Evangelismós

Just as the year can be conceived as beginning on various days—January 1st (civil), September 1st (religious), March 21st (spring begins)—so can various days in the Church calendar be conceived as the beginning of the Gospel.

I like to think of September 1st, “Indiction,” commemorating the Christ’s inauguration of His earthly ministry by reading the prophecy of Isaiah in the synagogue service, as the “beginning” of the Gospel.

Holy evangelist Mark is much simpler and more direct, The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God—It is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way, a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’ ” And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins…

But another “beginning” of the Gospel, the Good News, is today’s feast-day, commemorating the annunciation to Mary the virgin, of God’s will that she become the mother of His Son, the Messiah. This feast is called in Greek, Ευαγγελισμος, Evangelismós, ‘announcing the Good News.’ And for Mary, just as for us, it was God’s Word coming to her, personally. His Word could have been met with deaf ears or ears hearing but not receiving. She, just as we, could have said, can say, “No thanks!” to God. That would have gotten her, and us, “off the hook.” Instead, she said “No” to her fears and doubts, and “Yes” to what God had chosen her for from before the foundation of the world. And it’s always just the same for us.

God has foreknown us from before the foundation of the world, and ever since we were born into it by His will (and it’s the only act He has done to us without asking our permission, creating us), He has been announcing to us, personally, the Good News, at every moment asking us to say “Yes” to His decrees concerning us.

His Word is clearly written large and small, in the Bible, in the universe He created, and in the intangibles and indescribables of our personal being. As for Mary saying “Yes,” what He has in store for us will give us cause to say, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.”

Evangelismós. Announcing the Good News. Called since before the foundation of the world. Brethren, let us rejoice with the Theotokos, for “He that is mighty hath magnified me, and Holy is His Name,” will be the song of each one of us, if we only say “Yes”.

Honestly

Honestly, I used to have a saying, ‘Under the Roman Empire, the Christians were persecuted for their faith; now, since the Empire is no more, we have the Church to do the job.’

That’s how it sometimes feels. But there are other times when we have found ourselves in a perfect moment in the Church’s history, when pastors and people were full of love, respect, evangelical zeal, self-sacrifice, love for the lost, generosity for the needy. Those moments we wished would last forever, but they didn’t last long. Whose fault was that? Did the Church change, or did we? It is with the eyes of the Spirit that we look upon the Church with faith and declare to our souls, ‘This is the Body of Christ,’ and at other times, after ‘placing us on a peak impregnable’ the Spirit ‘turns away His eyes, and we are terrified’ (Psalm 30).

But without a doubt, the follower of Jesus knows who is speaking when he hears the preacher’s words, whether it is the Good Shepherd he is hearing, or just the hired man. And without a doubt, the disciple of Christ knows what is happening when he sees the Church’s works, whether it is the making disciples of all nations, or just lavishing itself in applause. It is then that the believer is tested: In Whom has he believed? In whom has he trusted? For whom does he live, in whom does he move and have his being? And finally, is it for what, or for whom, that he lays down his life?

We see around us the field white for harvest, yet stand our ground pulling up tares. We do the work reserved for the angels at time’s end, and let lie acres of dry bones waiting to be clothed in flesh, and live. There is only one Bridegroom, and only one Bride, yet we wander through the harems of our minds seeking under which veil she hides, and fail to see she is happily unveiled and seated beside her Lord. There is nothing to do now but plant the seed, because as soon planted, it springs up into the reaper’s hand, by the Lord of the harvest who alone gives increase. We have nothing else to do.
‘Come, labor on, claim the high calling angels cannot share.’

The people among whom Christ appeared continue, as Pascal writes, to deny Him, and for our sakes, otherwise they would be suspect witnesses, owning both the Kingdom and the King, that we might be slaves only, and not sons as they. And so they persist, and wisdom has still not abandoned them, for they guard and treasure her words. Their rabbi Tarfon says, ‘The day is short, the work is abundant, the workers are sluggish, the reward is great, and the Master of the house presses.’ He would also say, ‘It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it.’

For me there is no male or female, Greek or barbarian, freeman or slave, catholic or protestant, priest or layman, sophisticate or simple, rich or poor, black or white, straight or gay, friend or enemy, in short, no pairing of opposites to adulate one and outcaste the other, that is, if I am a follower of Jesus, who defended even those whom He knew to be unworthy, by human standards, of mercy and love. Every foundation of judgment has been shattered and scattered to make way for the only foundation that can be and has ever been laid: Jesus Christ, in whom there is no variation, no shadow of change, whose love is infinite, whose mercy boundless, who raises to life all the dead, yes, who raises even me.

Love is like the feet

Love is the hallmark of the true Church—nothing else!—and where love is, God is, Christ is, the Holy Spirit is. Christ does not tell us in the gospels, "Make sure each other is believing in exactly the right doctrine," but rather ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’

I am not saying that doctrine is unimportant, but that it is secondary.

Love is like the feet, very humble, but they're the parts of the body that enable you to follow Jesus, they lead you to Him.

Doctrine is like the head, full of itself, often lost in the clouds of speculation, often misguiding the feet, often putting up "mental roadblocks" where the feet know better, where the feet would go if not restrained.

No one has ever walked by using his head as the organ of locomotion. If you don't have feet, then you must use a wheelchair, but you still don't hop along on your head.

The church I belong to is the one where we are all of one mind because we are all of one loving heart.

The mind of Christ is the only mind that is not flawed, the only mind that does not fantasize, lie or lead astray, or prevent the blessed feet from walking after Him.

The church I belong to is really that one, and you and me and our Lord, Master and Savior is here with us, among us, and within us,
‘He pitched His tent among us and became man,’ so that we might pitch our tent in the heavenlies, and there abide forever in the wedding feast of the Lamb.

What does Christ see when He looks upon the Church?

Nothing and no one that He hasn't placed there.
Whatever and whoever is of the world is as invisible to us, as we are to it and to them.

What it's all about

Christianity is not all about doctrine. Christianity is all about grace. It is all about mercy and love. This is not, however, what one would think, looking at the Church. But the Church is Christianity, and Christianity is the Church. We must look deeper than the externals of history, and more finely at what the Church is, really is, in day to day life. Even there, we may find masquerades going on, but also the true.

Orthodoxy is true not because of the heroic stand against papal claims by such saints as Photios, or Mark of Ephesos. Orthodoxy is true because it sings, and because it sings even in the face of sin. It is true because such saints as Elder Porphyrios can love and bless prostitutes. It is true because of such confidence in the victory and mercy of Christ that it can be gracious to sinners, because Christ is.

Doctrine and dogma are the results of a qualitative analysis of the life of the Church, that is, what the Church actually does. They are formed and accepted spontaneously and organically. When they are formulated in lecture halls or in convocations they often reflect nothing real, are merely ideologies, which the evil one uses to divide the undivided Body of Christ. Anything that resists the love and work of Christ is not Christianity, no matter what it is called.

What is the love and work of Christ? It is what we see Jesus doing in the gospels. It is what we see the Holy Spirit doing in the acts and epistles. It is what we see the saints doing who have abandoned all to follow the Lord. It is what we participate in when we follow them. It is mercy applied to the undeserving. It is love lavished on the unlovable. It is refusal of the claims of the unreal. It is forgiveness of offenses. It is justification of the sinner.

Study the scriptures. Turn to them and learn. They mean what they say and will give you language to say what you mean. They uncover the truth about you, but then cover you with the truth about Christ. They baptise and chrismate you into the life of the new creation. They offer you the water that once drunk will quench your thirst for ever. They feed you with the bread of heaven that once eaten preserves you to life eternal. They are mercy, grace and love.

Mother

Psalm 87

Of the sons of Korach, psalm, song.

Yahweh loves His city
founded on the holy mountain;
He prefers the gates of Zion
to any town in Jacob.

He has glorious predictions to make of you,
city of God, selah.

‘I will add Egypt and Babylon
to the nations that acknowledge Me.
Of Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia,
“Here so and so was born,” men say,
but all call Zion “Mother,”
since all were born in her.’

It is He who makes her what she is,
He, the Most High, Yahweh;
and as He registers the peoples,
‘It was here,’ He writes,
‘that so and so was born,’ selah.

And there will be princes dancing there.
All find their home in you.

We know the Lord, we know whom we have believed in, we know what the essential content of the Christian faith is, the trust in God alone, the following Christ at all costs, the confession of a true word, and we know that somehow, we are the Church, we are in her, we are part of her, because we are in Christ, and we know each other when we meet, and if we have learned our lessons well, we come to our meetings with one another totally unarmed, totally disarmed if we ever bore weaponry against anyone but the devil, for whom hatred is reserved, if for anyone. Yet even the Lord, did He hate the evil one? It's hard to tell, because all He does is speak the word of truth to him. Isn't it the evil one, after all, who alone hates, hates God, hates Christ, hates woman for bearing Him, hates humanity for following Him, for trusting His word, for not listening to the lie?

Knowing what I know and having experienced everything from best to worst in the Orthodox Church, I still can swallow my neighbor along with his sins when I partake of the Body and Blood of Christ, just as the Lord has swallowed me and mine, and I can still defend him even when he makes himself my personal enemy. Why, and how? Because Christ defends me, even when I fall into sin, even when I cruelly wound Him, and there is no other path to life but through death on the Holy Cross, through letting one's flesh be nailed down for love of our neighbor, who is Christ.

The institutional Orthodox Church at best is the enduring ikon of the Bride of Christ, and at worst it is the stumblingblock that can snare a soul or put it into a tailspin from which it might never recover. But our God is merciful, He is loving, and I want to be near that kind of love, not just as it is sung about and proclaimed by words, but I want to be near it, where it is proved on the battlefield of the Body, where even wounded and wounding it heals by its faithfulness even amidst its sin. Faithfulness? What faithfulness? The faithfulness to stay through every conflict, through every victory, to stay the same, to be the deep well whose water may be hard to reach, but once brought up and drunk becomes that spring of living water inside us that leads to eternal life.

All Christians belong to this Church, yet our eyelids are stuck together and we, blinded by our own prejudices and fears, do not see light. The Orthodox who think of themselves as the sole possessors and owners of what can only belong to us all, only to us who are in Christ, just as blind as those who refuse to call her Home, those who hold her up to judgment—it doesn't matter by what standard. Mercy, mercy and love is how we express our discipleship and following of Christ, wherever we call 'home', and neither Christ nor His heavenly Father are fooled by what we call or do not call the Church. He (for they are One) knows.

I am a Greek Orthodox Christian, and I want everyone to know the Lord at least as intimately as I know Him, and receive at least as great a blessing as that which I receive within this ancient and venerable utterance of His Holy Church, but I know that all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord before men can expect no less salvation, whatever else they may believe in or about, than that which they receive from Him, who has created, called and saved them.

Glory to Your forbearance, O Lord, glory to You!

Stages of Christianity

1.

Appearance of the Word of God in human form, the God-Man Jesus Christ; this event is now called the Incarnation.

2.

On the authority of the prophet John the baptizer, some of his disciples leave him and become disciples of Jesus.

3.

By his personal call, Jesus attracts more disciples to himself.

4.

Jesus preaches the Word to the people, some of whom become interested in him for various reasons, but his following remains very small, the group we know as the disciples.

5.

Jesus sends these disciples out from him, in twos, to preach the same message in the local area to the Jewish people.

6.

Knowledge of Jesus and his message grows throughout the region of Palestine and even a little outside of it; his audience, but not his disciples, increases in number.

7.

Still having a small number of disciples, and a slightly larger number of followers, Jesus Christ comes into sufficient conflict with the religious establishment, for them to take action against him; they bring him to the civil authorities and request his execution.

8.

Jesus Christ is judged in a series of irregular legal proceedings and is condemned to death; he dies, crucified, as a common criminal, abandoned by all but one disciple, his mother, and a few women followers.

9.

Some of his sympathizers among the local notables request and are granted possession of his corpse from the civil authorities; they temporarily place it in a newly excavated tomb.

10.

The civil authorities station guards at the tomb to prevent his followers from retrieving and hiding the corpse; this is done at the request of the religious authorities, who fear that the disciples will steal the corpse and pretend that Jesus is resurrected from the dead.

11.

Despite the guards, the corpse disappears within two or three days; at first, some women begin to testify that Jesus is alive and has spoken to them.

12.

For a period of forty days, Jesus appears alive, first to his disciples, later to his followers as well, teaching them the rest of his message, especially explaining the significance of his death; this event is now called the Resurrection.

13.

Jesus Christ, in the presence of at least his disciples, but probably also of some of his relatives and followers, disappears in an event now called the Ascension.

14.

Ten days after the disappearance of Jesus, a mixture of his original disciples and followers experience a prophetic anointing during a prayer vigil and begin to publicly preach the message of Jesus Christ.

15.

The distinction between disciple and follower disappears, as the group of believers in the message rapidly grows, combining latent followers with new hearers.

16.

The community of disciples becomes organized, and those who preach the message emerge as apostles; there is no break with the established religion, only a revision of its content, among the disciples.

17.

The established religion excludes the brotherhood of disciples, who assemble separately outside it; the apostles are succeeded by their personal disciples who emerge as elders and bishops.

18.

The disciple community with its elders and bishops is recognized by the state as an entity, which institutionalizes it; the distinction between disciples and believers appears, the former becoming ascetics and monastics.

19.

The institutionalized community of disciples and believers becomes the established religion, taking on many characteristics of the state, as the state erodes; non-conforming elements in the community are suppressed.

20.

The state revives, localizes and divides the community, and makes citizenship and membership in its own established religion compulsory; discipleship is contained in special structures and marginalized.

21.

Discipleship revives both within and outside the established religions; the state withdraws its support from them except as cultural constructs; divided communities of disciples and believers emerge.

22.

Discipleship to the God-Man Jesus Christ supersedes the established religions and institutional forms of Christianity; the distinction between disciples, followers and believers disappears, and Jesus reappears in the same way he disappeared in an event called the Parousia.

Happy in the Lord

I am happy in the Lord, because through everything he's made me able to cope with things I never could have handled before. But my broken heart now is ready to receive anything and anyone. It's so broken that there is no longer any pain, no more crying, only lots and lots of room, for Christ, for the brethren, even for my enemies. That's just how it is.

Mystery solved. I am either a madman, or dead already, or dreaming, or a fool, or maybe all of the above. But, what you see is what you get with me. And if anyone walks all over me, it's because I let them. Sometimes the Lord wants us to feel what it's like to be the ground on which we walk. Just dirt, simple dirt, that's what we're made of,
but not what we are.

Yes, as scripture says, ‘Man reaches the end of darkness when he pierces to the uttermost depth the black and lightless rock’
(Job 28:3).

Let us also go

It’s really quite impossible to save a man. It takes all that God can do to deliver him. Everything that a man’s neighbors do to try to save him is really of no help. As well-intentioned as they are, when mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, friends, neighbors, teachers, pastors, co-workers, psychiatrists and social workers try to save a man, they can do little more than alter his outward complexion, and that’s the best they can do. The worst they can do is push him to profound despair and death, and this despite their good intentions.

But how then can a man be saved?

It’s certainly not by his own efforts, nor is it by the will of the people around him, but it is by God alone. All that is needed on his side is to keep saying “yes” to whatever God asks of him.

How does He ask?
It is by His acts, what He send us, the people, the situations and circumstances that He places in our path. Knowing that God uses everything that happens to us to be for our benefit, regardless of appearances and human judgment, we can rely on Him to save us, unconditionally. This is true, whether we trust God or not, He is out to save us. When we say “yes” to what He sends us, we let Him save us. When we say “no” to what He sends us, we don’t trust Him, we tell Him in effect that we know best, that we can save ourselves—an impossibility.

This seems to be a hard road and, yes, it is the way of the Cross, and following it, as did Mary the Lord’s mother, we are led to a place where the unthinkable happens—the betrayal and sacrificial death of the Good—but that which is beyond all thought and imagination, that which we can only hear told with wonder, happens to us. We are saved. Yes, by His stripes we are healed, and saved. We believed His Word, “I am the Resurrection and the Life” and when He asked us, by these acts in our lives, “Do you believe this?” our response was, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

“Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
John 11:16 NIV

A new gospel

There is a new gospel, a fresh gospel, that is preached to every person, in every circumstance, and that gospel is going to always be slightly different from the gospel preached to the next guy. That is the strength of the gospel, not its weakness: that it can be all things to all men.

Paul was not saying something astonishing or scandalous when he says he is all things to all men: he was only saying of himself (since he was the servant of that gospel) what is true of the gospel itself, fitting itself into the ears of each one, for ‘faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.’

Isn't that what is so good about the good news? That Christ who is Himself one person of the Divine and Holy Triad, sheds the might of His divinity, coming down to our level, to live among us, to speak our language, not just to feel our pain and endure the temptations we suffer.

If He must die on the Cross for our salvation, that cannot be conveyed to us, placed within our reach, without it being sized and fitted to the broken hearts of each of us. Yes, the Man of Sorrows, but also, the God of Joys. The latter doesn’t balance the former; it engulfs it like the sea engulfs a pebble, leaving no trace.

Hence, the gospel, always new, always fresh, containing all, supporting all, adapted to all, welcoming all, transforming all, but one by one, even as one by one we each receive the call, and one by one are seated at our places in the banquet of the Divine Nature, the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Grace

A baby is born. If all goes well, it is born with no serious danger to mother or child. Though we know what pains the mother endures in giving birth, no one has yet told us of the labor of being born. No one remembers, unless they are hints of it, those odd, terrifying dreams we sometimes are plagued with as children, of darkness, of our extreme smallness, of the threatening largeness of our room, of the strange terror of seeing light through our slightly open nursery door, those strange dreams that bridge our sleeping and our waking.

A baby being born, first the head emerges, again, if all is as it should be, with foamy hair and then suddenly, there is an absolute urgency for the rest of the body to follow. Everyone is tense, and the labor of birth is one that cannot be stopped, it must press on till completion—Push!—till the babe is out. There is the struggle for air, to clear the passages of fluid so the little creature can draw in its first breath, and exhale it as a cry. When it does, everyone exhales too a massive sigh of relief, and then the cord must be clamped and cut. For a moment all attention has focused on the child, but very quickly returns to the mother. The midwives attend her and the child, for it seems both are totally helpless.

This is how it is with us. We come into the world unasked but welcomed as Job says, “Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?” (3:12). We come into the world totally helpless. Everything must be done for us. Not only do we not know where we are, but we cannot even see clearly. If we see at all, what is that sensation? What are those movements in that brightness, those shapes what are they? And now, what is that vibration? It’s different from the smooth, dark and rumbling sounds we thought were our world. Then something pops, and we hear the new sounds even more loudly and clearly. But where are we? What are we? Totally helpless.

Being born is not much different than being born again, that is, from above, as Jesus tells us, “unless a man is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). He is just as helpless to do anything for himself as that newborn babe. Everything has to be done for him. Everything is pure gift, even the fact of his birth is pure gift, and all is due to a sacrifice that he is totally unaware of, by a being, his mother, whom he doesn’t even know yet, but begins to know, as his lips feel her soft nipples nudging his unknowing mouth. This is how it is with us in being born again. Everything is gift, all is grace and love and generosity, and we little know at first, and even for long afterwards, how great the sacrifice was offered on our behalf. But we feel the Spirit nudging us, coaxing us to feed and, in feeding on the pure milk of the Word, to drink, be filled, and grow.

We are totally helpless in our new birth. Who can deny that all is grace, that everything offered to us has been given for free, that Someone chose us to be born, not we ourselves? And how can we overlook this miracle? And why would we want to? We all have been born into the most beautiful of all worlds, even though the devil’s envy has defiled it with the spectre of physical death. We all can be born again into a world even more beautiful, that cannot be deformed by the destroyer of souls, because he cannot even see it.

Totally helpless in our birth, we grow by love into the image of our earthly parents and our heavenly Father, until we too conceive, and bear, and love, all for free, until our lives become grace itself.

Indeed, from His fullness we have, all of us, received—
yes, grace in return for grace,
since, though the Law was given through Moses,
grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ.
John 1:16-17

The peace of Christ

Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?
The Blood of Jesus whispers peace within.
—Edward Henry Bickersteth

Hymn writer

Peace, that which comes from above and is granted by God alone through Christ is not easy to define, but it definitely does not mean something like ‘all's well’ or ‘peace and quiet’ in the usual sense. Peace from God does not necessarily mean that there is no trouble anywhere in our life, nor that we are not faced with problems to which we cannot find a solution.

It's easier to talk about this peace that comes from God through Christ and is bestowed on us in prayer than it is to actually have it. Why? Because we usually talk about it when we are not in any great distress, emergency or need, but after we have been delivered from it. We look back in retrospect and thank God for the deliverance and find words of testimony to give about God's faithfulness.

What is the best definition of and the most convincing testimony to the ‘peace from above’?

When we are presently in distress, in danger, at risk, beset with problems we see no end of, when we are suffering persecutions, slander, unjust accusations, when no one believes us, when no one cares about us, and we are not sad, not unhappy, not anxious, not disturbed, not reproachful, uncomplaining, unmoved to anger or revenge, still hopeful, still forgiving, still loving our enemies, still seeking God’s Kingdom first and His righteousness, never giving in to despair or abandonment. When we are in this place, and can define ‘the peace of God which passeth all understanding’ not only by the word of our confession, but also by our passionlessness, then we have understood and accepted what that peace is. It's the same peace that Jesus knew when He was crucified and when He uttered with His last breath, ‘It is finished. Into your hands I commend my spirit.’ It is the same peace which Jesus gave to His disciples when He said, ‘My peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give.’

This is the peace of Christ.

Born blind

We are born blind, we never had eyes, we have never seen light, nor known it, nor experienced it, we have no idea even of what it is, just what others have told us. But did they have eyes? Were they born with sight? Or do they speak of what they imagine but never see?

This is how it is, for us, for every human being who has ever walked the earth, but One. We are born blind. We hear the world around us, but cannot see it. We know it’s there, we bump into it, sometimes hurting ourselves, until we learn how to navigate through the darkness.

Darkness? Our world doesn’t look dark to us. It’s light, it’s beautiful, there’s so much in it to see and experience. Yes, but all that you say we are seeing, all of it, my brothers, is dark and featureless, as shallow yet as deep as a starless night, and yet you say you see.

Let me, one blind man who does not see but feels, tell you that as wonderful as it would be for a man born blind to be granted the faculty of sight, that is how wonderful, and even more, it will be when we who have been born blind and see only this world are granted to really see.

To really see, when we have received our sight, we cannot remember anymore that seamless darkness that was what we thought the world to be. We will be able to close our eyes for a moment—only the demons are eyelidless—and see the world we left behind.

And just as we close our eyes to better pray, so there will we close our eyes for our brothers who live yet in that world born blind, which never since it sold them had eyes nor sighted birth, as we intercede without ceasing for those who await with longing to receive their sight.

And open them again, to receive Him who was always everywhere present, filling all things, the Lord and Creator of Life, to receive Him into our hungry eyes, to become what we behold, finally, finally, after waiting for what seemed for ever, waiting only to be fulfilled, to see only Him.

Except that moment

I don’t believe one has to understand or even know all that can be understood and known about the Godhead, even such essential doctrines as the Trinity, to be saved. Salvation happens when any soul turns sincerely and uniquely to Jesus as its Savior, and that is the core out of which all other experience, knowledge and understanding spring.

The thief on the cross beside Jesus knew only one thing, Jesus is the Messiah, the King of Israel. He didn’t even understand salvation apart from being merely remembered by Jesus. He hadn’t been instructed. He hadn’t been confessed of his sins. He hadn’t been baptized. He hadn’t received the Holy Eucharist. He hadn’t read the bible. He knew no other fact, other than the fact that the Man who hung beside him had ultimate and perfect power to save.

What astonishing faith! Knowing they were all going to be dead very soon, he asks the Man beside him who likewise would be dead, to remember him in His kingdom. For me, what’s happening when a person is joined to Jesus unto the kingdom and life eternal, is exactly the same as what happened with the thief. Everything else that engulfs that moment of saving recognition can be dispensed with, when necessary. Everything can be dispensed with, except that moment.

By faith and not by sight

δια πίστεως γαρ περιπατουμεν, ου δια ειδους·

for we walk by faith, not by sight
2 Corinthians 5:7

The struggle seems to be, between what is,
and what rather should be.

We see ourselves, the world around us—if we are Christians, we see the Church—as we are, as it is, and we are dissatisfied, we are moved to crisis, we feel abandoned, we feel we must do something, and inwardly become crusaders, we must right wrongs.

When it is within ourselves, we do well, knowing ourselves to be under conviction, knowing that the Cross rises in awful majesty before us, inviting us: what will we do? just stand and watch, or lay down our burdens, allow ourselves to be stripped and mocked, our flesh nailed to the wood? find our lives by losing them?

When it is outside our selves, we must take another path.

Are other people, other things, really as we see them? Is the struggle really to be pressed home, between what is and what should be? between the reality and our ideal? And if so, whence this ideal? and what is it? Is the ideal something that really is out there, in past, in future, our only in our minds, in our seats of judgment?

By faith, not by sight—do we ever see other people as they are, or do we only perceive them? We see an image, as flat as the man we see on the television screen, speaking the news. This is what he looks like, sounds like, the surface of the moment to a living being who is years deep and miles wide, whose height is beyond the range of our vision, whose feet have trod what paths we may have never found. Yet we think we see him, we say we know him. He is as hidden from us as if we were blind.

The same is true of things, of events, of historical movements, we do not see them, understand them, either, only what we perceive, only what our minds tell us. The natural man walks by sight, judges by sight, struggles by what he thinks right, and carries on a fight—as if he could—to save the world, even when he says to himself, ‘I only want things to be as they should be; that's all I want.’ But Christ says, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains’ (John 9:41).

By faith, not by sight: faith is the substance of things unseen, and so the spiritual man does not walk by sight, but by faith. There is no ‘is’ and ‘should be’ in his thoughts, for he knows, by faith, that God is sovereign, that He is working His purpose out, and he trusts, he trusts in Him. This is not the ‘faith’ of mere religious profession that can find fault with and fight ‘the infidel’, that makes him an anointed crusader, a defender of God Most-High. Is a god that must be defended any better than the kitchen gods broken to pieces by Abraham?

Look deep, if you must look at all, or else avert your eyes from anyone, anything, but yourself. We cannot see very far beyond ourselves, so if we must walk—and walk we must—let's walk behind Him who is worthy of our trust, and take the path He treads. Yes, avert your eyes from anyone but yourself, but only to make sure you're still right behind Him. Otherwise, keep your eyes straight ahead, let Him, if anyone or anything, block your view of your destination, because this is where you want to be: ‘If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also’ (John 12:26). Yes, Lord, by faith, not by sight.

Confession

The Church of God expects to experience injustice and hostility historically. It is precisely that it is persecuted and does not fight back or take revenge, but prays for the forgiveness and salvation of its persecutors, that qualifies it as possessing the true faith and being the true Church. It is precisely at that moment when the Church takes revenge or remembers the offenses it has endured and passes on hostility and resentment to its next generation that it is betraying Christ and proving to everyone that it follows not the God whose throne is the Cross and who trampled death by death, but the old Adam, whom death tramples.

How can I be a member of a church institutionally some of whose members and even some of whose leaders are betrayers of Christ? Well, because I too am a betrayer of Christ, but by His call refuse to give in to defeat, since He has won the victory for me, and for these others, whose blasphemies they call loyalty to Orthodoxy, while trampling down not death by death as Christ does, but their brothers, whom they hate, as death does. Like it or lump it, I too am a sinner following Christ, and if He picks me up every day, He will pick up these others too. Meanwhile, we all suffer the strain of forgetting Him while we glory in our own ideas, fleshly and blind though they be, and mistake our loves and hates for truth.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Dreaming of heaven

No matter where we go, in place or in time, across all cultures, we find that all human beings have one thing in common, without exception. We all have this idea that somehow, things are not as they should be, that there is something flawed about all we do, all we experience, in this world. There is always present this feeling of wanting to be home, but just when we think we’ve found home, it too turns out to be just another way station on the caravan of souls going… somewhere.

This idea, or feeling (because it seems to transcend mere thought and seems to issue from another part of our being, the heart maybe) can almost be described as what defines mankind and sets us off from other creatures. Though there are animals that build and organize, it seems that they always follow the same logic, and their creations never deviate very much from an instinctual standard. Could this idea of ours also be something of the same sort, an instinctual standard that is inseparably part of us, the very thing we were created to do?

In any case, we have this idea, but we cannot fulfill it. We are living in a world that is already perfect, yet somehow we find ourselves unable to be happy here. Some part of us keeps dreaming of heaven.

The one true American fairy tale, The Wizard of Oz, in its film version far exceeded the scope and content of the original children’s books, becoming in the process another heavily endowed myth of our dreaming of heaven.

Every religion and philosophy the world over has arisen out of mankind’s dreaming of heaven. It comes even before the discovery of God, and is probably what has pushed us into that search for Him. If there is a heaven, there must be a God. Does that make sense? Well, maybe not to all. Buddhism doesn’t need a God, but in some of its forms, it still wants, looks for, and promises heaven. It’s interesting that a similar experience can provoke at least two different responses.

Once there was a rich and cloistered prince who left the palace and walked through the world. He saw there four things that impressed him: a sick man, a poor man, a beggar and a corpse. All of these are things that he knew were intrinsically wrong, and the books about him say that ‘he was filled with infinite sorrow.’ Ultimately, after much searching and thinking, this man came to the conclusion that none of this was real, and that escape was possible and necessary. This escape, though, was not dreaming of heaven. It was something more like not dreaming at all. Why was this? Because this man considered that what he experienced in the world was itself just a bad dream. He created a path of escape from dreaming. This man was Gautama, called the Buddha.

In another story, there was a poor man who left his workshop and walked through the world. He saw there the brokenness of people, experiencing the rigor and hardship of their lives, joined them in their alternating sorrows and joys, tasted with them the bitterness of their exile from home, their dreaming of heaven. He shared with them this strange, inescapable feeling that things were not right in the world. He was born into a religion that tried its best to give men a system of rules which, if they lived by them, promised to make their lives in this world right, so that they wouldn’t need to dream of heaven. This religion even had a God who gave the rules and tried His best to get the people to follow them. Though they had the rules, and the belief that following them would set the world right, they didn’t follow them just the same. They didn’t, but the poor man did, and by following and fulfilling the rules to the uttermost, he opened a path of escape from dreaming of heaven, by opening a path of entering into heaven. This man was Jesus, called the Christ.

We all have the same experience as these two men, as have all men in all ages and cultures. Every time we think we’ve found home, somewhere to be comfortable, where everything is ‘as it should be,’ something or someone spoils it. In the film The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo, ‘It’s that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something is wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me.’ Morpheus in Greek mythology is the god of dreaming. Dreaming of heaven. The Wachowski brothers sure packed a lot of truth into that first film.

Here, if nowhere else, is the common experience that unites everyone, the knowledge that all is not well with us and with our world. Religions and philosophies offer answers and explanations, hoping to strengthen our dreaming of heaven to the point where maybe the dreaming will be enough for us, and sometimes just trying to get us to not dream at all. But where did the need to dream originate? Who told us that all is not well? And people dream only of things that they have seen and experienced somewhere, even though the dreaming sometimes distorts them beyond recognition.

The answer to all this, does it come from the prince turned enlightened one, or from the carpenter nailed to a tree?

To dream or not to dream, that is the question.

And if we must dream, who will wake us up?

The reward of virtue is to see Your face,
and on waking, to gaze my fill on Your likeness.
Psalm 17:15 Jerusalem Bible

His merciful face

We cannot do wrong, I think, when we judge with the scale weighted in favor of mercy, because God does not judge without mercy those who judge with it.

On the other hand, we can do wrong when we judge with severity, and that also puts us personally in very grave danger, for what can we appeal to in our defense, when we are judged by God?

Christ says, ‘How blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy shown them.’
He never says, ‘How blessed are those who judge justly…’ and well could He have quoted reams of laws out of the Torah, or even verses from the psalms, about judging justly if He had so desired. But no, He knew we didn’t need any help there.

As He Himself says, He came not to condemn the world, but in order that the world would be saved through Him. Since all that the world had seen of God up till then was His face of judgment—because that’s all they wanted to see—He had to come in person to show His merciful face.

From now on, no one can ever again put a man-made mask on the face of God, whether too severe or too lax: God Himself has shown up, and shown us ‘the light of His face’ and that is, above all, mercy.

What do you mean? ‘Show us the Father!’
I’ve been with you all this time!
Don’t you know that to see Me is to see the Father?

Want to be one

What is more important in the Body of Christ than unity? The world does not believe because it sees that the Church is not the abode of peace, unity and love, but only another society much like itself, full of jealousies, usurpations, war and discord. It knows that we have a good Lord and God but that He must not be worth very much, that we do not really believe in Him very strongly and truly, because our belief hasn’t changed us very much. It looks in at our door and sees a house no better than its own. It looks at our family and sees the same dysfunction that afflicts its own family. Why would the world want to enter into the Kingdom of God, if that Kingdom is only the same as its own under another name?

The human world, the human race, is stopped in its tracks, cannot take the next step in its evolution, because the only part of it that has the possibility of taking the first steps has chosen not to. The only new man in the history of the world has appeared. Though we fought against Him with all our might and were able to bodily kill Him, He was not defeated but instead defeated everything in us that keeps us down. What is worse for us is that the Man did not go away but is always present in our midst, and still we, the Church that claims to be His Body, the Body of Christ on earth, His Presence, that people who can of all peoples take the step into the new humanity, the new world, do not take it.

Unity, yes, unity. It does not have to mean what we try to bend it to mean. It is not an ideal that we can say we strive for but are unfortunately unable to achieve. No. Unity in God does not mean administrative unity. We all do not have to be united under one pope or system of Church government. That has been our big mistake, but it stems from another deeper one, the desire to overcome, not ourselves, but others, in the name of God. How senseless, how brutal is our handling of the Message that it no longer has any power in it to transform the world. We are indeed on our last legs, we have indeed reached our next to last day. We have failed to bring new birth to the world.

The Book is there and open to all who can read. The Christians read it and do not follow what it says but only argue about it and talk it to death. The world reads it and picks and chooses what it wants to take in its vain attempt to do without the Spirit what only the Spirit can do. The world and the Church are two disobedient sons, one saying it will do what the Father wills but does not, the other saying it will not do what He says—because there is no Father—and yet does, though without effect. Belief cannot be followed by disobedience. Obedience has no power to transform without faith. Though Christ prefers the obedient faithless to the disobedient believing, neither brings mankind to its destiny.

This talk of mine is no more than idle talk. I am both in the world and in the Church and I share the fate and fault of both. All I know is, I too want to be transformed. I too want to see the uncreated Light of Tabor and seeing it become it. There is no blame or shame that I do not share with all of you, my brothers, all of you, both believers and unbelievers. Nothing about us that divides us matters at all. Nothing. It is only what unites us that matters, and there is only one thing, one Man, that can unite us, and that is Christ. He does not unite us by brute force, by threats, intimidation, or by decree. He unites us by His prayer to the Father, by His life for the world, by His death on the Cross, by His resurrection.

This is what humanity is waiting for, what mankind really desires, what every man and woman, rich and poor, free and slave, really wants. Having this, having the unity that is in Christ, having it not just talking about it, is what dissolves the struggle between man and woman, tears down the wall between rich and poor, and makes of the human race a single family of priests and kings, where none rule but who serve, and where all make progress with not a single one left behind into the new world that Christ has established. He is the new Man, the only One, and what then does that make us? There is no middle ground, though we have made of human history a midden of disappointed hope by our refusal to follow Him.

Can we start today? Is there anything I can do as a single man, you as a single man or woman? If you are a pope, a bishop, a priest, a minister of the gospel, a missionary, a witness, a worker for Christ, whatever you call yourself, if you say you are following Christ, is there anything you can do? Is there anything you can do to make a difference? There is no program to follow, no principle to espouse, no compact to subscribe to. Have you been baptized and believed? Now just go and say and do what you hear Jesus saying and see Him doing in the holy gospels. Step into the shoes of the fishermen, but don’t do what you want, do what He wants. He is alive. He will tell you. I cannot do that. I can only listen for myself.

Humanity is waiting to take the next step in its evolution because those who know that the step has already been taken by Christ have refused to follow, but only squirm in their seats as they watch the Jesus movie and read the lives of the saints. The world will not believe until it sees God among us. Is He really there? Is He really here, with us? Do we believe that? If we do, then what are we doing sitting here like this? No, it isn’t just what we can do. In fact it is nothing at all that we can do that will transform humanity. Only He can do that, but we must first want it, we must first give Him our permission. We must let Him transform us.
All we need to do is want it.
Want to be one.

…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
John 17:21

The magic of existence

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

Till we leave our tombs

Whenever I look back—and I try not to, but sometimes it happens—whenever I look back at my life, my mind automatically starts up analyzing, measuring and weighing my acts, those of others, judging my mistakes, pushing me to lamenting, but not to guilt—I don't know why, but I've never been able to feel guilty about anything since I met the Lord at age 24. But I remember a talk I had with the Lord in the garden arbor on the evening of Yom Kippur a few years ago, which was a sort of turning point in my life in middle age.

Yes, the past can be looked at as wasted, or as preparation, but the testimony of the Scriptures leans toward the second view, that of preparation.

That we have wasted the opportunities God keeps sending us, that seem inherent in time itself as His gift, is without doubt. That we have been taught by our mistakes and strengthened by withstanding oppressions, that we have patiently endured under trials, even under the trial of our own helplessness and sin, is also without doubt.

God is good, and as the holy apostle says, ‘He turns everything into good for those who seek Him.’

To know that my earthly life will end soon fills me with joy.

Soon? Am I prophesying my own death?
No, but I already find myself at that moment which will be my last on earth, I am experiencing that rapid flipping through the pages of the book of my life that happens as we are judged, watching what I did with Christ walking along beside me, and knowing that His love is unconditional and His mercy infinite. ‘Whoever believes in Me…’

Joy? Am I happy that my earthly life will end?
Yes, because it could not continue, I cannot continue, for ever, as I now am. I know that. It isn't as though we will be magically transformed, ‘dying and going to heaven’ to be angels as some have imagined. No, dying in Christ is to happily be ended as what we think of as ‘human,’ what I think of as ‘myself,’ and to vanish without a trace, to emerge ‘on the other side’ as a being I could never imagine here and now, so different from what I now am, that it would be easier for a baby to remember its life in the womb than it would be for that new creature I will have become to imagine my life on earth.

This is true joy, to be happy to die, knowing real life doesn't begin
till we leave our tombs.