Commandments

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

Here are a few passages from the booklet “Spiritual Economy” by Father Matta el-Meskeen, spiritual father of the monastery of St Macarius, the Desert of Scete, Egypt...

…the power of faith in God is greatly strengthened when we believe in our hearts that the works that God performs with us surpass all our estimations, so much so that He can create a new creation from nothingness: “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matthew 3:9).

How much more then will He give us what we need when necessary, and grant us all power and help in fulfilling His commandments, be it in fasting, vigil, prayer, voluntary poverty, sacrificial love, or any sort of service that is within His commandments.

Shall we then shrink from fulfilling His commandments for fear of falling ill or becoming weak? To St Paul the Apostle He has said, “My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). To this St Paul himself also testifies, “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Shall we then be afraid to apply His commandments lest we or our children should hunger, thirst, go naked, or become destitute? The Lord Himself has said, “Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26).

Shall we fear confessing Him lest we should be persecuted? Has He not said, “Blessed are you when men revile and persecute you and utter all manner of evil against you falsely on My account” (Matthew 5:11)?

And when relying upon Him alone with no power, no artifice or weapon, shall we then fear death? For He has said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28).

Therefore it should be firmly established in our minds that the One who has laid down the commandments for us has done so simply and solely for our gain; He has guaranteed the success of everyone who fulfills them with good intentions. The loss in the commandments, which appears frightful to the ego and the body, is in fact the touchstone of faith; latent in the loss is testimony for which is offered the reward.

The soundness of one's spiritual economy is the measure of one's faith. The strength, fervor and soundness of faith can neither be judged by a man's professed creed, nor by his thoughts, nor his writings, but rather by his works and behavior: “…and I by my works will show you my faith” (James 2:18).

Correct theoretical faith in accordance with the foundation of sound beliefs as handed down by the Church is, in effect, the general foundation laid down for all who wish to build upon it their house of faith. But if a man builds nothing upon it, how can he claim that it is his faith?

As James the Apostle puts it, whoever is contented with the universal truth that “God exists,” that person has no merit; for demons also believe the same, even confessing Him and trembling at His existence. In other words, man must prove his faith in the existence of God by his prayer, as well as by his behavior among people in accordance with God's directives and commandments.

His behavior in the midst of hardships and tribulations should clearly proclaim his personal trust in and practical reliance on God…

How then can you love God except by fulfilling His commandments? Or how can you grow in His love except by growth in devotion, and by precisely fulfilling even the smallest of His commandments?

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me” (John 15:14). “If a man loves Me, he will keep My word” (John 14:23). “He who does not love Me does not keep My words” (John 14:24).

The question that everybody then asks is, “How can I grow and be strong?” This question is the same as, “How can my love in Christ grow and be strong?” The answer is provided by the verses cited above. In other words, how do you propose to keep the words of Christ? By what sort of zeal, love and ardency will you persist in scrupulously, faithfully, and sincerely fulfilling His commandments?

When one first begins to manage one's spiritual life, it clearly appears how faith conflicts with man's comfort, how the commandments of Christ stand against human honor, and how the sayings of Christ taste bitter on the palate of the ego which seeks to be glorified by people, and which seeks to change all opportunities of the spirit into opportunities for personal fame.

The gauge of faith's exactitude, appropriateness, and even its orthodoxy, is manifest in man's readiness to reject the whole of earthly life, and with that to relinquish all its comfort and false glory, if it conflicts with even the least of Christ's commandments.

Ever and always your whole life long, the devil will pressure you with all possible guile, to ease up in your adherence to the Truth in order to maintain your worldly or social status. He will alarm you and confuse you, so that you might relinquish Christ's commandments in order to attain an opportunity for pomp, authority and outward glory.

Thus the Gospel, and along with it Christ, become victims along the path of your utilization and exploitation of chances for gain, comfort, and transient glory…

This is the measure of free faith, and blessed is he who chooses loss, weariness, contempt, illness, or even death instead of relinquishing his fidelity to God. For if he dares to choose this, then he will receive strength that will compensate all loss—a strength he had never known of or expected, that strength which we call grace, which means “the gratuitous omnipotence of God,” and which is so tightly bound to faith:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8).
It is not just any faith, but rather the faith of one who is bold and defiant of death.

This omnipotence makes hard things easy for you and elevates your flesh and senses above the needs of nature. Thus it is that man prays without fatigue, fasts without wasting away, serves without flagging, loves without ceasing—all this with fervor in asceticism and spiritual economy that never grows cold.

— Abba Matta al-Meskeen (1919-2006)

Son, I have posted these words for you, to help you right now. These words I took to myself as a young man only a little older than you are now, and I believed them, and I began to live by them, and now that I am old, I continue in them, for they are the words of Jesus, spoken by His beloved servant, my spiritual father, Matta el-Meskeen.

Of course, I never met the elder in person, but by living in the words of Jesus, as he also did, I have come safely to this moment, just as he promised, when he writes, ‘He has guaranteed the success of everyone who fulfills them with good intentions.’

Trust me, Son, and let's serve Christ this way together. He has called us, and He will not fail us.
He makes us fearless. He makes us true men.

If we dare

It’s a funny thing, but in the last few years it has become clearer than ever to me that the doctrinal issues really don’t matter at all. It doesn’t even really matter what we believe about the nature of Christ. What matters is that we believe He is the Savior of the world, and that He is the Truth, the Way and the Life. How can a man be the Truth? I don’t know, but He is. Before you decide to stone me, try to hear what it is I am saying, and not jump to conclusions.

That Truth is a Man, and not a doctrine, fits in so well with God’s very nature.

Notice, in the Old Testament there is no doctrine at all except, ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods but Me.’ Nothing else. How simple! And look what happened. The rabbis turned that into a vast theological system.

And into that system comes a man who is Who He is, who does not argue, who does not teach doctrine. Do you ever hear Jesus teaching doctrine? or religion? No, He just speaks the Truth, and that Truth is Himself, that He is sent by the Father to do His will, and to speak what the Father tells Him to speak. Nothing else.

And look what the fathers have done to that. We have had councils and even wars over questions that not Christ, not the apostles, were ever concerned about. We have disputes over the oneness of God, and about the Trinity not being written up in the bible. Of course it’s not written up! It doesn’t have to be!

That the Divine Nature is a triad is not a doctrine to be believed—
what good does it do if we believe it, what evil if we don’t?—
but a reality to be lived, to be lived, really and truly, the pattern of all being: three are one, not two, not one, but three.
It’s just how things are.

Jesus came to demonstrate that and to invite us to join in that threesome by sending us the Holy Spirit who incorporates us into the Body of God, making us ‘one of the Family.’ It is so awesome!
How petty we are to nitpick each other and tear each other’s flesh over trifles!

I have no problem with Orthodoxy and with its Christological dogma, because I really believe it is an expression in human thinking of the livable reality that I have just been describing, otherwise I would not be an Orthodox Christian.

And even though the Orthodox Church is responsible for a lot of the turmoil in the early Church, defining what’s what and who’s who, and even though it has canons and rules and jurisdictions and squabbles enough to tear the heads off many chickens, the Orthodox life is really quite simple, just as simple as the life of any Christian of any denomination or lack of one.

As simple as the life of any lover and disciple of Jesus.
I know, because I have met them there, as everywhere,
and I hope I am one of them.

I have declared many times, not to contradict, but simply to state a fact about myself: I am not an ecumenist. Ecumenism is for those who think the Church is divided and so they take pains to reunite it. But if we know it as one, we just live in that knowledge.

That is, if we dare.

You may stone me now.

Keep my commandments

            I wouldn’t call them beautiful exactly,
            but these few lines inscribe my life,
            a life that it’s easy to hate;
            but then I heard it said to me,
            ‘the man who hates his life in this world
            will keep it for eternal life.’

            ‘Remember to breathe,’
            I tell myself each morning;
            ‘Cast your eyes ahead,’
            that voice within me calls,
            and like you, brother,
            though I light no candles,
            my vigils take the place of sleep.

            Lying flat on my face,
            no pillow drenched with tears,
            I watch for dawn’s hint of light,
            and then pray I expire
            before the sun rises;
            no other answer to despair,
            except a kiss whispered in my ear,
            ‘keep my commandments.’

— Romanós

Do not stay away

Church is a dynamic environment. It is not one in which everything is governable by rules and protocols. Yes, there are such things as ‘the commandments of the Church’ though not every community has them or, if they do, makes them known. As I child I remember reading these ‘commandments’ in my prayer book. One of them was ‘to be present at mass on Sundays and all holy days of obligation.’ Perhaps Roman Catholics are familiar with this commandment. ‘Holy days of obligation’ for me has particularly the taste of Catholicism in the West. That was my childhood. Now, as an adult Christian in the Orthodox East, the phrase doesn’t come up, but sometimes the meaning is pushed just the same, only more subtly.

We know that there were saints who did not follow this prescripted pattern, their entire lives in regular orbit around the cycle of church services, fasts and feasts, yet the Church declares them saints anyway. People are tempted, I am tempted, to excuse myself, let myself ‘off the hook,’ sometimes too leniently, from attending divine services, not just on feast days (which often are at inconvenient hours) but even on Sundays. ‘I just want to stay at home today and read psalms and pray, and take selah.’ I am not ashamed to say this, because usually it’s true, but not always. Sometimes I just feel lazy. I’m getting old. Church services and activities are the social aspect of the Church, true, but not entirely dispensible.

For the Word of God declares, ‘Do not stay away from the meetings of the community, as some do, but encourage each other to go; the more so as you see the Day drawing near’ (Hebrews 10:25).

Notice, the apostle doesn’t say ‘Don’t miss a single divine service,’ but only ‘Do not stay away.’ There’s a gentleness in the way the Lord persuades us to stay connected. Of course, He shouldn’t have to persuade us at all, but He knows all men, He knows what we have to face in the world, and so He gently reasons with us, by the word of the holy apostles in scripture, and by the same gentle love of His ministers today.

Though we may be sheep that sometimes stray, if we know the Lord, we know His voice no matter who is speaking.

Seeking

Brethren, what is true of you is also true of me—we seek.

I ask myself, ‘Who is it, or even what is it, I am seeking? Is it the Lord, or have I been talking to, listening to, following, preaching and promoting, living and loving only myself?’

Imaginary lines are what we make, but fine lines there are unmade by us but drawn by the finger of Christ God as He squats and scribes the sand walked by our accusing feet.

Whoever and whatever it is that we really seek, even in our blindness we are not deaf to His gentle, persistent words, ‘How blessed are the merciful, for mercy shall be shown them!’ 

These words are for us who say we believe and hope we are saved, but also for those who do not believe, if they do them.

Again we see the Divine Nature at work in us, defying our religion and our irreligion, delivering us from our isolation, from ourselves, making room for us based not on what we do but on Whom we seek, whether we know Him or not.

As the desert father replied when asked who might be the sheep and who the goats, ‘Who the sheep be, God knows, but the goats are such as I.’

And yet He accepts even goats’ hair as an offering.

A ramble on esoterics

There are no hidden meanings in our letters besides what you can read for yourselves and understand.
2 Corinthians 1:13

I have always been amazed whenever I read this line at the beginning of the apostle Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth. Right here and in no uncertain terms we have a declaration by one of the writers included in the New Testament that the ordinary Christian can be confident of understanding the simple, saving message of the Word of God. Am I not stretching things a bit? After all, maybe the apostle was only talking about his writings, his letters. Maybe he was even talking only about this particular letter. No, he uses the plural, so that means all of his letters. Too bad we don’t have all of them, but what the Lord wanted us to have, we have.

And he says ‘our letters,’ as well. Doesn’t that mean letters written by the other apostles? And if that is true of the letters, might it not be true of the gospels? Well, they hadn’t been put down in writing yet: they were still being lived. Even so, I get the impression that it was a priority for the first generation of the Church to make sure that whatever was written down was written clearly, concisely, truthfully, simply and directly, in an idiom that the audience would have no trouble understanding. It was, I believe, the same spirit that imbued the reformers of the Church of England to provide scriptures and liturgies in a tongue ‘understanded by the people.’

This primitive protocol of the first generations of the Church was, I think, preserved for many centuries, but as society underwent decay and suffered the barbarian invasions, language changed, native intelligence was stifled, yet for those who could still read and think for themselves the same clear, clean light of the Word of God was still accessible and proved that ‘there are no hidden meanings in [the New Testament scriptures] besides what you can read for yourselves and understand.’

This precious deposit was guarded zealously by the early Church, and what escaped, or was expelled, from the community of faith was taken up and further mutilated by those who had religious principalities to build and fake mysteries to hawk, like frontier potion peddlers. All of this was so obvious even in the days of the holy apostles that they were warning us about people like this right from the beginning. Human nature will always produce spiritual counterfeits. Anything is preferable to the Truth, because Truth is not for sale, it’s free. But lies command a high price: they’re always in demand.

As it was in former times, so it is still today. Just as the attack was pressed home against the Church of the holy apostles, so it is directed against the Church of Christ today.

Be careful, brethren, of objectifying the Church as the ‘organized church’ and looking for esoteric truths. There are no esoteric truths in Christ that can be passed down from master to disciple as in the non-Christian religions, or even as in some forms of Judaism. Whatever makes the claim to be that is patently false. But I didn't say there are no esoteric truths in Christ, just none that can be passed down or handed over: that is what tradition is, and tradition is only the form that can be filled with faith, our personal faith, and through which we can commingle with other disciples of Christ.

Yes, esoteric truths there are, actually, not plural, truths, but only singular, Truth. Esoteric, hidden Truth in Christ there is, but it cannot be described or handed over to anyone, so you will not find authentic esoteric teachings among the church fathers. You may find one or two here or there who have come down to us through the memory of the Church because of their holding some idea that earned them notoriety. But these thoughts will not prove to be fertile soil for the life of the Spirit, only various kinds of poorly drained swampland for the delectation of the superstitious, or else hard, unwaterable clay from which a new man cannot be made, but only slept on by the tough-minded.

Stay close, always, to the words of holy and divine scripture, and follow behind the fathers and mothers of antiquity who followed Christ not with their heads alone but with their feet. There is no ‘formal church’ that became irreversibly corrupt most likely in the first century, either discovered by historical scholarship, or speculated into existence by idle and curious intellects. The very word of Jesus prevents this, for He said that the very gates of hell would not prevail against the Church, and who can imagine either, that the divine Bridegroom, the Nymphios, would hand over his turtledove to the Beast. Whatever the institutional Church looks like outwardly through its activities, the true Church still lives within that structure.

Back to the esoteric. I said there is esoteric Truth, and that there is only One. And I want to qualify that statement just once by telling you that it is the Cross.

One thing that a Christian, that is, a follower of Jesus, can always rely on, no matter what church he belongs to or attends. You cannot go wrong, ever, if you imitate Christ, and do only those things you see Him doing in the gospels. The visible and institutional Church can be falling away around you, but with your eyes fast focused on Jesus, you would scarcely notice. What you would see, however, is what Jesus is doing right now to remedy the situation, and you, if you are following Him, are privileged to share with Him the work that He, not you, sets yourself to do.

Thinking His thoughts, loving as He loves, redeeming the time, welcoming the stranger, overlooking offenses, healing the sick, seeing clearly so that the blind around you may also see, suffering the humiliation of your own human weaknesses without abandoning the work or the discipline of the Son of God, keeping your heart free from malice: These are the worthy tasks, the fulfilling of the only commandment, that erases sin in both the Church and in yourself, because it is letting the fire of Christ burn all unrighteousness from the inside out, leaving only what He has recreated in you and in the Church—that is as close as I can get to pointing to what you will never learn from books, only from following the Son of God, walking with Him the way of the Cross.

So, brethren, as I always say, ‘Go with God.’

It is for the Lord to call us

Though I never use the animal terms ‘dogs’ or ‘pigs’ with regard to humans to whom the gospel is addressed, I know from tradition that ‘dogs’ refers to male homosexuals and ‘pigs’ to people who have no understanding of, or use for, the gospel—pigs can’t wear pearl jewelry, nor would they want to. I encounter these kinds of people everywhere, and how to deal with them as with ‘those for whom Christ died’ is something that I struggle with every day.

Our society seems to have become post-Christian, people from complete atheists to church-going types can all fall into this category, which seems to me to be the ‘pigs’ scripture is talking about. What? Church-goers can be post-Christian? They can be the pigs before whom one must not throw pearls, lest they turn on us and trample us underfoot? Well, sorry, but yes.

To receive Christ and the good news is precisely as the Lord says in the letters to the churches in Revelation: ‘I stand at the door and knock...’ Everyone, from atheists, to agnostics, to the christianised masses who may be quite religious but are blind to Jesus Christ as He really is, can be so inclined that they either will not open the door, or can not, for they no longer hear Him knocking, if they ever did.

This poses the question, for me at least, of evangelism in the lands of ‘christianosis,’
is it worth it?

Well, of course it is, because even one soul that is led to salvation through mine or anyone's witness—I am not here speaking about just talking, but about one's whole Christian life as a visible witness—is worth it. But it still is very discouraging to be placed in an environment where everyone around you has already chosen, and chosen wrong. It's like working in a pigsty, so to speak.

On good days, I still love the pigs and try to let that love alone be the witness, even though they see me coming and run. On bad days, when I am weak and am crying out for mercy for even my own life, being surrounded by pigs is almost more than I can bear. Almost more? Yes, because if I give in to the old man, I too become a pig, and that herd is headed for a lake, and it's not the sea of Galilee.
Christ have mercy!

Fortunately for us, babies are still being born who turn into youths and then young adults. That cream of the crop of humanity is still there, white for harvest, and it is primarily for them that we hang on to a life that otherwise would be almost unbearable, living as we do among people who hate, lie and slander at every opportunity. But it is for the Lord to call us to follow Him into that harvest field, and I hope He calls us there every day.

Therein is life, and without end.

Another night falls

              O, for a moment of tenderness,
              of sweet conversation
              with my friend,
              for the battle rages
              unremittingly,
              as storm clouds pile up against the sky,
              hiding the sun
              and weighing down the earth
              with threats, not rain.

              Sullen silence not blessed repose
              suffocates not revives
              the soul of waiting,
              while faithfulness fingers
              the knotted rope of prayers,
              and hope tries to remember
              to feed itself,
              and sleep forgets what night is
              and what is day.

              Time never rolls backwards
              but always marches on,
              never waits, nor slows nor runs,
              and always opens
              to dangerous, unknown lands,
              where we rise or fall, live or die,
              when we find our friend waiting,
              or else no one,
              only cold, stony soil.

— Romanós

The fall of the Republic

And why must the Republic fall?
For the very same reasons that the original Republic, Rome, fell.

We were founded on virtuous principles, and we flounder on virtual laurels. Rome did the same. Before her, Athens did the same, and ancient Israel, and countless other civilisations known and unknown.

Yet why?
You and I know the answer due to the mercy of our man-loving God, who doesn't hang for long on a cross or sleep long in a tomb, but who once dead lives now and forever.

And we, without the solace of mere myths, do indeed live in our testimony, surrounded by walls the enemy cannot scale or breach; and that City not made with hands cannot fall, now or ever; and that heritage is what was handed over to us, and what we will hand over when our time comes, to our children, yes, but to the King, to whom our Republic and all true cities pointed.

What an honor, indeed, what a blessing, to live in these times, and to share with even one other, and to witness, the end of all things.

For the perfection of humanity is nothing else but to end, end so that it can finally begin. Our Republic existed to await the true King, so that it could die in the establishment of His Kingdom.

Faithfully He brings true justice; He will neither waver, nor be crushed until true justice is established on earth, for the islands are awaiting His law.
Isaiah 42:4 Jerusalem Bible

Let Him train you

We find Orthodoxy and Orthodox teachings in many places, not always within the Church enclosure. This proves that there is, as the Bible teaches, only one gospel, only one church, an unchangeable gospel, an indivisible church. Long before words like 'orthodox' came into use to distinguish the stale from the fresh—heresy is stale, always a recycling of outdated, unworkable ideas, orthodoxy is fresh, always a treasury of supple, living words to feed every hunger—long before, and long after, there was, is, and will be self-evident truth issuing from the servants of God, who not knowing themselves but only their Lord, speak His words, do His actions, speak the facts of His reality. None but the Most-High, the Triad Holy, is infallible, yet He unweaves our human minds from mere earth to knit them into the fringes of His seamless Spirit, making us one in Him as is the Father, the Son, and the Life-Creator, One without second, to Whom is no partner, only We, in whose Divine image man was made, and Man is remade. Such truth as this, is a refreshment to the soul, to the world when it seeks it, but only those with ears, as the Lord says, shall hear. As for the others, they hear and hear but do not understand. Let's keep seeking the truth, and live it, wherever we find it, wherever we hear the Shepherd's voice, as we follow Him, the sheep of His pasture, the flock that He guides.

Submit to God’s Training

by Pastor Zac Poonen
of Christian Fellowship Church, Bangalore, India

Whenever God wants to do something for His people, He always begins with a man. He had to find a suitable man before He could deliver the Israelites. The training of Moses took 80 years—and it wasn’t academic training alone. Moses was trained in the best academies of Egypt, but that did not qualify him for God’s work. In Acts 7, Stephen says that Moses was mighty in both word and deed. He was a strong man, and an eloquent speaker at the age of 40. He was a great military leader, a very rich person, and had been educated with the best education that the most advanced country in the world could give—for Egypt was the world’s only superpower in those days. At the end of it all, he was unfit to serve God. Stephen says that Moses thought that the Israelites would recognise that God had raised him up to deliver them. But they did not recognise him as their leader. All his earthly fame and abilities could not prepare him for the task God had prepared for him.

Today, many Christians imagine that they can serve God just because they have Bible knowledge, musical ability and plenty of money. But they’re mistaken. They need to learn a lesson from Moses’ life: 40 years of the best that this world could give him could not prepare him for God’s service. God had to take him through another 40 years in the wilderness, in a totally different environment from the palace, in order to equip him. He had to be broken of his human strength. And God accomplished this by making him look after sheep, and by allowing him to live with his father-in-law and work for him—for 40 long years. Living with one’s father-in-law for even one year can be quite humiliating for a man! I know that many married women in India live with their fathers-in-law all their lives. But it’s different when a man has to live with his wife’s father and work for him as well. That can be quite a humbling experience for a man. But that’s how God broke Moses. That was how God broke Jacob too. He too had to live with his father-in-law for 20 years. God uses fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law to break His children.

What all the universities in Egypt could not teach Moses, he learnt in the wilderness, looking after sheep and working for his father-in-law. At the end of those 40 years, Moses is so broken that he who was once so eloquent and who thought he could deliver Israel, now says, “Lord, I am unfit. I cannot speak properly. Please send somebody else to lead your people.” It was then that God said, “At last you are ready. I will send you to Pharaoh now” (Exodus 4:10-17).

What is the lesson we learn from Jacob and Moses? Just this: When you think you are ready, you are not. When you think you are capable, that you are strong, that you have knowledge, that you can speak and sing and play musical instruments, and do wonderful things for God, God says, “You are unfit. I have to wait until you are broken.” With Jacob that process took 20 years, with Moses it took 40 years, with Peter it took 3 years, and with Paul at least 3 years. How long will it take with us? That depends on how quickly we learn to submit under God’s mighty hand.

How long does it take to go through school from First Standard (Grade) to Twelfth Standard (Grade) ? 12 years? Yes, if you pass each year. But I know children who have taken 16 years to complete 12 classes in school. I know medical students who have taken up to 15 years to complete a 5-year medical course!! How long anyone takes to finish school depends on how quickly he learns his lessons. It is the same in the Christian life too.

All power and authority

All power and authority given to man on earth by God is given to him when he prays.

‘How can this be? I pray all the time and I don’t have any power, I have no authority. What are you talking about? But I do see power and authority given to people who have status, who have money, who are educated, who know how to pull the strings. As for the rest of us, right, we pray, but we pray because there’s nothing else we can do.’

With a sigh of resignation the words of barely hidden contempt are mouthed. Men for whom Christ died and who say they believe in Him, men on whom ‘all authority in heaven and on earth,’ given to Christ by His Father has been bestowed, men who can read the words for themselves, ‘anything you ask for in My name,’ are reduced to practicing magic they don’t even believe in.

‘Glory to You, O Lord, glory to You!’ I hear muttered constantly under his breath, and ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner!’ cried out in lonely and forsaken places, moaned even, mingled with sobs of sorrow for his sins. Of little account, the world passes the saint and thinks him mad, yet his prayer is genuine and not for show or for sale.

The religious are even baffled. ‘We do more than he does, keep the fasts, drink tea without sugar, never touch flesh or oil or cheese during the prohibited times, never miss a service, and we greet each other nicely. Why does everybody go running to him? He scares us. He doesn’t follow the rules. He’s proud and wants his own way. Why does God answer his prayers and not ours?’

He can battle the devil, he can even drive him out, because he knows him personally. He has locked himself in battle with him in an invisible ring many times. His weapons? The words of holy and divine scripture, outbursts of mighty psalms, supplications to God Himself and his shameless asking for what he doesn’t deserve, his confession of his own sins, his laying all at the feet of Jesus.

The irreligious, bent as they are on what profits them, can come closer to the Truth than those who were suckled by it, who feel so sure that they know what works and what doesn’t, that they do neither. Seeking himself the worldly man can stumble upon his own corpse and asking, rise from the dead. The religious polish their coffins, but the saints lie down in theirs in peace, expecting life.

‘In peace I lie down, and fall asleep at once, since You alone, Yahweh, make me rest secure. (Psalm 4)
For me the reward of virtue is to see Your face, and, on waking, to gaze my fill on Your likeness.’ (Psalm 17)

Even now

All of your efforts will come to nothing in the end, unless you submit yourselves to the truth of God’s Word, who says, ‘What comes out of a man is taken from what he puts inside himself.’

The practical application?

Rather than try to focus on and ‘cure’ the symptoms, go for the root, and axe it.

How do you do that?

By filling up on the Word of God, not on television;
on the Word of God, not on the internet;
on the Word of God, not on computer games;
on the Word of God, not on newspapers and magazines;
on the Word of God, not on the contents of your iPod;
on the Word of God, not on the latest Christian books;
on the Word of God, not on rumors;
on the Word of God, not on hanging out with your friends.

Can you see the connecting idea from the practical application above?

The downfall of the churches as assemblies of God’s people, and of people themselves as individuals, comes from the utter lack of respect for and immersion in the Word of God, i.e., the Holy Bible.

Read the Word of God every day, throughout the day, fill yourselves with it, rather than filling yourselves up on that which cannot last and which divides and slays the spirit.

Remember, it is not just money that Jesus is talking about when He says, ‘You cannot serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or love the one and treat the other with scorn. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.’ The bottom line on Mammon is that it is anything that diverts your attention, unlawfully, from the Word of God.

Again I say, don’t just try to cure the symptoms, strike at the root of worldly attitudes in yourselves by using the axe of the Word of God. Christ has already used it to fell the world tree of death. Now He has given it to us to do the same in ourselves. It’s never too soon, but it could be too late.

‘Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees…’

What would happen?

Why must we always be checking and examining each other, to make sure that we are all ‘on the same page’ and believing everything in exactly the same way, so that we can feel safe, so that things seem to be ‘in control’?

When encountering another Christian who does not confess the ‘Orthodox faith’ it doesn’t really matter if I agree or disagree with him. It isn’t like I am calling him forth into a new ‘nameless non-denomination’ if I try to share some fellowship with him ‘outside of’ confessional boundaries. He can stay whatever he is, and I will remain Greek Orthodox, but in Christ our unity goes beyond labels or concepts like ‘catholic’ or ‘orthodox’ which were never spoken by the Word Himself. 

Our unity in Christ isn’t affected by our formal theologies, which can do nothing, nothing! Salvation is through knowing only Christ, not by what we believe about Him, all of which pales when compared to our knowing Him and His knowing us. That is ‘the one thing needful.’

Let a man say Christ is not con-substantial with the Father, and ‘I don't believe in the Trinity.’ Let him even say that Jesus is a man.
He is ignorant, that’s all. But if he confesses Christ as Lord, believes in His resurrection as the Bible plainly describes, and fulfills His commandments, is an ignorant man to be denied salvation in Christ? And who would keep him out? You and me, who know so much about Him? Everything we know about Christ, think about Christ, believe about Christ is nothing compared to what He is, and what He does for us, here and now, and in the world to come.

Let’s tear off the costumes we wear in front of each other as we go into battle. Why? Because our battle has thus far been against each other, and not against ‘the powers of wickedness in the heavens,’ as it should be. If we want to fight each other, let’s strip ourselves of our defenses and see what is under them—Look! We’re all the same after all!

Then, let’s put on the only garment worth having, because He gives it to all who believe in Him, His own skin! ‘All who have been baptized have put on Christ,’ as the scriptures say. And what baptism is that? Being buried with Christ in His death, so as to rise with Him in His glorious resurrection.

As for me, I’m trying to move beyond thinking about God, so I can just live in Him. I’m trying to untie for me, and maybe for you, the knots of tangled lore that have kept us encamped on the devil’s playground so long, fighting each other.
Just imagine the following scenario…

What would happen if, suddenly, the various Christian missions and denominations in a majority Muslim country like Indonesia or Malaysia—which still allow the existence of Christianity—suddenly were seen to absolutely and without reserve support each other in everything, and without coalescing into one uniform institution?

Everything that they disagreed about, they would agree to just pray and ask the Lord to intercede for each other’s folly, and then, with that out of the way, they would just ‘go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them.’

Hey! But what if they can’t agree on how and whom to baptize, and when? Well, that’s just some more pieces of folly, to ask the Lord to forgive and correct. Meanwhile...

Let’s all just go into the harvest field, and work, because ‘night is coming when no one can work,’ and because ‘the time is close.’

Yes, what would happen?

The work of an historian

Since when is the Gospel a guardian of the one true faith, the opponent of all false religions, the tool of God’s vengeance and wrath on the pagans? Yet in the historical record, we find that Christianity, which owes its very existence to the Gospel, is often found ‘beating… plowshares into swords and… pruning hooks into spears,’ and ‘weaklings’ saying ‘that they are warriors’ (Joel 3:10). While it aggresses, it seems to forget that the Gospel is ‘good news’ and that Jesus came ‘to seek and save those who are lost’ (Luke 19:10). This happens not only on a grand scale, nation against nation (Christians against Jews or Muslims), even confession against confession (Christians ‘crusading’ against each other) under institutional direction, but even more often on a small scale, man against man, under no leadership at all.

What do I mean by this? What I mean is, Christianity is whatever people call Christianity. Sometimes it has little or nothing to do with the Gospel or with Jesus Christ at all. Often it is just a cover for other motives, none of them honest, though usually hidden from their owners by what can be called ‘invincible ignorance.’

Ironically this ignorance comes from people reading the Bible and fitting its contents to what they already have in mind, whether doctrines only or actions as well, since the one often leads to the other. How is this possible? The Bible is supposed to be the source of all wisdom, knowledge and blessing. How can reading the Bible result in the kind of ignorance that produces fanaticism? Easy, ‘the Bible says what I want it to say,’ and it’s infallible, so if you disagree, you’re wrong.

The historian, especially the Christian historian, has his work cut out for him. If there is a Christianity different from the one that writes big in the world, where is it? How do you find it? Is it documented? ‘Because, if it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen.’ No, not really. This popular but cynical saying is absolutely false. Lots of things happen that are never documented. In fact, most things aren’t, yet they happen anyway. The historian, though, does have a real job to do, if he is honest. To collect the facts and interpret them in a constructive and honest way.

This is how it is

I have never heard anything but the truth about baptism or any of the other ‘mysteries’ of the Christian faith from an Orthodox priest. Maybe that’s why, in spite of any of its flaws, I cannot get away from the Orthodox Church. Just when you think they’re going to pull some magical nonsense about the Church or the sacraments (I use this word here, though I really prefer to call them ‘mysteries’) out of their hat, behold! What they pull out is what you’ve felt deep inside you was right all along, yet never, or almost never, heard come out of a clergyman’s mouth.

I may as well tell you up front, if you hadn’t noticed this before. Orthodoxy does not accept the doctrine of original sin in the sense of us being guilty of Adam and Eve’s sins, even if we aren’t guilty of anything of our own. This doctrine comes from a mistranslation into Latin of Psalm 51. The Western Church reads, ‘and in sin my mother conceived me.’ The Eastern Church, following the Greek, reads, ‘and in sins my mother conceived me.’ This has been taken to mean that, though the divine image in man was broken, and continues to be broken, by Adam and Eve, and by their descendants imitating their disobedience, man is not utterly and totally depraved, by nature, only by will. A very subtle difference? Yes, but it matters.

‘But the Bible clearly says that anyone who isn’t baptized can’t be saved.’ Well, yes and no. In ordinary circumstances, when baptism means repentance, conversion, and the subsequent ceremonial acts that confirm it for the individual and the community, yes. But even in the gospels we have the example of the good thief who was saved without baptism, without righteousness, without belief in any particular doctrines, saved by only one thing, ‘whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.’ He had personal trust (the word in Greek we usually translate as ‘faith’) in Jesus as who He said He was. If anyone could tell us whether or not we would be saved, it would be Christ, and if there were stipulations, He would have spelled them out clearly. Was He too busy to do that on the Cross? Wasn’t there enough time for Him to go over the points He talked to Nicodemus about? No, it’s not that at all. Salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone, and it is appropriated by our personal faith in Him, and if nothing else is possible, that faith alone, without works, without knowledge, without self-sacrifice, without membership in a religious body, that faith alone is enough.

When Christ goes to raise Lazarus from his four-day burial, He meets the sister of the dead man, and He tells her the astounding fact that He Himself is the Resurrection and the Life, and He asks her whether she believes that or not. She doesn’t answer with a straight yes or no, but rather declares her faith in an almost dogmatic utterance, ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the One who was to come into this world.’ In this encounter, Christ states first of all, that anyone who believes in Him, even though he dies, will live, and then repeats Himself in slightly more detail, ‘whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.’

What is this ‘never die’ business He’s talking about? Can it be something other than being saved? What was that paradise He promised the good thief when He said, ‘this day you will be with Me in paradise’? Is this different than being saved? Though He says things like, ‘unless a man is born again, of water and the Spirit,’ is He revealing a new legislation, a new Torah, for His would-be followers?

Christ is Himself eternal life, He is Himself paradise, there is no other ‘place’ to go to be considered ‘saved.’ What I am writing here is not my personal philosophy, but what has been handed over to me by the Church fathers among whom I was brought up, in the environment of the Orthodox Church, which I was already beginning to enter long before I walked through the doors of an Orthodox temple or was chrismated.

Why baptise infants? If they die unbaptised, there is no punishment for them, there is no isolation in a place called limbo, which has now been emptied by proclamation of the pope, and there is no hell for them either, because they have not rejected Christ, the Light of the world, through whose name alone under heaven mankind can be saved. So in this the Orthodox would agree with many Protestants, maybe even with some Baptists, though I wonder if sometimes the agreement is flakey, based on the similarity of conclusions reached by quite different logic.

The Orthodox know that a real God does not make impossible demands and is not looking for a reason to condemn us: hence, babies, children, imbeciles, the insane, even the suicides are in no danger of divine wrath. Some of the others may come to this conclusion because they think God is really just a big softy, and His scary pronouncements are only there to trick us into being good. No, God means what He says, the terrible as well as the awesome things He tells us, but in no case is He a heavenly policeman, judge, torturer and executioner all rolled into one.

His revelation is given only to tell us, ‘this is how it is’ and ‘you can’t come Home until you come Home.’

The purpose of Christianity

Tokyo, 20 December, 2011

What is the purpose of Christianity, the transformation of society, or to save souls? If it is the former, then there are societies that have been transformed without it, or with very little reference to it.

I am sitting alone in a hotel room in Tokyo, Japan, as I ponder and write. A large window beside me faces the eastern horizon where the sun will soon reveal itself. I’ve opened the window to refresh myself by the cool winter air and to hear the sounds of the wakening city. The morning crescent moon, hanging above all at sixty degrees above the horizon, awaits the sun. I am back in this land of a childlike people who know nothing of Christ, only of Christianity. Their ancient traditions still their anchors, they do not fear to join the world of men, helping to make the modern world. Why? Because beyond all religion or religious feelings, they seem happy to live in a world of uncertainty and paradox, knowing that a Mystery at the heart of their race still guides them, covers them, provides for them, even loves them.

Is it Amaterasu quietly secluded in her sacred house in the forests of Ise? Is it her beautiful, silent protector, mighty Fujiyama rising from the sea? These two ancient ancestors of the Japanese race, because of them ‘the only divine race on earth,’ the goddess of the sun and the mountain who is a god, will never fear being abandoned by their people as long as they exist on earth. Why? Because they live in them, the people in the kami, the kami in their children. Yes, a childlike people carried in the arms of childlike gods.

The sun is still resting below the horizon, now a rose-red rind to an aquamarine sky. Will she arise and shine as I first saw her in Nagoya, a deep red orb against a pale white silk curtain? I continue to ponder. Who is this Jesus who walks in Japan? I saw Him here before, though I encountered very few churches. Christians in Japan—I know they are here. I worshiped with the Orthodox Christians of Nagoya one Sunday three years ago at Pascha.

They now have a new temple in the city center, built to resemble an ancient Russian church. I questioned then, and I question now, is this who or what Christ is or must be for the Japanese people? Why would this childlike people want a new god tabernacled like a stranger in a strange house? Again, what is the purpose of Christianity, to transform society or to save souls?

Of course, the question is really not about the purpose of Christianity at all, but about the purpose of Christ. And He does both: transforms society and saves souls. It isn’t as though these are two separate ends. They can only happen together. But without an answer forthcoming, just as the sun delays her rising—and I must now leave this room and soon this pleasant land—I still believe, I know, that Jesus Christ walks these islands. He is seeking His lost sheep even though they do not know they are lost, even though their ancient guardians have kept them safe and united for millennia. For a new millennium is coming for the Japanese people, and for all peoples.

It is only waiting for us who know Him, to follow Him.

The return of Holy Wisdom

Often the sentiment is expressed, that Justinian's great edifice, the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople—Istanbul—should be returned to its original purpose. It was not erected to be a museum, nor a mosque—though it has been the inspiration to mosque-builders over the centuries. It was built to be a temple of the Lord, the Holy Triad, Father, Son and Spirit. Miracles used to occur within these ancient walls.

I can understand why many hope for the restoration of the great church to Christian use. We recall time-hallowed traditions like the story of the priests disappearing into the walls of the edifice when the Turks broke in to take it during their conquest of Byzantium, as well as the legend that they will reemerge when the church is restored. I've heard this story, and once upon a time I too was charmed by it.

Though casting a warm glow, quite honestly, the story is nonsense. This is not how God works. If priests were slaughtered during the taking of the church, they will emerge from their graves with all the rest of the blessed dead at the end of the world. Perhaps on that Day the great church will be restored—except we won't need it then, because scripture says, 'I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple' (Revelation 21:22).

I don't believe in the priority of Christian 'real estate.' I know it's great to have big, beautiful church buildings, 'built to the glory of God,' as emperor Justinian intended Hagia Sophia to be, but such things are not what is important in Christianity. In fact, vast real estate holdings should be an embarrassment to the Church, unless we are in the business of property management.

The rationale for wanting the great church back is understandable. It is an historic landmark, and many momentous events happened there, even holy, even miraculous events. But this whole world has been host to great events and miraculous happenings, and yet it too will one day disappear and be forgotten. 'The world of the past is gone' (Revelation 21:4).

And if Hagia Sophia were given back to the Orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople, what then? What will they do with it? Will it be filled with hundreds and even thousands of people in joyous and lengthy worship? Where would they come from? Almost all the Greek Orthodox are gone from the City.

The great church is what it is only when it is the main temple of the Orthodox Christian Empire, the godly jewel set in the crown of Constantinople, the City of New Rome. As it is, Istanbul is a large, sprawling and dirty city, ruinous at worst, secular and unspiritual at best. And this is where the Ecumenical Patriarch should reside? In my humble opinion, not.

Following Jesus, let him either submit to the cross and martyrdom in a final appeal to the Turkish people to accept their Savior—for they would certainly kill him—or let him be realistic, and follow Jesus where He is walking today. That might make him patriarch of no city at all, except the City of God, which exists everywhere, anywhere there are faithful people of God. Like Moses, journeying through the wilderness with his pilgrim people, the Ecumenical Patriarch will have demonstrated what 'ecumenical' signifies.

I am not a romantic when it comes to Christian heritage. I have seen and experienced too much to believe that the Church can be entrusted with riches and power. The psalmist says—and you must know this is one of my favorite verses—'man in his prosperity forfeits intelligence. He is one with the cattle doomed to slaughter' (Psalm 49:20). It is the suffering Church that has the hope of following Jesus, and the only Church among whom real miracles can be expected.

Not the showy and ludicrous miracles of priests disappearing into church walls, or statues weeping tears of saltwater or blood, or ikons or bodies of saints gushing forth fragrant myrrh. Yes, such things do, in fact, happen, but to what purpose? That the great church of Hagia Sophia will one day be handed over by the Turks to his all-holiness Bartholomaios or one of his successors would be just such a miracle. Perhaps it will be the bride price of Turkey being allowed to join the European Union.

In the end, will it really bring the joy and the blessing people expect? And will those vanished priests come tumbling out of the walls fully vested and ready to serve the holy mysteries? If they did, they might be in for a surprise.

I hope I haven't upset you by writing down these contrary thoughts, but I am very tender right now, and sensitive to the intrusion of fantasy into my world, whether it is romantic, religious, or whatever. I actually am and can be a romantic person, but for me romance has more to do with a merciful appreciation of all things beautiful trying to exist in a world made ugly by prevailing sin.

As usual, I am going to keep harping on the idea that we must 'do what we see Jesus doing in the scriptures,' down to His very thinking where it is apparent, but at least what is clear from His words and his actions. When we try to do this, we begin to notice gradually how much of our Christian and religious ideology seems to have nothing in common at all with Him.

That, by itself, is a very scary thought—or it would be, if we didn't already know how merciful God is. You should know me well enough to know that I am not here saying the Church is wrong about anything, nor will I ever be found opposing her 'to her face.' It isn't that the Church is wrong. It's just that often the Church stops too soon. But like myself, with whom I am infinitely patient, the Church deserves our patience and our hope, that sooner or later, she will emerge fully awake and ready to present herself to her Lord.

Finally, brethren, pray for me, Romanós the sinner.

The work of epiphany

What is the work of epiphany, and who does this work, and when?

Holy Epiphany is the name we give to that moment in salvation history when ‘the Lamb of God’ is identified, is pointed out, ‘who takes away the sin of the world’:

Τη επαύριον βλέπει ο Ιωάννης τον Ιησουν ερχόμενον προς αυτόν, και λέγει • Ιδε ο αμνος του Θεου ο αιρων την αμαρτίαν του κόσμου.
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ John 1:29

The world, ho kósmos, ‘the ordered [of God]’. The sin, hi hamartía, ‘the not a part of’. Takes away, airo, ‘to lift off’.

We associate the work of epiphany with John the Baptist. The scripture is quite blunt. John was sent, given a concrete command, told to baptise. That was his part of the work. It didn’t matter that he himself wasn’t given all the details ahead of time. ‘I myself did not know Him’ (John 1:30). But he did know, he did have to trust, the One who gave him the commandment, keep doing what he was told. The work of epiphany could only be done with his cooperation, with his faith, with his obedience.

When the work of epiphany was actually accomplished, nothing could have been less conspicuous. ‘At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him’ (Matthew 3:16). Not many others were standing by to see this, or to hear the words, ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased’ (Mark 1:11). John was doing his work, and the work of epiphany happened, yet John seeing the work completed did not stop working.

Whatever it is we do, whatever work has been assigned us, it is the work of epiphany, yet it is not we who do the work, nor is it ourselves that we point to. We have our instructions, and we know what to respond to askers and trippers, ‘A man can receive only what is given him from heaven’ (John 3:27). It is always ours to begin the work, to trust the Word, to be obedient, even when we don’t have all the answers, even when we don’t know what it will look like—it is His to finish the work—when He appears.

The work of epiphany is for us what it was for John the Baptist. Each of us does what he is commanded by God, trustingly, obediently, so ‘that He might be revealed to Israel,’ (John 1:31) to our own people, to those around us. Our work is lighter than John’s because we have seen the end as well as the beginning in Christ, and following Him we can truly say, ‘we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen’ (John 3:11). We know what the work of epiphany is, we know Who does the work, but we don’t always know when, because in weakness we try too hard to watch it happening.

We know the heavens will open, and so we watch for it, forgetting not ourselves in the process, but ironically forgetting Him. Straining so hard to see what cannot be seen, to hear what cannot be heard, we too can miss Him standing before us, speaking in our faces, ‘among you stands One whom you do not know’ (John 1:26). The timing of the epiphany, when it will happen, is now. It is every moment that grace has given to us, because ‘it is the day of Resurrection’ which is ‘the Day without end.’ That which was hidden from the world has, in a paradox, become what will in the end be seen by all.

Meanwhile, we have our work to do, and He has His, the work of epiphany, yes, each of us doing the work given to us by heaven, because soon, very soon now, we will see it open one more time, ‘And I saw the heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and one sitting on it, called Faithful and True, and he judges and makes war in righteousness’ (Revelation 19:11). Brethren, let us work, and trust Him in whom we have believed, and be obedient, that the work of epiphany be done in us, that we may soon hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’ (Matthew 25:23).

Wild rock honey

Aunt Melanie, in her blog Old Pages – New Life, shares a wonderful passage from The Conquest of Fear by Basil King (1921). The following central paragraphs touch upon the importance of using the original languages to frame our Christian thinking…

While turning these things over in my mind I got some help from two of the words most currently in Christian use. I had long known that the English equivalents of the Latin equivalents of the terms the New Testament writers used gave but a distorted idea of the original sense; but I had let that knowledge lie fallow.

The first of these words was Repentance. In these syllables there is almost no hint of the idea which fell from the evangelistic pen, while the word has been soaked in emotional and sentimental associations it was never intended to be mixed with. The Metanoia, which painted a sober, reflective turning of the mind, had been so overcharged with the dramatic that sober, reflective people could hardly use the expression any more. Repentance had come to have so strong a gloss of the hysterical as to be almost discredited by men of common sense. It was a relief, therefore, to remember that it implied no more than a turning to God by a process of thought; and that a process of thought would find Him.

The other word was Salvation. Here again our term of Latin derivation gives no more than the faintest impression of the beauty beyond beauty in that which the sacred writer used. Soteria—a Safe Return! That is all. Nothing complicated; nothing high-strung; nothing casuistical. Only—a Safe Return!  Yet all human experience can be read into the little phrase, with all human liberty to wander—and come back. True, one son may never leave the Father’s home, so that all that it contains is his; but there is no restraint on the other son from getting his knowledge as he will, even to the extent of becoming a prodigal. The essential is in the Safe Return, the Soteria, when the harlots and the husks have been tried and found wanting.

This excellent article is the first time I have ever heard anyone else (besides myself) explain why it is preferable, even imperative, to retreat from the Latin equivalents of biblical Greek salvation words (and their translations into English, and other languages), and use only the original Greek terms.

This is why I prefer to say and write ‘Holy Triad’ or even ‘unearthly Triad’ based on the Greek ‘Aghia Trias’ (literally: holy triad; ‘unearthly’ is a free translation based on a false etymology that still fulfills the purpose of amplification: a-ghis = not-earth = unearthly), instead of ‘Holy Trinity.’

This is why I prefer to use ‘mystery’ from Greek ‘mystirion’ instead of ‘sacrament,’ and the original Greek without English translation ‘sotiria’ instead of ‘salvation,’ and ‘metanoia’ instead of ‘repentance,’ and even ‘metamorphosis’ instead of ‘transfiguration.’

‘Presbyter’ instead of ‘priest’ follows the same pattern: it reintroduces both the humility and the true authority of the ordained minister of Christ without conjuring up false images of hocus-pocus men, white lace clerical garb and all the guilt-ridden false authority that accompanies painful memories.

Using the Latin-based ‘religion’ words stultifies and even petrifies one in a circumscription of the liberty of Christ, perpetuating imaginary lines, erecting a false religion of dogma without mercy, prepayment for future grace with forced obligation, negating both the free gift of God and the love gifts of men.

The Word of God written in two tongues, Hebrew and Greek, two languages couldn’t be more different from each other, the one grounded in bedrock, the other rushing ahead of the irresistible wind that sends men to seek life on the high ‘seas of leaving,’ yes, leaving all behind, yet losing nothing.

Christ the divine Man and the human God, mortised in the granite of eternity, yet supple to bear the only nourishing fruit that can make us immortal: He is what all religion that is true leads us into. Everything else is mere barbaric yawp. Holy Triad the mystery, Sotiría the progression, Théosis the perfection.

How can we ascend by our own wings? Only as the angels, whose wings are ‘not made by human hands,’ but by the Most-High, only as the angels can we approach the Son without melting. Yes, ‘we can know God easily so long as we do not feel it necessary to define Him.’

Lord, help us to learn to speak Your language, Your words, and purify us thereby, by the Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being. Teach us, only Rabbi of mankind, the meaning of Your words we utter. Satisfy us with the wild rock honey, let our crowns burst into flower.

The cost of discipleship

Like the apostle Paul, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is so right on about grace and its relationship to the following of Jesus, that it's scary. Sometimes his initial impact on the Protestant mind feels like a threat to the sovereignty of God, just as the same impact on an Orthodox mind seems a threat to the protocols of worship of the divine splendor.

When I first encountered the book Cost of Discipleship the intensity of its light and heat was too much for me: I wanted to crawl back into my Christian cave and hole up there, happy to be enlightened by the little fragments of sparkly truth I had cherry-picked from the eternal fire. But little by little, pretending to follow Jesus, I got braver, and cautiously emerged from my cozy Christianity with all its doctrinal and dogmatic assurances, until I was fully exposed to what Bonhoeffer was pointing out to me.

It takes real guts to stand beside, and then to follow behind, the Son of God, and, asking no more questions of Him, to just do what you see Him doing, to let Him lead you in the dance to Calvary, for all the world, then, becomes for you what it was and is for Him: infinite hunger and thirst for salvation crying out, inexhaustible holy and divine bread and wine of sacrifice raining down as manna first, then as quails, and you partitioned between earth and heaven, but not divided.

You realise that following Him, you too can be Christ. No, that you must be. There is no higher way above, nor safer road below, than that of the holy cross: this is the cost of discipleship.