In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In the very disconnected mind of us who live in the West, Christianity is accepted to be a religion. In the Orthodox Church, no-one ever told us that. Nevertheless, we live in the West in the midst of a society that believes, in fact, that Christianity is a “religion”. Our government says it is a religion, so we tend to give up and say that it must be a religion if everyone says so. A religion is a system of belief and governance.
It is a blessing that we are Orthodox Christians. No matter how much we try to live otherwise, we cannot be any other way. The way we live shows that there is no system in Christian life. There truly is no organisation. In fact, although our Church government works, it does not make much sense to most people. However, it works. It is really odd being an Orthodox Christian. There are people coming to Orthodox Christianity from outside who are well-organised, highly systematised people. They become Orthodox Christians and then they begin to be frustrated because all the organisation which they were successful at before does not work. They get the distinct impression that they are swimming in very thick, cold porridge.
In fact, that is just the way it is and that is the way things are. This is so because it is as we heard in the Gospel today : to be a Christian is to encounter the Lord’s compassion. This poor mother has just been deprived of any hope of any sort of secure living. She is a widow with only one son who has died. Society at that time had no provision for women in that situation, and she would now have to be on the street begging for any income and hope of having food or shelter for the rest of her life. The Lord encountered this procession and He had compassion on her. As the Lord of Life, He gave her son back to her alive.
The Apostle Paul tells us this morning that he did not receive the Gospel from man. This is not a religious system engendered by humans. This is not a system of belief developed by humans. By the mercy and love of the God who has compassion on a widow deprived of her son, our Faith is a response to the revelation of God Himself in His compassion for us who are lost in our sin, our darkness and our brokenness. He revealed Himself to the Apostle who was persecuting Him, and He saved him. He saved him because the Apostle was ready to accept the loving, waking-up revelation of the Lord to himself, and to unite himself to the Lord. The Apostle was ready to do what the Lord said and to go where He willed.
You and I are Orthodox Christians because of this loving relationship with our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. God has revealed Himself to us. It is not we who made anything happen – it is He who loves us and has revealed Himself to us. We respond, and He unites us to Himself. Our life as Orthodox Christians gets messy sometimes because our life as Orthodox Christians has nothing to do with (or very little to do with) by-laws or with any sort of organisational structures. It has to do with relationships. We have relationships of love in Jesus Christ with each other. Some of you in this congregation have been married for a long time. You know that your relationship with your spouse is a continuing mystery. You know that there is a constant mystery about your spouse. Even after many, many years you are finding out new things about your spouse. I know this is so because my parents and grandparents (who were married for 55 years) said so. I have met couples who have lasted in marriage for 65 years, who said so, thus this must be the case. If it is so about husband and wife (which is about the closest one can get in a human relationship), how much more is it so in terms of relationships in a Christian community ? We are always finding out new things about each other. Our love is not drastically affected by these new things, but as each person develops in life in Christ, it affects how we interact with each other.
Our life can be like walking through cold porridge if we try to find our way using logic and not listening to the Lord. We have Church government for instance, led by bishops. However, a bishop is not in any way a chief executive officer of anything. He is not even to be understood as such. The bishop is given to the Church by the Lord to be as Christ to the flock. He is to be like a father to the whole diocese. The relationship between the bishop and all the people in the diocese is supposed to be like father and family. For the bishop, the whole diocese is like his wife. There are all sorts of mixed up allusions : “wife”, “children”, “sheep”, but you surely catch the idea. In a somewhat similar way, the relationship between a shepherd and his sheep is a personal relationship. We have in our lives deanery meetings, diocesan councils and diocesan assemblies. We have all these organisational things to help our relationships with each other along. They are not created by God to increase the number of laws we have to obey. They are given to us as ways in which we can help and assist each other. Diocesan councils are not given to the Church in Canada for legislation. They are given in order to provide advice to the bishop from the believers on how to go about administering and organising our life as well as we are able. Sometimes the bishop can be the advisor of the council.
The main point is that it is very important for us not to allow ourselves to think of our life in Christ in terms of mere structures. Our life in Christ is a work of daily prayer to the Lord, and service to other human beings. If I want to serve God, I certainly serve Him by being here and worshipping Him week after week, and also day after day in my home. However, I serve Him just as much by phoning up someone who is sick at home and cannot get out and come to church. I serve Him just as much by taking someone who is ill or feeble and cannot do things to the grocery store to get groceries. I serve Him just as much by hugging with love people who are bereaved and deprived of loved ones through death, and being present and supportive to them while they are being healed. This is where being a Christian is revealed – how we behave in our lives.
This parish is the parish where I was placed the longest. Somehow, it was in this parish that the Lord established a particular sort of loving relationship which makes it quite difficult for me every time to go away from here even if I am here only for a short time. This parish somehow became my spiritual family. That is precisely how it is supposed to be. I give thanks to God for the time that I have spent here and for the many times that He allows me to come back here and to be in your midst. I wish I could be here all the time. I cannot, and it is impossible because that is not what the Lord is giving me to do. However, that does not prevent us from loving one another and being brothers and sisters, encouraging, strengthening, praying and helping each other in Christ to grow and mature. That is what the Lord desires for us and that is what we all desire – simply to love Christ. Therefore, let us put our priorities straight once again and remember what Saint Herman exhorts us to do. Let us ask God for the Grace to do it : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute let us love God above all”. In doing so, may our lives glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.