That new river

River of Life, Revelation 22:1

'The world my parish, or my parish my world.' Years ago when I managed Ethos, the Greek Orthodox bookstore in Portland, I remember having a few copies of a book—I think it was a children's book—with a yellow cover and a photo of a Greek bishop in his blacks and skoufi with some children, and the title of the book was something like ‘The World My Parish.’ Trying to find that book again, instead I discovered that this phrase seems to have originated among the Methodists, probably from one of the Wesleys. I'm not surprised. I have a soft spot in my heart—some people would say a soft spot in my head—for basic mainline Protestants of all sorts, especially the small town types, Methodists, 'Piscopalians, Presbyterians and 'Lutherns.' These people have always been kind to me whenever I've interacted with them. The more rigorous types would say these people were 'just being nice' and, alluding to C. S. Lewis' observation in Mere Christianity that it's not nice men but new men that life in Christ produces, consign them to the category of 'probably not saved.' Why kill when slander does the job better and lasts longer? Anyway…

Forgive me, brethren, but back to the topic, is it my parish, or my club, or my cohort or my family that is my world, and let all outsiders stay away, or is it that daring opposite, the world my…? For the second is to have your door blown off in a hurricane and possibly even your house blown down or carried away in the whirlwind, but hey! didn't Elijah leave mother earth in just that way? For to shut your door and bolt it tight is the magnification of what you're doing to your heart, and that open door, if you unwisely keep it unlocked or even wide open, will attract all kinds of unsavory types. Welcome, for all decent people, consists in showing hospitality to your relatives and friends, but as for the others? How could you? You never know who the wind just might blow in. You have only one life to live, so why not stick close to your kith and kin. Let the other guy welcome angels who might possibly be Christ in disguise—but probably aren't, since that only happens in fairytales—while you smile on the deserving.

Why am I thinking of this just now? I have an old friend, someone I've known nearly my entire adult life, and for some reason he has always tolerated me and grudgingly—but sometimes with a surprising hint of genuine warmth—accepted me into his very narrow circle of friends. Yes, he's a Christian, started out a small town, one of the 'aforenamed' Protestants, very mellow, almost a 'Bilbo Baggins of the Shire' sort of man, of hardy English stock. Well, started out that way but married a lass, yes, alas! a no-nonsense, 'my way or the highway' sort of missionary Baptist zealotess, a sweet woman who characteristically could smear Jesus all over your face at the picnic table when she found out you were not exactly a real Christian like herself, and did it with a smiling frown that Da Vinci would've loved painting. Probably would've out-classed even the Mona Lisa, if he had. That changed him for ever after.

We worked together, and we probably learned a lot from each other, woodworkers as we were, though he would never admit it. I learned a lot from him, of course. It all happened while he carefully tried to polish me up to his standards of Christianity, but he was unsuccessful and finally gave up with a shrug. But I never seemed to learn enough. The thing that irked him most about me was how I kept welcoming people and including them in my life, as promiscuously and shamelessly as a common prostitute or sinner. Of course I didn't 'fool around' with anyone, but I didn't seem to understand that not everyone can be trusted, and I recklessly let people get to know me, and even invited them to my home and church. I didn't seem to know where to draw the line, and lines must be drawn, or else we'll get dragged down the slopes with those galloping pigs. Drowning in a lake is too good for them, but Christ shows mercy even to demon-filled hogs.

Our lives are nearly over. My friend is retired early, and I may be too, sooner than I think. He has become firmer and more righteous than the rock of Gibraltar, and his dear wife must now be a pinnacle of biblical inerrancy and churchly rectitude. I don't know, as we haven't seen each other in years. She is a brilliant woman and a medical professional. My friend, of course, has remained what he always was, a country squire, just a little more disconsolate at the state of everything and everyone around him. The world was going to hell in a hand-basket when we worked together all those years. Now, it's probably arrived, because the last he saw of it, it was going in the same direction in a dump truck. We do see each other once in a while, and I think we're always happy to see each other, at least I know I am. I see him as I will see him on the Day of resurrection, loaded with only good memories. He sees me, well, I don't know how he sees me, but I sometimes feel pity looking at me through his eyes. Yes, I am a failed human, but because he still likes me, he'll be able to hear, 'Enter into the joy of your Lord…' Who knows, maybe I'll be let in too, as his stray dog.

This is my experience of the world. When I wrote, our lives are nearly over, I meant, from man's point of view, I've done what was expected, and my friend has too. Now we can rest, he on his laurels, me, well, on my futon. The only laurel leaves I have are tucked in the pages of my bible where I use them as book marks. I picked them up off the floor of Hades after they showered down on the Son of God to celebrate His victory over sin, death and hell, as He was emptying the place. I hope that when it's my turn to go down below, I'll be turned away at the door by a sign that says, 'Sorry, hell is too small for you. Please see the Receptionist at Gate 22.' I see those laurel leaves and the flower petals whenever I read the psalms, and I remember all the blossoms that the Lord showered down on me in my long life, all the wonderful human souls whom I tried to make welcome and who welcomed me. Nothing virtuous on my part. I just read what the Lord says, 'Make peace with your adversary while you are on the way with him to the court,' and that's what I did. It's not hard to follow instructions when it's a matter of life and death, and especially when you know that life is with your brother, and death being without him.

This ramble is, of course, just another rant about welcome, about hospitality, about brotherly love, about turning the other cheek, going the extra mile. It's about being willing to see your neighbor as your other self, just as good and just as bad as yourself, just as deserving and undeserving of love, acceptance, even forgiveness, as you are. Yes, we are again approaching the edge of the highest cliff in the universe, the one which Lazarus approached and looked down from, never seeing the bottom, and across seeing the land of infinite sorrow. Like him we will be reprieved, called back temporarily—who knows for how long—from our bodily death, so that having faced it and overcome it through the One that calls us out one by one by name, we can remember to keep open our door to the stranger, our hearts to those who are different and for that reason unwanted. For we are the person that is turned back at the door, we are the unwelcome, we are the stranger in a land far darker than Pharaoh's Egypt, the state of misery. Let's get ready to journey together to that other mountain, not Sinai of the trumpet-blasts and rock-hard commandments, but the place of the Tree of Life, from whose branches more than manna can be gathered, and whose roots do not drink water but deliver it to all who thirst.

Come, brethren, let us drink from that new river…

All things to all men

The holy apostle Paul writes, ‘I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some’ (1 Corinthians 9:22b). He also writes, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me’ (Galatians 2:20).

So it is not he, but Christ in him, who does the work. It is therefore Christ who becomes all things to all men in order to save some. This is exactly what He did on the Cross. He became sin for us, that we might be made righteous (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:21).

He descended to the uttermost depths, that we might be raised on high with Him (cf. Ephesians 4:9). So we see that Christ in us is willing to endure every suffering, every shame and degradation, in order to save some of us.

Why some, and not all? Because even infinite love cannot overcome the finite wills of those who reject it.

And so, like Paul, we become all things to all men according to our call, according to the measure of our abilities, according to the breadth of our love. Yet it is never we who do the work, but Christ who is alive in us.

Always, brethren, surrender to the man-loving God who becomes visible in Christ, who in us is still the most active Person in the history of the race. Yes, surrender to the Love that made all worlds and who has descended to free us from our passions.

Surrender, brethren, to His mercy. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy shown them. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called God's sons.

Love, respect and awe

All Saints Orthodox Church, Bellis, Alberta

When I set foot in an Orthodox church for the first time probably as a young man of about 22 or 23 years, it was a small, rustic country church in the Ukrainian village of Bellis – ‘White Woods’ – Alberta, and I was overcome at first by the utter simplicity of the house of God itself. Then, the service began, and from behind an ikonostasis made of white-painted garden trellis a deep voice chanted in a Slavic tongue that reminded me of my native Polish, and a sweet fragrance and clouds of smoke emanated from there as well.

Holy Gospel Book

As the service continued, my earthly eyes saw many things that were strange, though beautiful. At one point the priest emerged with two covered golden vessels and walked carefully through the small crowd of farmers and their families kneeling with heads deeply bowed or down on the floor. As he passed through them, he seemed to hover the cups over each of their heads, and he looked at them with love, respect and awe, as if to say by his actions, ‘these are the people for whom Christ died.’ Throughout the rest of the service, that was what struck me the most—love, respect and awe—not just for God, but for one another. This was before I had even come to that point where I was ready to follow Jesus. To me up till now Christianity had been nothing more than a religious exercise with little meaning. I remember thinking to myself, ‘If Christ is real, and if Christianity is true, this has to be it.’

Fr Elias

At the age of 24 years, I ‘accepted’ Christ, or rather, accepted His will for me, and promised to follow Him. At the age of 37 years, I ‘returned’ to the Orthodox Church. Returned? What is that supposed to mean? Well, that's what Fr Elías said to the congregation by way of introducing us on the morning we were chrismated. He said we had struggled hard to get back here. I never forgot his words.

What was I doing between the ages of 24 and 37 years? Well, let's just say that I was a catechumen for 13 years. Actually, right from the beginning I believed myself to be an Orthodox Christian, identifying with that radiant cluster of Christians I had seen worshipping the living Christ in the village of Bellis, and I hadn't yet grasped that Orthodox Christians belong in the Orthodox Church. I thought the Episcopal church was as close to Orthodoxy as I could get. After all, there were even Greeks going there (at my first parish, Good Samaritan, in Corvallis, Oregon). So the Lord was patient with me. He didn't mind waiting 13 years for me to gradually come to my senses.

But back to the topic. What I experienced when encountering Orthodoxy for the first time was not a ‘one time’ event. The same thing hit me when I entered the Greek church of Aghía Triás (now my family church) for the first time, an incredible sense of mercy, experienced as—love, respect and awe—not just for God, but for one another. This initial impression became the foundation of what Orthodoxy essentially means to me.

After being joined to the Church, and growing up in it, as it were, I came to realize what everyone does who becomes an Orthodox Christian—it cannot be learned from books: only in living the life can it be truly comprehended in all its mystery. Theology is a practical science. A trinitarian God may be incomprehensible to the mind, but He can be experienced and understood by the heart of one who lives in the Body of Christ. It is because Christ is in our midst that the Holy Triad also is. Praying for the Church, Jesus says,

May they all be one, Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me. I have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, may they be so completely one that the world will realise that it was you who sent me and that I have loved them as much as you loved me.
John 17:21-23 Jerusalem Bible

Veneration of an ikon, by kissing the picture, is a testimony of one's faith.

Sometimes brethren who are not Orthodox are surprised, even put off, by the kind of love and respect that we show not only to God and the saints of old by venerating (bowing towards and kissing) their ikons and the book of the Holy Scriptures, but also by the fact that we bow down in front of, embrace and kiss one another. Sometimes, even our language seems ‘a bit too much’ for them, as we address the saints that have gone before, as well as the ones that are living now in words and gestures that seem ‘over the top.’ Why are you doing that? Don't you know that only One is worthy of worship, only One is Lord? Well, yes, we do. We are not doing to them and to each other what can be offered to God alone, no, we're really not. But what we are doing, loving one another in Christ, and loving Christ in one another, accounting all that Christ has redeemed by His precious Blood to be worthy, everyone and everything worthy, is the preparation for, and the proof of, our divine worship.

The relationship that the brethren share in the Body of Christ with one another is in fact and must be the primary qualification of the Church. This is what we learn from overhearing the high-priestly prayer of Christ recorded in the 17th chapter of the gospel according to John. How we are to treat one another with love, respect and awe is found throughout all the apostolic writings of the New Testament, but particularly in the first letter of the evangelist John. Yet, even in the Old Testament we are taught how to love one another.

We read of Jonathan entering into a covenant with David (1 Samuel 18:1-8). This is a prophetic image of what relationship should be like in the body of Christ. ‘Jonathan's soul was knit to the soul of David.’ The word for ‘knit’ (נקשרה, niksheráh, ‘was knit’) is the same root word (קשר) used in Nehemiah 4:6, which describes the wall of Jerusalem being built (ותקשר, vatikashér, ‘was joined’) so there were no gaps in it. Jonathan's heart was knit with David's without a gap—no space between their hearts for the enemy to come through. Jonathan loved David as himself. This is our calling in the body of Christ too, ‘that they may be one as we are one,’ such that there is no gap between us of misunderstanding, jealousy, or suspicion through which satan can slip to divide us.

Jonathan made a covenant with David and, as a symbol, removed his royal robe and placed it on David. This act symbolized Jonathan's desire to die to himself as the next king of Israel and to make David king. The holy apostle Paul writes, ‘Love each other as much as brothers should, and have a profound respect for each other’ (Romans 12:10 JB). We are to die to ourselves and sincerely long that our brothers will be regarded as greater and higher than ourselves—we even take our "robe," if necessary, to cover a brother's nakedness, wherever it is seen. Thus can we make our brothers glorious in the eyes of others. This is the kind of relationship we should have with one another in the body of Christ.

If we can have this kind of relationship, by all means we must.
Love, respect and awe—because Christ is in our midst.

Open Door

We are still the early Christians, at least,
we can be if we want to.

This doesn’t mean trying to set up yet another church denomination to ‘purify’ the Church of all the accumulations of tradition and what not that seems to obscure the Good News. Actually, it isn’t the traditions per se that obscure the Good News. Administered rightly, the traditions do what they were designed to do: amplify the Good News and integrate it into our personal lives.

What obscures the Good News is something so close to us that we can’t often see it. It’s our tendency to want the appearance rather than the reality of anything. The mind awake knows better, knows this tendency and refutes it, saying as C. S. Lewis writes, ‘I want God, not my idea of God.’ This is what the Christian mind awake realizes about God and, this being its starting point, begins to untie the knot of its self-deception.

Acknowledging the holy scriptures formally does nothing to promote our life in Christ. We must with the fear of God, with faith and love draw near to them. We must humbly bow our stiff necks and tender our tough hearts into the faithful care of the Word of God. Studying them in this way, we are drawn to the same life that the holy apostles and early church brothers lived.
Why? Because we realize we want it.

When I read the first letter of holy apostle Paul to his spiritual son Timothy the other day, I didn’t read a daily portion. I couldn’t read any less than the whole book, cover to cover, short as it is. It drew me into itself, not in the imagination, but in the spirit of the life it contains. Reading it this way, I was placed right then and there, living the same church life that they live, with them.
Why? Because it’s still happening.

As I said at first, we are the early Christians, and that’s that, but only if we want to be. Once you discover that through living in the holy scriptures, once you have had a taste of that life, that real Church life, you realize there really isn’t any other kind, everything else seems fake, seems contrived. Fellowship with the saints becomes more than a review of history, and you realize what it means to have an indelible baptism.

Christ is not religion to me, nor are He and His holy apostles and saints too exalted to be my friends, nor is the Holy Spirit an excuse for me to rest in comfortable exile from my heavenly home.

Instead, the Book is the door that was left open in my path, and I walked through it to find that all it says is true, that there is a heavenly country, that paradise still exists, that the Church has never changed, never been divided, and that it’s my Home now, and to the ages of ages.

Behold, I have set before thee an open door,
and no man can shut it.
Revelation 3:8

Ιδου, δεδωκα ενωπιον σου θυραν ανεωγμενην,
και ουδεις δυναται κλεισαι αυτην.

The Beginning and the End

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,
the Beginning and the End.
Revelation 22:13

Jesus Christ is one Person fully human and fully divine, but as He enters and permeates time, we experience Him as He describes Himself to John the Revelator, as the Beginning and the End. Philosophers and theologians have written volumes about this, but I only want to say a few words about the Good News of Jesus Christ, which I believe also is experienced and works in us as the Beginning and the End.

The Good News “looks” different when it is the Beginning. It is a word that could be written down: The beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah… (Mark 1:1-2a)

The Good News is a word that could be spoken, that can be preached: Jesus went into Galilee. There He proclaimed the Good News from God. “The time has come,” He said, “and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.”
(Mark 1:14b-15)

The Good News as the Beginning is what the Church through the ages and up till today has busied itself with, planting the seed of the Word, laying the foundations for the Kingdom, that which is the Good News as the End. It is just as necessary that the Good News should be the Beginning, as it should be the End. And though there is only one Good News, it “looks” different when it is the End.

The first Christians evangelized the world by bringing to it the Good News, the Beginning: Remember the Good News that I carry, “Jesus Christ risen from the dead, sprung from the race of David.”
(2 Timothy 2:8)

Yet even back then, the Good News, the End, was revealed: For I am not ashamed of the Good News: it is the power of God saving all who have faith. (Romans 1:16a)

The Beginning of the Good News was proclamation such as this:
“Yes, God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

The End of the Good News was demonstration such as this:
This has taught us love—that He gave up His life for us; and we, too, ought to give up our lives for our brothers. (1 John 3:16)

The Good News, the Beginning, consists of transmitting the teaching of Jesus and the story of His saving acts: “I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to My voice.” (John 18:37b)

The Good News, the End, consists of Christ living in us and gathering His lambs into the Kingdom: Jesus knew that the hour had come for Him to pass from this world to the Father. He had always loved those who were His in the world, and now He showed how perfect His love was. (John 13:1)

I’m not entirely sure that I have been able to express my meaning well. Let me try again.

The Good News, the Beginning, is doing all the explicit evangelizing, missionary work, church life, everything that lays foundations for the building up of the Kingdom in spirit and truth, which is itself the Good News, the End, of which it is said, it “is close at hand.”

The Good News, the End, is letting Christ in us do that which He alone is capable of doing: “You are the Light of the world. A city built on a hilltop cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp to put it under a tub; they put it on the lampstand where it shines for everyone in the house. In the same way your light must shine in the sight of men, so that, seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

Our world, our culture, has been irradiated repeatedly and for a very long time with the Word of truth, and yet most people do not accept it, do not accept that Word which alone can save them—Jesus Christ. The same was true in the days of the Roman Empire. Yes, many were “added to their number,” through the preaching of the Good News, the Beginning. But back then, far more were added by their witnessing the holocaust of the martyrs, who went to their deaths without explicit preaching, who were transformed before the world by the love that they had, not only for their brothers, but for their enemies. That was the Good News, the End.

It is the demonstration of the Good News, the End, that is revealing Jesus to the world in this final age, effecting the true ‘end times harvest’ of saints.

Do not keep the prophecies in this Book a secret, because the Time is close. Meanwhile, let the sinner go on sinning, and the unclean to continue to be unclean; let those who do good go on doing good, and those who are holy continue to be holy. Very soon now I shall be with you again, bringing the reward to be given to every man according to what he deserves. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
(Revelation 22:10-13)

Forgiveness

Of all images or ikons of Christ, this is my favorite.
Why? It is His look. His eyes say,
‘I know everything about you,
and I love you.’

O God, You show Your power especially by granting pardon.

People recognized Christ because He remitted sin. That was the Good News, the meaning of His advent: ‘Go tell everyone his sins can be forgiven!’ Jesus is essentially ‘the Savior.’ ‘Where there is much sin, there's even more grace’ (Romans 5:20). He came, not to abolish sin, but to forgive it. ‘I've come for sinners,’ He used to say, ‘not for the righteous’ (Luke 5:32).

Those who couldn't tolerate such mercy rejected Him. Mohammedans, for instance, refuse the believe in the divinity of Christ because they can't accept the idea of a God who's so ‘unjust,’ as they see it—who doesn't take vengeance on His enemies but suffers all manner of abuse from them, who lets the wicked do as they please and, instead of pulverizing them, anxiously hopes they'll reconsider returning to Him. ‘There's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents…’ (Luke 15:7).

If this thought fills us with warmth and gladness, we're close to Christ. If it annoys and vexes us or makes us shrug our shoulders in resignation, that's because we still have none of His spirit. We're deists, perhaps, but certainly not Christians. Many of us are Mohammedans and don't know it.

‘God alone can forgive sins’ (Mark 2:7). Above and beyond its juridical meaning, we must read this statement as a sort of description of God. Only He ‘knows how’ to pardon. We surely don't. According to the old saying, women forgive but never forget. And as for men, they're so self-centered they forget and very rarely take time, thought, or trouble to forgive.

All in all, human forgiveness is a crushing thing, an unpleasant memory we can't shake off. The superiority of those who grant pardon utterly quashes those who receive it. There's forgiveness, but no reassurance, no consolation, no encouragement. God is the only one who can manage all four together. You see, forgiving kindly entails humiliating oneself.

The prodigal's father doesn't want to hear another word about the whole episode. He gives a banquet. That's how God does it too. He alone can make forgiveness something glorious to remember. He is so glad to absolve us that those who have afforded Him that joy feel, not like disagreeable, troublesome pests, but like pampered children, understood and heartened, pleasing and useful to Him, and infinitely better than they thought.

‘O happy fault!’ they could cry. ‘If we weren't sinners and didn't need pardon more than bread, we'd have no way of knowing how deep God's love is.’

I wish these words were mine, but I have only made them mine by trying to live out what they say. The passages above are taken from Fr Louis Evely’s book That Man Is You (1966). I offer them to you, brethren, following the precept,

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

Dispel my darkness

A favorite poem of mine, that helps me sometimes to remember, and to dispel my darkness…

I Think Continually Of Those Who Were Truly Great

by Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

Live

            live for yourself in every creature
            live for the calm in the storm
            live but to love though no one notice
            live but to know, not be known

            wait for the time in every moment
            watch for the day in the night
            witness in joy though all be sorrow
            wonder at dark, hid in light

            give of yourself and never tire
            give of the pleasure and pain
            give but to gather what only matters
            give but to go, not be gone

            nothing there is though all surround you
            no one is here but your own
            never is new though old be ever
            no way but this, truth is one

— Romanós

Finally

Finally.
I bet that is just the word Jonah said, as his breath bubbled up to the surface. Finally, the end has come.

There are a couple of ways to picture the prophet Jonah in the little vignettes of his life. The story can be read as sort of a sandwich of ‘rebellion, obedience, and rebellion’… First, Jonah runs, then he comes to his senses on the boat, praises the Lord for his obedience, goes to Ninevah directly upon vomitation and preaches the word of God before he finally falls back into his rebellion to God and hatred of humanity.

You could legitimately (perhaps) read the story as a story of a good prophet gone bad… of only twice. If this is true, then he immediately recognizes the salvation of God Chordatic form and he means every vampy word of his hymn of praise. ‘Finally,’ he would say to himself, ‘finally the end of my disobedience and rebellion against the Lord has come.’ Maybe. I doubt it.

It would be much easier for me to imagine Jonah as a man filled with self-pity. He has been defeated in his battle against the Lord, sure enough, but the fight is not quite over. Think about Jonah on the ship, as he tells the sailors to cast him overboard. He has been found out in his sin. Should he fear the Lord, offer a sacrifice and make his mind up to take the next ship back in the direction of Ninevah? Should he pray, like Moses, on behalf of the innocent mariners whose lives he has jeopardized? or better, like Jesus, ‘they know not what they do!’ What I mean to ask is, do you really think the only way to Jonah’s redemption was to ask for his own execution? And what about that?

Was Jonah incapable of jumping out of the boat on his own? 
Were his legs broken?

No. It was more important for Jonah to be in the right than to own up to his own faults and fight for the good of those around him. He knew he would be in the wrong to jump out of the boat, but what if a bunch of useless mariners tossed him over? Well, their standing with the Lord could not possibly count for much, right?

And we have arrived at Jonah’s basic problem. He was a self-righteous man, above all else. Think about the last verse to his little ditty to the Lord, upon being eaten by a gigantic fish…

Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope
of steadfast love.
But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you;
What I have vowed I will pay.

For a refresher, who, in this story, is struggling with idol-worship? Two groups: the useless mariners and the wicked Ninevites. And who is on the Lord’s side? One man. Jonah, the grace-hoarding prophet who has caused the sea to be turned upside down and who finds himself in the belly of a fish. Jonah may be one step closer to understanding God’s heart, but he still has light-years to go before he can take a kernel of truth from his own tale. In this story, the mariners have become the God-fearers and the prophet has become useless, vain, idolatrous and hopeless. Jonah’s story sounds all too familiar to my own.

Every day I substitute self-righteousness for responsible living. I measure myself against the jerks I work with. Just like the Pharisee in the story Jesus told, I find myself thanking God that I am not like them. I see Jonah’s reflection when I look in the mirror.

Our call is not so much to sinlessness as it is to love one another; to bear one another’s burdens. We agree when the Lord call us rebels, haters and prodigals. We live lives of repentance. We seek ways to love those around us. And we rest in the one true thing Jonah says in his vampy little tune…
Salvation belongs to the Lord.

He is for us, even when we are working against Him.
Finally the end can come—the end of hating God and neighbor. With every end comes a new beginning. He calls again to us to join in his work of love, burden-bearing and humility.

from his blog

Which will it be?

Divine humanity, or human divinity? Which would we rather have? This is the question that is presented to man in every generation from the first to the last.

The first is not in our control, something we could not even guess at, something only dreamt of by those whose hearts persistently seek the Most-High, wondering what He is.

The second is what we found ourselves left with. Since we couldn’t discover divine humanity, we consoled ourselves by inventing human divinity.

Human beings, worthy or unworthy, raised some of themselves to the status of gods. The ancient heroes of the Greeks, of the Indians, of the Chinese, gods.

The wielders of earthly power, those in whom their peoples invested the ring, orb and crown of authority, lauded ‘guardians of mankind’ and ‘benefactors,’ gods.

Those fools who once graced the courts of kings with levity to assuage the harshness of our earthly exile, now electronically glorified, our entertainers, gods.

Human divinities all, they are sculpted images of the human nature, to be worshipped by their adorers, or vilified by opponents who worship not men but things.

Yet, divine humanity, after long ages, He did appear. Him, the bedreamt of prophets and prophet-kings, has appeared, does appear, and now lives among us.

No sculpture, no painted image can convey Him to us better than He Himself can, walking in our midst, as one of us, though we do not recognize Him but in retrospect.

He is Divine Humanity, having taken our human nature into the fiery folds of His sixfold wings up to the Throne of the Divine Nature, making us enter heaven, and the heaven of heavens.

Making us sit upon His Throne and upon His Father’s Throne, making us sup with Him and with His Father and the Spirit Holy at the banquet Table, in the light of a thousand suns.

Every molecule of our humanity transformed in Him into Divinity, no particle of darkness remains, no shadow, only light, light, wonderous light, bright, bright, brighter.

Divine humanity, or human divinity? Which do you choose?
‘No one lights a lamp to hide it under a bushel.’
‘A city set on a hill cannot be hid.’
‘I set before you life,
And death.’

Even so, I stayed in Your presence

It is impossible to read the Psalms and not come away with more than you have given. The Lord speaks to us through them to the very details of our lives, answering all our concerns, all our prayers even before we ask Him. He is a good and loving God.

Psalm 71, one of the Psalms appointed for the fourteenth day of the month, always stops me in my tracks, especially when I read the words, “To many I have seemed an enigma…” How true, Lord, how true! This was true when I used to pray this Psalm thirty-five years ago, and it’s still true today, but so is the second half of that verse, “but You are my firm refuge.”

God is faithful. He maintains us in our first call, and in our first love. All we have to do is stay close to Him. Here I share with you, brethren, a psalm of a man in his age, and a psalm of the same man in his youth, the sinner but servant of God, Romanós.

Psalms for the 14th Day
71 72 73 74

Psalm 71

An old man's prayer

In You, Yahweh, I take shelter;

never let me be disgraced.

In Your righteousness rescue me, deliver me,

turn Your ear to me and save me!

Be a sheltering rock for me,

a walled fortress to save me!

For You are my rock, my fortress.

My God, rescue me from the hands of the wicked,

from the clutches of rogue and tyrant!

For You alone are my hope, Lord,

Yahweh, I have trusted You since my youth,

I have relied on You since I was born,

You have been my portion from my mother's womb,

and the constant theme of my praise.

To many I have seemed an enigma,

but You are my firm refuge.

My mouth is full of Your praises,

filled with Your splendour all day long.

Do not reject me, now I am old,

nor desert me, now my strength is failing,

for my enemies are uttering threats,

spies hatching their conspiracy:

‘Hound him down now that God has deserted him,

seize him, there is no one to rescue him!’

God, do not stand aside,

my God, come quickly and help me!

Shame and ruin on those

who attack me;

may insult and disgrace cover those

whose aim is to hurt me!

I promise that, ever hopeful,

I will praise You more and more,

my lips shall proclaim Your righteousness

and power to save, all day long.

I will come in the power of Yahweh

to commemorate Your righteousness, Yours alone.

God, You taught me when I was young,

and I am still proclaiming Your marvels.

Now that I am old and grey,

God, do not desert me;

let me live to tell the rising generation

about Your strength and power,

about Your heavenly righteousness, God.

You have done great things;

who, God, is comparable to You?

You have sent me misery and hardship,

but You will give me life again,

You will pull me up again from the depths of the earth,

prolong my old age, and once more comfort me.

I promise I will thank You on the lyre,

my ever-faithful God,

I will play the harp in Your honour,

Holy One of Israel.

My lips shall sing for joy as I play to You,

and this soul of mine which You have redeemed.

All day long, my tongue

shall be talking of Your righteousness.

Shame and disgrace on those

whose aim is to hurt me!

[Amín!]

Psalm 73

The triumph of justice

God is indeed good to Israel,

the Lord is good to pure hearts.

My feet were on the point of stumbling,

a little further and I should have slipped,

envying the arrogant as I did,

and watching the wicked get rich.

For them, no such thing as pain,

their bodies are healthy and strong,

they do not suffer as other men do,

no human afflictions for them!

So pride is their chain of honour,

violence the garment that covers them;

their spite oozes like fat,

their hearts drop with slyness.

Cynical advocates of evil,

lofty advocates of force,

they think their mouth is heaven

and their tongue can dictate on earth.

This is why my people turn to them

and lap up all they say,

asking, 'How will God find out?

Does the Most High know everything?

Look at them: these are the wicked,

well-off and still getting richer!'

After all, why should I keep my own heart pure,

and wash my hands in innocence,

if You plague me all day long

and discipline me every morning?

Had I said, 'That talk appeals to me',

I should have betrayed your children's race.

Instead, I tried to analyse the problem,

hard though I found it—

until the day I pierced the mystery

and saw the end in store for them:

they are on a slippery slope, You put them there,

You urge them on to ruin,

until suddenly they fall,

done for, terrified to death.

When You wake up, Lord, You shrug them off

like the phantoms of a waking dream.

When my heart had been growing sourer

with pains shooting through my loins,

I had simply failed to understand,

my stupid attitude to You was brutish.

Even so, I stayed in Your presence,

You held my right hand;

now guide me with advice

and in the end receive me into glory.

I look to no one else in heaven,

I delight in nothing else on earth.

My flesh and my heart are pining with love,

my heart's Rock, my own, God for ever!

So then: those who abandon You are doomed,

You destroy the adulterous deserter;

whereas my joy lies in being close to God.

I have taken shelter in the Lord,

continually to proclaim what You have done.

[Amín!]

Know and trust

A ramble…

Yesterday I found myself writing the words 'instant Christianity' to describe the kind of religion that takes no notice of anything in its path but mows down all opposition without a hearing—this, really in reference to a certain 'missionary' style, though it can be applied to churches as well.

Thinking about just the phrase, not what I'd originally intended by using it, I imagined 'Instant Christianity—Just add water, and mix' as if it were a label on a product. This made me think of another aspect of modern Christianity: its religious relativism, and its marketing and branding.

That brought a scripture to mind, 'And the misery of the children of men who corrupt their minds and are cheated of the truth, and they think that making money is the worship of God; but stay away from these things' (1 Timothy 6:5). This almost seems to prophesy a kind of 'prosperity gospel.'

Back to 'instant Christianity.' Thinking about it some more, two images came to mind. The first, the baptism of an infant. Yes, some might see this as a magical form of 'instant Christianity, just add water,' as if baptism as a rite can make someone a Christian with no effort or knowledge.

The other image was that of an adult man being baptised by immersion in a large tank in full view of a congregation. To many this would seem to be the only kind of baptism that is valid. I know people who have submitted to this kind of second baptism because they were made to doubt their infant baptism.

Yet, in actual practice, this 'believer's baptism' is quite often just as magical and as much 'instant Christianity' as the other. Again, a concept of 'just add water' and, there you are. Once when I was witnessing downtown by reading scriptures aloud, I was stopped and asked by a listener, 'Don't you think water baptism is necessary for salvation?'

The questioner quoted me relevant passages from the third chapter of John's gospel, which I had only just read. Christ seems to be telling Nicodemus that water is somehow necessary to salvation, 'No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit' (John 3:5).

'Well, then,' I responded, 'who or what is it that saves? Is it the water, or is it Christ?' My informant unhesitatingly affirmed, 'It is both. Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation, because Christ said so.' All that came into my mind in that moment, and I said it, was, 'Well, who baptised the thief on the cross?'

Back to 'instant Christianity,' if we use it as another thought weapon to attack each other, then let's bury the hatchet right now. For me, it simply signifies the state of mind that forgets that our neighbor too is Christ, even if he is an unbeliever. Our witness to him can never ignore this fact, else it becomes transgression.
'Lord, when did we see You like that?' (See Matthew 25:31-46.)

One last thought that came to me as I was considering what makes Christianity real and not instant or imaginary. There are two entrances into Christianity in my experience. One entrance is through knowing. The other is through trusting.

Some people become Christians through study. Not just books, but life itself, especially their own. They know, and are forced by their knowing to become disciples of Jesus. In this category probably belong C. S. Lewis among the modern, and St Augustine of Hippo among the ancient Church fathers.

Some people become Christians through trust. They find themselves somehow in the presence of someone or even something that they feel they can trust, and they give themselves over as easily as a bride to her husband. In this category are many people raised as Christians, and I am one of those.

Those who know, and therefore become Christians, will arrive sooner or later at the state of unshakable trust. Those who trust, and therefore become Christians, will arrive sooner or later at the state of certain knowledge. Both of these are predicated on the fact that it is the living God they know or they trust at the beginning.

Now, place the template of baptism over these ideas. The baptism of infants is an example of Christianity by trust. Believer's baptism is an example of Christianity by knowledge.

'Do you know the Lord and accept Him as your personal Savior?' is the qualifying question to the adult baptised, but there is nothing you can ask an infant, yet its answer can be found in the book of Psalms, 'Enough for me to keep my soul tranquil and quiet like a child in its mother's arms, as content as a child that has been weaned'
(Psalm 131).

That is trust.

Bad alliances

If you make yourself a friend of the world,
you cannot be God’s friend.

The father of the prodigal son was a pious and God-loving man, because only such a man could have allowed his sons their full freedom and still receive one of them back with love and honor (and unself-conscious forgiveness) after he had abused his freedom and defiled himself.
The boy was ‘brought up right.’

A good marriage and family life does not come about by magic. It begins with mutual faith. It grows and is sustained by mutual faith and faithfulness. And it continues blessed and good right to the end only as long as the first faith and trust is preserved inviolable.

What can destroy it? Wanton breaking of the commandments, adultery, bearing false witness, theft and covetousness—all of which stem from forgetting who is the Lord: “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”

I have passed on to my sons what my dad passed on to me, “If you are looking for a good wife, you don’t go looking for one in bars. You go to church and find one.” Though I did not exactly follow his instructions—he told me this after I was married—I followed a slightly different route, which is maybe even better: Pray to the Lord to send you a wife, and then watch closely whom He sends to you, just as you watch for friends that He sends you, and one of these will be your wife. It goes without saying—or does it?—that you are living a life of discipleship when you make this prayer.

How simple all of life is, especially family life and our circle of relationships, when we follow the commandments! Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will follow my commandments.” That’s what I’m talking about, not some rigorous set of rules whether biblical or self-improvement-minded, neither of which will ever succeed in really making anyone better. “Branch out for a time they may, but when you look for them they will be gone, vanished like their vain hopes.” Christ is at once the source of all righteousness, the way to it, and the achievement of it. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” says Jesus (John 14:6).

Even being raised in a pious family, a son does not become a Christian by magic. As soon as he reaches the age of independent decision, his parents’ faith no longer speaks for him the moment he makes the conscious choice to take the world for his friend, instead of God. Even after making that choice, he can repent, and God our heavenly Father, can and will take him back. But just as the father of the prodigal son did not restrain that son from the choices he made, neither does God, or the parents, restrain him or constrain him. They may advise, they may teach, they certainly must pray for him to turn away from his friendship with the world, but they cannot force him to give it up. He must want a better friendship.

So it is, that a man who has taken the world for his friend no longer thinks of God, except of the punishment that he will receive after everything he does is done and his life is over—if there is a God.

Instead of memories of a youth spent in innocent fun and friendships, he finds memories only of riotous relationships, infidelities, the waste of his virginity and that of one he might have truly loved and been wedded to, and years of profound loss: spoiled friendships, missed opportunities, time and money wasted, and all for what? Now the mercy of God can only drive him to even more miserable states, to where he, like the prodigal son feeding unclean animals (pigs) and not even being given their slop for food, finds himself at another point of decision: To utterly despair, or to return to his Father.

Rather than flee from house to house, or from town to town, to escape his brown girls and their offspring, like John of Puritania this son needs to turn around and start traveling Home, facing East. The road back will look very different than that same road looked when he made the world his friend and followed it to the place of bondage. By making God, in Christ, his Friend, the road will turn into something very, very narrow, but he won’t mind that, because he will hear his Friend going ahead of him, saying, “Follow Me.”

The magic of existence — Théosis

Some people talk as though it were totally barbaric and unworthy of Him that God should have created a world in which such a thing as sin exists, that has so corrupted His chief creation, Man, that He now must punish him with eternal torment in fire, unless he accept the bloody death of a unique Man, who is also somehow His only-begotten Son, who sacrificed Himself voluntarily to satisfy the requirement of His angry heavenly Father, whose Law demands blood to compensate for its violation, as a ransom for his sins, so that he can be regenerated in sinlessness as his first forefather Adam was originally created.

This is like saying that
God created a good universe
into which His chief creature, Man, was placed
with the expectation that he would always be of one will with Him,
while at the same time allowing an evil agent into it,
which He knew would corrupt Man’s will,
and then forcing Himself to eternally punish this Man
and all his descendents from their very births
to eternal damnation for breaking a Law
which He established and to which He is now bound,
when He could have either not created that Law at all,
or else overridden it for Man’s sake,
or else not allowed the evil agent to deceive Man
and cause the sin that must now be avenged,
since God is holy
and cannot tolerate sin.

Well, what would you have?
A good God who created a good universe
into which He placed a good creature, Man,
who sometimes acts against what he knows intuitively is right
by a standard he didn’t create
but which the good God did,
whose Son also entered that good universe
and somehow was accidentally put to death
but was rescued and resuscitated somehow,
so that His teachings could be learned and followed,
restoring Man,
if not to his originally perfect and righteous state,
at least to a state in which his moral failures
are somewhat in control,
allowing most men to live together in relative peace and safety
and to enjoy a reasonable level of freedom and happiness?

Religion.

That would be nice!
That is how Man would like it.
That is how Man in his natural state would like to see existence
and give it meaning.

That is how a civilised and worthy God
would have set things up,
that is, if He exists.

Let’s have none of this sacrificial talk!
Away with the barbaric demand for blood by an angry God,
who is unfit to be called Father
if He has to send His only Son
to a humiliating, bloody, excruciatingly painful death,
to save His creatures from a sinfulness
He almost willed them to have,
to save them from an eternal and fiery torment
that He imposes on all who reject His love.

His love?
Would a loving God have such a plan?
Would He create beings only to torture them
for not being His robot slaves?

With all due respect to those
who try to prove God
loving, righteous, rational, and worthy of our praise
by departing from the words
of holy and divine scripture
to paint a picture of Him
in colors that are pleasing to our sense
and standard of right and wrong,
of what we call love, and mercy,
and what we would honor as holy

—I know what they are trying to do,
to make God lovable
so that we will love Him and believe in Him—

This strategy in the end
does not produce the effect in us
that the Word of God was revealed to produce,
does not raise us out of our mortal, human reason
to immortal, divine faith,
does not deliver us from death and bring us to true life,
does not equip us for and acculturate us
to what we can only call
—because it is just the other side of our ontological ‘event horizon’
and we cannot express it any other way—
life eternal.

The real universe,
not the one that scientists explore,
test, measure and define by human standards,
not the one that sociologists and historians archive
and try to understand,
not the one that moralists and would-be theologians
devise as a frame of reference
to interpret the results of the studies
of the other two groups,

but the real universe
—what really exists,
what really operates and animates
all that we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel
and philosophize—
is so beyond our human capacities
as to be conveyable to us
only in what seems miraculous or magical,
or else so out of sync with what we should have expected
that it seems barbaric and primitive in the extreme.

Not that real universe,
but its Creator,
has told us about that existence
which lies just beyond our human nature’s ‘event horizon’
by taking up a literature as the vehicle of His Word,
and that is what we call the Holy Bible.

Why holy?
Because it is, like Him, totally other,
fully incomprehensible to those
who would fit it into the container of their minds alone.

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not grasped it.

The Bible teaches us,
as a mother teaches her toddler using baby talk,
how to take the first steps into that real universe
where there is no other map that we can yet read,
where there are features
that could harm or even destroy us
in our present state of being and level of maturity
if we met them without warning.

We must listen very carefully,
mimic and memorize the instructions
just as we receive them,
even in the limited language that we know thus far,

because for us,
where we are headed,
where we have no choice but to be headed,
is a state that now can only seem to be
the magic of existence.

It will only be magic
until we find out and understand what lies behind it,
until we find ourselves actually and even factually
crossing that ‘event horizon’
that limits our mortal, human vision,
until by faith we come to
immortal,
divine being.

Théosis.

But I, when I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men to myself.
John 12:32 NIV

The Asker and the answerers

Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, ‘El Greco’ - The Resurrection

Who is this obscuring My designs with his empty-headed words? Brace yourself like a fighter. Now it is My turn to ask questions and yours to inform Me.
Job 38:2 Jerusalem Bible

Who is the Asker, who the answerers?

We always assume that we ask the questions, and God answers them, but in actuality it is He who asks, we who must answer. Yes, must. That’s the one thing in which we do not have free choice,
whether to answer or not.
It is the very price of our being.
Put off answering for a time we may, but not indefinitely.

And what does He ask? Will He ask us a question for which He has not prepared us, of which we had neither inkling nor warning?
No, the question He will ask is one He has already asked.
It has been written down.
We can read it for ourselves before we will hear it from His lips.

What our answer will be is the sole determiner of who we were,
who we are, and who we will forever be. Yes, will, not shall.
We have freedom to answer what we choose,
but not to withhold our answer.
It is His very question that brings us into being,
and it is our very answer that makes our being eternal.

Jesus turned around, saw them following and said, ‘What do you want?’ They answered, ‘Rabbi,’—which means Teacher—‘where do you live?’ ‘Come and see,’ He replied…
John 1:37-39a

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been in this condition for a long time, He said, ‘Do you want to be well again?’ ‘Sir,’ replied the sick man, ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is disturbed…’
John 5:6-7a

Looking up, Jesus saw the crowds approaching and said to Philip, ‘Where can we buy some bread for these people to eat?’ He only said this to test Philip; He Himself knew exactly what He was going to do. Philip answered, ‘Two hundred denarii would only buy enough to give them a small piece each…’
John 6:5-7

Jesus heard they had driven him away, and when He found him He said to him, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘tell me who He is so that I may believe in Him.’ Jesus said, ‘You are looking at Him…’
John 9:35-37a

Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection. If anyone believes in Me, even though he dies he will live, and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she said, ‘I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, the One who was to come…’
John 11:25-27

His disciples said, ‘Now You are speaking plainly and not using metaphors! Now we see that You know everything, and do not have to wait for questions to be put into words; because of this we believe that You came from God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Do you believe at last?…’
John 16:29-31

Unquenchable Desire

Picture Credit: Paul in Chains, by Richard Serrin

Friends, He lit my desire for you, unquenchable
Fear having been cast, chains make hearts bold
Abounding in love with all knowledge and wisdom
So fruits of righteousness might be offered up
In sincerity and without offense until the 8th day

In our Lord Christ such a prison is free indeed
Filthy guards as brushed ushers in service
Beaten bodies remember ancient scourge
Starving stomachs recall 40 days of fast
And the darkened cell, midnight’s Gethsemane

— David Dickens, Nothing Hypothetical

Nothing else

Anything that can ever be said, written or thought about Jesus Christ by anyone except those who personally knew Him and walked with Him when He was alive as an earthman is going to be contradictable.

Let anyone contradict Thomas, ‘No, you didn't really see Him. You just imagined it,’ and likely as not (if I were him, anyway) Thomas would've let him have it. (Nicholas of Myra is said to have let Arius have it—he punched him—at Nicaea, for which he was expelled from the council—temporarily.)

But anyone can challenge me and my faith in and knowledge of Jesus Christ, and I can do nothing of the sort, only quietly insist that I know what I know, and that’s that.

Even I cannot base my beliefs about Jesus on any of His teachings or miracles, not even on His exact words quoted in the gospels, all of which could be forgeries and in fact are claimed to be by His enemies almost from day one.

In my case, what I base everything on is my intellectual and moral surrender to the fact of His literal resurrection and everything that follows from that, such as His ascension (where else could the body have gone?), and the unearthly behavior of the first generation of His disciples, by which they were able to convince the world of something the world would rather not know. Even reading Paul and the other apostles, though, does not convince me. Only Christ Himself convinces me, and only by His resurrection.

Yes, and all that follows from it, the ascension, and then pentecost, and then Christian history, all of which are either done or still happening, and then, only one more thing, His return to end the world as we know it.

That resurrection also rolls back to legitimatize all that flows out of it in reverse order, such as His birth of a virgin, and His conception through the Holy Spirit. Once these things are settled, the stage has been set, intellectually and morally, in me to accept everything else that is written about Him in the New Testament and prophesied of Him in the Old. But never, never could I have started out from there. Only the resurrection of Christ could convince me, because if it happened, it is the source of all meaning in the human, or any, universe.

What else makes my belief and knowledge of Christ (this knowledge is first, knowing Him, and second, knowing about Him, inseparable but distinct) invincible for me, that is, incontrovertible, is the proof that is to be had by putting the resurrection into practice.

Having accepted the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, totally on faith since I didn’t experience the fact of the resurrection, only the act, a new frame of reference is created inside me intellectually and morally, through whose prism I experience the world around me, and inside me, all that happens there, all I do there. This, however, is really no different than it is for any other believer in any other religion or god. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, even animists, all live within world views—frames of reference—that filter reality to fit their paths. So I cannot claim for my doing this any added authority. It works for me, so what?

So, in the end, all mental acrobatics and pugilism aside, the unprovable for me can be nothing other than the improbable for those who do not accept the resurrection of Christ, and even for those who say they do accept it, myself included, unless it is put into practice. Even for the believer it is no real proof, only, as their critics allege, a kind of crutch for the weak.

Yes, weak we are too, just as they say of us, when we do not practice the resurrection, living in it, putting it before us, behind us, beside us, above us and below us, walking with Christ, as Christ’s earthmen, surrounded by that same nimbus by which He in His resurrection is surrounded in the holy ikons.

He has gone, and is still going ahead of us, now no longer just the earthman people thought He was when He was with us in that body of death. He now goes ahead of us, behind us, to our right and left, above and below us, the God-Man that we know Him to be.

And it seems to me, you cannot know Him unless you walk with Him.

And you cannot walk with Him unless you believe, even know, that He is here, with us.

Apart from that, nothing else matters.