Trusting the Lord to provide

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Trusting the Lord to provide
(Memory of Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco)
3rd Sunday after Pentecost
2 July, 2006
Romans 5:1-10 ; Matthew 6:22-33


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

It is hard for us, generally, to take the words of the Lord about the lilies of the field and the sparrows and live by them. However, the fact is that this is how the Lord created us to be. If we are not like that, we are far short of who we were created to be. If we have not come to this, we are far short of the sort of person we can become.

We have on our calendar many saints, including Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, whose memory we are keeping today. He was one of those saints, in fact, who in a strange way, I think, did come to live in accordance with this Gospel passage. He was so much like this that people called him a Fool-for-Christ. He behaved in ways that were unusual. In the first place, he went about in bare feet quite a bit. For Orthodox bishops that is generally a no-no. If people do not laugh at the bishop for going about in bare feet, they will criticise him thoroughly for doing so. However, I still remember almost forty years ago in Vancouver when a subdeacon at Holy Resurrection Church was telling me about his encounter one time with Saint John. In San Francisco there was a Church feast-day, and when the Archbishop came to the Temple, there were not very many people there at all. And so, in his mantya, he went out of the Temple with his pastoral staff, and he walked along the street until he came to a hotel. In this hotel there was a ballroom, and a large number of the parishioners were celebrating the Feast ahead of things somehow, in their own order. They were celebrating in this ballroom but they were not in church. Saint John came, I am told, and with his mantya, stood there in the door, and thumped the floor with his pastoral staff a couple of times. People saw him standing there. Everything stopped. He turned around, went back to the Temple, and people followed after him. He did not have to say so many things, but he certainly lived by Whom he followed.

He followed Jesus Christ. He suffered much in the course of his life. He was in exile more than once. Yet, no matter how painful and difficult the circumstances of his life might have been, he continued to be faithful to Jesus Christ, as he looked to Christ to supply everything, just as the Gospel says. The Saviour did supply everything for him. This is a man who died not long ago.

Why should we be able to ask so many things and expect so many things from the Lord ? The answer is that our relationship with Him is all love. Our very life comes from Him. Everything comes from Him and His love despite the times when we yield to the temptation to think that we are the source. It is still because He blessed me to have it that I have anything. Everything comes from Him, beginning with my life. My life comes from Him because He loves me. Everything in creation is the result of His love. Everything, whether we accept it or not, whether we reject it or not, whether we co-operate or not, everything that is (not only on this planet) is the product of His love. Everything is created because God loves it into existence.

Our problem mainly is that we listen to the Tempter. We get preoccupied with ourselves. We say, in response to this Gospel : “Am I not supposed to be taking some initiative here, and doing something myself ?” The answer is : “Well, yes, you are”. However, taking this initiative has to be preceded by asking the Lord : “What is Your will ? I want to do Your will. I love You ; I know that You love me, and I want to do Your will about everything. What do You want me to do ?”

There are, and have been, many people whose hearts have been so connected in love with the Lord that they instinctively knew what was God’s will. Everything that they did bore fruit because it was God’s will. They knew that it was the right way to go. However, if we are not so attuned to the Lord in our hearts as all that, we can still open our hearts towards the Lord when we are faced with choices, and first ask Him the right thing to do.

The Lord does provide. I just heard this week about a certain person who does not have very much of an income at all. However, this person had given away quite a bit of money out of love and care for other people. Within a month, the Lord had re-supplied it all. This person is living on next to nothing, and yet the Lord does look after this person. There are many monks and nuns in this diocese who are living precisely on that basis. They are serving Him. They are helping other people. The Lord does look after them, and He supplies whatever is necessary for life.

Knowing what is the will of the Lord is a very direct product of living in the Scriptures, living in the Gospel. That is why it is important for us to read the Scriptures all the time. The Lord shows us how to live our Christian life by the things that are written in the Scriptures from 1 Moses [Genesis] to the Apocalypse. He shows us how we are supposed to live. He shows us how He loves us. He shows us how we are supposed to behave towards each other. He shows us how we are supposed to live our lives in thanksgiving and in service.

We have Fathers and Mothers in the Orthodox Church who have written many things which give us examples of how we are supposed to be living in response to God’s love. They were able to write what they wrote, not because they wanted to write what they wrote, but because circumstances demanded that they write what they wrote. There was a specific need that demanded that they write, and so they wrote. However, they wrote out of their experience of life in the Scriptures, and life in communion in their hearts with the Lord. As a result, what they wrote for us (I guess one could say as long ago as the second century) is still used by us to help us keep on track.

Living the Orthodox Christian life is not concerned with rules. Rather, it is concerned with love in Christ, with Christ. It is concerned with coming to know God’s will and doing it, so that we always know what is the right thing to do. Ultimately, we do not even have to ask, because our heart tells us right away. I am not saying these things because of having my own experience. Rather, I am saying these things because I have seen it so much already. I have not only read it or heard people speak about it. God is merciful. He has let me see many examples of this, and therefore I can share it with everyone (except that I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you here have seen much of the same thing already in the course of your lives). At a young age, I had not seen very much myself, but it was not long before the Lord began to expose me to such people.

The Lord loves us. It is His desire that we be protected, that we live lives that are productive, that are fruitful, that are healthy, that are constructive, that are supportive to other people. As He gives life to us, we give life to other people in Him. Let us ask the Lord to give us more courage, hope, and strength in the midst of all of the difficulties that we endure in the course of our lives. Let us ask Him to enable us never to take our eyes off Him, so that our hearts will never be distracted from Him, and that the whole substance of our lives always will serve Him and glorify Him in everything, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.