Evening visit

Recently I spent an evening with some friends of mine. Visiting them is always a very solemn event, and it is only by invitation. One wouldn’t think of just stopping by unasked, and for most people, that would not even be a possibility. They are very private people. Their telephone number is unlisted, their address shows as a post office box, even in the parish directory. They practice what to them is a very pious, otherworldly, Orthodox lifestyle. There is no question that the husband is his wife’s lord, and he controls every aspect of their lives. When they had a son in the house, that boy could scarcely peer out from under the thick, heavy authority imposed upon him by his (foster) father, and as soon as he was of legal age, he escaped back into the world, hoping to breathe the air of freedom, leaving ‘Orthodoxy’ behind.

Serving with the priests at the altar, my friend never neglects to venerate every ikon on the ikonostasis, slowly and reverently moving down their row, bowing, crossing himself and tenderly kissing them. His dear wife never appears in the temple without being heavily veiled. When the Great Entrance passes her on its way back into the altar, she always extends her hands toward the robes of the gift-bearing priests so that their fringes pass between her fingers. Then she kisses them and traces the sign of the cross on herself, her movements trancelike and heavy with holiness. At communion time, she joins the queue and moves forward towards the Holy Mysteries, and her husband, if he is not assisting at the Cup, leaves the soléa and files forward ahead of her so that he can receive first, she afterwards, Adam before Eve.

Doing everything according to the great pattern, the tradition, everything according to the form of the ancients, deliberately separating themselves from the world and all its pomp and false glory. There is no television in their home, no computers, and they only use the telephone, even a cell phone, out of necessity imposed upon them by the fact that they must make a living in the outside world. In many respects their priorities match mine, and I think it is on this basis that we have a relationship at all, but between us there is very little similarity in our visible lifestyle. Myself, I am an ancient man, living simply and with few modern conveniences. I am one of those holdouts who still has no cell phone, but of course I have a land line. I don’t want to be unreachable, even if it is only by cold callers.
I welcome all.

As I visited them and, after supper, we sat together and talked about Christian and churchly things, I found myself constantly having to divert our conversation from criticism of the brethren, and of the priests, but not with much success, and I admitted to them my views on people and matters that should best be kept to oneself. It was my friend who mostly elicited them from me, and his wife who simply unburdened her troubled soul in my presence as we talked, so that she could hear a word from me on her concerns. I was caught in a strange tension between the one and the other, trying to find answers for the questions of each, guarding myself from judgment with the one, giving myself in encouragement and affirmation with the other.
By the end of the evening, something became very clear to me.

It is not such things as doctrine or denomination that really divide Christians from one another, though they arrange themselves in camps according to these, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal. I find myself in unofficial unity with Christians of many church affiliations, and I try to refrain from saying or doing anything to underscore division when I am with them. I want to see them and be with them as Christ sees them and is with them. You already know why. It is because the Church is not and cannot be divided. Everyone who confesses Christ is one for that fact alone. Where we go with our relationships is our choice. What will we do? Will we draw imaginary lines, or worse, erect insurmountable barriers between those for whom Christ prays, ‘that they all may be one, even as the Father and I are one’?

What divides Christians from one another is not something that can be sliced with a doctrinal knife. The division is not between the knows and the know-nots, but between the haves and the have-nots.

Here I was, sitting together in the evening with my friends. The head of that family has devoted his life to hedging them round with very high walls of protection, contriving every device and circumstance to keep them safe from the world, in the process creating something very like a prison. Unwilling to let even the average fellow Christian know where he lives, answering almost every question or request, at least initially, with a negative response, living in prosperous seclusion: it became clear to me that this friend had everything and yet had nothing. Though I often mystify him in our encounters, he still tries to ‘save’ me. That’s why I was sitting with him and his wife in their great room that evening. As I listened to both of them, I responded as best I could with what has been handed over to me:
To always say ‘Yes.’

In response to their anxieties about the dangers that ‘the other’ poses for them, I told them, there is no one and nothing that comes to us that God does not send. Every person that comes to us is sent, just as we are sent to every person we meet. If we reject, we may be rejecting Christ. If we are rejected, then the other may be rejecting Christ. For this reason, the safest possible road is to say ‘Yes’ to whom and to what God sends. If the Lord does not want us to go through with something to which we have said ‘Yes,’ then He will change the circumstances, making it impossible to follow through. The sacrifice of Isaac is the very best example of this. Abraham even said ‘Yes’ to something that was against everything he thought he knew, but the Lord changed the circumstances, and He was saved, and blessed, by his ‘Yes.’

‘But what if the devil comes disguised as an angel of light? Should I say ‘yes’ to him or to what he proposes?’ asked my friend. ‘There are many saints stories that have examples of this.’ Yes, there are stories like this, of course there are, but I am not talking about our response to the inner battle, to the spiritual warfare we wage internally against temptations of the world, the devil and the flesh. It is to actual people and to things that happen to us in the world, where God has arranged everything that happens for our salvation. Christ Himself teaches in His sermon on the mount these very things. He teaches us what we must do in order to have faith. If we have faith, then we have everything. If we do not have faith, then we are have-nots. We have nothing, no matter how carefully we protect it.

You have learned how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer the wicked man no resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well; if a man takes you to law and would have your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone orders you to go one mile, go two miles with him. Give to anyone who asks, and if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn away.
Matthew 5:38-42

Do you think that I was not sure of my own intentions when I planned this? Do you really think that when I am making my plans, my motives are ordinary human ones, and that I say ‘yes, yes’ and ‘no, no’ at the same time? I swear by God’s truth, there is no ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ about what we say to you. The Son of God, the Christ Jesus that we proclaimed among you—I mean Silvanus and Timothy and I—was never ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. With Him it was always ‘Yes’. And however many the promises God made, the ‘Yes’ to them all is in Him.
2 Corinthians 1:17-20