Come and see : Taste the Heavenly Banquet

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Come and see : Taste the Heavenly Banquet
14th Sunday after Pentecost
5 September, 2004
2 Corinthians 1:21-2:4 ; Matthew 22: 1-14


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel and Epistle today have to do with the more difficult side of Christian life. Particularly in the Apostle’s case, I, myself, would have great difficulty in doing what he had to do, which was to impose some discipline and order so as to correct people. Because they were particularly self-willed and rebellious, he had to correct them somewhat sharply, and that is why he is apologising at length in case he might hurt their feelings too much. Nevertheless, what had to be said, had to be said. There is always the temptation in Christian living to fall into ... well, there is always the temptation to fall into temptation. We all do that in one way or another, and to a greater or lesser extent. There is also the temptation in this whole environment to puff ourselves up and to think that we are something, and to try to make something of ourselves. This has always been a part of human fallen society, but it is especially the character of western societies, and of North America in particular.

The way North American society forms us is the opposite of what the Christian life is supposed to be about. Whereas in Christian life, we are supposed to be learning how, like Christ, to love selflessly, western society teaches us to love ourselves above everything. It teaches us always to have strings attached. By this, I mean that there are conditions. As people popularly say : “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine”. There are many sayings of that sort. If we do something for someone else, we only do something good for someone else if they are going to do something good back to us. “Do not do good for someone else if there is nothing in it for you”. That is the way Canadian society has been tending to move for a long time now. Indeed, I have heard throughout my whole life : “What is in it for me ?” If I am going to do something, or refrain from doing something, then what advantage is it to me ? What advantage is it to me if I do something good for someone else ? “We have to look after number one (i.e. me)”. These are all secular, selfish and egocentric attitudes that completely clash with the Gospel.

On the other hand, the teaching of Christ, the example of Christ, is that we do good because Christ is good ; we love, because Christ is love. Furthermore, we do not expect anything back. If we get nothing back but abuse, we still give love and we do good to the others. We do what is the right thing, in accordance with the standard of Christ. That standard is — whether we pay attention or not — one of the reasons the Beatitudes come to us every Sunday (and even on weekdays if we offer the Divine Liturgy). The Beatitudes are with us all the time. If we were in a monastery (as I was a couple of weeks ago in Romania), every single solitary day there is the Divine Liturgy. Every single solitary day, they are hearing those Beatitudes. The Beatitudes come to us because our Saviour is telling us in them about how to love even if people do not love us in return. The Beatitudes show us how to behave in accordance with His will, even if people do go so far as to abuse us.

In the context of this subject, I always seem to have to talk about Saint Juvenaly, our first priest-martyr. He was not the first martyr in North America, but he was the first priest-martyr in North America (in Alaska), near the end of the 18th century, just before the turn of the 19th century. Saint Juvenaly had been one of those who had been zealously active in Alaska, doing missionary work. Thus it was that he went to western Alaska where the Yup’iks live. As he was approaching them on his boat (I am told by the actual descendants of those people), he was misunderstood in two ways. When he was approaching, the fact that he was wearing his gold Cross appeared to be a threat to the shaman of the area, and to their faith, because it seemed to be some sort of religious invasion. Thus, they were going to try to stop him. It was a sort of religious invasion, but it was not what they thought it was. He was not a foreign shaman trying to take over. Nevertheless, as Father Juvenaly was nearing the shore on this boat, they started to shoot arrows at him. The descendants of these Yup’ik people say to this day that their ancestors thought that he must have been “nuts” (a sort of a crazy man), because he was waving his hand. Mistakenly, they thought this hand-waving was to brush away those arrows as though they were mosquitoes or some other insect. What they did not understand was that Saint Juvenaly was doing exactly what the Gospel teaches, and what our Saviour directs us to do under those circumstances. When the arrows started to come at him, he knew what was going to happen and what his end would be. Therefore, he began with his hand to make the Sign of the Cross upon them, upon the people who were killing him. That is exactly what happened. The descendants of those people now understand. They were converted by someone else afterwards ; and now, for almost 200 years these descendants have been faithful Orthodox Christians living in that same area – very faithful and strong Orthodox Christians. In addition, they have Saint Juvenaly in heaven to pray for them. He is their own martyr at their own making, as it were, and he continues to protect them until this day.

A considerable amount of the Christian life is backwards according to the standards and ways of the world. Regardless, it is important for us, despite what the world thinks of us, to persevere in what seems to be so strange to the world. This is because it is only in this way that there is life-giving freedom and true, real love, substantial love, eternal love. It is love without borders : love without conditions. It is just plain life-giving love in Jesus Christ.

In the Gospel today, the Saviour is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven : the banquet in the Kingdom of Heaven, and what happens when people do not take seriously their invitation from Him to this banquet. As we heard, there were people who were frivolous about the invitation. They did not take it seriously, and they did not bother to come. In some cases, they even killed the messenger. Now this parable is exactly directed at the people of Christ – the Jewish people of those days – because they had been given a responsibility in God. This responsibility was rooted in the fact that long ago God had revealed Himself to the ancestors of the Jews that He is love. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jakob, and many others besides them and after them had a personal experience of God and of His personal love for them. It was to be their work and responsibility as a people to show to all their neighbours what joy and hope there is in this loving relationship with God. They were expected by the Lord to be a witness to the world as a nation, as a people. Just as our Saviour speaks about our need to be yeast and salt, so was it the responsibility of the Jewish people, the chosen people of God, to give a good and lively example to everyone else. However, since we human beings so frequently tend to take the easy way, and so frequently do nothing, even this is a visible sign of God’s love for us, because of the unimaginable extent of His patience. Going their own way, they decided instead that because they were the chosen people, they were therefore the exclusive people.

Instead of being a light to everyone else and revealing the truth about the one true God and about His love for us, they became a closed and exclusive club, as it were. This, of course, is contrary to what God had sent them to do. Therefore, when our Saviour speaks about sending out into the highways and the byways and bringing in anyone – anyone at all – to fill up His banquet hall, this is exactly what He was addressing. He was letting us know about what would come : the mission to Gentiles — to us. He was preparing us for the mission to the people who would hear the voice of Christ and respond. They would hear His voice and say “yes”. They would hear His call, and come to His banquet. They would hear His call, and even more importantly, they would try to do His will. It would now no longer be understood to be an exclusive call. Indeed, this call cannot at all be interpreted as an exclusive call. With their hearts responding readily, large numbers of Jewish people have, from the very beginning, heard the call of Christ and come to Him, and entered into His banquet-hall. The whole idea of having an exclusive nation was broken with the coming of Jesus Christ, and the development of the Christian mission to us, the Gentiles.

Sometimes, Orthodox people still fall into the temptation about this idea of exclusivity. It is very important for us, especially here in North America (where we are still relatively free of this), to be diligent about keeping out the idea of exclusivity. This is important because as always, if I think that I merit something (regardless of what my ministry or call is), if I dare to think that it is my own ministry, my own call, my own privilege, my own anything, then our Saviour is very quick to respond, as it were : “All right, you can think like that if you insist, but I will find someone else who is ready to listen to Me and to do My will”. He does do just this. Therefore, even in our ministries in Christ, even with our particular gifts that Christ gives to us in living our Christian life, none of us had better dare to think that it is “mine” exclusively and alone. It is so sadly ironic how we human beings can be. It seems that we never grow up. It seems that we very much tend to stay emotionally and even spiritually for the most part at the age of two. At that age, of course, everything is “mine”. It belongs to no-one else. It is “mine”. We seem to be frozen in this condition. It is amazing. We tell ourselves that we have grown out of it, but if we were to look at ourselves honestly, that attitude of “mine” is still there. We can recall the story of The Lord of the Rings, with Smeagol-Gollum and his “Precious” and his all-consuming, obsessive fascination with the precious ring. We seem rather often to tend to be too condescendingly dismissive of the poor benighted chap. Even in flash-back recollections of how his torture began, not many readers or viewers seem to grasp the full import of the death-dealing process and the depth of distortion that occurred in him once he became the slave of the ring and of the evil associated with it. Not many see how Gollum, himself, became a lie.

When we come to the point of considering the details about our lives, about the seasons in our lives, about the portions of our lives, in what way are we so different from Gollum or from a two-year-old ? With His love, Christ breaks us out of this possessiveness, this obsessive, exclusive possessiveness. It is important that we learn how to grow up, and to break out of any ideas at all – in any part of our life – about exclusivity. Orthodox Christian faith, which is life in the love of Jesus Christ, is inclusive, not exclusive. Yes, it is true, there are some regulations, and there are some boundaries, but these are not for the sake of exclusivity. Rather, they are for the sake of good order. Our Lord Jesus Christ on His Cross, with His arms outstretched, was forgiving all those who were killing Him. With His arms outstretched, He was welcoming you and me into His Kingdom, along with the Repentant Thief. Our Saviour is inviting all peoples into His Kingdom. Christ is the Light and Life of the world. It is our responsibility as Orthodox Christians to be, in and with Christ Himself, a light shining in the darkness, a light to the Gentiles, a light to the nations, a light to the world, a light of Jesus Christ’s love. It is our responsibility to be bringing people into the Body of Christ. It is our responsibility – each one of us – with the net of the love of Jesus Christ, to catch human beings with His love, to bring them into His light, to bring them into His love, to unite them to His Body, and to bring them to this Banquet-Table in which we are about to participate.

It is our responsibility to use the talents and gifts that God has given to each one of us, gifts of love, compassion and mercy, to bring His love, His life, to the people around us : to the person that God is sending to us everyday, and perhaps especially to beggars on the street. It is our responsibility compassionately to bring His love to those He sends, with the hope and the prayer that they will seek His love and ask to come and see. It is not for us ever to be bashing people over the head with the Gospel as some people seem to do. When we turn on the radio or the television, we very frequently see one or another person doing just this : bashing other people over the head with the Gospel, and preaching to them about things that do not yet make any sense to them, because they probably do not yet know Who Jesus Christ truly is. It is indeed odd. People are ready to quote long passages of the Scriptures to people who have never read the Bible, and yet they expect such persons to understand what all this means.

What does the Gospel mean ? No-one can know what it means until after having been introduced to it. Nowadays, very many persons have no exposure at all to the Bible, quite unlike the environment of my own youth (in Alberta in the 1950s), when most children already knew very well Who is Christ, and already knew many scriptural passages by heart. Indeed, most people in those days regularly went to church services. How did and do children get introduced at an early age to the Gospel ? They were introduced in the first place by the love of human beings, by the witness of the love of human beings who knew and loved Christ personally. It is not different with adults. They, too, must be introduced. They will often ask us us : “What is this love ; what is this hope ; what is this joy that you have ? How can you manage to live your life in the midst of all this pain and sorrow with such joy and such hope, when it seems that no-one else can do it ?” Such a moment is precisely when we would say : “Come and see”. They would come ; and as there are in this parish, there would be some people waiting to talk about their love for Christ, and for the Gospel. When they speak, they will not start talking about this or that prophesy, or about who is this or that prophet. They will, out of love, and as a loving reflex, talk about Who God is to us. Newcomers have to be shown, little by little, for instance as in Genesis 1 (also called 1 Moses 1), how God created everything. We have to begin at the beginning with the ABCs, because we in North America are really very much like those who lived in the early times of the Christian faith, times in which no-one knew anything. Now, we can again say with some certitude that no-one knows anything about the Gospel. We can very safely assume that no-one knows anything about the Orthodox Christian way, either. We have to start from zero, and before anything else, show them that God loves them.

We also have to try in some fashion to fit in elements of the Twelve-Step Programme in which so many people are finding some sort of consolation in their difficulties in life. It is a good introduction to Christ and to the Christian way to give people some form of the Twelve-Step Programme to begin with. This is because one of the first things that a person has to do in the Twelve-Step Programme is to admit that whatever one is addicted to (and people can be addicted to very many and surprising things), whatever it is, one cannot get out of the addiction by oneself alone. They say that we need a “higher power”, but we know that this means God. We need God’s help. We can help them to realise that they are truly in need of God’s help to get through life, to get out of whatever holes they have gotten into.

When we are beginning to introduce people to Christ and the Church, we first teach them about Genesis, just as was done in apostolic times. In so doing, we teach them about the evidence of God’s love in Genesis, and then we continue, following this theme of God’s love, in Exodus. Once we have talked about Genesis and Exodus, we will have hope that they can begin to understand something about everything else. We really have to begin with the beginning. We certainly still speak about Jesus Christ, but we have to talk about Him in His full context. We cannot begin simply by reading the entire Gospel according to Matthew, for instance. If we read the Gospel according to Matthew to someone, the Gospel according to Matthew is full and overflowing with references to the Old Testament (also called the Old Covenant). Matthew cannot be understood properly without understand also the references to the Old Testament. Therefore, if we would begin with Matthew, then we will be required at the same time and immediately to make the necessary connections with the Law, the Prophets, and the Wisdom writings which we find referred to in this Gospel. Perhaps Matthew is in fact a good catechetical tool to begin with, because we begin with the fulfilment and the foreshadowing found in the Old Testament. However we may begin this introduction, it is the Lord Who is guiding it all in and through us.

Witnessing really involves how I, as a Christian, treat other human beings. How do I behave in Christ ? Do I bring Christ, His love, His hope with me when I am shopping at my grocer’s ? When I am standing in a very long line and being impatient because it is hot and people are being grumpy, do I bring Christ with me then ? Do I, as a bank teller, bring Christ with me when I am encountering someone who is really nasty ? Bank tellers seem to receive the worst of this sort of behaviour. This is because when it comes to people and money, well, people seem to become angry and impatient and aggressive very quickly. This is surely why banks offer so many machines now. People can be very nasty about their money and any small mistakes — a penny here and a penny there. On the other hand, it may be that just because they are feeling grumpy, or they have had a fight with someone that day, they take it out on the nearest bank-teller or clerk in a store. When such people are doing that sort of thing to me, do I show them Christ’s patient love in response, or do I tell them that their mother is a hamster ? Which way is it ? What sort of response do I give ? If I say to them that their mother is a hamster, I am then behaving just as everyone else in the world would. However, if I am patient and I do not answer back with the same ill-treatment, but instead if I have some sort of real peace within myself, then while I may be suffering this abuse, they will not take it out on the next person. Two and two sometimes add up to four. If I go so far as to pray for such an irate person, perhaps it may help that person to make two and two add up to four faster. Indeed, we may well understand that we meet such wounded and angry people every day.

Our Saviour invites us to His banquet. As we participate in this banquet, He gives us a responsibility to become co-workers with Him : co-workers with Him in His field ; co-workers in building His buildings ; co-workers in strengthening the members of His Body, in grafting on members to His Body. Let us be the good respondents to His invitations, those who are (because of love) eager and willing to work together with Him in His Kingdom, to eat together with Him in His Kingdom. Let us, in our co-working, glorify our Saviour in every part of our lives, every day of our lives, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever and unto the ages of ages.