5th Sunday after Pentecost
Hebrews 13:7-16 ; John 17:1-13
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
When it comes to being a human being, a regular, recognisable human being, there are some standard characteristics that we generally expect to see in such a person, regardless of gender. It is into these characteristics that we normally grow up. If we are really going to be true human beings, then we are going to grow up as human beings patterning ourselves after the most perfect of them all, Jesus Christ Himself, and His Mother, the Theotokos, also. The foundation of that identification is love, and a perfect relationship between this human being and God and His will. As we know from the Scriptures, and as we also know from our inheritance, God is love (see 1 John 4:8, 16). Everything about God and our relationship with Him has to do with this love. We live out and express this love in one way or another.
In the Gospel reading today, we heard about the two demoniacs who are so fierce that no-one could pass by them. These demoniacs are people who became possessed in one way or the other by the devil, and they were living at the very best an irrational life. However, this was far worse than a merely irrational life. It was a completely distorted life. It was a twisted life, a caricature of human life, we might say, because their behaviour was the opposite of how a normal human being should be behaving, and especially a Christ-imitating human being.
When our Lord heals the men, they are instantly restored to being normal human beings. This is like the deliverance that we hear about during the course of the liturgical year in the Gospels of Mark and Luke of a particular demoniac in this region being healed and being restored to his own right mind. Saint John Chrysostom passes to us the apostolic understanding that the other two Gospels focus on the fiercer of the two possessed men rather than present a supposed second occasion. There are other persons in the Scriptures who are being delivered from possession by the devil and being restored to their normal, integral personality. They were restored to a personality in harmony with the Lord, a personality in harmony with God’s will, a personality in harmony even with itself. We know that it is highly irregular for swine to be raised anywhere on Jewish territory. However, human beings have always been like this, and it is important for us to understand that. Yes, the law is the law, and the rule is the rule, but people often take the law into their own hands, regardless. In this particular out-of-the-way region hidden from the sight of most people, swine were being raised.
When the legion of demons enter the swine, immediately the little pigs, that were going about their normal business as pigs do, go insane, jump in the lake and drown. That is a very, very clear illustration of what happens when we separate ourselves from the Lord, and when we play around with the powers of darkness and say to ourselves : “I want to do it my way, and I am going to try to make the Lord conform to my way” (instead of the other way around). As soon as I do it my way (without consulting the Lord first), and I go in a contrary direction, already I am becoming like those demoniacs and like those pigs. I am behaving irrationally. I am giving myself over into the hands of the powers of darkness when I do this. For you and for me, the only way we can live, is to live in harmony with God’s will (in other words, in harmony with His love), and to live out His love.
Today, we are celebrating the memory of the Fathers of the first six Ecumenical Councils. Very many people in our western cultures like to speak about these Fathers as though, in the course of those several centuries and their various Councils, they were developing Christian doctrine on the basis of some logical development (or even worse, on the basis of some philosophical principles). Those Councils had nothing to do with doctrinal development. We Orthodox do not understand development in this way. In the Orthodox Church there is no such thing. There is no such thing as change when it comes to what we believe about God, what we believe about our Saviour, Jesus Christ, what we believe about the Church, and what we believe about all creation in this relationship. There has been no change.
Therefore, why these Councils and why these definitions ? These Councils came about precisely because, in various periods, there were people who had it in mind that they could come up with a better way to say things so that others could understand and grasp things. In their attempt, they distorted everything and ultimately made people crazy. Such thinkers were people who were falling away from true understanding and from living in harmony with what God revealed Himself to be – which is the point of everything. God reveals Himself to you and to me. It is for us to live in response to that revelation of who He says He is. Who are we to tell Him to be different ? Even until this very day, the Lord reveals Himself in the same way to believers everywhere.
As the Epistle says, He is the same : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. The Greek, however, says “unto the age”, rather than “forever”. God is the same. His love is the same. However, as Arius did, there remain today many who think that they can try to redefine Him and to remould Him according to their limited logic. That is why the first Council was convoked. Arius tried to suggest that Jesus Christ is not the uncreated Son of God, but rather some sort of creature who volunteered to be the “sacrificial lamb”, as it were. However, that is not at all the meaning of the Incarnation. If the Son of God Himself had not done what He did, reconciliation with the Father would not be possible. Yet we know that reconciliation with the Father did happen because that has been our experience in common for 2,000 years.
There were others also who came along and thought that they had clever ideas. There were people such as Nestorius, who had a hard time accepting that Mary could be the Mother of God. He tried to change her into being merely the Mother of Christ, thereby reducing Christ Himself. It is very complicated. It is more than just a little bit confusing when people are thinking, thinking and thinking and trying on the basis of their criteria, logic, and philosophies, to make sense of the Christian Faith. The tail cannot wag the dog, and the cart cannot go in front of the horse.
Our experience of Jesus Christ, our experience of His revelation of Himself to us must, absolutely must, lead, define and determine everything. This is what the Fathers were doing in all those seven Councils (actually there were eight, but the eighth has not been recognised universally yet). The Fathers were listening to the Holy Spirit as well as they could. Sometimes the listening had to persist during a meeting which lasted longer than a year in order to come to a true understanding of Who is Jesus Christ. They were asking themselves : “What is our Tradition of Him, and how can we with words as clearly as possible, speak about it ?” That is what theology is. That is all that theology is – speaking in clear, correct words (and one would have to say even in inspired words) about our experience of God.
Nowadays, people are speaking about theology as though it were something that can be learnt in some university somewhere. People go and get a degree, and then call themselves a “theologian”. In calling themselves theologians, such people can very often be heard to say strange things about Jesus Christ, things that do not connect with Him, and our 2,000 years’ experience at all. What sort of theology is this ? It is only philosophy and egocentric idea-systems trying to dress themselves up as theology. Very few people can speak about theology, and those are persons, generally, who do not have a university degree to prove that what they are saying is correct. Papers mean nothing.
Therefore, what is our call from the Lord in the context of these swine, and also in the context of the Epistles today ? Our responsibility as Orthodox Christians is in the context of the love of Jesus Christ, and in living in obedience to the love of Jesus Christ. Our responsibility is to become human beings as closely resembling Jesus Christ as possible. That is also what we should be trying to do as a believing community, as a Christian family : trying to live as closely as we can to the example of Jesus Christ. In doing so, we become an example to the people around us of what is sanity, true sanity, true humanity.
People seem to like to make fun of us Orthodox Christians, however. For us, time is a little bit flexible (sometimes very flexible). Food seems to be an obsession (not that we want to eat so much, but we want to feed others so much). We want to give people food, and we want to offer them hospitality. In all our Orthodox cultures, the faithful practically kill themselves trying to give hospitality to people who come to their homes. This is all the expression of Christian love.
There are still people alive in Canada who remember when very many more Canadians (even Anglo-Canadians) behaved more like that. However, probably since I was about twenty or so, that way of living has catastrophically fallen away from most Canadians. Canadians in general have fallen in on themselves. They tend to look to themselves and they are afraid of other people. It is for us to show the example of how human beings are supposed to live. We do this by not being afraid of other people who are created in God’s image. People are a wreck because they are broken. We can show them how they can be healed.
That is our responsibility. It is not so small, and it is not so easy. However, it is, as Father Alexander Schmemann rightly said, full of joy. Father Alexander always spoke about joy, and he said that if joy is lacking from anyone, then Christ is lacking from us. There cannot be Christ in us without there being joy. Even when we are suffering a lot, in the midst of that suffering, there is still joy in the heart. There is still hope. There is still confidence. There is still a sense of direction and life, even though there is great and intense pain.
Let us cultivate that joy, that love of Jesus Christ in our hearts. Let us exercise that love and joy on each other. Let us do our best to show Christ to each other, and together let us sow a seed in this city that will grow and produce not just twentyfold, not just forty or fiftyfold, but at the very least a hundredfold, to the glory of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let us bring people into His Kingdom and join them to His Body, with us to 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.