Waiting is

The phrase “waiting is” is about the only thing that has stayed with me all these years from my reading of the science fiction cult novel Stranger in a Strange Land, by Heinlein. It was a favorite saying of Valentine Michael Smith, the main character in that book, a human who had been raised as an orphaned child on Mars by the inhabitants of that planet. When he is returned to earth, he causes a sensation because his mindset is totally Martian in every respect, as are all of his habits. He ends up becoming a messiah figure who starts a new religion, the Church of All Worlds. I dug up these details from the internet because, as I admit, the only thing that stuck in my mind was the phrase, “waiting is.”

Why did the phrase stick? Well, to be blunt, I have spent most of my life waiting for something or someone. Was my intrinsic attitude somehow an unconscious result of reading the novel, or just my heredity expressing itself, the last in a long line of men who have been very, very patient with everyone?

I have had a good apprenticeship at waiting most of my life, but only in these last years has the object of my waiting shifted. Before, I waited only on human beings and their needs; now I wait primarily for Christ. He is the only one worth waiting for, because He brings not only His gifts, He brings Himself.

Books of science fiction, especially from the 1960’s and ’70’s, tend to wander into fantasy about alternative religions, as they are mirrors of the real world in which they arise, where any religion is superior to the simple truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why is that? Because mankind is a religious animal, and we are by nature shocked and offended by a God who becomes one of us precisely to put religion to death.

And so, these novels tend to promote religions, many of which resemble those we already know on earth, especially Buddhism, which seems to be a favorite. But religion is always only man’s best shot at escaping the horrible mess we find ourselves in, because we can’t accept that to escape our predicament—sin—means death to us, death to the world as we know it. So we take our best shot at whatever it is we’re searching for.

Buddhism is man’s best shot at achieving some kind of personal inner peace, if not salvation, given that there is either no God, or He is far too big and busy to deal with us.

Hinduism is man’s best shot at achieving some kind of personal safety, now and possibly in future lives, by satisfying the need for worship of the myriad hypersomatic beings, devas, that invisibly infest the human world.

Islam is man’s best shot at achieving some level of moralistic order in society for the masses, and justification for the immoral excesses of a select few, at the cost of a total denial of human freedom, while promising an otherworldly reward for the surrendered, and threatening thisworldly punishment for the unsurrendered.

Judaism is man’s best shot at achieving some kind of personal salvation, and a sense of righteousness, given that the only God has chosen the people of a certain lineage, to which they belong, to bring everyone to a knowledge of Him, while remaining outside His promises.

Christianity is man’s best shot at achieving some kind of personal salvation, with the least possible commitment to righteous living or self-sacrifice, by formal adherence to or membership in religious associations, while trampling on the call of the one they call Lord.

In the wasteland that is this world, I have waited, and been fortunate to have met two or three followers of Jesus who stand firmly on the Word of God, keep their lamps lit, remain vigilant, wait on the voice of Jesus at every moment and desire to do what He commands, and are willing to suffer for the sake of His name. I didn’t look for them.
I waited, and He sent them.

And I too can only hope to be one of them, by continuing to open my door when He knocks and to welcome Him into my house, which I want to be His.

Help me, Lord, to seek not my own, but Your will alone, and to be willing to accept everything that happens to me at Your hands, for You alone are the lover of mankind, and Your Word is truth.

I bless You, Lord, at the assemblies.
Psalm 26:12

From Thanksgiving Day three years ago

A post, originally titled He makes us look, from November, 2007.
Holy Apostle Paul was very right when he compared the marriage relationship between a man and woman to the relationship of Christ and the Church, yet in these last days both these relationships are ravaged with bold-faced affrontery and unashamed hypocrisy. It all begins with the manhandling of the Word of God, ruling over the Word insteading of letting it rule over you. This misbehavior shares at least one important characteristic with lying—once you start lying, you can never stop, because you have to bury each lie with another. The same is true with manhandling the Word, which in a sense is also a form of lying—once you start twisting the Word, well, you see where this is leading? "What is twisted cannot be straightened, what is not there cannot be counted." (Ecclesiastes 1:15 Jerusalem Bible)

The man is, as the scriptures teach, the head of the woman, and Christ is the Head of the Church. When this order is not respected, true community breaks down rapidly, and tyranny replaces it. Worse yet, prayer is corrupted, because it cannot be honest. It becomes a formality, even if it is not a written prayer. If people can lie to one another without reading the lies out of a book, so also can people "pray" dishonestly without reading prayers out of a book. It's not whether a truth or a prayer is read from something written down. Everything hangs on the disposition of man's heart.

Why am I thinking about this? Because I have witnessed blasphemous prayers today being offered in rebellion against the Truth, futile prayers spoken for show, for the sake of keeping up appearances. And I ask the Lord, "Why do You let this continue? When will you show everyone up for what we are? How long, Lord, how long?"

Perhaps I've shared this already, but Sergei Fudel writes in his little book Light in the Darkness,

Prayer is born of love. Is it not the same as to say, "Prayer is born of tears?" I realized this quite recently when I heard a young girl answer a question addressed to her. "How can I learn to pray?" The question did not puzzle her and she said unhesitatingly, "Go and learn to weep and you'll learn to pray." She completed the words of the Fathers.

This is me again. The psalms for the 22nd day were Psalms 107~109. I didn't offer them in prayer today, but I have prayed a verse here, a verse there. These are the psalms of my wife's birthday, so I know them quite well. Psalm 107 is all about how we go and do foolish things, following our vain desires, and then get into trouble or danger, and… God to the rescue! And then we thank Him, profusely and, we hope, honestly. Here's a sample that speaks to me…

Some were living in gloom and darkness,
fettered in misery and irons
for defying the orders of God,
for scorning the advice of the Most High;
who bent them double with hardship,
to breaking point, with no one to help them.

Then they called to Yahweh in their trouble
and He rescued them from their sufferings;
releasing them from gloom and darkness,
shattering their chains.

Let these thank Yahweh for His love,
for His marvels on behalf of men;
breaking bronze gates open,
He smashes iron bars.
Psalm 107:10-16 JB

A verse in Psalm 108 expresses something I've been asking the Lord many a day "God, can You really have rejected us? …Help us in this hour of crisis!" (Psalm 108:11-12 JB) It isn't as though I think that He has rejected us, no, but that our free wills prevent Him from acting, and so I just keep pleading, "Help!"

The third psalm for this day, Psalm 109, is King David's plea for help against his enemies. Aside from everything else he prays, my spirit trembles when I pray these words "In return for my friendship, they denounce me, though all I had done was pray for them." (Psalm 109:4 JB) Things like this have happened to me and are happening still. We'd like to just turn a deaf ear to them, turn our backs on them, the people who trouble us. We might be able to do this, if we stayed away from God's Word. But if we turn to the Word of God, whether to the Psalms, or to any other part of it, He makes us look, makes us face the enemy in ourselves and in others. Maybe that's why we'd rather read anything else. We can read what people say about Him, and not listen to what He says about us.

God save us, and help us to be thankful for Your friendship, Your willingness to receive us.

Help me, Yahweh my God,
save me since You love me!
And let them know that You have done it,
that it was You, Yahweh, who did it!
Psalm 109:26-27 JB

Eyewitnesses

Today was the feast-day of John the Theologian, that is, Christ’s youngest disciple, called ‘the beloved,’ who also sealed his life not with a martyrdom of blood as did all the other holy Apostles, but with a martyrdom of an entire life—his life.

When we commemorate a saint on his or her feast-day, we include in the worship service hymns and chants that tell of their exploits and suffering, and often there will be an ikon set out for veneration (to kiss the ikon acknowledges that we affirm the life and faith of the person depicted). The focus of the worship service is then, as always, only God, but we bring to mind the saint or the event commemorated — we bring them to our mind, and also to God’s, presenting them to Him in thanksgiving and praise. “Christ, You are the life of your saints, and we bless and thank You for Your faithfulness in saving them and changing them into beings like Yourself, who are capable, and who want to, live forever, with You.”

I wanted to worship on this day for two reasons: to honor the sabbath, and to honor the saint whose writings have been so pivotal in my life. The gospel according to John, his three letters, and the book of Revelation, all have left a deep impression on my life, and formed me in my witness.

After the divine liturgy, Fr John came out and stood in the nave, and talked to us a little about John the Theologian, and what his example means for us as Christians today. “Fellow Christians and friends,” he always starts out, respecting the mystery that not everyone who comes to church is a Christian yet, “John, the beloved disciple of our Lord, is very important for this reason, he is an eyewitness of the resurrection, and not only that, but of all that happened to the Lord. He was there, watching, with the mother of Jesus and the other women, at the foot of the cross, when our Lord suffered and died. It was to him, that our Lord said, ‘Behold your mother,’ and to His mother, ‘Behold your son,’ thus handing over to John the care of his mother, as there was no one else He could trust.” Forgive me, Fr John, if you happen to read this, as I am putting words in quotation marks that you said, not exactly, but essentially. I hope I was hearing you right.

Fr John continued, pointing out that our faith is deliberately and strictly based on eyewitness accounts, not on myths, not on legends, not on fantasy, but on what really happened, in human history, that was reported by reliable eyewitnesses. Except for Judaism, no other faith can make this claim. Our faith is based on what men described as eyewitnesses, and it is sustained to this very day by eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses of what?

As the song goes, “Were you there, when they crucified my Lord?”
A beautiful and moving song it is, and the question it asks begs to be answered in the positive, “Yes.”

Jesus says to Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). To many, this seems to describe the state of blind faith, and in a strict sense it does. No one alive today has witnessed the resurrected Jesus of the forty days’ sojourn, but yet there are people alive today, and there have been in every generation since the first, who are eyewitnesses of the resurrection. How can that be?

Fr John described the apostolic succession, generation after generation, bishops laying hands on their successors and handing over to them their office and guardianship of the holy tradition, but wait, there is more.

The apostolic succession also means the handing over of that life in faith, that eyewitness faith of the resurrection. In every generation, Fr John said, there are people whose lives prove that they are eyewitnesses, that they see the resurrected Jesus and follow Him, not as blind men but as those who have received their sight, and their witness is irrefutable and invincible. We have known people like this. Some of us actually are these eyewitnesses. It is the presence of such eyewitnesses in the Church that preserves her from one generation to the next. As the saying goes, ‘there’s more here than meets the eye.’

It was appointed to me to go to the service today to honor my saint, and to worship the Lord and pray with the brethren, for yet another reason: to be an eyewitness of something that I had never even heard of, let alone seen, before.

After the liturgy, Fr John told us that there would be a 40-day memorial, followed by a 40-day blessing. I could see the mound of white kollyva on a small table in front of the ikon of Christ enthroned at His second coming. I knew that was for a memorial service. The mound had a cross on it and two initials, M and G. I couldn’t remember anyone reposing 40 days before today, so I had to wait for the explanation.

The 40-day blessing in the Orthodox Church is the service where a woman comes back 40 days after childbirth to thank God for safe delivery, and to present her child for its dedication to the Lord. After giving birth she doesn’t come to church until the fortieth day. This custom is based on the Hebrew 40 day blessing, as are many Orthodox traditions. Our faith is closest to that of the family of Jesus and His apostles, all of whom were Jews. We are the ‘new Jews’ by faith in Jesus Christ, Y’shúa ha-Mashíach in Hebrew.

The memorial service began. There was something different about it. Fr John was chanting prayers for the repose of the... child of God, Maria! What? I listened more closely. Yes, the prayers were in a different form and were based on passages of scripture where Jesus speaks of letting the children come to Him. The service continued.
At the place where we normally sing Aionia i mnimi (Eternal be his/her/their memory) instead we sang Christos anesti (Christ is risen from the dead, by death trampling down death, and to those in the tombs bestowing life). This was probably the tradition when memorial services are sung during the forty days of Pascha.

After the memorial service was finished, Fr John turned to us and addressed us. This little Maria was baptised by her godmother. She is now in the presence of God and lives with the saints who worship God unceasingly. (Fr John made reference to the vision of heavenly worship in the book of Isaiah, whence the inspiration for the painting at the top of this post.) Her twin sister, Alexa, would now be presented to the Church in the service of 40-day blessing. Little Alexa will someday understand that her twin sister is alive and praying for her, for her life and salvation, but right now she’s too little to understand.

How truly awesome our God is, that of all things that can happen, He can yet turn sorrow to joy, curse to blessing, and death to life! The members of the family of little Maria and Alexa filled the narthex of the temple as we departed, sharing the kollyva that had been made to commemorate the entrance of their little one into paradise, while they waited for the 40-day blessing to begin, where Fr John would carry Alexa in his arms, praying the psalms and prophets, while walking through the nave, up the steps of the soléa and into the sanctuary, walking with her around the holy altar, and then emerging to give her back to her mother and father, dedicated.

We see with our natural eyes, a priest of God carrying an infant into the earthly copy of the Holy Place, and we also see, by our spiritual eyes, the great High Priest Jesus Christ carrying her twin sister into the real Holy Place on high.
Glory to You, O God, glory to You!

We are indeed, eyewitnesses.

The crisis of civilization

In every age and in every place the times appear perilous, the crisis of civilization seems at hand, and so the same message, the same offer is repeated age after age, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” The demise of the one evokes the other to arise.

The Church holds open the door to the reality of another world, one not made by human hands but fashioned by the Spirit. It holds open the door but can do no more. Those invited to the wedding feast must find their places in peace, trim their lamps, put on their own wedding garments.

The Master calls, though only His sheep know His voice, and follow Him, unconvinced of the threats cast at them from every quarter, unconcerned, almost unaware of the crisis of civilization, aware of only one reality, their Master’s voice, and the new creation that opens before them that knows nothing of night.

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.
Revelation 21:22-27 NIV

Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.
Isaiah 2:5 NIV

Witnessing in the Land of End Times ‘Christianosis’

I, Romanós the sinner, commented on a post by my brother in Christ, Andrew, and in my comment referred to a testimony I had written back in 2006 when my synergós Brock and I were witnessing in downtown Portland by reading, cover to cover, one gospel (usually John) and the book of Revelation. Andrew followed up the reference and read that testimony, leaving a short comment. This morning, after prayer, I too went and read that testimony. It was something that I needed to hear again, to raise me from my sins and show me "the better way." Thinking of those days, remembering my best friend, and praying for him as well as my other brethren, I offer this again to you, my readers, and ask you to pray for Romanós the sinner, whom the Lord Jesus has picked up once again and after having forgiven me for the umpteenth time. Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed.

ο ποιμήν ο καλός

(oh pee-MEEN oh ka-LOSS)

‘the Good Shepherd’

Notice that both the rewarded and the condemned refer to Christ as “Lord,” clearly acknowledging His divinity, but as Christ asserts in the gospel according to Luke, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46) Both the ikon above and the text cited below it come from the weekly bulletin of my church, Holy Trinity, Portland, Oregon. The ikon is rustic in style, like the simple faith it represents, the simple trust in the Good Shepherd, who is the Word of God and Who said, “The sheep that belong to Me listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me.” (John 10:27)

In order to write this article, I had to invent a new word—“christianosis”. I had to break the rules of noun formation in Greek, because I needed a noun equivalent of the verb “to christianize” and that already exists—“christianismos” in Greek, which means merely “Christianity” in English. But I needed a word that meant to christianize a people without really converting them. The word had to have a dysfunctional sound, something to remind one of other dysfunctional words, like “neurosis” or “psychosis” or even “hypnosis”, which, though not exactly describing a dysfunction, still alludes to something spookily wrong-headed. Hence, a new English word with admittedly faulty Greek roots—“christianosis”—the state of being christianized but not Christian.

Here in America, but also in other “Christian” lands, we find ourselves living inside the ruins of a great and ancient civilisation, one which bequeathed us not only spiritual values but cultural and material benefits as well. This civilisation is patronisingly called “Judæo-Christian” and the sacred name of it is pulled out of safekeeping whenever anyone wants to press their point of view. An example of this that everyone knows, is when someone who calls himself a Christian pulls out of context a bible verse or passage to legitimize his personal opinion. This is the downside of ‘proof texting.’ That doesn't mean that every quoting of scripture is invalid; it just means that there are two ways of using the written Word of God: either you submit your ideas to what the Word declares and let your mind be formed by Christ (that is, having the ‘mind of Christ’); or you develop a personal philosophy and then go fetch bible verses that seem to bolster your thoughts, in case you want to appear to have the mind of Christ.

Back to my subject, witnessing in the land of end times christianosis…

Why do I think that ‘America is christianized but not converted?’ Well, this was brought to my attention by the sole person who stopped and actually listened to our reading of the gospel of Mark yesterday in downtown Portland. She asked, “Why isn't anyone stopping to listen?” Hmm, good question. The Word is being read public'ly to the people who roughly fall into two groups.

The first group, the one you would expect to stop and listen (yes, not just rush past with a ‘praise the Lord’ or ‘God bless’), should be other Christians. Even with the low church attendance rate in Oregon and Washington, in any given crowd, at least 10% should be Christians, maybe 20% if you include Roman Catholics. (I am not analyzing this situation with a view to measuring the effectiveness of our witness.) These are people who ‘go to church’ and sit in respectful silence listening to the Word of God being read and preached (we hope!) in their churches. If they are so respectful in church, why don't they show the same respect when that same Word is being read in public? What do they really believe about the Word of God?

The second group, those who actually do stop, are some who are in fact Christians, whether or not they go to church, and some who don't know if they're Christians (and often don't care) but who are looking for the Truth. A significant portion of these are children, and the rest include such ‘types’ as street people, Goths, gays and lesbians, Latino immigrants and other marginalized folks, all of whom are mentioned by Christ (under different names, no doubt) as “sick needing a physician” and as “sinners needing a Savior.” Who are these people? Where do they come from? And why do they come near, and listen?

America has more churches than possibly any land on earth, and Portland is also richly endowed that way with churches and Christian “ministries” despite its reputation as Godless.

While we were at Pioneer Square, a Christian ministry from Alabama was doing a ‘worship’ presentation there, complete with a great band, and free handouts of food (cotton candy!) and bottled water. There was also a fellow (I don't know if he was with them) going all over the square and giving out little silver cards with an optical illusion game on one side and a gospel message on the other. We passed a group of young Goths playing with the cards and saying “Far out!” and “Ooh, wow this is weird!” Then they turned the cards over and one of them said, “It's just a gospel message.”

Just a gospel message!?

What kind of evangelism is that? Does Jesus walk the streets of Portland handing out toys and trinkets to the kids? So, yeah, people were sitting on the steps of the square all afternoon, listening to the music of this band. Not too many people, mind you. And who were they? Tired moms wanting to sit down for a moment with their cranky kids? Old Jesus Freaks who happened by and wanted to enjoy the music and the warm sun? People who were just plain bored and came there anyway, regardless of the music, because it wasn't as annoying as hearing someone preach, like two guys reading the gospel or the book of Revelation?

If the Son of God, the Word of the Father through whom all things were made, the Light of the world which that world cannot overcome, if He emptied Himself to assume the conditions of a slave, suffering for our sake, and dying to pay the debt of each and every one of us, on the Cross, if He went down to She‘ol to yank Adam and Eve by their wrists out of their deathly misery along with everyone else from righteous Abel to John the Baptist, and place them in paradise with Abraham and the good thief, if He rose from the dead, taking death captive, and after establishing the saints on earth as His Bride, ascended to the right hand of the Father to intercede for us, if He did all that, and we spend ourselves in entertainment and call it worship, take Bible cruises, listen to self-improvement and ‘God wants you to be prosperous’ talking books, and if there's anything left over, help the convenient needy of our choice, is it any small wonder (?) that the world which Christ came to save (not us, of course, we're His sheep!) plays with our leftovers and says, “oh, nothing special, just a gospel message!”

The good news drew crowds in the days of the Apostles. Why do we now have to run after the unsaved and shove tracts in their faces?

The preaching of John Chrysostom and Basil (the Great) drew crowds in the days of the Christian Roman Empire, no matter what the time of day or the season. Why do we try to fill our empty assembly halls with “spiritual” bread and circuses?

The signs and wonders of our Christian ancestors were changed lives, which in turn changed society. Instead, we have signs that say “Portland, you need to change!” and our followup is such things as a program of praise music!

Now, there's nothing wrong with worship and praise, except when we deceive ourselves into believing that worship and praise happens between the hours of church services or Christian concerts. In the heavenlies, the worship is unceasing, according to the will of God. And don't we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”?

Jesus told Photiní (the woman at the well), “…true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and Truth: That is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.” (John 4:23)

What is worship in Spirit and Truth?

Apostle Paul's answer was, in part, “I worship spiritually by preaching the Good News…” (Romans 1:8 JB) Speaking more directly to us, Paul also wrote, “Think of God's mercy, my brothers, and worship Him, I beg you, in a way that is worthy of thinking beings, by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God. Do not model yourselves on the behavior of the world around you, but let your behavior change, modeled by your new mind. This is the only way to discover the will of God and know what is good, what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do.” (Romans 12:1-2 JB)

Where am I going with all this?

By our willingness to read the Word of God public'ly outside of church, we are being taught many things.

Christ wants to gather His lost sheep. It's too late (“…the time is close.” Revelation 1:3) to deliberate and develop programs. We waste valuable time. The Word of God, the Holy Scripture, is already everything we need to accomplish what He sent us forth to do: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19)

The churches are, by and large, pitifully asleep, enmeshed in the cares of the world. Why do I think this?

Ask any Christian, where his/her bible is right now.

Ask what book, passage or verse did he/she read this morning.

Ask how long did he/she spend praying yesterday.

Ask how long since he/she had a one-on-one deep, spiritual fellowship with another Christian.

The churches have produced the very things they say they are against, by the refusal of most of their ministers and people to put God first in their lives. Every pierced and tattooed ‘Goth’ has both a mother and a father who, in their turn, have a mother and a father. Was the youth I often see downtown, who has images of barbed wire tattooed all across his face, born that way?

Jesus Christ has already won the victory over sin, hell and death.

About His Bride, the Church, the ‘Christian people’ He says (speaking to His heavenly Father), “May they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” (John 18:21 Jerusalem Bible) How can we be one in God the Trinity as Jesus prays, and at the same time NOT live in His victory over sin, hell and death? Impossible.

The time is close. Now, if never before, read the book of Revelation. Read it every day. It is like a “fifth gospel”. Don't try to interpret it. It's a mystery to him who seeks to open its seals, but it is revealed to him who TRUSTS the Lamb of God, the Only Worthy One, to open the seals. Just read the book, and read it aloud, and read it to others, your family, your friends, whoever will listen. It is NOT a literary relic of the apostolic age. It is NOT just a source for Orthodox liturgica. It is exactly what it says about itself. It's the only book of the bible with this blessing attached: “Happy the man who reads this prophecy, and happy those who listen to him, for the time is close.” (Revelation 1:3 JB) Read it as personally addressed to you, and the Lord will reveal to you what His instructions are for you. Will He do that the first time? Probably not, but by the tenth time you will begin to understand.

What! Do I have to read it over and over again? Yes. This is how we keep our lamps lit, we keep filling them with oil. (Matthew 25:1-13)

What else? Back to basics. You really do have to put God first. You can't fake it. You can go to church all you want, but you cannot avoid the winnowing fork of the Lord. You can't hide forever what kind of seeds you've planted. Judgment begins now, but it takes a long time… maybe. The pious Jews have a saying, “Repent one day before your death.” God is being patient with all of us. He doesn't want us to lose any more of our children by drugs, sex and suicide. What? You don't have any children? Think again, if you're a Christian reading these words. As Francesco of Assisi proclaimed, echoing Christ His Master, “There are no more fathers. There are no more sons. And everyone who has left fathers and mothers, children, lands for the sake of our heavenly Father will receive a hundred times more in the life to come…” We are ALL His children, and all His children are OURS. “You must call no one on earth your father, since you have only One Father, and He is in heaven.” (Matthew 23:9)

America has a serious case of ‘end times christianosis’.

If your church has a lot of members, if they're enrolled in lots of classes, seminars, programs and groups, if they give lavishly, how many of them have made the Word of God their home? How many are stepping out, every day, in faith to the lost, calling them ‘brother’ and acting likewise? It's hard to get the unsaved to trust us, because we have let them down. Now, we have to break through the protective walls, and show them Jesus. If we are following along behind Him, neither we nor they have anything to fear anymore.

There's no loss with Jesus.

The Matrix revisited

Well, actually not the whole film of The Matrix, but just one small scene from it, something that I’ve blogged before, the scene in the dojo where Morpheus tries to raise Neo’s perception of reality by saying, “Stop trying to hit me and hit me!”

This is not just an exercise in raising someone’s consciousness, as a Buddhist might see it. The Matrix (the first movie of three in a series, of which I have chosen to see only the first) provides the viewer with an avalanche of spiritual and metaphysical concepts. What is unique about this film is that it somehow strikes a universal chord in believers or practitioners of many faiths, religions and philosophies. The Wachowski brothers are nothing if they aren’t geniuses when it comes to laying out a multi-dimensional fantasy world which has so many connexions to the real world—not the ‘world of the real’ that Morpheus welcomes Neo to in the ‘desolation scene’ inside the computer. I’ve heard of a Hasidic Jewish boy who on a flight somewhere spent the entire time discoursing to a non-Jewish woman seated next to him (once they’d made acquaintance) how The Matrix reveals and supports the hidden world of Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah, and the teachings of the Hasidic masters. I’ve read at the blog of an American Buddhist monk studying in South Korea how The Matrix ties into and demonstrates the truths taught by the Buddha. I’ve heard that even in the Orthodox Church, when the first film came out, it was quickly commandeered and put to use in youth Sunday schools in various places as being a metaphor for the Orthodox way of life and spiritual warfare. It is in this last regard that I believe it is most helpful.

Now, back to my topic, the words of Morpheus to Neo in the dojo scene, “Stop trying to hit me and hit me!” In the space of only eight words were spoken a decisive truth about our lives in Christ, not as mere believers but as followers of Jesus.

Did our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ ever try to do anything? Or did He just do it? This is the key to understanding these words. No, He didn’t try to preach the good news, heal the sick, give sight to the blind, raise the dead. He didn’t try to die on the Cross, descend into Hades, preach to the souls He found there, or raise them with Him to paradise. He didn’t try to rise from the dead, breathe on His disciples and tell them “Receive the Holy Spirit,” or ascend into the heavens to sit at the right hand of Divine Majesty. No, our Lord Jesus Christ never tried to do anything. And since this is true, why should we?

This idea of “I’ll try to... (you can fill in the blank with anything you wish, just don’t try to!)” has infected all of modern society. It softens the possibility of failure, allows for a gracious rebound after dropping the ball to do something (that most probably one hadn’t the slightest intention of doing anyway). We have all caved into this at some point in our lives, or we’re doing it at this very moment. However, my brothers, this is a simply a beautified disguise for our besetting sin, that built-in law of failure that comes as part of our inheritance in the old Adam.

Christ the Resurrection and the Life, like the movie shadow Morpheus, expects nothing less from us than to do what He commands. He knows nothing of trying. He knows that on our own we will always fall flat on our faces. He knows that we know that He will pick us up and stand us on our feet after every failure, as The Matrix character Trinity commands Neo after he has been killed by a barrage of bullets, “Now, get up!” The command of Christ to us at such moments is even stronger than Trinity’s. All we have to do is follow His instructions and do what He commands.

“Don’t try to... (you can fill in the blank with anything you wish),
just do it!”

Expect the resurrection of the dead, don’t just look for it!
Let your confession be your profession.
Let them call Him your obsession.
Don’t try to follow Jesus,
just follow Him!

Do you want to be well?

The following was going to be a left as a comment to my own post Office life which I wrote after reading the comments left there before me, but after writing it, I decided to publish it as a testimony in its own right.

It is the complete lack of freedom in the workplace that bothers me, in a country where freedom of speech is a supposed basic right, coupled with the almost universal compliance by most Christians with the world's determination to eliminate God from every aspect of public life.

It is not unlike what happened with the Orthodox Church in Russia in the Soviet era, when the clergy were forced to sign a document pledging their loyalty to the Soviet system, making "the victories of the motherland our victories"—seemingly a harmless, patriotic affirmation—yet, the professed aim of the Soviet-ruled motherland was the complete triumph of atheism! Hence, the bishops signed a document that made them say that it would be their victory if all belief in God were exterminated. Those who didn't sign became martyrs—witnesses—of Christ.

We read books about the history of Christianity, and its triumph in various countries, and they make it sound as if there were whole periods when Christianity was strong, vibrant and dynamic. Perhaps this has been true in local instances at various times for very short periods.

But I am beginning to suspect that at almost all times and in almost all places the Church has never been more than an ill-equipped, no, I should say, poorly-staffed, hospital for the sick human race, where the doctors were few, and few the patients who ever made it to health, while the rest were satisfied to remain mere patients, satisfied to let death be the cure for their miserable lives.

This is not the life which is the cure for our miserable death, that Jesus Christ the Physician of our souls, won for us on Calvary. He walks among the seven golden lampstands (cf. Revelation 2:1) as John the Revelator saw in his visions, He walks among them unceasingly from the beginning to the end, seeking those to whom He will present all the prizes of victory described in His letters to the seven churches.

This is not dead letter of a forbidden and mysterious book, but living words that will fall on our ears if we are among those of whom the Book itself declares, "He who has ears, let him listen, to what the Spirit is saying to the churches." (Revelation 2:7, et al.)

Courage, brothers! Either our lives in Christ are afire, or they are nothing. What do we want, whom do we want, what do we answer when Christ asks us, "Do you want to be well?" (John 5:6)

Office life

The art of invisibility, the practice of vacancy, define the life of the modern corporate office. If Christians find themselves working there, they are more terrified of revealing their identity as Christians, even to each other, than the early Christians were of being discovered by the Roman authorities. And if you make the mistake of calling them out, they look stunned and are struck with speechlessness. If they hear a particle of the Word of God spoken in their presence, they race to fill its aftermath with mysterious giggling laughter or guffaws and references to some movie they have just watched. Anything to avoid coming into contact with the living Christ, anything to acknowledge the One they say they have given their lives to, or at least been baptized into as infants.

This morning I found myself walking into the lunch area in the upper offices for a cup of coffee. Coming right at me at a furious pace, our new CMO, a young man with typically piercing eyes that nonetheless emit a vacuous look, looked right at me, unsmiling as a corpse, saying nothing. I knew my “good morning” would go unheeded, so this morning for the first time I didn’t say it. The last time I greeted him and he walked past looking right at me and saying nothing, later that day he asked me why I was so grouchy, was I having a difficult day? So, after several attempts, I learned my lesson. Not everyone is looking when they’re seeing, or listening when they’re hearing.

So, I gave my usual cheery “good morning” to my buddy, our in-house salesman, as he sat in his cubicle. No need to worry about him responding. Like me, he’s a born and bred mid-westerner transplanted out here to the land of the uttermost west. Like me, he was brought up a Catholic, but unlike me, he was fortunate enough to accept it as his religious heritage, and he remains so. We often share interesting discussions and reminiscences, and even sometimes a joke or two. He’s almost a generation younger, but sometimes I’m just too “cutting edge” for him. He’s a conservative; I have no secular affiliations.

Jokingly, I ragged on how the CMO seems to be robotic and oblivious to me and anyone from whom he does not require something right now. My Catholic co-worker generously defended him, “He’s just on a mission,” and then chuckled, as you see, he had been making a bee-line for the men’s room when I saw him. “But surely,” I responded, “people are more important than that. It takes half a second to flash a greeting to someone as you pass them.” My friend and I then walked over to the coffee machine, for our morning grog.

Continuing my probe, I asked him, “If you were heading one way, and you met a funeral procession carrying the dead only son of a widow going the other way, wouldn’t you take a moment to stop and raise the dead?” (cf. Luke 7:11-17) This is the way I am used to talking, bringing the Word of God into a conversation, whenever it enters my mind to do so—in this case, an extreme example of the willingness to be interrupted, even when you’re ‘on a mission.’ I knew that my friend was knowledgeable in the bible, as he is a faithful church-going Catholic and hears it read at mass, though he rarely reads it himself.

As I was saying this to him, another co-worker came out of his cubicle, sensing the approach of a possible moment of jest. He is a very young man, a twenty-something, and I know by some of his behaviors (he sometimes says grace before eating when we are at a company feed) that he must be a Christian. When I have tried to openly fellowship with him, he shies away. We’ve noticed he does not celebrate birthdays, so we’re sure he belongs to the JW’s. Anyway, so he came out and heard me alluding to the scripture where Jesus and the disciples meet a funeral procession, and He stops to raise a dead young man.

Suddenly, from both my colleagues, hilarious laughter bellowed and some other little sounds I cannot identify, like hoots or whistles. Confused, I asked, “What are you laughing at?” thinking, it couldn’t possibly be my reference to the bible story. My younger friend responded that it was something from a popular film that they were laughing about, but I’d never heard of it, and the joke was entirely lost on me.

I brought us back to the topic—that people could be friendly and aware of each other, instead of walking around like robots in a vacuum—that I was talking to my Catholic friend about, when the other joined us. “Both of you know this scripture. You’re a Catholic, and you’re a Christian, and both of you must have heard this story. Wouldn’t you stop, even if you were on a ‘mission,’ to do an act of kindness for, or even greet, someone coming toward you?”

The laughter subsided, replaced by two faces that looked as if they had just seen or heard something shocking, and then utter silence for the space of four or five seconds. “We have to be awake, brothers. We have to be aware of each other. We can’t just let our minds be vacant.” Then, I filled my coffee cup, and my two friends walked off to finish their common jest, laughing and chortling as they went.

This is office life where I work.

Zeal for Your House…

Zeal within religious communities we seem to have no lack of, whether non-Christian or Christian, whether Orthodox or non-Orthodox, but how often is this zeal just a form of self-love veneered with a thin layer of religious confession? How often is it a cover up for an agenda, a headhunter's mentality, or simply a perverse and sulky disposition to sabotage?

Jesus Christ rarely acted in such a way that could label Him a zealot, and nowhere in scripture is He described as such, except in His act of "cleansing the Temple" whereupon His action is explained as a fulfillment of the prophetic utterance in psalm 69, ο ζηλος του οικου σου καταφαγεται με, "zeal for Your house eats me up" (John 2:17). Strangely, in John's first letter, the same chapter and verse number seems to give a commentary on the application, for us, of true zeal, και ο κοσμος παραγεται και η επιθυμια, ο δε ποιων το θελημα του θεου μενει εις τον αιωνα, "The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever" (1 John 2:17).

The man who does the will of God...

Brother Pandeli has posted at his blog FOCUS a wonderful article in which he offers the following quote from our father among the saints, Nektarios of Aegina,

“The zealot according to knowledge, motivated by the love of God and his neighbor, does all things with charity and self-effacement; he does nothing that might bring sorrow to his neighbor; such a zealot is enlightened by knowledge and nothing prompts him to deviate from what is morally right” (see Self-Knowledge, pp. 135-136).

Nothing prompts him to deviate from what is morally right...

I have been privileged to know people like this, and have been blessed to call one of them my best friend. With a friend like that, it is easy to follow Jesus and to choose the right. Somehow we escape, as did Jesus, the accusation of being zealots. The world doesn't quite know what to call us, because as soon as it chooses a name for us or throws an accusation against us, our course of action seems to have changed again. That's because they cannot see, they do not know, the One we are following, and so our ways are an enigma to them, as are His. They simply cannot track us.

I invite you to read the rest of Pandeli's post, entitled Zeal and Love: St Nektarios. It is well worth reading.

A coffeehouse testimony revisited

There, in a coffeehouse in old Portland, we met together, and our invisible Lord was in our midst, teaching us His precious and all-powerful Word through our discourses with each other, helping us to understand that our lives, which we three had given to Him, really are now in His mighty and yet tender hands. There, a few hours of chrónos time were plucked out of this plummeting age and, transformed into kairós time, were laid up for us in the “city not made with hands.”

One of us, a man I know in Christ, spoke at one point with such calm passion and Christ-like simplicity and order, about the lives we have been given back by Jesus, lives of willingness to suffer for His name, all I could say, over and over, after each pause in his voice, was "Ameen" but softly, so as not to interrupt him. He spoke like the Evángelos, the “good angel” I know him to be. Almost never have I heard such a discourse from a priest, and certainly never from anyone, except in the writings of the Fathers, expressed with such God-imploring humility.

Kept coming to my mind the remembrance of the new martyrs of Russia who, though young in years like my brother, like him too were wise like the ancient Fathers. They struggled against an atheistic Christ-hating state, refusing to take the “mark of the beast” in any form. They suffered for the Truth, and the wonder-working faith that was the fruit of their endurance, fed each other as they were, one by one, led as Christ's innocent lambs to the slaughter. Two of the young men pictured met this fate, one came through it alive. Yet their three-fold unity mirrored the three-fold radiance of the all-holy God, the Almighty, the Deathless, the unearthly Triad, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I cannot evade testifying that there is Truth on earth, even now. Defying the barking dogs in their mangers who do not go into the Kingdom of Heaven themselves yet prevent those who want to from going in, Jesus walking among us still casts the money-changers from His Father's house, crying out, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, for to such as them belongs the Kingdom of God!”

What is different and perhaps even more cruel than an atheistic Christ-hating state is what we have to face now, in America… I cannot even say it, but you know what it is, because you have already seen in your young lives what the divine, God-breathed scriptures was telling us of, when Jesus said, “They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or Me. I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you” (John 16:2-4 NIV).

The time is now very close. “O gar kairós engýs” (Revelation 1:3). That is why we are reading the Apokálypsis more and more, even in Greek, to understand its message intimately and spiritually—not like the expounders of end times theoretica—but as men and women of faith, “who follow the Lamb wherever He goes” (Revelation 14:4).

How can we know that the time is very close? We can see what is happening to the churches. Though we do not abandon our institutional churches, we cannot let ourselves be trapped in them. The time is now very close. We do the work we see our Father doing and, following Jesus, in company with Him, we know and accept His great commission, to go forth with Him to seek that which was lost. And where Jesus is, there is the Holy Spirit, there is the Church. “With so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us, we too, then, should throw off everything that hinders us…”
(Hebrews 12:1 JB).

“It is all clear to me now, either Christianity is fire,
or there is no such thing.
I just want to wander through the world, calling,
‘Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.’
And to accept it if people revile me
and say all manner of evil against me.”

Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945)

Living in the Word

This is a comment I just left on the blog of a Christian seminarian that I've known for a number of years. His post was an explanation of why he finds Christian girls boring. The topic interests me because other young men I have known have also expressed the same complaint. In my comment I dissect to some level a few of the ideas he expressed.

Brother, if I may comment, I would like to say that in general you find women who are stereotyping themselves as “Christians” to be boring and, of course, so do I. Authentic life in either sex is what attracts, life lived “as you are” and, if Christ is your life, well, what can I say? You will not probably fit the cookie cutter pattern of the modern Christian. Instead, you will be like someone out of a science fiction or fantasy novel, or from the pages of the Bible itself. Why? Because the inauthentic has become the majority environment of the world in these final days, and only fiction (written to give some relief, though it is not permanent or lasting) or the Word of God (the eternal, the always fresh, revelation of the mind of God our maker and deliverer), challenges this environment, and presents us with an alternative.

I find that most of your criticisms are not coming from a scriptural mindset, but from one which is really quite secular. This surprises me, as you have put forth yourself as one who is a follower of Jesus, who is the Word of God in human form, and who said, “If you make My Word your home, you will be My disciples.” That home comes fully furnished with everything we need, and He has arranged everything so wisely for us. People say they are moving in to live there, but usually they only visit and try to rearrange His furniture to suit themselves. Brother, do not be that kind of habitant!

You say that you don’t like this in Christian women, that they think their biological clock is ticking very quickly, that they must get married and make babies as soon as possible, no matter what. You challenge this, saying, “It costs A LOT of money to support oneself, but to bring in another life and be dependent on it is another ordeal altogether, how many can say they're financially secure right after school? I mean, unless you married someone who's an oil baron who doesn't need a spouse to work, you and the guy you're married to will BOTH need to work to support each other, bringing kids into the world while not being somewhat financially secure is bad idea in my opinion. You will have plenty of time to make some kids, don't worry, until then get on some form of birth control.” I challenge you to take up the biblical faith, starting with not seating yourself on the throne of your life and tailoring the commandments to suit what you think is reasonable.

The truth is that no one is ever ready to have children once they are married, no one, not even the rich. It is a scary proposition, not however for the reasons you state, financial inadequacy and such, but rather, because God has given us a commandment, “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”, in which He partners with us in the most intimate way imaginable, making us in our act of procreation co-creators with Him of other human lives and fashioners of the history of the world. As followers of Jesus—I am not saying, as “Christians”, because anyone can say they are that—as followers of the Living One, the Holy One of Israel, the only God, who risked all to enter the womb of an unwedded bride and become Man, as followers of That Man, we run the way of the commandments, because we have been set free.

Set free from what? Set free from fear, ultimately the fear of death, but intimately the fear of submitting our day to day lives to Him, to letting Him, the Faithful and the True, hold us in the palm of His hand. The first commandment is the easiest, but only if we obey it without hedging it in with restrictions. Yes, your young body and the young body of your wife, are prepared for the begetting, bearing and raising of children. We let ourselves be guided by biblically informed reason, according to the conditions at hand. If you are caught in the midst of a raging battle, your land is being pillaged and raped and denuded of its inhabitants, this is not the time to procreate, but to pray for deliverance. We aren’t there yet, brother. But if you make ease the measuring stick of how and when to fulfill the commandments, you will lose all.

Everything that our good and loving God commands in holy and divine scripture is true. It doesn’t need adjustment from us. The Holy Spirit in fact interprets for us in every situation how to apply it, if we will listen to Him and not take refuge in our own calculated reason. He can enlighten reason in us, but only when we have yielded all to Him.

You seem to have a problem with God’s order of Man and Woman that is provided for us in His Word. Out of context, you say, people have stressed the “wives submit to your husbands” and suppressed the “husbands submit to your wives.” There is no such verse, other than to “submit yourselves to one another, in love.” The word submission can mean many things, and you have a lot to learn, not from modern philosophy or your own thoughts fashioned by the world system, but from living the commandments that have been revealed in the Word, instead of just talking about them. At one time you identified yourself as Greek Orthodox, and I don’t know if you still do. Orthodoxy does not bend to the world system or its philosophy, and those who are Orthodox live already in another world, in another house, and that house is the one that Jesus speaks of when He says, “If you make My Word your home…”

People are afraid—there’s that word “fear” again!—to submit themselves body, mind and soul to what the Word of God decrees for mankind, that is, the divine economy, the plan of salvation. They always want to tailor it to what they think is their current condition or status. That’s why we see hundreds of different editions of the bible for every kind of person. But this, brother, is blatant blasphemy, yet the world-conditioned Christians see it as God’s gentle and accepting way with them. C. S. Lewis was right when he described this kind of man-made “God” as a Grandfather in heaven, who is happy when he knows that everyone has had a great day and enjoyed themselves.

You say that you are not one of those who box reality up into secular and spiritual categories. You say that “everything is spiritual, all truth is God’s truth.” Easy to say this, brother, but difficult to live it, don’t you think? You say, “No need to complicate things and make laws that aren't of God.” Again, easy to say, but then whose laws are of God, and whose aren’t, and who is to judge?

There is a divinely established order of Man and Woman, and it is what the Word of God declares. Only those who intend to live according to that order can speak about it, can describe what it is like, but most importantly, even without speaking of it, we can see the effect that following the order that God has established has on their lives. Their marriages and their families become ikons of life in the Holy Triad, ikons even of Paradise, as the Orthodox wedding service proclaims.

Not only in the married life, but in everything—for He has ordered even our society—we live according to the mind of Christ, which is One mind, and which He gives to us, when we come to Him without defense or excuse, and allow Him to reveal to us what and who He made us to be, and gives us that white stone on which our new names are written, which only the one who receives it can read.

It’s time to grow up for real, and leave behind the world’s false assurances and decrees.
The decree of Yahweh Sabaoth awaits us all, who have ears to hear.

The irony of believing

Fr Stephen's blog is always a rich source of reliable and honest truth about Christian faith, and the Orthodox in particular, and so for any who might not have visited his blog Glory to God for All Things, I want to introduce it again, and give you a sample of what he writes about, from his most recent post entitled The Irony of Believing...

There is a deep need for the appreciation of irony to sustain a Christian life. Our world is filled with contradiction. Hypocrisy is ever present even within our own heart. The failures of Church and those who are most closely associated with it can easily crush the hearts of the young and break the hearts of those who are older.

I can think of at least two times in my life that the failures of Church, or its hierarchy, drove me from the ranks of the Church, or what passed for Church at the time. As years have gone by I haven’t seen less that would disappoint or break the heart – indeed the things that troubled me as a young man barely compare with revelations we all have seen in recent years.

No hands are clean. Evangelical, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, the failures and coverups are in no way the special province of any. The question of truth remains – but in a contest of the pure, everyone loses. The irony remains. Our failures would not be so poignant if the Kingdom were not so pure. Judas’ betrayal is darkened all the more by the fact that his victim is God Himself.

All of which brings us back to the irony that remains. The greatest irony of all is the God who forgives and remains ever faithful to us despite the contradictions.

These are questions that any follower of Christ, or anyone for that matter, has a right to ask. Some very famous non-Christians have asserted that they respect and admire Jesus Christ, but it's His followers that they can't stand. They're talking about the Church... well, actually, they're not talking about the Church (capital C) but about what they (and even we sometimes) call church. That's another discussion. But Fr Stephen examines this well, and his entire post is worth reading. It's all right HERE.

Apologia

I don’t want to entertain,
I want to communicate.
Meaning and relationship are
what is most important to me.
I am a Greek Orthodox Christian,
but not Orthodoxy,
only Christ matters.

Church has its place,
but it cannot be substituted for
one’s personal response
to the call of Jesus Christ.

The above has been my summary ‘statement’, written back in 2006 when I first started blogging. These words, combined with my choice of “Cost of Discipleship” and a quotation from this book by its author, Protestant hieromartyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the name of my blog has kept it off the ‘Orthodox’ blog rolls of most other bloggers who confess this faith. A handful of other Orthodox have listed me as an Orthodox blogger, including two priests, one Antiochian and one Serbian. They must have seen through whatever it is that keeps me ‘off limits’ to all the others. Truthfully, I do not promote Orthodox Christianity as a church or religion. My intention is to confess Christ and to be His witness, sharing with others what He shares with me, and following Him with my whole being, not just with my words, by doing what I see Him doing, saying what I hear Him saying. It doesn’t seem honest, prudent or safe to do anything other than this.

But thinking about my ‘statement’ I can see that it could easily be misunderstood. It is vague enough that my enemies, if I have any, can say that I am a pseudo-Orthodox, or worse. After all, I seem to be saying that Orthodoxy isn’t important, that it doesn’t matter, that only Christ matters. And actually, starting in reverse order, that is what I confess—only Christ matters. But if that were true for me without qualification, why even mention Orthodoxy at all? Anyone who knows me personally, who goes to church with me, knows that I am a practicing Greek Orthodox, that I participate in regular worship and have at various times held responsible positions in this church.

What I mean when I say that Orthodoxy doesn’t matter, or that “Church has its place, but it cannot be substituted for one’s personal response to the call of Jesus Christ,” is that in every context, our individual response to the living Christ is incomparable in importance to anything else we might think about or do. Everything about Holy Orthodoxy springs from the reality of that response to the living Christ, the resurrected Lord, everything! Yet, we can have an ‘Orthodoxy’ that is the work of man, not the work of God which is what Holy Orthodoxy is.

The Orthodox Church is everything that it claims to be, nothing more and nothing less, but Orthodoxy itself is an inexhaustible reality that overfills and overflows the visible Church. Wherever Christ is truly welcomed, followed and confessed, there is the Church, there is Orthodoxy. I do not promote Orthodoxy as a church or religion, because it is neither. It is a living reality that is the work of God, not man-made, and it is not something I can lure people to. I simply witness for Christ, as I can do nothing else, and He does all the work, as a homely saying runs, “We catch the fish, He cleans them and sorts them.”

So do I recant? Does Orthodoxy matter or not?
Of course it does, but it’s not something I can give you. It is the work of God, and to Him alone it belongs. It is a humble work, I know, to simply witness for Christ, but by our lives and actions, not by our words alone, are people drawn to the One we follow and, if they truly want Him, they will, like the two disciples, ask, “Rabbi, where do you live?” and He will always answer, “Come, and see!” (John 1:38-39).

We witness for Christ, we never argue.
We read the Word aloud and speak it to people without adding anything or taking anything away, and by so doing disarm our detractors. It is “not ourselves that we preach” (2 Corinthians 4:5) and promote, only Christ, and who can argue with Him? They may try, but Christ Himself never argues, He simply is who He is. Sometimes His sheep even “recognize His voice” (John 10:27) long before they know it is He, and when they finally do know who is calling them, to Him they run. He leads them “to graze close by the shepherds’ tents” (Song of Songs 1:8).

I was reading some passages in the book Hymn of Entry, by Archimandrite Vasileios, and it made me stop and think the foregoing thoughts. I really just wanted to quote more of the wise words of this modern church father, rather than write anything of my own, but that’s not what happened. Sometimes the end of our motivation is different than what we supposed. But let me, brethren, quote at least a little bit of what I was reading, as these words will be more edifying than mine...

How frequently the Lord would stop people who wanted to start a “theological” conversation with Him. They ask, “Will those who are saved be few?” and the Lord replies, “Strive to enter by the narrow door” (Luke 13:23-24). Again, with the Samaritan woman who is surprised when the Lord asks her for water, and explains her surprise, “For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans” (John 4:9), Jesus cuts short her comments on the relations between the religious communities with the command, “Go, call your husband” (John 4:16). In a moment He leads the conversation into the field of personal life, of true theology. In every case He is interested in the person, not in theological discussion as an isolated occupation remaining out of touch with life and with the very person who is speaking. “I seek not what is yours, but you” (2 Corinthians 12:14), says Paul; I seek the person and his salvation.

Therefore, while the Jews of Christ’s day were so eager for theological discussions, He let them go unanswered; “But He was silent.” For He did not come to discuss, He came to seek out and save the one that had gone astray (Matthew 18:11). He came and took on our whole nature. He entered into us, into the shadow of death where we are, and drew us to the light. We passed into His life: we live in Him.

Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry, pp. 32-33 passim

The passage quoted above is the commentary on and explanation of what I mean in my ‘statement’ when I say, “Meaning and relationship are what is most important to me.” Even, and especially, in Orthodoxy is that personal response to the call of Jesus Christ the most important thing, that “which will not be taken from” us
(Luke 10:42).

The unchanging Change

What the [Church] Fathers require and give is the change which comes from the Spirit. If we want to approach them outside this reality, they will remain for us incomprehensible as writers, and scorned as persons.

Communication of the patristic word, the word of the Holy Fathers, is not a matter of applying their sayings to this or that topic with the help of a concordance. [The Kingdom of God is not a Talmud, nor is it a mechanical collection of scriptural or patristic quotations outside our being and our lives. ibid., p. 34.] It is a process whereby nourishment is taken up by living organisms, assimilated by them and turned into blood, life and strength. And, subsequently, it means passing on the joy and proclaiming the miracle through the very fact of being brought to life, an experience we apprehend in a way that defies doubt or discussion.

Thus the living patristic word is not conveyed mechanically, nor preserved archaeologically, nor approached through excursions into history. It is conveyed whole, full of life, as it passes from generation to generation through living organisms, altering them, creating “fathers” who make it their personal word, a new possession, a miracle, a wealth which increases as it is given away.

This is the unchanging change wrought by the power that changes corruption into incorruption. It is the motionless perpetual motion of the Word of God, and its ever-living immutability. Every day the Word seems different and new, and is the same. This is the mystery of life which has entered deep into our dead nature and raises it up from within, breaking the bars of Hell.


How beautiful it is for a man to become theology. Then whatever he does, and above all what he does spontaneously, since only what is spontaneous is true, bears witness and speaks of the fact that the Son and Word of God was incarnate, that He was made man through the Holy Spirit and the ever-virgin Mary. It speaks silently about the ineffable mysteries which have been revealed in the last times.

Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry, pp. 35-36 passim