in the Path of loving Service
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In the life of Father John and his family, we have an example of the working out of what we have just heard in the Holy Gospel. It is important for us to remember this, and especially to remember the words of the Gospel, and the assurances of love that our Saviour gives to us. We, ourselves, must take confidence in these words of love in our living of our lives in Christ. Our Saviour, no matter what, is always with us. He emptied Himself in His love, in order to keep us in loving harmony and in union with Him. Everything about Him and His relationship with us is concerned with this love.
It is important for us to remember the life of Father John in this context, and the life of his whole family, because his inheritance was all concerned with and filled with living in the confidence of this love. He was not the first person in his family to serve Christ. There were five generations of clergy before him in his family. His father was a Pentecostal minister and missionary. In his childhood, Father John was in China and India because of his parents’ love for Jesus Christ. While he was in India, the way that Orthodox Christians whom he met there worshipped and loved God affected him very much, also. It seems to me that, to a great extent, his experience of his parents’ love for Christ, and of the love for Christ of Christians he encountered in other parts of the world, confirmed him in his own desire to serve Jesus Christ in this same single-minded, single-hearted way. That was, as far as I can recall, in my experience of him for about 25 years, completely characteristic of him.
Father John (or “Papa John” as many prefer to say) was full of the love of our Lord, and he wanted to serve Him, to serve Him only. He was willing to do what sometimes seemed to be ridiculous to other people, in order to be faithful to our Saviour Jesus Christ, and to the truth about Him. That is why he gave up everything, and came into the Orthodox Church, because of embracing the whole, full truth about Him who is the Truth, Jesus Christ. He told Archbishop Sylvester that he did this because he had found the Pearl of great Price (see Matthew 13:46).
It is because of his obedience and his love that we ourselves are able to be here today in this building. It is because of his loving obedience (even though there were many difficulties, and he made mistakes, like everyone else). It was Father John’s love for Jesus Christ that enabled him to gather people together to establish one of the earliest English-speaking missions in the country, and then to do what was thought to be impossible. What was the impossible ? I do not know that it is being done anywhere else yet – but by his prayers and by his example, it became possible here : the re-unification of the anglophone Holy Transfiguration community with its russophone mother parish, Saint Nicholas, to make our cathedral community. For the most part, people got along reasonably well after that reconciliation, and a truly life-giving and strong community was formed.
If we are being accurate, then we will accept that it is also because of Father John that we are now in this particular building. I am quite sure that if Father John had not been so convinced by the Mother of God that this was the right thing to do when he was venerating the Kursk Root Icon of the Theotokos (as many know from his own words), then I do not think that we would be here today. Of course, that is just as well, because if it were not God’s will, we should not have been here. It was also because of Father John’s love for Jesus Christ, and the joy with which he lived that love of our Lord, that this cathedral community is able to be such a family in Christ. If we are going to be faithful to his love for our Lord Jesus Christ, and if we are going to live following his example of living the love of our Saviour, then, making mistakes (as he made mistakes) and repenting (as he was repenting), we ourselves are going to do everything that is possible, with God’s help, to maintain this community as a loving family, even though it is quite a big family in quite a big house.
Being a big family like this one is not easy. Sometimes, we have to associate with one another in sub-group families in order to keep together. Nevertheless, the community still somehow has to be maintained as a united family, because the Lord would not have given the responsibility to Father John to bring all this into being if that were not how it is supposed to be. The Lord would not have brought things about as He did if that were not what we are supposed to be doing in this city, in this diocese. Our situation is as it is, because God wills it. Father John has been co-operating with that Will, not necessarily always knowing precisely what he was doing, and why. Nevertheless, this is the fruit of his love of Jesus Christ.
Father John was a good father. He was a good father, and not only to his physical family and blood-relatives. It is a good thing for the rest of us (especially fathers) to remember his example, and to do something similar, as well as we are able. No-one can be Father John again (not even his children). No-one can be Father John again, because there only ever was one – God only created one of him, as He creates only one of you and one of me. That does not mean that there cannot be similarities, however. We can encourage each other by the example of our lives, and by the memory of his good, Christ-loving example. Those of you who heard from him in his last week amongst us, heard how full of joy he was, even when he was faced with the possibility of a cancer (and everyone knows what his family already went through with Suzanne in that, and how the prospect could have been extremely upsetting for him). By God’s Grace and mercy, he was full of joy, full of peace, and full of acceptance of God’s will, no matter what it would bring about. He was radiant with joy, as people have been testifying.
Well, is not that an example for us : how to be encouraged in our own difficulties and struggles in trying to follow our Lord Jesus Christ ? Our Saviour was in him, facing everything he faced. Although he did not have an easy life, as he faced everything he was confronted with, and as he endured everything he was given, he was still able to be so effervescent with the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, so emptying of himself. Even the night before he departed, he was still emptying himself, serving, loving, and giving of himself one hundred percent to people around him, being the father that he was to everyone around, and in the foot-steps of Christ, serving people all around him.
Our Saviour gave him this joy, this strength, this peace, this ability to face something difficult or something horrible, with joy and with victory. Then the Lord took him just like that, in the middle of the night. No-one expected anything. The Lord took him just like that. Well, how merciful was that, because anything having to do with colon cancer is unpleasant (to make a real understatement). The Lord spared him and his family such an ordeal. Yet we know by his love, by his faith, by his confidence in Jesus Christ, that if the Lord had asked it of him, then he would have lived through that ; he would have endured it as he had always gone through everything – with love and confidence in our Saviour, and with joy.
We are full of heartache right now, and we are full of tears, mixed with joy, in the Orthodox way. It cannot be otherwise, as long as we remember the fundamental : that the love of Jesus Christ, and joy in the hope of the Resurrection (which the texts are assuring us about) all have meaning. It is not some sort of crazy, philosophical idea. It is reality. Father John lived, and continues to live that reality. We are following with him in the same path, loving the same Jesus Christ with him. We have him, along with many others now, to intercede for us, and to support us in the work that we have to do.
Let us not get lost in the cares of this world ; but let us remember him, his love, his faithfulness, and be encouraged, ourselves, to persevere in the same love. Let us allow the Lord to give us the same joy, the same strength, and the same sense of direction. Then, when our time comes, we will meet him there in the Kingdom of Heaven, with all those others whom we love, who have gone before us, and who are glorifying the Saviour. With them, we will unite our hearts and our voices in eternal praise of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the Kingdom, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.