The Revival

This post is very, very long, but forgive me, I couldn't help myself. It is just too good to tantalise you with fragments. The following is a talk given by Archimandrite Elias Morcos in 1964, which I discovered posted here in English translation of the original in Arabic here.

The Revival as a Return to God

The Church in her human reality is always something less than her perfect true reality. We must always surpass our human weakness within her in order to arrive at her perfect true reality. This is the revival: this constant effort, this continuous movement from the way we are to the way we should be.

The Church is the salt of the earth and completes the work of Christ in the world. The Church works, she is present, for the sake of the salvation of the world. We can say that she is the center of being, in her its destiny is achieved. The world corrupts and ages, but the Church is continuously renewed for the sake of the salvation of the world. But if the salt is corrupted, then how can it be salty?

The Church is the group of those who believe in the Lord Jesus and who have united around him to live the life of the Gospel, the life of God. They have no concern except to follow the Lord’s teaching and to follow in his footsteps. The group is in the world and for the world, but at the same time it is not of the world. From the beginning, from the ascension of the Lord to heaven, it is oriented toward the age to come, awaiting the return of the heavenly bridegroom and hastening him on. From now on, it lives in the last days, in the fullness of time, “it uses this world as though it doesn’t use it, and buys as though it doesn’t own.”

However, the coarseness and weakness of human nature weigh upon the Church, since she is made up of humans. Sins and failings and imperfections remain, and doubles will continue to remain as long as human beings are human. But the Lord has born all things and taken them all upon himself, and as a result there is no barrier.

The Lord Jesus has passed over our life and has cleansed us and taken us from weakness to strength and from corruption to life. In order for the Church to continue to be the Church, she must follow the Lord and cleave to a continuous Pascha, surpassing the self and constantly passing from the weight of the world and its many varied temptations to the victory of the Lord and the purity of the divine life.

Everything that exists is in a state of motion and progress. Vegetable, biological, and social life, the sciences… everything grows and is perfected. And how much more so the spiritual life. It is progress and growth, an infinite reaching toward God’s life. For that reason it is said that, “one who looks back is not suitable for the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The temptations of this world are many and varied. They take an evil appearance just as they take a good appearance. All of them are clear in their result, in that they are a stopping in the world, a stopping along the way, a stopping in the exodus, the passing over, Pascha. They are an obstruction to God’s eternal Pascha. The journey to God is a journey without end. Every stopping along it leads us to the corruption of the world.

We acquire upright faith. We build churches. We hold services and prayers. We celebrate the feasts. We have all the richness of Orthodoxy, its liturgical and spiritual and ascetic treasures… But naturally, if all this remains external it is not enough. There is no doubt that the journey towards God is at its base an inner striving of the heart, in God’s being a God to us, living, personal, inner. It is said, “If you want to kill God, then kill man’s inner life.”

No, the Church is not in the externals, it is in the heart. As the Bible says, “One who does not meditate in his heart has no knowledge and no understanding” (Isaiah 44:19). We know this, but in our habitual action we very often forget it. We know that the Church is not in the stone and not in the chants and not in the institutions and what is visible, but all its beauty is from within. If we are satisfied with the externals and we do not understand them and do not enter into their deep, living meaning, then the externals become something dead and superficial that comes between us and God rather than leading us to Him. It turns into an absolute value or an obsession or a reason to be distracted from God. Then we confuse the externals and the true, unseen glory, forgetting the words of the Bible, “On that day the glory of Jacob will grow lean” (Isaiah 17:4).

But if we transcend appearances and desire to live and enter into the essence, there is a Gospel that we must follow. There are teachings and divine commandments that we have abandoned for the sake of the commandments of men. Unfortunately, not only have we abandoned them, but often we have mocked them and we have mocked those who keep them. The logic of the world here is the logic of wealth and lust and it glorifies a lifestyle that dominates our entire life.

No, the Church is not in hearing the Gospel but in applying it. If we do not maintain our chastity, our poverty, our humility, our mercy, then where is the Church? If we do not desire righteousness and purify our hearts and we do not do good works, but rather tear each other apart, then where is the Church? It is something difficult and ineffective? But have we tried? Have we experienced the Lord’s commandments to the very end in order to taste their sweetness and effectiveness? Or have we preferred the bitterness and emptiness of the pleasures of the world to the very end?

The Lord put a great deal of emphasis on keeping his commandments and he strongly urged this in his final sermon since he knew that “the prince of this world” will prevail over hearts. But if we are of the Lord and not of the prince of this world, should our faith not start from this? Does our Lord not deserve that we trust in his word and try to act according to his commandments so that we will be blessed? “If one loves me, he will keep my word. If you keep my commandments, then you shall be established in my love.”

But the Church herself is not commandments and ordinances so much as Love of the Lord and striving for his face. For this reason we do not understand the commandments if we see them as dry ideas, devoid of their marrow and their taste. Virtue is not in actions but in the movement of the heart within the actions. It is through actions oriented toward the Lord, cleaving to him and longing for him.

How can the Church be commandments when the Lord said through the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah “Precept upon precept, precept upon precept. Line upon line, line upon line. Here a little, there a little. For with stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people, to whom He said, ‘This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest,’ and, ‘This is the refreshing’; yet they would not hear. But the word of the Lord was to them, ‘Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little,’ that they might go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and caught” (Isaiah 28:10-13).

And to the youth who had kept the commandments from his infancy, the Lord said, “You lack one thing.” That one thing remaining is love: to long for the Lord in our heart and to desire him alone.

This is not for some people and not for others. It is a call, it is an invitation, to all. All of us are called to love the Lord with the love of life. All the life of the Church is the life of invitation: “‘I have redeemed you and I have called you by your name. You are mine,’ says the Lord to his people” (Isaiah 43:1). Likewise the Apostle Paul says, “We also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power” (2 Thessalonians 1:11).

The people without a calling and love is “a people ravaged and plundered,” the Bible says. The Church does not exist without the visible Church, the Christian people. Our religion is a religion of incarnation. If we do not embody it, if we do not follow the Lord, then where is the Church?

“Our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power” (1 Thessalonians 1:5), says the Apostle, but out of habit and the passing of time, we often take the words without their true meanings, the shadow instead of the person and thus we mock the Lord. We might hear the call and do something. We might go for a part of the way. We might be given the grace of prayer if we ask for it, the fathers say. But if we do not do all the Lord’s will, there will come a day when we discover that we have no faith and no forgiveness.

“Woe to the person whose reputation surpasses his reality,” says Fr. Silouan. But the Lord says, “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God” (Revelation 3:1-3).

In order for us to truly follow the Lord, we must have force and self-emptying. Jesus came to be crucified, not to talk. If talking was enough, then Jesus would not have been crucified. He said, “He who wants to follow me, let him take up his cross and follow me.” This total commitment, the commitment of the cross is doubtless painful and scandalous. But it is the only way in the Church.

Pain here is a birth pang, and a birth pang is the beginning of any existence. We have no existence in the Church and the Church has no existence in us without the cross of commitment and its pains. But those who abide will be wiped out: “They slept a heavy sleep,” says the Psalmist, “and they found their hands empty” (Psalm 72:18). The issue is the issue of true commitment that we plunge ourselves into. We do not love our life to the point of death, a commitment in which we break the barriers of our freedom like breaking the sound barrier: in our freedom, we empty ourselves of our freedom in order to follow the Lord, and only then does he open before us the way into space.

This ultimate commitment is what makes the Church the Church. Everyone can contribute in this commitment to the Church of Antioch, each one in his field and surroundings and profession, fathers and sons according to the gift of the Lord. It is within the ability of fathers to offer the best and most precious gift, if the Lord wills.

I would like to repeat to you what a Coptic monk, a friend of mine, wrote, “O people of Antioch, the voice of the Lord to you, as from the voice of the great prophet Samuel: offer, offer the good vessels that you have, which through all these years have become empty. Offer them so that they can be filled with God’s oil. Do not be stingy with your sons and daughters, so that they can become your vessels of salvation on your day of hardship and so that they can become oil of joy and gladness in the time of war. The Lord will be pleased with you and your times of relief will come from him. Do not say enough, enough. The world looks upon you. Yes, enlighten once more, O Lord, Antioch so that the world will be enlightened by its light as in the first days.”

As for those who have truly committed to the Lord and have gone into the great depths—and among you are many of them—they do not stop along the way. If we have done something, we are not satisfied with it, as every stopping is a fall. No one is better than another.

“All the Church is a Church of penitents. All the Church is a Church of mortals,” says Ephrem the Syrian. We have not yet begun to repent. We have not struggled against sin to the point of blood. If we stop and we haven’t bled, then we have not brought it to the end and commitment, the revival, and the Church become mere expressions and empty clichés that we repeat in order to quiet our conscience. Our giving must increase in order to remain. May the spirit’s be to vigorously move forward and not stop short like Lot who remained alive while his wife looked back and died. We must renew our will like the stroke of a hammer in the soul so that it arrives at the profundities of existence.

“So the craftsman encouraged the goldsmith; He who smooths with the hammer inspired him who strikes the anvil, saying, “It is ready for the soldering”; then he fastened it with pegs, that it might not totter” (Isaiah 41:7). The danger of lethargy confronts us at every moment, “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:30-31).

Brothers, if we understand the revival on this basis, and we walk in it with faith, steadfastness, and alertness, by His grace, He, for the sake of His glory, for the sake of His love and the Love of His holy Church which is above all and for all, He will allow the revival to be. At that point the revival will be at its true extent, proceeding after the Lord risen from the dead. Then each one of us will rise from his death. In an eternal exodus we shall follow him in his Pascha, he whose life has no end, amen.

Weighing in on dress

There has been some controversy regarding the dress code allegedly being introduced by the power-hungry Russian Orthodox Church. I am writing ‘power-hungry’ only to emphasize that if this were true, it would indeed be a threat. However, I don't think that this is what is really happening. My following comments are tied to this article on Fr Milovan's blog Again and Again…

The Church has the right and the responsibility to provide guidelines for personal dress and grooming outside the temple enclosure—remember, I said, guidelines—because that is entirely scriptural, and it does not have to become a legalism: it is simply pious good sense. Isn't Christianity the way of salvation both in this world and in the next? So, we shouldn't be shocked or offended if any church provides such guidelines. This is not a step in the direction of shari‘ah law.

As for personal dress and grooming inside the temple enclosure, that is, inside worship, inside the church buildings and environment, in visits to monasteries, etc., the Church has every right and responsibility to lay down not mere guidelines, but rules.
Sorry, I really do believe that.

I am a Greek Orthodox in America, and so I belong to one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal Orthodox Church in the world, and I still feel this way. The way both women and men dress during services is often very careless and even seductive. Well, no matter. People do reap what they sow, just as is hinted at by the ROC pronouncements.

‘Rules are for slaves and for riff-raff’ paraphrasing the Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia in the film Agora, and in real world terms, rules really are there to mentor immature Christians (no matter what age they are) into a place of maturity and self-control, self-mastery.

The Greek Church in America is being recklessly hopeful that we are all already so mature that dress codes in ordinary church environments are not necessary, but no monastery is going to allow that, Greek or otherwise. They know better.

A Christian, especially an Orthodox Christian, shows obedience to Christ by obedience to the Church as an institution. Yes, the Church has sometimes overstepped its authority in some areas, but dress code is not one of them, and we can thank the Lord that He has still preserved our ancient Commonwealth wherever it has spread, in the ways of piety and peace.

Divine Wisdom

The following is a short message by pastor Zac Poonen, of Christian Fellowship Church in Bangalore, India. This is a lesson that I have learned in my life, and one that was reluctantly learned, something hard to accept but true. As we grow older chronologically, it is harder to hide behind our carnal façades, and if we finally let the Lord have His way with us, well, maybe we'll finally begin to understand who it is we really are, as Moses did. Here's pastor Zac's message…

Learn to Value Divine Wisdom

Moses was a man who got a certificate of approval from God. God said concerning him, "My servant Moses is faithful inall My household" (Numbers 12:7). It was recorded of Moses at his death that, "since then no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face" (Deuteronomy 34:10).

It was not through Moses's first forty years of training in the palace and the military academies of Egypt that he became a spiritual leader. No. It was through God breaking the strength of his 'Self', when Moses spent the next forty years looking after sheep in the wilderness.

At the age of eighty, with his confidence in his own abilities shattered, Moses could lean upon God and become the deliverer of God's people.

In the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness, we read one phrase repeated eighteen times in Exodus chapters 39 and 40 - the phrase, "just as the Lord had commanded Moses". The pattern of the tabernacle given by the Lord was a very simple and modest-looking affair. It was a far cry from the fantastic pyramids that Moses had seen built in Egypt.

If Moses had been given the plan of the tabernacle at the age of 40, when the strength of his 'Self' was in full bloom, he would certainly have modified it and made it look more attractive. But at the age of 80, Self had so died out, that he did exactly as the Lord commanded him. And that is what brought the glory of the Lord into the tabernacle.

Our human wisdom has to be dethroned if we are to obtain Divine wisdom.

The Bible says, "If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become foolish that he may become wise."
(1 Corinthians 3:18).

God could approve of Moses only when the chaff of the wisdom of Egypt had been thrashed out of him.

The apostle Paul had studied for three years at the feet of Gamaliel, the great professor of theology at the Jerusalem Bible school. That's why he had to spend three years after his conversion, in the wilderness of Arabia to have the wisdom of Gamaliel removed from his system and replaced with Divine wisdom. Paul refers to this period in Galatians 1:17,18: "I went away to Arabia… Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem."

Only then could Paul become a servant of the Lord.

The dethroning of human cleverness is fundamental for anyone who would serve the Lord. Yet there are few who learn this lesson fully.

God tested Moses when he made the tabernacle to see whether he would make it exactly according to the pattern that he had received on the mount. The glory of the Lord coming on that tabernacle was the visible indication of God's satisfaction with Moses' work.

How is it with us in what we do and build for the Lord? Is it exactly according to the pattern found in the Scriptures? Or have we modified it with some of the wisdom of this world? If so, then that must certainly be one reason why the glory of the Lord is not found in our lives.

Passions

Εξ ύψους κατήλθες ο εύσπλαγχνος,
ταφήν καταδέξω τριήμερον,
ίνα ημάς ελευθερώσης τών παθών,
Η ζωή καί η Ανάστασις ημών, Κύριε δόξα σοι.

You descended from on high, O merciful Lord,
and accepted the three‑day burial
in order to free us from our passions.
Glory to you, O Lord, our life and our resurrection.
Resurrectional Apolytikion, Tone 8

I don’t know why, but this was the first Greek hymn I ever fell in love with. I sang it constantly for years, and I still do from time to time. Later, after worshipping the Lord in the Anastasis service for many years, and having heard my beloved bishop Anthony (of blessed memory) sing with great gusto the apolytikion of Tone 2, Ote katílthes, ‘When You descended,’ in which occurs a phrase I love more than anything, ti astrapí tis theótitos, ‘by the lightning flash of deity,’ that hymn became my favorite. Now it almost sings itself inside me wherever I go, keeping me always present at the moment when the angel speaks the words, ουκ εστιν ωδε, ηγερθη γαρ καθως ειπεν, ‘He is not here, for He has risen as He said’ (Matthew 28:6).

But, back to the 8th tone hymn, it is the words τών παθών, ton pathón, from the passions, that has kept catching my ear from the first time I ever heard it sung.

The passions? What are they?
Some translations propose ‘from the sufferings.’ The word ‘our’ is implied earlier in the verse where it’s the direct object of the verb ελευθερώσης, eleftherósis, You liberate. Whatever is meant by ‘passions,’ Christ came to free us from them. That’s what we’re singing about.

Yet, in the world today, outside and inside the Church, we hear voices throwing around this word ‘passion’ in relation to good things as well as bad, positive as well as negative. Young Christians intent on serving the Lord often say, “I have a passion for Jesus,” or “I have a passion for ministry,” and what they’re saying is that they have a strong feeling. But is it feelings, if that’s what they mean by ‘passion,’ that will keep them going and strengthen them to follow Jesus, or to serve His people, from beginning to end?

The ‘passion’ that young people have, how many times does it get traded or sold for something less than they bargained for? How many Christians have in middle age the same fervor for Christ that they had when they first decided to follow Him? These people are not hard to spot, if you know what to look for. They are those who, no matter what their age, seem somehow to be always young and fresh, their spirits unaffected by the physical deterioration that comes with age.

Living fulfillments of Psalm 1, planted by water streams, yielding their fruit in season, their leaves never fading. Age they have eluded, as they will also elude death.

Εγω ειμι η αναστασις και η ζωη. Ο πιστευων εις εμε καν αποθανη ζησεται… Πιστευεις τουτο? ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. If anyone believes in Me, even though he dies, he will live… Do you believe this?’ (John 11:25-26)

We sing of Christ that He ‘accepted the three‑day burial in order to free us from our passions.’ Perhaps following Him even there, to the rich man’s virgin tomb, in the darkness of death we will shed our passions as the souls in Hades shed their shadows. He emptied the graves once. He will do it again. And that, very soon.

For the time is close.

It is love that heals

This thought keeps coming to me,
‘It is not medicine that heals, it is love.’

I’ve said it to people in conversation, even to my personal physician—and he agreed with me! I’ve written it to my closest friends in messages and emails. I’ve thanked God for it, the healing that comes from love, not just from the feeling of love, but from the actions that love inspires. I’ve reminisced how I used to hold my sons when they were very young, and sick with fever, sitting on my lap facing me, bare chest to bare chest, rocking them gently to calm them and to absorb the fever from their hot bodies into my cool one, or how as a sick and frightened child, one of them would slip into papa’s bed, to sleep in safety. And I’ve thought about the strange sharing of others’ sicknesses and distress by holding them close to my heart, spiritually, by prayer, and how they have done the same for me.

As holy apostle Paul writes, ‘If one part suffers, every part suffers with it’ (1 Corinthians 12:26), to which verse my experiences have given very personal meaning.

Here is a word from Elder Païsios, one of my teachers, in which he describes this same idea, that it is love that heals. The elder writes,

“You must make the other person’s pain your own, and then pray from your heart. Love is a divine attribute, and informs the other person [that you are praying for him]. Even in hospitals, when doctors and nurses feel genuine compassion for their patients, this is the most effective of all the medications to give to them. The patients feel they are being cared for with love, and have a sense of certainty, security and consolation. You do not need to say much to someone who is suffering, or try to instruct him. He understands that you feel his pain and care about him, and he is helped by this. Feeling his pain is everything. If we feel compassion for others, we forget ourselves and our problems.”

— Elder Païsios of the Holy Mountain (Athos)

Ikons of the Divine Nature

The sacerdotal priesthood in the Body of Christ is an ikonic construct established by Christ and the holy apostles, within the human biological and cultural milieu, and within the divine order of His creation.

The relationship between male and female is the union of ‘a kneeling with a sceptred love,’ as C.S. Lewis puts it. Modern people, brought up within a world view largely contemptuous of divine order, even when they are Christians, tend to see every social relationship in terms completely alien to nature that are the product of mere thinking.

The so-called ‘age of enlightenment’ is really just another ideology. Christ is not ideology, and if we follow Him, we follow nature as well, for it is patterned after Him. Nature and life. Modern man has let his thoughts carry him away.

Why didn’t I say ‘modern man and woman’?

Because Man includes Woman: The two are one, and are meant to reflect the divine order in the most perfect way. Now, I just noticed that I seem to be expressing myself as the proponent of an ideology and gotten off course. What I wanted to say was something much simpler; it is just this:

Modern people thinking of ‘church’ think of it in modern terms, where only the leaders, the high profile visibles, matter. That is not, however, how Christ thinks of ‘church’.

Being a priest, or whatever the equivalent is in any Christian community, is not something that most people, not even most men, are called to be. Literally, we are all priests in the holy nation of God, male and female, and no one is more preeminent—despite the titles and ceremonial forms of address—than anyone else.

Priests are men because fathers have to be men. Where does that leave women in the Church? Everywhere, but only a woman can be a mother. There is no trans-gender in the Body of Christ (speaking now metaphorically, not addressing the issues of trans-sexuality).

I can only explore from my home base, Greek Orthodox Christianity. A community is pastored by a presbyter and presbytera, ideally. A family becomes a priestly family, each with his and her role to play.

If the male dies, the female remains a presbytera and continues her ministry within the community: She never marries again. The same is true if the female dies: The male remains a presbyter and continues his ministry without remarrying. In those situations, the community itself replaces the lost partner in various ways, to help the presbyter or presbytera to continue fulfilling the role that Christ has assigned them.

The Orthodox Christian family is the basic unit of the Church, and within it the same divine order prevails.

When married, husband and wife are crowned king and queen, priest and priestess (though we don’t use those words, I don’t think, in English) of what will be a new cell in the Body of Christ.

Everything, absolutely everything, is laid out according to divine order. What we see in reality, though, is a Church that is struggling against a constant invasion by the world at the family level. That is where our struggle lies, and not every family fulfills the call. Feminism and secular attitudes invade and capture us, and we come to question and analyze the Word of God with an attitude of superiority to it.

I have visited a website of Catholic feminists where nuns want to become priests, and some actually have, I think, though it is without canonicity. This is all too stupid for words! As if canonicity mattered!

If the canons of the Church were changed to admit women priests, bishops, etc., that would not change the divine order, nor could it cover up the mismatch and disobedience we would be trying to hide under our new regulations.

All this has been better and more fully said elsewhere, but I try to explain it without a polemic motivation: Every essential ministry is open to every man or woman in the Church, excepting those ceremonials which are ikons of the Divine Nature in humanity.

We all can be spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers: In fact, that is what God expects us to be, what Christ calls us to. What else can it mean to be ‘called to be saints’, if not this?

Yes, the hard reality

Today I came across this excellent, because ultimately challenging, testimony by Fr Stephen at his blog Glory to God for All Things. I am just going to provide a short excerpt here, to whet your appetite but not to spoil your supper, because what he writes in his essay The Hard Reality of the Kingdom of God is what we need to hear right now at this moment in history. If you've visited my blog and read what I write about, or if you're familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his book The Cost of Discipleship, you will know that I am in complete, and helpless, agreement with Fr Stephen. Complete, because it is the truth no matter how you cut it, and helpless, because though I agree with it, I too cannot always practice it. In fact, on my own power I can practice it not at all. Christ has a way of asking us for impossible things, but if we will just trust Him and do them, He will always provide the means to accomplish them. Sometimes, what He asks seems just too fearful, and no amount of faith, if He doesn't provide the grace first, will let us abandon ourselves to the word of His command. I see I've already written far too much, when I only wanted to bring your attention to a better word than mine. Well, at last, hear it is…

There are many things that bring us up against the hard reality of the Kingdom of God. The Gospel given to us by Christ, the verbal icon of the Kingdom, often gives us commands or parables that run radically counter to instinct (as we experience it) and, not infrequently, against reason (or so it seems).

No commandment in the teachings of Christ fits this description better than “forgive your enemies.” Our instinct is generally always to avoid and protect ourselves from our enemies, and, in extreme cases, to kill them or imprison them if possible. Again, this seems entirely reasonable for enemies may indeed be genuinely serving the cause of evil, and present a danger (physical, moral, etc.) to those around them.
…
Years (centuries) of scholastic torment have rendered the commandments of Christ of little effect, transforming them into virtual rabbinic arguments about the rightness and wrongness of certain actions. Their dynamic in the role of salvation is completely lost (particularly where salvation itself is seen through a forensic lens). Salvation is to be conformed to the image of Christ – a work of grace – a gift from God. However the distortion of that image becomes an enemy of grace and stumbling block to salvation.

And so we come back to our salvation and the commandments of Christ. It is a difficult thing to ponder and yet we must – who are my enemies that I should love? Why does my heart hate them so? Why do I rejoice at their downfall and not weep for the sins of another human being – who is – by definition – my brother?

… Read it all here.

Invisible fire

As I work, I sometimes look up at a large photograph on the wall of my cubicle—I am a technical writer and translator—of metropolitan Alexander of Nigeria, seated at a table with three of his native clergy of the Orthodox Nigerian church. I really like this photo a lot, because it is free of any hint of churchly opulence. There are four men seated on one side of a table. In front of them is an array of bottled soft drinks and a few pineapples and bananas. Yes, this is Africa.

Each of the men has a different look on his face, but all seem possessed of a contentment and earthly happiness that defies explanation. How they can even be sitting there together like that defies explanation. The photo to me is an ikon of the undoing of the curse of Babel when the tongues of mankind, and thus their races, were divided. It is an unassuming photographic image of the spirit of Pentecost, that day when all tongues, all races, were reunited.

Man tried to reach heaven by his building higher.
Heaven instead reaches down with invisible fire.

Ordinary men, in fact, ordinary boys in men’s bodies, boys whose eyes are on Jesus, each looking at Him in his unique way, each hearing within His unique call, and yet seated together in expectation. Looking from one face to another I see, boyish happiness, youthful hope, quiet introspection, and an almost divine impatience for the open road. These are men such as Jesus once called in Galillee, men such as He calls today, not full of themselves, empty for Him.

I may never come with them on their missions, though my heart follows them with its eyes, and my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God our Savior, for He has regarded our lowliness, and anointed us and clothed us with His mercy, to distribute to those around us, whoever they are, what He has paid so much for, yet what He gives us all for free. Whether on mission in a foreign land, or at home, the man next to us, or the woman, is our neighbor.

I want to be and to remain as simple, as silent to the flesh and aloud to the Spirit, as these are, my brothers, who have heard the call and said ‘Yes’ to whatever the Lord asks, and to be nothing more than a boy, trusting and obeying his Master’s word.

Family

In the case of real toy soldiers or statues, if one came to life, it would obviously make no difference to the rest. They are all separate. But human beings are not. They look separate because you see them walking about separately. But then, we are so made that we can see only the present moment. If we could see the past, then of course it would look different. For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of his father as well: and when they were part of his grandparents. If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would not look like a lot of separate things dotted about. It would look like one single growing thing—rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other.

— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Book IV, Chapter 5, “The Obstinate Toy Soldiers”

Years ago, newly reborn as a Christian, when I read these words it were as though a dream too good to be true came true for me, it were as though some invisible threat were suddenly collapsed and trapped forever under a weight that could not be removed. The very core of my being, that I could not express without misunderstanding or instant criticism, was justified. What I suspected, what I wanted to be true, that God is a ‘family man’ and that He really created us to be too, and that ‘family’ was more than what I had experienced growing up, really was true.

Later on, when I had read the psalms enough to notice them and have my favorites, Psalm 133 had the same effect on me, and still does, every time I read it. Here was what humanity was made for. Here was what brother should mean to brother, what father should mean to son, and son to father, even what husband and wife should mean to one another.

How good, how delightful it is
for all to live together like brothers:
fine as oil on the head,
running down Aaron’s beard
to the collar of his robes;
copious as a Hermon dew
falling on the heights of Zion,
where Yahweh confers His blessing,
everlasting life.

This is what I was longing for when I ran away from home, on my own personal ‘road to find out,’ looking for this in a New Age hippie commune, where I was the only non-hippie there, and quickly ejected as some kind of antibody. They knew that despite appearances, I didn’t really want what they wanted. I wanted more than mere appearances. I wanted the reality. That was something they must’ve instinctively known was impossible for them, without Christ. So man’s curse turned for me into God’s blessing. God is a ‘family man’ for true, and He wanted me to be one too.

But family, like everything else that’s true, cannot be created by human effort alone, for man, fallen man, though starting out even with right intentions in mind and right actions in hand, will fail, will fall into the same old heresies of self-love, envy, pride and wrath. Only Christ can teach us what love is, and therewith provide in Himself the only true foundation for what we call, and long for, as ‘family.’

So it’s not surprising then when the mystery of division rears up even in the midst of ‘the best of families.’ It’s sad to me and distressing in the utmost to witness parents weighing and calculating their rights against their children to the penny, unwilling to continue to be the sheltering tent of love over them, not realising that they are the foundation on which their son or daughter builds their house, but ejecting them perforce with a spirit almost of competition or ‘survival of the fittest’ with which an animal in the wild might eject its offspring. I am embarrassed by it when I see it, almost embarrassed at being a human myself, even though this attitude is completely foreign to me.

Only the grace of God working in us can produce fruit for love, remake us in the divine image that was shattered by the fall when we ejected ourselves by knowingly breaking the only commandment given to us, consciously taking the only thing that was not permitted us. When we get what we want, denying what we need, it only crushes us lower, so that the things we want become more and more debased, and so that we can no longer hear our hearts crying out for love, and so our own love grows cold. Greed shrivels the soul. The fruitless fig tree withers under Christ’s curse. Was it really not at fault? Can God Himself be wrong to demand from us what He has given us in trust?

These ramblings I offer to the good Lord who called me in the depths of my being and said to me, “Do not be afraid, it is I” (John 6:20), asking Him to forgive my sins and negligences, and my betrayals of the love He has entrusted to me, and to other parents, and asking His mercy on us all.

Cleanse us, Father, from our iniquities and save us from ourselves, unite us to You and to each other in the bonds of love, knowing no debts and holding no accounts between us except to love one another, knowing that we are all worth more than money, and that we have been bought and paid for, by the blood of a Lamb without spot, Your only Son our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Occupied territory

"Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage."
—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 2, "The Invasion"

I'm afraid I've "let the cat out of the bag" on a number of levels.
First, the image of my copy of Mere Christianity both dates and places me in geographical context—an old mended paperback bought for "three bob six" (about 49¢) in London, 1966.

Second, as my son Jacob was once called by his Orthodox opponent in a "friendly" online debate, I may be labelled a "crypto-Protestant" for quoting C.S. Lewis and other "non-Orthodox" authors on my blog, and for (seeming to be) saying that "Orthodox Christianity" is not that important. I hope my friends, though, know me well enough to understand my meaning to be not to say what is un-important, but Who is important, thereby giving "Orthodoxy" and everything else, its true value, for nothing stands except for Him, and on Him.

"Apart from Me, all is nothing." (Isaiah 45:6 Jerusalem Bible)

Third, I also must be no less than a Christian jihadist to have quoted the above and to believe it. As a former friend and reader of my blog wrote me, "I'm glad your true colors have come out," when I publicly took a stand for the truthfulness of the Bible on who Jesus Christ is versus the Islamic concept of Jesus, some people may write me off as a bigoted hypocrite who writes about love on the one hand and on the other dogmatizes that there is a real battle going on, and real sides, right versus wrong. So I'm a sheep in wolf's clothing after all!

Well, I admit that I'm probably a bad person on a number of other levels as well, but let's turn now to the topic I wanted to write about… "occupied territory."

If you type these words into an internet search engine, I guarantee you, most of the results will be something about Palestinian issues, but this is not what C.S. Lewis is writing about, nor am I.

It's the world, that world of which Morpheus speaks when he says to Neo that the matrix is "the world pulled over your eyes," punning on "the wool pulled over your eyes."
Clever, my brothers Wachowski, worthy of your Chicago-Polishness.

Back in May of 2007, my friend Brock and I went downtown thinking we were to read the Word of God publicly and instead were sent on a kind of rescue mission or rendezvous by our heavenly Father.

"Baah!" some people would say, as in the film Luther, when Martin's father abruptly leaves the church after witnessing his priested son's first mass. Luther defends himself to his angry father, "God sent me here [to the monastic life]…" and his father responds, "A bolt of lightning burns your arse, and you say that God sent you! The devil more likely!" and gallops off.

Sometimes in a lonely moment my flesh cries out to my mind for sympathy in its bewilderment over God's incredible work in the Spirit. "How can you do such things? Are you crazy? How can you start what you don't know you can finish? What will people think now? Don't you care about your family and your reputation? Get back in line! Don't be a fool! Nobody's worth that much! There now, wouldn't you rather find a comfy corner and read some nice Christian book? Or history? Or work on your hobbies? Who do you think you are? Remember, you're not worthy! Let those whom God has called do His work! That's what the priests are for! Leave well enough alone!"

My response is to get quiet, and wait it out. [Yawn…] No matter how hard or long the tempter speaks, I can always sleep.
"…and in the night my inmost self instructs me."
(Psalm 16:7 Jerusalem Bible)

Another memory rises up.
During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the family ten Boom, watchmakers in Haarlem, forgot themselves and started helping their Jewish neighbors by hiding them and using their house as a way station in a kind of underground railroad to get Jews out of Holland to safety.
When asked by an agent of the underground why they were taking the risk of helping those in danger, Betsy ten Boom replied, "No, not for excitement or adventure. I would rather just close that door, and stay inside and wait until this whole dreadful affair is over. But that is not what my Jesus wants. He wants us to open our door to all who knock and ask for help. And that's what we will do."

In my flesh, I feel the same way, I'd like to just stay comfortable and safe. But then, there's Jesus. It's not a question of "what would Jesus do" that I can play with as I sit in my favorite chair. It's "what does Jesus do," and do I dare follow Him out into the world where He is constantly seeking that which is lost? That's the question we all have to ask ourselves, today.

Holland was under Nazi occupation from May 10, 1940 to May 5, 1945.
This world has been enemy-occupied territory since the time of Adam and Eve.
The battle lines are drawn,
and though we can't always see it
with our fleshly eyes
the victory has been won.


Thank you, Lord, for Your great mercy
in revealing everything to us in Your Word.
Thank you for giving us yet one more day
to serve you "in peace and repentance."

He has chosen darkness

I know it sounds crazy, but my first reaction when hearing that Osama had been killed was a feeling of intense sorrow.

I went to bed early that night, it was barely 8:30 and not even dark yet. About a half an hour later, I was sound asleep, and dreaming. I was suddenly and abruptly awakened by the voice of my son John standing in the doorway of my room, and loudly, ‘Dad, Osama Bin Laden is dead!’

My eyes popped open, and for a moment I couldn't remember what day it was, or even where I was, but the words just stung me, and I felt intense sorrow, knowing that this man whose earthly life was a foretaste of hell, was now beyond redemption, and we would see and hear him no more in this or any world.

He was human, too, like us, and like us a sinner. He had a mother that probably loved him and thought the world of him when he was first born. But he was born into a family and into a religion that lives in sin and knows no way out. Tragedy upon tragedy.

How satan has deceived us so well, that a billion or more people can live without Christ and think that killing His followers is to honor God! And how shallow and cruel his promises: seventy-two black eyed virgins in paradise. This religion and all the suffering it has caused has made more victims than any other, I think, in the whole world.

So one of the sons of men has been killed as befits all us sinful men, and like Judas he has gone down to darkness and eternal pain, having been the instrument of paradise for others. Yes, where would we be without Judas? But alas for him who has betrayed the Savior of the world. Even the love that created and saved the world cannot reach him. He has chosen darkness.

Christian celebrities

Another oxymoron fell into my mental pail as I was searching for crawfish in the culture creek—Christian celebrities—and now I know what it is that always irked me when seeing the shelves overloaded with ‘Christian’ books at Borders or Barnes & Noble.

Like ‘jumbo shrimp’ the expression ‘Christian celebrities’ is a phrase describing something with words that don’t belong together, yet there they are, and they do describe something. ‘Shrimp’ is a metaphor for little, ‘Jumbo’ means rather large, but shrimp is also an edible animal and though small, there are bigger ones among the small. So that phrase does, after all, make sense. But what about ‘Christian celebrities’?

Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’
Matthew 20:25-28

The obvious point of Christ’s words is a warning against the abuse of authority among His disciples. He is warning us what not to do when we will be ‘on our own’ after His ascension to the Father. We tend to think of this as applying solely to church offices, and it gives us plenty of opportunities for finger pointing and name calling. But it also applies to any abuse of authority, even authority which is not official.

A great deal of what is visible in the evangelical Church world consists of men and women striving to make their mark, to establish themselves, even to promote themselves, as knowledgeable or authoritative on issues ranging from bible interpretation to personal relationships to international politics to women’s liberation. True, ‘a man must earn his daily bread’, so what is wrong with becoming an author of ‘New York Times best selling’ books, especially if you’re doing it all for Christ?

I can only ask this question; I can’t answer it. I can only point to what the writer of Acts reports on the testimony of the holy apostle Paul, ‘All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas’ (Acts 17:21).

Christian celebrities seem to roll out of a majestic and divine theological mill along with their books, videos, music, and television appearances with astonishing regularity, and we, like avid fans of sports events, follow them daily, making their pronouncements, or their announcements, our daily bread. What does it look like when a Christian, a disciple of Jesus Christ, ‘wants to become great among’ us and so becomes our ‘servant’? What was it that won the ancient fathers and mothers of the Church their notoriety? Or, even in modern times, what made a man like C. S. Lewis stand out among his generation? And were any of these ‘Christian celebrities’?

I can’t put it into words any better, but to me, Christian celebrities, though there is such a category of persons, do not really exist. It’s as though our salvation is worn, and won, by our membership in this or that particular church. ‘Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?’ (1 Corinthians 1:12-13).

I know there are such things as popes and patriarchs and archbishops and moderators: all these are offices in the Church, and all have been, can be, and may yet be abused by their holders. This is nothing new. They also are Christian celebrities of a sort, but they can never escape even for a moment Christ’s words of warning, that they must be ‘servants of all’, because we, the flock, never cease pressing on them. But what of these others?

We make Christian celebrities, and some are self-made, but only Christ is worthy of true celebrity, and only those who follow Him can hope to be like Him. ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ (Matthew 16:24-26)

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!

A Christian asks himself

How can I be living my life as though the resurrection didn’t really happen?
I say, “Christos anesti” with my lips, but what do I say with my heart?
What do I say with my life?

What is belief?
Is it just the mental agreement that a statement is true without experiencing the truth it expresses?

Can I live my life in the resurrection of Jesus while living it as though He did not die on the cross, and die on the cross for me?
I can humbly bow and cross myself with my body and kiss His image, but what worship does my spirit offer?

But the hour will come—in fact it is here already—when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.
John 4:23 JB

Can I believe in the resurrection without believing in the Lord’s death?
How can I believe in the Lord’s death without experiencing it?
Can I believe in it by attending the services, or reading the bible, or is there more to believing than being a “good Christian”?
And what is a good Christian?

Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.
Matthew 16:24-25 JB

“He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
—Jim Elliot, Martyr of Ecuador

Can’t I be a follower of Jesus without dying?
Isn’t all the talk about being buried with Christ in my baptism just a metaphor?
But if it is, what is there to do?

Back to my original question, why am I living as though the resurrection didn’t really happen?
Is it really because I don’t believe in the death of Christ and in the power of His life-giving cross?
What is this “power” of the cross?

All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death.
Philippians 3:10 JB

Living as though the death of the Lord did happen will give you the power to live your life as though the resurrection did happen.
There is not one without the other.

You cannot live as though Jesus Christ died on the cross,
and still lie, steal and kill.
You cannot live as though He died for you,
and still treat others with disrespect.
You cannot live as though He endured temptation,
and still fornicate, alone or with another.
You cannot live as though He said from the cross,
‘Father, forgive them,’
and still hold grudges, envy the good fortune of others,
and judge your neighbor.
You cannot live as though He endured being stripped naked
and beaten,
and still look the other way and wink at wickedness,
and let the innocent be slaughtered.

You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which gets corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution, so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.
Ephesians 4:22-24 JB

“Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: My own will shall become yours.’…”
—C. S. Lewis

So, this is the way to live a resurrected life, to live as though the resurrection of Christ really happened, to know that it happened, not just to say I believe in it:
To live a dying life, to let Christ nail not only my sins, but also my very self, what I think is me, what I think I want, to the cross.

…the thing that is sown is perishable but what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised, it embodies the spirit.
1 Corinthians 15:42-44 JB

If we have died with him, then we shall live with him.
2 Timothy 2:11 JB

Lord, let me live as though You really rose from the dead, by living as though You really died for me.

Martyrdom

Martyrdom—this is a word we’ve heard a lot lately, especially on the news. Muslim fundamentalists commit martyrdom. Christians suffer martyrdom. But what is martyrdom, really?

It comes from the Greek word μαρτυρια, meaning “witness”. It’s one of the four characteristics of Orthodox Christianity: liturgía “worship” literally “the people’s work”, dhiakonía “servanthood”, martyría “witness”, and kinonía “fellowship”.
A modern addition to this foursquare scheme is paidheía “instruction”.
It used to be considered sufficient that the idhiótes, that is, the laity, were educated and edified by the original four. But the modernist Orthodox wants to make sure the world understands that we are “educated” too. “Nobody who speaks only Greeks is anybody!” as Spiro exclaimed in the film My Family and Other Animals.

Back to martyrdom.
Muslims commit it,
Christians suffer it.

A Muslim terrorist firmly believes in the reward of paradise and seventy-two black-eyed virgins if he commits martyrdom by, for example, strapping a bomb to himself, walking into a crowd of “enemies of Allah”,
and blowing himself and them up.

A Christian who suffers martyrdom
at the hands of unbelievers
because of his testimony,
his witness to Jesus as Lord and Savior, firmly believes that Christ will stand up for him, based on His word of promise, “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32 NASB)

The Christian doesn’t know the particulars or details of the reward, if you can call it such (though Jesus does, cf. Matthew 10:42), but he believes in it just as firmly, and with good reason.
“The Word of God says so.”

So, martyrdom means “witness”.
It seems strange that witness can be committed as an act of violence towards oneself and others by the followers of Muhammad, and at the same time suffered as violence committed against oneself by others. But that’s how it is. Has it always been this way?

Have there been Muslim martyrs who suffered rather than committed martyrdom?
Well, yes, of course there have. Think of the Crusades, when Roman Catholic armies attacked the Muslim states of the Near East. Of course, they were only trying to win back what the Muslims had conquered in the first place. Maybe that’s not a good example.

How about the case of Mansur al-Hallaj (AD 858-922), who was martyred for his faith? Well, yes, it was by his fellow Muslims. He wanted to testify of his relationship with God to others, even at the price of his own life. He also referred to the martyrdom of Christ, saying he also wanted to die ‘in the supreme confession of the cross’. Many Muslims of his time criticized him as a crypto-Christian for distorting the monotheistic revelation in a Christian way. Well, maybe that’s not a good example either.

Have there ever been Christians who committed martyrdom?
Well, again I think you could cite the Crusaders, though reliable contemporary sources, Francesco of Assisi for example, expressed the opinion that the Crusaders needed Christ more than the Saracens did, so that’s probably not a good example.

I think the closest I can come to finding a Christian equivalent to ‘committing martyrdom’ is the acts of the Greek neo-martyrs during the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. These were (usually) men who had gotten into trouble with the Turks, but who escaped punishment, fled and lived in hiding. Later, after repenting for their apostasy (most of them had been forced to become Muslims, and then had backslid), they would return to the places where they had denied Christ and ‘commit martyrdom’ by boldly confessing Christ and denouncing Muhammad in front of Turkish authorities, who then had them executed (not without trying to induce them to recant, rejoin the Muslim fold, and be pardoned). They could have stayed in hiding (and most former apostates did), but something inside these men couldn’t be silenced. Perhaps they read the passage in Matthew, “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men…”


Are we any closer to defining martyrdom?
I think not. What martyrdom really is can be learned only by following Jesus, going where He goes, doing what He does. Here’s what martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about some aspects of martyrdom:

Neither failure nor hostility can weaken the messenger’s conviction that he has been sent by Jesus. That his word may be their strength, their stay and their comfort, Jesus repeats it. ‘Behold, I send you.’ For this is no way they have chosen themselves, no undertaking of their own. It is, in the strict sense of the word, a mission. With this the Lord promises them his abiding presence, even when they find themselves as sheep among wolves, defenceless, powerless, sore pressed and beset with great danger. Nothing can happen to them without Jesus knowing of it. ‘Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’

… Jesus never called his disciples into a state of uncertainty, but to one of supreme certainty. That is why his warning can only summon them to abide by the Word. Where the Word is, there shall the disciple be. Therein lies his true wisdom and his true simplicity. If it is obvious that the Word is being rejected, if it is forced to yield its ground, the disciple must yield with it. But if the Word carries on the battle, the disciple must also stand his ground. In each case he will be combining wisdom with simplicity. But wisdom, however spiritual it may be, must never lead the disciple along a path which cannot stand the test of the word of Jesus.

… It is not our judgment of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God’s faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity.

… The return of Jesus will take place suddenly. That fact is more certain than that we shall be able to finish our work in his service, more certain than our own death. This assurance that in their suffering they will be as their Master is the greatest consolation the messengers of Jesus have. As is the Master, so shall the disciple be, and as the Lord, so the servant. If they called Jesus a devil, how much more shall they call the servants of his household devils. Thus Jesus will be with them, and they will be in all things like unto him.

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (martyr, 1945)
The Cost of Discipleship,
Ch. 24 The Suffering of the Messengers

Modern Martyrs Website

Follow behind Jesus

Miracles are not seen. The human eye is not large enough to ‘see miracles.’ What the religious person thinks of as miracles are sometimes not miracles at all, but the effect that the presence of the miraculous has on people and things. For example, what is miraculous in a weeping ikon?
Is it the mysterious liquid that oozes out of the wood (or even out of the paper) of the ikon’s eyes? Or is it the opening of a unique doorway to a moment of real faith?

Some Orthodox Christians want to venerate every ‘miracle-working ikon’ that comes their way. Some want to pray before it as well. Some want a miracle in their lives. Some just want to be there, in the presence of the miraculous; for them, that is enough, not even their eyes could ask for more. Others don’t go; they don’t find anything to add to what they already have. For them, the present moment and the place they are standing seems enough.

‘I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles.’
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Song of the Open Road

As for Christians in general, history writes no tall tales about miracle when it writes the truth. Hoping to force God to mimic His mighty acts in the book of Exodus by their ‘faith,’ the children’s crusaders waited in vain for the Adriatic sea to part so they could walk dry-shod to Jerusalem. Compliant helpers were found to transport the infant armies in sea-worthy ships to the slave markets of North Africa, whose harems for decades heard French folk songs sadly sung.

And today, we have faith healers, but to what avail? Do they heal men’s bodies, their minds, or just their souls, or none of these? I have known enough healed, and heard enough testimonies from them of miraculous healing by the likes of these. One sister told me confidently that her extreme nearsightedness was instantly cured when she placed the palms of both her hands against the television screen, while an Oklahoma faith healer cast out the demon in her.

Not long after this, she was also instantly killed along with her innocent daughter, in a head-on collision with a dump truck on the narrow coast highway. Their Pentecostal sisters sang beautifully and in strange tongues over their coffins at the cemetery the morning their bodies were consigned to the earth. She called her instant healing from nearsightedness a miracle. What would she call this? Yet the Lord was fully present in both moments, all His acts.

Yes, I too want miracle in my life. I want my faith to move the hand of God. I used to pray with the pleading father in the gospels, ‘I believe. Help my unbelief,’ but I pray so no longer. For me, the miracle is to trust God to act according to His will, which is always the best for us. If He should ‘tear the heavens open and come down’ as Isaiah pleads, I am content, no, more than content, for that means it is the end of all things. That, to me, would be the greatest miracle.

Because the end of all things is the end of sin and death, for that is what we are, by our weakness and our bad choices. Miracle springs from the beginning and the end of God’s work in us, and between the First and the Last, all time is filled with His presence. If we do not in fact ‘stop here… and do miracles,’ in whom have we doubted? Of whom have we been afraid? ‘I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more…’

The miracles we seek will always proceed from the miracle that eyes cannot see, that ‘two of you on earth agree about anything…’ That is the hurdle to get over. That has more to do with love even than with faith. That is where all true and permanent healing comes from, from that love, because that is the source of all miracle from beginning to end. By love the universe was made out of nothing. By love, what was lost in the First Adam was restored in the Second.

‘Miracles’ that do not begin in love and end in love are no miracles at all, only magic. The faith that moves mountains is nothing less than the confidence that God can do all things, and that everything He does is for the best. ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’ (1 Corinthians 2:9). Yes, we walk by faith, not by sight, and yet miracle follows us and precedes us wherever we go, because we follow behind Jesus.

Of mystics and uninterchangables

In Orthodoxy there is no putting of ‘mystics’ on a pedestal, and we don’t have mystics like the Roman Catholics do, of either sex. Orthodox mysticism is akin to Jewish mysticism, very experiential, apophatic, imageless, even existentialist, and difficult to put into writing. Not only that, but Orthodox mystics tend not to think of themselves as mystics.

Female saints, spiritual mothers, the Orthodox have in abundance. None of them, I don’t think, would presume to write and teach men in the way that Theresa of Avila, Catherine of Sienna, and other Roman Catholic female saints have done, nor do we have (at least not yet) the Joyce Meyer type of female teachers.

In the Greek Church there is beginning to be a presence of women in teaching (other than Sunday school) and even preaching (more as ‘witnessing’ from the pulpit), but the scripture cannot be put aside without consequences. In Orthodoxy, as in the Christian denominations, women can serve the church in many positions of authority, just not in the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon.

On the other hand, as I mentioned, the Orthodox have female saints and some of them have teachings and writings.

Among the early apostles are included women who are called Isapóstoli, ‘equal to the apostles.’ and we cannot imagine that these women did not exert some sort of didactic and moral authority over everyone they came into contact with, including men.

Still, as with the Theotokos, who is certainly higher than even the apostles without ever presuming to teach them, women in the Body of Christ can have any role that God assigns them: How that looks in practice is not what most modern Christians are prepared to accept. They are still looking for equality and interchangeability of women and men in the same functional roles. This, for the Orthodox, the scriptures and tradition cannot allow. Men and women are simply not interchangeable, not in physical roles, or spiritual ones either.

I hope I have not put my thoughts forward as an authoritative statement or as a challenge to anyone: I am just an ordinary layman in the Greek Church, writing about what I have observed. As to my personal opinion, I have none, but leave the Church to decide what it will do.

My life in Christ is just to love the brethren close up and minister to them, and let them do the same to me, and never to let myself become an enemy where I should remain a friend.

Anything you ask for

In the closest following of Jesus, the miraculous is not only possible, it is inevitable. It is into the life of this kind of faith that we are called, but very few Christians even consider it.

‘Ordinary’ Christian faith usually means just ‘trust Jesus’ and ‘God will take care of everything, no need to worry.’ But this is not the kind of faith that Jesus is leading us to when He says, ‘I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, Go, throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.’ (Mark 11:22-23)

Brother, yes, you are on the edge. Yes, you are standing on the precipice of something miraculous. We all are. Some of us have stepped off into that ‘walk on the waters’ and have known that kind of faith, but it is too strong for our weak human nature, and we dash back to safety. But the call doesn't go away, and when we have been strengthened, we go out again, following the call, into the realm where ‘all things are possible, if you only believe.’

Everything that Jesus said is true. He wasn't joking when He said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.’ Neither was He joking when He said, ‘Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 18:19)

Wrestler

Jacob wrestles the ‘angel’ of Yahweh, who is the pre-incarnation appearance of the Word of God, later to be born and known as Jesus, who lets Himself be almost overpowered, but to stay Jacob’s winning the match, He shoves His hand into him and dislocates his hip.

Still, Jacob doesn’t let go, but demands that the Stranger bless him, before he will let Him go.

This is an awesome testimony of God’s incredible love, that He puts Himself under one of His own creatures, to let Him get the best of Him, for precisely this reason—He wants to be asked for His blessing.

This is one of the pivotal episodes in human history, and no one, but no one, even saw it happen, except God, and Ya‘aqov.

This is why the personal encounter between us and the Lord is no different: It replicates this event for each one of us.

This is why our holy God is supremely to be praised, and man-made gods and religions so detestable: Because our God comes to us, because only a real God could and would do that.

All the fake gods in the universe rolled into one, no matter what they are named, cannot even wrestle a meatball.