Centennial Celebration
Audio
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
When the Apostle Paul is speaking about the importance of unity and harmony, it is not unity in human relationships alone that he is referring to (although he is addressing a particular problem at this time). He always is referring to a much greater harmony and unity. We Orthodox Christians always have been concerned not only with the importance of unity in human relationships but also the importance of unity with all creation around us.
People who still have the blessing of being able to work on the land tend to have a more open heart towards the Lord. They tend to be able to hear what He is saying, to pay attention to His guidance, and also to be ready to ask for His help. When there is not enough rain, people ask for the needed rain. (I have much experience with this, myself.) When there is too much rain, they ask the Lord to slow it down. When we are planting crops, we are asking God to bless the crops. When we are harvesting, we are asking the Lord to bless the harvest. Everything in our life is somehow conscious of, and focussed on the Lord and our relationship with Him. This has always and ever been the case with us. City life very much distorts this awareness as I have noticed from my childhood, when many children believed that milk came from a glass bottle (now it is a plastic bag or a waxed box). They believed that eggs came from a paper carton. Even today, hardly anyone seems to know where milk and eggs come from. They just mysteriously appear. People who have the blessing to live on the farm are not disunited from the whole process of life in general. People who have the blessing to live on and work on the land know the importance of unity with the Lord and also unity with each other.
The greatest joy for me in celebrating these many 100th anniversaries in this part of Alberta in the past years has been seeing the visible unity amongst the people here in the countryside. In the case of this particular area (and not just this church), this unity is amplified by a remaining connexion with that big, giant city just over the horizon. People have moved off the farms into the city, but they have not forgotten where they come from. They still come home very often (as long as there are still people here to come home to).
It is my prayer that that will never change. I am nervous about the way farming has been changing. I mean by this the movement towards agribusiness. Reducing farming simply to business tears people away from their personal connexion with the land, and their personal responsibility towards natural resources of which they are supposed to be the stewards. Agribusiness takes people away from God, upon whom farmers have always depended.
Many of these Temples remain here to this day. These Temples are connected to people now living in the city, but who, nevertheless, consider these Temples as their spiritual home, somehow. These Temples remain a source of mutual co-operation and reminders of how we are supposed to be living. Despite the fact that there are many difficulties and dangers in life, at least we have these Temples here. There is still a strong sense of connexion between the city to which people have immigrated and the place (where we are standing right now) from which they have emigrated.
People who are now living on these farms (especially those who are older) have probably experienced in the course of their lives something not exactly like, but similar to what we encounter in the Gospel today. Today, our Lord is compassionate towards the 5,000 men, in addition to all those gathered there : the women, children, relatives, friends and others. When we say 5,000 men, we are going to understand this to mean two and a half to three times that number of people in actuality because the apostle writes : “five thousand men, besides women and children”. In those days, the great majority of people were married, so it is safe to multiply the number by two. Then you have all sorts of children because in those days the families were not small (as we are having now.) If you multiply again by two children for each family, you are encountering a very large crowd of people. They had come to hear our Saviour, and they were nourished by His words.
People can be completely taken up with listening to His teaching, because it is so life-giving and rivetting. They forget all about the need to eat. Then, as the sun is setting in the countryside around, they realise that they are hungry. Our Lord knows that their bodies need food, too, and so what does He do ? The disciples are ready to try to do something practical and organised. They ask our Saviour to dismiss the crowd so that they can find and buy food. However, He tells them to let the multitude remain where they are, and to feed this multitude themselves. Can you imagine how they would react as they panicked ? However, our Lord, who is the Provider of life and the Giver of everything, in His compassion, simply says to the disciples : “‘You give them something to eat’”. The disciples, in shock at such a direction (as I would have been), admit to Him : “‘We have here only five loaves and two fish’”. The Lord blesses, gives thanks, and gives the loaves and fish to the disciples, and the disciples give them to the crowd. Having already encountered unusual things from the Lord, the disciples are obedient and do as they are told. When the disciples are distributing the five loaves and the two fishes, everyone had enough to eat, and there were baskets and baskets of leftover food. How Orthodox that sounds !
Although we do not very often have the multiplication of loaves and fishes in the same way, I rather suspect that in the course of the lives of persons here today, there must have been experiences of fear of not having enough food and crying out in the heart to the Lord. They would have seen that the Lord did, in fact, enable the food to go far enough. I have heard stories about such things so I know that this does happen. These persons are certain that they do not have enough, and yet they find that they have more than enough because their hearts have turned to the Lord. The Lord has somehow provided, and they cannot in any way explain it.
A much, much milder expression of this is found in the normal hospitality of our Orthodox people. When visitors are coming, the parishioners are determined to provide enough to eat. When there is a gathering of people and we bring together all our food, I have heard more often than not, fears that there is surely not enough. Yet, in the end, there is far more than enough, and there is plenty left over to take home. These events occur not merely because we mis-estimated. These things occur, in fact, because the Lord is blessing. This is less obvious and less serious in the case of our regular parish pot-luck dinners and our own home hospitality (which is always generous, as Christ would have it). In times of need and shortages, in particular, it is very much the case that there seems to be a multiplication of resources beyond what we are sharing together.
As all those who have come before us over the last 100 years have remembered and known, we must all remember and know that the Lord must come first in everything in our lives. After putting Him first, everything else does, in fact, fall into place. Persons who came here and built their Temples (even before their homes) understood that. The Lord comes first, and everything else is provided. Our Saviour did provide, and He still does provide. The Lord does not change. The love of the Lord remains steadily with us, for us, and in us, always. In His compassion and His love, the Lord is always with us and caring about us, just as He cares today for the multitude that is hungry at the end of the day. He provides for us as He provides for them today, not only with bread and fish, but in many other ways for which we turn to Him for help.
In the words of the Apostle Paul which we have heard today, divisions had crept in amongst the members of the church in Corinth. They were developing a party spirit, and they were saying, in effect : “I belong to this person or to that person” ; “I am a follower of this person or that person”. The Apostle Paul is saying to them really harshly, it seems, that he is glad that he baptised almost none of them. However, in the Body of Christ, there is only unity and harmony. The concern is not about any person who might be doing the baptising. Rather, everything is focussed on Jesus Christ. Everything is focussed on our Saviour, not on us. We are His agents, the Apostle says. Everything we do points to Him, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and His love, His life, His joy, His hope, His peace, and His provision of everything.
Brothers and sisters, our life in this parish and its neighbour parishes was built on a very good foundation of life lived properly in the proper perspective. Yes, sin exists, and no-one is perfect ; however, for the most part this is and has been the case. The life here has been built on a good and firm foundation which is rooted in Christ, lived in Christ, focussed on Christ, dependent on Christ. Because this foundation is so good, we are able to be here today celebrating this first 100 years (I will not be around for the second). By the perpetuation of the same love that has been before, the same faithfulness to Christ that has been before, the same unity one with another that has been before, whoever will be coming after me as a bishop will be able to have a similar joy when he comes to these parts to celebrate the second 100 years. He will be able to give thanks to God for another 100 years of witness and service to the Lord here in rural Alberta. These rural parishes are still providing spiritual food for the city and far beyond. These parishes are signs of life in Christ.
May the Lord grant us all the heart to be as those who have come before : faithful to Christ, rooted in Christ. With them, may our lives glorify the same Lord Jesus Christ, who is with us always, at all times and forever, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.