…hear His call, follow Him, and do what He commands

Let’s just be honest with ourselves and admit that we never wanted to be saints, if that means to live our earthly lives as though the resurrection of Jesus Christ really happened, and if that further means that we do what He tells us to do.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
Matthew 7:24-29

The crowds were amazed at his teaching, because He taught with an authority that their usual teachers didn’t have. Being amazed is like telling someone who’s trying to follow Jesus and do what He commands, “You have a gift. You can’t expect everyone to want Jesus as much as you do.” Being amazed is a way of excusing yourself from doing likewise. Hence, the Church divides helter-skelter at the voice of Jesus into two camps, the enthusiasts and the run of the mill. The first group can be comfortably hidden from view in monasteries or behind a clerical collar, so as not to embarrass the other half, while it patiently endures its weekly dose of churchianity.

The cult of invoking the saints can be justified by saying that we ask them for their prayers—which they can be expected to be offering anyway—just as we ask other members of the Church to intercede for us. The main difference is the saints are in heaven, and have nothing better to do, whereas our earthly neighbors are, like us, caught in the hustle and bustle for survival, and can’t be depended on to pray even for themselves, let alone for others. That’s why we offer an “I’ll pray for you,” instead of actually standing in prayer with our neighbor right then and there. The saints in heaven will actually pray for us; that’s how they got where they are, we think.

Ensconced and comfortable in the mystery of an ambiguous humility, a devout woman bows and bows before an ikon and kisses it, and leaves a flower. I asked her, what she was asking the Mother of God for, and why. She responded, “Well, I really need God to grant me…” and then added, “I am way too sinful to pray to God myself, but Panagía will ask for me.” This same woman never goes forward to communion either, except once a year, at Pascha. She is a gentle and devout woman, and she even goes and stands outside a locked church on her street to say her prayers, and yet in her day to day life she lives as though the resurrection were nothing more than its ikon decorated with flowers.

Church has got to be one of the most boring things that contemporary Christians have to put up with, and they make no secret of it. Handling the things of faith and of God with such familiarity and for so long, and with the confidence that they are right in all their beliefs and customs, they are like guests who lick the silver platters after dumping the feast off to the side at a banquet without eating a morsel. No one in their right mind would do that, of course, but at the wedding banquet of the Lamb, that’s what most of them do. They don’t partake of the feast of faith themselves, but by their contrivances, they keep others from it by their cry of “the doors! the doors!” I am speaking metaphorically, you understand.

This evening I discovered a webpage of a contemporary Christian—I don’t know what exactly to call him—entertainer, no, that’s not right, but he’s trying to incite people to go back behind what they usually think of as Christianity or church by means of what seems to me to be a form of entertainment. By using what will attract and keep people’s attention, he can then knock them out with his message. The image of his online webpage (below, right) can be enlarged for a closer look, or you can of course go to it yourself and see what he’s all about. Looking past the slogans, “to believe is human; to doubt divine,” and “i believe in the insurrection,” and looking at the rest of his introduction, it seems that he’s trying to get people to realise the resurrection of Christ.

He says, “The task today does not lie in some naive attempt to return to the early church.” With that line alone, he quickly disposes of a large part of my own life in Christ and my testimony that “we are the early Christians.” Of course, I don’t try to be that by any special method of my own. I just follow Jesus’ instructions to “make My word your home,” and that’s quite enough. He’s not actually saying what he seems to be at first. Rather, I think he’s trying to derail the evangelical strategy of discrediting the historic Church from Constantine on, and restore something better than just fixing symptoms: Let’s get back behind it all, to the resurrection of Jesus. My thought is, if that’s what he’s trying to do, why not just do it? Enough of jargonising and word substitutions.

Clothing the most powerful divine intervention in the history of the universe, Christ’s third-day resurrection and all that follows from it—for that too is the resurrection, not solely the moment when He literally rose from the dead—clothing it with something we think is more attractive and inspiring… “we must call a new army of agitators… dissidents courageous enough… a new breed of individuals brave enough to turn back so as to advance… through a provocative cocktail of incendiary theology… that will strip everything from us, everything we hold dear and inaugurate a new year zero… belief in the event of Resurrection means nothing less than participation in an insurrection.”

This string of passages, taken out of context not to distort them but merely to reveal their high points, is almost an icon of the extremes to which contemporary Christianity is willing to depart from the language of the holy scriptures, and from the authentic presentation of the Good News and the life of discipleship, in order to recapture them. What? In order to recapture the life in Christ we have to depart from it, wander the battlefield, or perhaps the minefield, of contemporary cultural struggle clothed in its terms, ideologies and even fantasies, and that somehow will let us retake the promised land? We hope to arrive at Christ’s glorious resurrection by convincing ourselves that we are bravely taking part in an insurrection?

Nope! For one thing, it is bad theology, unbiblical theology, no theology at all, really. Sorry, but the only insurrection is that of satan and his angels against the King of kings of kings, blessed be He. The anointed Son of Man, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, descended from the race of David, has trampled death by death and abolished the power of the devil, and His Word is Truth. So, why all this talk of us joining an insurrection? All we need to do is intend to be the saints of Jesus, to do what He commands. We are already enlisted, not as insurrectionary guerillas, but as co-combatants and comrades in the Jesus people army. We’re the police force, not the rebels. We follow the rightful and true King who not only pretends to be alive, but actually is, and for evermore.

Brothers, in case some of you may know this author and artist and like him and his works, don’t think that I am any more critical of him than I am of myself when I see I’m swerving to right or left into the ditch of my own plan of salvation. To err is human, and to forgive divine, and I’m the first (of sinners, as we say but don’t ever really believe). He seems to be heading in the right direction—for there really is only one right direction—to the living God, but he doesn’t seem to know not to “use the Torah as a spade to dig with,” or not to “put the crown to his own use.”

Christ is to be exalted above all our human constructs, His Word to be held pre-eminent above all our human talk. The way to receive Christ, the Resurrection and the Life, is simpler and doesn’t require our help at all, except to hear His call, follow Him, and do what He commands. And the garment we put on is Christ Himself, the Lord our Righteousness.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:9 NIV

כי־גבהו שמים מארץ כן גבהו דרכי מדרכיכם ומחשבתי ממחשבתיכם׃