In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
The society in which we live is a society that “wants to have its cake and eat it, too”. That is the old saying we are taught when we are young. Our society wants both to eat the cake and keep it. Why is this ? It is because of a loss of direction, a loss of purpose. The only purpose our society seems to have is to satisfy every imaginable passion and desire. Our society is like a spoiled child. “No” has never been said to that child, and every time there is an obstacle that child throws a terrific tantrum. This is what we have become. Take, for instance, the fact that in our society in North America crime is rampant. People lament that there is no order, and things are going to pieces everywhere. At the same time, this very society at every opportunity lambastes Christianity, which is at the foundation of North American culture.
In these days it is not “in” to be a Christian. In these days, if you are a Christian, then you are “out of it”. You do not fit in. You are fanatical, and they say you are a hypocrite. So what ? We are all hypocrites. Who is so honest as not to be a hypocrite ? Who is so righteous as not to be a hypocrite ? It is hard to find such a person. Greek philosophers went around looking for honest people, and did not find them. No-one finds them. Why ? Because we are all enmeshed with sin.
North American society is trying to deny the existence of sin. Therefore, our society is full of crime, and we have uprooted the source of righteousness in our society. We cry and lament. We recognise that in our society we have done bad things to each other. We say : “Oh, but that is not sin, and it is not my fault either. Someone was bad to me ; therefore, even if I steal your purse, take your life, rip your eyes out or destroy your reputation, I cannot help it. Thus, we give people in society the ammunition to say that it is everyone else’s fault (except mine) that I do bad things – that I misbehave, that I steal, that I kill, that I do horrible things, that I lie, that I cheat”. We say : “It is someone else’s fault, not mine”. W S Gilbert may have already comprehended this attitude when he wrote the aria : “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one” in his lyrics for the operetta “Pirates of Penzance”.
Our society in the face of all of this becomes very defensive. We do not want people abusing us in various ways. We do not want to be the object of theft, slander, rape, murder, pillaging, and looting. We want to be protected. So, what do we do ? We really do not lead people into repentance any more, because repentance does not exist in our society any more. We punish. Because we are afraid, we enact legislation. When people do bad things we put them behind bars, and then let them out again in a couple of months. All of this is nonsensical and irrational if we pay attention to it.
We want order, but we rebel against order. We want morality, but we rebel against morals. We want joy and happiness in life, but we uproot that very source of joy and happiness. We want people to be good to each other, but we make ourselves so afraid of each other that we do not dare to be good to each other, in case we get sued (that is coming to our country, too). Day by day, we fall deeper and deeper, subtly, into this crazy mire. Our own Christian foundation, our Orthodox Christian foundation gets eroded and eroded because the society in which we live is so pressuring and so subtly persuasive that it is very hard to stand firm.
The Lord has very clear things to say to you and to me about this. The fact is that things have not changed. We think that here in almost the twenty-first century, we are so modern, so up-to-date, and so far ahead of anyone before us. However, the fact is that what we have done is conveniently to forget all about history. We like to think that everything was naively rosy before (or primitively stupid), and that people did not know how to live until now.
The fact is that all those primitive people did know how to live. Where they are still alive in the world (and where they have been left more or less alone to themselves), they do know how to live. We do not. Perhaps we can hear the Lord say to you and to me, as it were : Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your consolation with your big houses, your “electric everything”, and every imaginable comfort, and you got it on the backs of the poor around the world. Maybe we do not get it on the backs of the poor right next door, but we have surely extracted it from the poor overseas. Because we are so comfy and cosy now, we cannot expect to be so comfy and cosy after this life.
The Lord says : “Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger” (Luke 6:25). Probably we will find ourselves hungry in this life. As a result of the unleashing of deadly passions around the world, societies which have been relatively stable and self-sufficient are ripped apart, and people are dying of starvation on land that could perfectly well sustain them, and meet every need. However, because they are filled with such hatred, and killing each other, and stealing from each other, no-one except the most evil has enough to eat. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep”(Luke 6:25). The first part of this next one is what runs our society : “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets”(Luke 6:26). What happened to the false prophets ? They went down with the society that they were pretending was all right (but it was dead).
We live in a society that is full of hatred and fear and self-interest. What does our Lord say to you and me ? He says the opposite : Do not kill or put in prison your enemies. Love them. Do not sue and do not put in prison those who do bad things to you. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you” (Luke 6:27028). How far are we going to get with trying to do this in society these days ?
In fact, people laugh at us about what the Lord says next. He says : “To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either” (Luke 6:29). Here is another good one : “Give to everyone who asks of you” (Luke 6:30). By contrast, we are nowadays told : Do not give to those who beg, because they might use it to buy a drink or drugs. By contrast to that judgemental cynicism, Bishop Gregory of Alaska gave me a reminder last year. Talking about these Dominical directives, he said : “I do what my father and my uncle said : ‘If the person asks something from you, then he must need it’. Who am I to ask what he needs it for ? If I start to say : ‘I am not going to give’, then I am judging him. Maybe I will give something to the person begging on the street, but I do not simply give ; I give with God’s blessing”. If this person is misusing that gift, then with that blessing will come God’s ruler on the knuckles, as it were. The conscience will prick that person (if there is any opening) when we give to that person who is begging ; and if there is any possibility of good coming from it, then some good will come.
This following directive is even harder to take : “From him who takes away your goods do not ask them back” (Luke 6:30). His next words are ones that some make fun of, and twist around, because they cannot stand the Truth. The Lord says : “Just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise” (Luke 6:31). There is no person with any sort of real sanity, half-sanity, quarter-sanity, eighth-sanity who says : “Go ahead and beat me up ; I do not care. I just love it”.
People want to be loved. They want people to care about them, to pay attention to them, to respect them as creations of God. That is why, as we have just heard, our Lord says, in effect : Do to others what you would have others do to you. We want people to love us, to care for us ; but we cannot wait for them to love and care for us first. We have to be ready to do this first, because (as we will sing a little while later) : “We have seen the true Light; we have received the heavenly Spirit”. We have been filled with the love of Jesus Christ. We have to be the example.
This is what the Apostle is saying to us this morning. The world thinks, in its cynicism and hatred of Christ, that it is the weak and flabby way to go, to be a Christian. In a sense, I do not blame them, because some people who call themselves Christians have namby-pambied themselves into a lump of stale Jello. This is a distortion of the love of Christ. The love that Jesus Christ is talking about has nothing to do with warm, fuzzy, gutless, shapeless, formless feelings. It has to do with raw courage, acts of the will, determination, love with no strings attached, willingness to suffer even unto death for the sake of Christ. That is not wishy-washy, fuzzy emotionalism. That is life-giving, no-strings-attached love.
The Apostle Paul said to his disciple, Timothy, what is said to all the clergy, but which is especially applicable to every last one of us : Be an example to the faithful. Be an example of love (see 1 Timothy 4:12). Have the intestinal fortitude to do what Jesus Christ said and did, and be like the saints. Be powerful. Be strong. Be defenders of the Truth. Be those who live the Truth. Reveal Jesus Christ in your lives in the way you love so that by your example others will see and believe, and become completely a part of the Way.
Our first responsibility here, today, is to ask the Lord to come into our hearts more deeply, more fully, with greater power by the Grace, the inspiration, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this way, despite our sins, despite our shortcomings, despite our selfishness and our brokenness, others will see His love, will be touched by His love as we live our lives, and they will come to be united with Him. Then, they too, will have the same joy, the same hope, the same power, and the same victory that you and I have, and that we participate in.
In two more weeks, God willing, there will be in Alaska the glorification of Saint Jakob Netsvetov. Yet another of the courageous saints of North America, he is the first half-Russian, half-Aleut priest to be glorified as a saint. He was not the first of the mixed-blood priests, but he is the first to be glorified as a saint. He was a co-worker with Saint Innocent of Alaska, and with him, translated Scripture and the Divine Liturgy into the Yupik and Athabaskan languages in south-west Alaska. The legacy of these great warriors for Christ is that the Yupik and Athabaskan peoples are the most stubbornly faithful Orthodox people in all of Alaska. If we think we have it hard now, then let us then read the lives of these holy men, sailing all over on the stormy North Pacific and Bering Sea waters, freezing half to death, starving part of the time (and lacking an electric anything). What Saint Innocent and Saint Jakob accomplished in their lives !
Later this year, God willing, two more saints will be glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church, since they were part of the original Russian mission. One priest, Father John Kochurov, was a great builder of the Church. If you go to Chicago and see our Cathedral, it was built in his day. This man, together with Father Alexander Hotovitsky (also a priest brought here in the time of Saint Tikhon, a co-worker with Saint Tikhon), worked in the Chancery in New York City. They then went back to Russia in 1918 as representatives of the Church of North America at the Assembly of the whole Church of Russia. This assembly was prayerfully deliberating while the revolution was in progress. Father John Kochurov became the first Priest-Martyr of the Revolution when he was killed by a mob during one of the revolutionary riots. Father Alexander Hotovitsky was not able to leave Russia again, and he died in a labour camp fifteen years later.
Can you imagine the strength of such persons ? What would it be like to be a First- Martyr, like Father John Kochurov, and refuse to deny Jesus Christ, and to die ; or to be like Father Alexander Hotovitsky – to serve, love, and witness to Jesus Christ as a slave labourer in Siberia ?
Perhaps the Lord does not call you and me to such outstanding and heavy tests of our commitment to Jesus Christ. However, He says the same to you and to me as He said to Father Jakob, to Father Alexander, to Father John, and to all the others : Be an example. Reveal Christ. Show by your love to Whom you belong. Show by your love to what Kingdom you belong, and let us all do as Saint Herman, the first and foremost among North America’s saints, teaches : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”.