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In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen
Today, the Saviour is pointing out very important things to us. He is pointing out these things to those who say they believe in Him, as we see at the beginning of the reading from the Gospel according to Saint John. However, even though they say they believe in Him, they actually do not, because, as we can see, they are addicted to rules and laws. They say : “‘We are Abraham’s descendants’”. They affirm that they are certain that they are the children of Abraham. However, when our Lord points out to them that they are not doing the works of Abraham, they cannot understand what He is saying. Whether they keep saying it verbally or not, their attitude insists again and again : “‘We are Abraham’s descendants’”.
In effect, our Lord responds to them : “If you are the children of Abraham, then you are going to behave like Abraham”. How did Abraham behave ? Abraham obeyed the word of God, and he left his home and everything to move away from Mesopotamia into the land of Canaan. He wandered and wandered, not knowing what would happen. However, he knew and trusted the love of God who had revealed Himself to him. He did not know where he was going ; he did not know for certain what would happen, but he did know that God loves him. He behaved as knowing that God loves him. He went and lived frequently (but not all the time) under and beside the Oak of Mamre (which I, and many other pilgrims saw and stood near to just a week and a half ago). After 3,000 years or so, this tree stopped giving leaf three years ago, sad to say. There was an old man there who was handing out acorns, and he showed pictures of himself as a child when the tree was still in leaf. Many other people who have been to visit the Oak of Mamre (which is in the city of Hebron) and who have seen this tree when it was alive, have spoken to me about it.
Abraham wandered, and he obeyed. He did unusual things (such as nearly sacrificing his son). In fact, he did sacrifice his son Isaac, even though he did not sacrifice him to death. What he did do was to offer up his son Isaac to the Lord completely. Abraham had complete trust in the Lord. Even though it did not make sense (compared to everything else that he had been asked to do), he did it anyway. He offered himself and everything that he had to the Lord out of love, and not out of fear. Abraham was visited by Three Angels, and he gave hospitality to these Three Angels. He acted out of love, and was given (as we understand it) a visitation, an experience of the Holy Trinity. These were not just Three Angels. This was an appearance, a personal encounter with God.
If people are addicted to rules (as are those persons who are talking to our Lord today), they are not following Abraham. Our Saviour even gives them a clue by saying : “‘If God were your Father, you would love Me’”, after they say to Him : “‘We are Abraham’s descendants’”. It is important for us in our lives to remember not to be hard-hearted, stubborn, and addicted to rules and regulations. Instead, we have to be addicted to the root of those rules and regulations which Moses gave, and any other rules and regulations that come along. The root of them all is love of God above all things. Then, in this love everything else falls into place. Even the Ten Commandments (and all those other commandments and rules that came after) are rooted in the following words : “‘You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart, from your whole soul, and from your whole power’” (5 Moses [Deuteronomy] 6:5). We are to love God above and before all. Actually, all the Commandments are about this – loving God more than everything. If we love God more than everything, then in our lives we would honour God more than everything ; we would not worship idols ; we would be worshipping on the Lord’s Day, and on every other day as well ; we would honour our parents ; we would not lie, steal, or murder. We would not live in covetousness of other people’s things and persons, relatives, and families, and so forth. We want to live in freedom ; but we nevertheless seem to be very addicted to the slavery of rules and regulations. This is why the persons who are speaking to Jesus Christ today have so much difficulty. They find it comfortingly familiar to be bound by these rules. Like them, we can often be blinded by the foggy deception that we are obeying God by obeying the rules. This fogged-in blindness makes it very hard to give them up, and to let God rule in our daily lives and direct us personally.
In the readings, we have just seen recently that the Apostle Peter had been experiencing the same sort of thing by the vision of the sheet being let down from heaven with all sorts of unclean animals in it. The Lord said : “‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat’” (Acts 10:13). The Lord showed him that nothing that He has created should be called unclean (and particularly when it comes to human beings). The Apostle Peter understood the meaning of this vision very quickly when he encountered Cornelius. So the apostle opened the door for the Grace of the Holy Spirit to fall upon Cornelius and his whole family.
In the reading today, the Apostle Peter is the victim of Herod. It is important to remember (as we pilgrims were reminded just recently) that Herod was not himself Jewish. We understand that he was a descendant of Esau, and not of the Jewish people. He was a Roman-imposed ruler who wanted to be pleasing to the Jewish people, which is why he killed James, the brother of John. (I suppose he had done this by surprise, and the faithful people were not expecting it.) However, when Herod had the same plan for the Apostle Peter, the faithful prayed fervently and instantly for the Apostle. The Lord released him from prison in a wonderful way. Let us, therefore, keep ourselves mindful that the prayers of the faithful accomplish many things that we do not expect. The faithful in those days were in prayer offering the apostle to the Lord, saying, in effect : “Do what You will, Lord, but help”. The Lord could have allowed the death of the Apostle Peter at that time, but He did not. Instead, He released him, and allowed him to continue to do his work for a very long time afterwards.
When we are praying for other people, we do not know precisely what the Lord is going to do with our prayers. However, He accepts our love, and our intercessions of love, and He accomplishes His wonders. Because of people’s intercessions, all sorts of wonderful things have happened until this day. Not that many people these days are so easily freed from prison as was the Apostle Peter ; but then, we do not usually have apostles in prison these days. On the other hand, there are thousands of stories (only a fraction of which I have heard) about the times of Islamic domination of the Church, and about the communist times of domination of the Church. These stories all show that the Lord has intervened and saved communities, people, ecclesiastical hardware and software for the times when things would be normal again. Churches have been able to be refurnished in Russia and other lands of the former Soviet Union because icons, vestments, copies of the Scriptures and other things were kept safe in secret places, and the destroyers never found out. Yet, at the same time, even some of these very destroyers were moved by a divinely-supplied impulse. For instance, in Moscow, when Christ the Saviour Cathedral was blown up by Stalin, many items were actually saved from that cathedral. In the Donskoy Monastery, there are many fragments of the original friezes that were on the original cathedral because the artists at that time felt that something had to be saved. There were other things that were saved, including the plans, and the names of all the people killed in the wars that this Temple was built to commemorate in the first place. Although this cathedral, in its reconstruction, was not rebuilt with the same stones, nor in exactly the same manner, it stands and it appears as it was before. However, with the new building techniques available, everything possible was replicated. Unintentionally, this replication included the bad acoustics of the first building. The Lord is working with us. He takes our offering of love, and He does what He knows best.
Living as we do here and now in the twenty-first century, it is more important than ever that we remember that love of the Lord comes first above everything. It is important to live in loving obedience (and not fearful obedience) to Him. It is important to hold each other up before Him, trusting Him, as Abraham trusted Him, and as countless thousands and millions of believers still do. In so doing, let us glorify Him, risen from the dead, Jesus Christ our Saviour, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.