4th Sunday after Pentecost
Romans 13:11-14 ; 14:1-4 ; Luke 1:1-25, 57-68, 76, 80
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Because of the ways of Canadian society and Western civilization, there is a tendency in this society to behave towards the Lord as though He were far away, usually angry, and somehow “laying down the law” to us. This attitude towards the Lord is not native to the Orthodox Church. It is a distortion. If we lived in a native Orthodox country, we would find that people do not behave that way. They do not treat the Lord as though He were always angry, waiting for them to make the smallest slip and then beating them up. God is not like that. However, sad to say, there are enough people in the world who have somehow been so damaged by life, by family, one way or another, or even worse, by philosophy (very much by philosophy in North America) that they tend very much to treat God this way. They seem erroneously to perceive that God is an angry old man up in the sky who does not care much about what happens here (except that when something goes wrong, then He can get out the stick). It is a lie, a lie about God that He should be considered like this and treated like this. The contrast to this lie is found in today’s readings and today’s events in which we are participating in this Divine Liturgy.
At the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, we have the healing of the servant of the centurion. What is the nature of the relationship between the Lord and the centurion ? The centurion, who is not Jewish at all (let us not forget that this is a Jewish environment that we are talking about), is a Roman, who is a part of the conquering, occupying army, one might say. This soldier comes to Christ, and says to Him : “‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, dreadfully tormented’”. Our Saviour says to him : “‘I will come and heal him’”. However, the soldier in his humility says : “‘Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed’”. A centurion is like a major or something like a major, a bigwig in the army. His title comes from being a leader of one hundred soldiers. To paraphrase, this conquering soldier says to this Man who is just walking around teaching (that is how it looks) : “I am not worthy for You to come to my house. I am a soldier ; I know how it goes. I tell people what to do, so obviously, You can do the same, please”. Our Lord responds by doing what the centurion asks. The servant is healed – just like that. That is what the Gospel says. Just like that, at that moment, the soldier’s servant is healed. By this time, this soldier has obviously heard very many things about what this Nazarene has done and said. He would expect Him to be, at the very least, a prophet. Indeed, the soldier understands that our Lord is not merely some sort of nice guy walking around teaching nice things. If the soldier already does not yet believe precisely that the Lord is the Son of God, then at least he does understand that our Saviour behaves like it. The centurion can tell that God, who is Love, is revealing Himself in this manner, and this love is pouring out. He has seen many people be healed already by this love.
In these works of love we can clearly understand that God is love as the Apostle John tells us in his Epistle (see 1 John 4:8). There is also the famous little phrase that I memorised when I was about seven : “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). This is the central meaning of our whole life. God, who is Love, simply loves every one of His creatures. God is love, and He loves us. He is waiting for our response to love Him in return and that is probably why He has not wiped us out yet. He loves us. He is more patient that any one of us could ever be. I like always to say that it is a good thing that I am not God, because none of us would be here. I have heard many people say this. I do not have that patience. God, however, does have this patience ; He does have this love.
His love is demonstrated again in the other event, besides His Resurrection, that we are celebrating today : the Birth of Saint John the Forerunner, the first cousin of Jesus Christ. He was born six months before the Saviour. He says always in his life that he is preparing the way for the One who is promised, the Saviour who is to come. In his whole life, John is preaching (as our Saviour Himself begins His public service) : “‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’” (Matthew 3:2). What does he mean by “repent” ? It means to “turn about”. By the way, we are informed in our environment here in Canada with all sorts of radio and television programmes that are not Orthodox, that to repent means to break down in tears, and weep and weep and weep, and be sad and sorrowful and depressed. That is not at all the central meaning.
“To repent” means simply to turn about, to turn away from darkness, and to turn to the light ; to turn away from hatred and fear, and to turn to love ; to turn away from death, and to turn to life. It simply means to turn about : to turn away from selfishness (me, me, me only), and to turn to selflessness. This means that everyone else comes first ; it means that I care about everyone else, and me afterwards. That characterises many mothers I have known. The way of love was preached by the Forerunner. He was asking people to turn about to life : to stop focussing on manipulation and politics, to focus on love and serving. Before he was born, it had been promised for a very long time (fourteen times fourteen generations) that the Lord would send the Saviour.
The Lord was preparing for the fulfilment of this Promise all along. Human beings are so stubborn, so selfish, so rebellious that it took a very long time to prepare us to receive the Saviour. As the Lord was refining this preparation, He was calling certain people, who began to listen to His voice, and say : “Yes”. One of the main preparers was a couple, Abraham and his wife, Sarah. We cannot leave Sarah out, because without Sarah nothing happens. She has to co-operate as much as Abraham has to co-operate. Abraham does not completely understand at the time when the Lord is calling him to follow this inexplicable direction to get up, leave the country and go somewhere else. Why does the Lord ask Abraham to go somewhere else ? “Because I love you, and I want you to multiply”, says God (as it were). This relationship of love continues generation after generation from the time of Abraham.
Often, people are sometimes listening, and sometimes not. Even the great King, Prophet, and Poet, David, sometimes listened, and sometimes did not listen. Even when he did not listen, when he did not pay attention, when he forgot and became selfish, still David turned about and said : “I am sorry”. A reflection of this we see in Psalm 50. The Prophet David did do some bad things, but he still said to the Lord : “I am sorry”. We must keep in mind that a king has the hardest time of almost anyone, probably, to remember the right way because the temptations are so great. The Lord accepted his apology because even if David had made these mistakes (some of them were horrible), still his heart loved God above everything, and he wanted to live in God’s love.
The Lord in His patient love waited, and formed people generation by generation until this particular time came which we are remembering and participating in today, when we first hear the Archangel Gabriel speak to Zacharias. Zacharias does not truly believe, and he asks questions. Therefore Gabriel says, in effect : “Just to be sure that you do not have any doubt, you will not be able to speak from this announcement until your child is born, and you will name him ‘John’”. Zacharias obviously told Elizabeth somehow that the child’s name had to be “John” because the Archangel had spoken to him. Elizabeth says today, let us remember : “‘He shall be called John’”. Of course other people do not believe it. “What does she know ?” they say. “We will have to ask the High Priest Zacharias. He must know”. He confirms it in writing by saying : “‘His name is John’”. Immediately to confirm all that, his mouth is opened and he praises God.
This is how God’s love works with us always. The way of the Christian is not the way of being paralysed by fear ; it is not the way of being afraid of God and waiting for God to beat us up. The way of the Christian is to acknowledge God’s love for us. We try to be pleasing to Him because He loves us, and we love Him, too, and we want to love Him more. The point of this is that the more we love Him and the more we behave in accordance with His love, the more He gives us the Grace and the strength to do even more. We can see that in the course of Orthodox Christian history, people have done amazing things.
People are very fond of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. There is a famous story about his conversation with Motovilov out in the forest in the middle of winter-time. Saint Seraphim is wearing only summer linen clothes. As he is speaking with Motovilov, Motovilov is realising that he does not feel cold at all despite the fact that it is the middle of winter in central Russia. Winter in central Russia is like winter was here in the old days of my childhood when there were real winters. We can suppose that it was probably minus 45 C. In the middle of this cold, Motovilov is feeling sort of warmish. Saint Seraphim is standing there in very light clothes, and they are surrounded by light. How does this happen ? How can it be ? This happened not only to Saint Seraphim. There are all sorts of other people who have gone into the forests of the far north of Russia, many of them Karelians. Karelians are not really Russians at all. They are a sort of Finnish people in the area of Karelia, where about 180 saints have been given to the Church by the people of this region. These people lived in the forest and many of them ultimately were given the same sort of blessing : being kept warm by God’s love. I have met here in some Canadian cities a few street people who might be called Orthodox strays. These people, somehow, being foolish for Christ, seemed to be able to be not frozen to death at minus 45 C at the corner of an Edmonton street in the winter.
The Lord’s love does do wonderful and marvelous things with us. It is His love that enables us. We are not going to be doing the things of the Lord so that we can show off, living in summer clothes at forty below in the winter-time. There is no showing off in the way of Christ. The way of Christ concerns being hidden. We live out our lives “hiddenly”. If someone finds out that Saint Seraphim or some other saint is living like this, that is a person-to-person thing, and it is an encouraging thing. None of us can try to pretend that we are some Tibetan yogi, and try to do things like this because we have learnt about some secret technique. We will find out that we will not be able to do it. Saint Seraphim did not have this ability. He had a gift from God. There is no secret technique that can enable anyone of us to do the things of Christ. Only love, only the love of Jesus Christ can show us the way. If He wants us to be something special to someone who needs it, then He will give it to us, so that the other will be convinced of God’s love. We may find that there are many stranger circumstances than forty below weather. However, we will not be able to exercise these gifts just any time we like. We can only do these things when God says (as it were) : “Go do it. Be like this”. For instance, we cannot just go and be friends with a bear ; nor can we just decide to be friends with a lion, as some saints in Palestine and Africa have done. The love of God has to be evident and alive in us. Those animals have to come to trust that our love is sincere. Then maybe it could happen, but human beings are so abusive to animals that they cannot trust us.
The important point of all this is that when we are hearing or reading the Gospel and the Epistle, we have to look for this one thing : What is the Lord saying to me about His love here, now, in this passage ? What response does He want from me here and now ? The Prophet David said, and our Saviour says that He wants us to turn about from darkness to light, and to walk in the life and the light of His love. He wants us to imitate Him, and be life-givers to all those around us.
Remembering that, let us ask the Lord to give us the Grace in our hearts to do a little better later today. It is easier here during the Divine Liturgy to do it, and it is probably not so hard downstairs while we are having coffee. However, when we step out from the Temple, the test begins again. Let us ask the Lord to help us when we are leaving here to remember this love a little longer, and to be faithful to Him a little longer before we fall (because we all fall sooner or later). When we do fall, let us ask the Lord to give us the Grace and the mindfulness quickly to turn about, and to say : “I am sorry”. Let us also allow Him to renew our strength and our determination to persevere in the right path of His light and His love, and glorify Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.