Waiting for a judge…

…to show up. That’s what these times are like, as Jacob, my oldest son, remarked to me last Sunday after services, while we stood alone in a crowded fellowship hall, coffee cups in hand. We’re like the people of Israel in the biblical book of Judges. We don’t move on the Lord’s command, we just go about our business, being oppressed and pillaged by our enemies, the devil, the flesh and the world, while waiting for a judge to show up, but they rarely do. Instead we have shepherds that are afraid of their sheep who not only don’t go after the lost, but isolate themselves from the sheep who do! The saying of Jesus contrasting the shepherd and the hired man is very true of these times.

"But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them."
John 10:12 (NKJV)

After reading yet another long, dreary blog post of a local pastor who is on his way back to earth, analyzing the causes and sharing out the blame for why his evangelical church is losing members, I myself wonder if there’s anything one can say to him. He carefully describes the symptoms of spiritual and moral decay, yet beyond this, he seems to know nothing but what he reads in trendy “Christian” books and reviews. “The boat is sinking, brothers! But let’s not bother Jesus, He looks so peaceful napping there in the stern…”

He's there, in the true Mysteries of His Word, His Body and Blood, His Bride, the New Birth by Water and the Spirit, the Unity and the longsuffering Love of His Messengers. Truly knowing Him makes one Orthodox in the only sense that matters, gives our Orthodox faith its only reason for being. Without Him all is lost, even the great Ship laden with the precious cargo of ageless Holy Tradition. Patriarch Bartholomaios writes, we are to "wake up the Christ that is sleeping in the night of the non-Christian religions." Rather, let's wake up the Christ, asleep within us in the stern of our own Ship, that "built in an ancient pattern that journeys far," before we are capsized by the waves of the storm of this vile age.

"And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, 'Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?'"
Mark 4:37-40 (ESV)