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)

From within... rivers of living water

From the Oneonta Trail, above Triple Falls, Columbia Gorge, Oregon

Another couple of great poems have appeared at The Postman, and I want to share them with anyone who comes upon my blog. They are not too long, but what they express is very long, and very deep, and full of truth, full of Jesus. All of the Postman's poems open and close with the Word of God, demonstrating that he knows in Whom he lives, and moves and has his being, and in Whom he writes his songs. My favorite line occurs in this excerpt from the second, longer poem Witness…

I can hide the thoughts I have
By actions that seem so righteous;
The grinding of my teeth
To be mistaken for a smile;
I can clench my fist in anger
But cross my hands behind;
I can seem so much better
Than one whose anger killed a man;
But on that great and terrible day,
When all the dead shall rise,
I will need to answer for my anger,
No more any place to hide,
With the killed and the killer,
Standing side by side.

Read the rest of the poem here, and read them both, and see for yourself how they start and how they end, and where they lead you.

ο Θεανθρωπος - The God-Man

Jesus, our Saviour, the God-Man…

We confess one and the same individual as perfect God and perfect Man.
He is God the Word Which was flesh.


For if He was not flesh, why was Mary chosen?
And if He is not God, whom does Gabriel call Lord?



If He was not flesh, who was laid in a manger?
And if He is not God, whom did the angels who came down from heaven glorify?



If He was not flesh, who was wrapped in swaddling clothes?
And if He is not God, in whose honor did the star appear?


If He was not flesh, whom did Simeon hold in his arms?
And if He is not God, to whom did Simeon say, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace”?


If He was not flesh, whom did Joseph take when he fled into Egypt?
And if He is not God, who fulfilled the prophecy, “Out of Egypt have I called my Son”?


If He was not flesh, whom did John baptize?
And if He is not God, to whom the the Father say, “This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased”?



If He was not flesh, who hungered in the desert?
And if He is not God, unto whom did the angels come and minister?



If He was not flesh, who was invited to the marriage in Cana of Galilee?
And if He is not God, who turned the water into wine?


If He was not flesh, who took the loaves in the desert?
And if He is not God, who fed the five thousand men and their women and children with five loaves and two fish?


If He was not flesh, who slept in the ship?
And if He is not God, who rebuked the waves and the sea?



If He was not flesh, with whom did Simon the Pharisee sit at dinner?
And if He is not God, who forgave the sins of the harlot?


If He was not flesh, who wore a man's garment?
And if He is not God, who healed the woman with an issue of blood when she touched His garment?


If He was not flesh, who spat on the ground and made clay?
And if He is not God, who gave sight to the eyes of the blind man with that clay?


If He was not flesh, who wept at Lazarus’ tomb?
And if He is not God, who commanded him to come forth out of the grave four days after his death?


If He was not flesh, whom did the Jews arrest in the garden?
And if He is not God, who cast them to the ground with the words, “I am He”?


If He was not flesh, who was judged before Pilate? And if He is not God, who frightened Pilate's wife in a dream?



If He was not flesh, whose garments were stripped from Him and parted by the soldiers? And if He is not God, why was the sun darkened upon His crucifixion?


If He was not flesh, who was crucified on the cross? And if He is not God, who shook the foundations of the earth?



If He was not flesh, whose hands and feet were nailed to the cross?
And if He is not God, how did it happen that the veil of the temple was rent in twain, the rocks were rent and the graves were opened?


If He was not flesh, who hung on the cross between two thieves?
And if He is not God, how could He say to the thief, “Today thou shalt be with me in paradise”?


If He was not flesh, who cried out and gave up the ghost?
And if He is not God, whose cry caused many bodies of the saints who slept to arise?


If He was not flesh, whom did the women see laid in the grave?
And if He is not God, about whom did the angel say to them, “He has arisen, He is not here”?


If He was not flesh, whom did Thomas touch when he put his hands into the prints of the nails?
And if He is not God, who entered through the doors that were shut?


If He was not flesh, who ate at the Sea of Tiberias?
And if He is not God, on whose orders were the nets filled with fish?

If He was not flesh, whom did the apostles see carried up into heaven?
And if He is not God, who ascended to the joyful cries of the angels, and to whom did the Father proclaim: “Sit at My right hand”?

If He is not God and man, then, indeed, our salvation is false, and false are the pronouncements of the prophets.

From A Spiritual Psalter or Reflections on God
(from the works of our Holy Father, Ephraim the Syrian)
Click on the images to see an enlarged version.

Has the smoke cleared?

It’s a strange thing, at times almost beautiful though amidst a scene of desolation, the peace that descends in all quietude on the place where once a great house stood that has gone up in flames during the night, leaving whisps of smoke curling to a soft morning breeze and, underfoot, littered invisibly among charred, fallen timbers, glowing embers.
Or as Job, having finally fallen asleep where he lay alone in the ash pit scraping his sores, abandoned there by his faithless wife who had mocked him, “Why persist in your blamelessness? Curse God, and die!” is suddenly awakened in the dark night by the almost inaudible voices of argumentation going on somewhere in the blackness above him between his advocate YHWH and his antagonist, one claiming to be a son (or could it have been a daughter) of God, “No! He only serves You because You supply all his needs! Desert him, and see how he will curse You to Your face!”

What must be fulfilled will be fulfilled.
The fruit of pride, rebellion and apostasy remains on the tree a little longer. Then, without warning, for not having been harvested its loathesome weight bows the tree down until finally it splits, exposing light, living wood within the fissured bark of the ravaged trunk and branches. The tree will be cut down, savagely, by a relentless axe, neither the evil fruits nor the pain of wrath will be remembered henceforth. Only the fresh, hopeful sprigs arising from the otherwise barren stump will bear witness to what could have been, will follow the sun in its course, as He draws them up to Himself.

Saviour of fugitives, Christ our God, have mercy on us!

Suffering Church

An anonymous testimony of an Orthodox woman, concerning her family’s struggle in Christ…

Individuals can make a cult out of anything. As I struggle over my issues regarding my daughter and Islam, I see that what attracts her to it is the simplicity… “Five Pillars,” all confusion taken away, she just does what she's told… the tradition and discipline.

But we had aspects of that in Orthodoxy, and there were whole groups who had a group response to Orthodoxy, and their own “House Rules.” I see it as a kind of living suicide, giving up oneself, giving up… a self-centered kind of irresponsible self-emptying, the ultimate Gnosticism and faithlessness. She experiences it as “The Answer” and doesn't see the pattern of the ultimate answers she's picked before to fill her emptiness. There is an Answer presented that is so tempting to many tired despairing people, giving up, going to Koresh or whatever such answer is offered… giving power over yourself to another. Relax, everything is done.
“Magic pills.”

We abdicate thought and responsibility, compartmentalizing our participation in the church to liturgy and obedience which can become liturgical idolatry and blindness. But the image of the Body and community is not esoteric—it is didactic.

The eye has a job, the feet, the hands, all together in unity. There's diversity in the body. There's diversity in us. The principle to unity is freedom… not the Borg type, “You will be assimilated'.” As my daughter takes intoxicating, heady comfort in seeing hundreds on weekdays, mid-days, uniformed new friends praying, hind quarters high, heads low in sharp unison during the day (ridiculing our non-existent feeble presence on weekdays in church), she feels this makes it Real, really Real.

I am horrified at that and see extreme loss of freedom, loss of diversity, homogenization of the wonders of creation, like girls having plastic surgery aiming for the same ideals, politicians eyeing Global My Way Takeovers.

I see psyches stuffing feelings, pain, shame, struggles, hopes and curiosities to fit in, a kind of living dead. It may be that the Muslims are all compartmentalized, and that is their version of shallow churching… the uniforms, the choreography, the rules. And they act out… hopefully in healthy ways, if they have healthy venues to celebrate and commune with God. But as with any rigid association, often the only outlets must be secret, must be dark, and often allow expression in darkness to only the darkness.

Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos talked about and evidenced in Illness and Cure of the Soul, the groups he held every week for his spiritual children. They would talk of struggles, hagiography. I didn't take him for a homilist during these groups, but a father talking with his kids, and everyone together… a microcosm of the Body of Christ, helping each other along to greater gnosis and towards transfiguration.

I don't see that happening in America. Parishes focus on administration and financial priorities and on “putting the show on” every Sunday. Community life becomes coffee hour and volunteer projects like festivals which are again administrative and financial. There is rare, little constancy in parishes, save the demigods that rule, and it’s not unlike “serial fathers,” where the kids psychologically become fixated neurotics.

Our witness as the Church is feeble in America. How would a parish priest or lay community begin group therapy? It would be a novelty for a while, perhaps supported by hierarchs from time to time, second to administrative and financial priorities. But eventually, ego assaults the priest, envy assaults others, divisiveness erodes the work, and a new priest comes in, breaking the frame, and water seeks its own level. If it works, it very often is because of the tendency in people to transform the experience into a cult. Even positive or benign groups… work, A.A. N.A. types, social service ...

For me, my family, overcoming the pain of isolation, has to begin with the prayer at home and the group is the family and friends. Pray for us. In Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God.

Martyrs under the same sword

Till we’re ready to be martyrs next to each other,

under the same sword, no real unity is possible.

I don't know if this line which I read in a comment left on Fr Milovan's blog post Catholics Through and Through was intended to say what it says to me or not, but to me it expresses this very fundamental truth:

It is in our common witness (μαρτυρία), and in our common readiness to lay down our lives “for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (cf. Revelation 1:2, 1:9, 8:9, 20:4), that we express our unity in Christ, not through any hobnobbing of church dignitaries, or by any convenient ecumenical declarations, all of which are pure poppycock.

In history we have seen examples of this in the bodily martyrdom of Christians of all denominations in the Nazi death camps during World War II, and in the Soviet gulags (even though the majority were Orthodox Christians, a few weren't). For those who were “martyrs next to each other, under the same sword,” real unity was possible, and not merely possible, it simply was.

I recall a scene in the film The Hiding Place, where Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom, evangelical Christian sisters imprisoned in Ravensbrück, huddled in common prayer with Catholic women and a Greek Orthodox girl who crossed herself and recited the Πάτερ ἡμῶν (Our Father), as other women devoid of faith or just too desperate, looked on uncomprehending. Unity in Christ? How could there not be, since all were “martyrs next to each other, under the same sword.”

My hope is only that we are granted God's grace when it comes our turn to suffer for His Word and the testimony of Jesus, together, and finally recognize our brotherhood in Christ, which was ours in Him all along, in the only unity that is possible.

It just doesn't let up!

Continuing thoughts presented in the posts The Border, Fearless and True Man, let me share with you this straight teaching from Abouna Matta el-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor, a contemporary desert father, 1919-2006), found in his pamphlet Spiritual Economy…

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

Ever and always, your whole life long the devil will pressure you with all possible guile to ease up in your adherence to Truth in order to maintain your worldly or social status. He will alarm you and confuse you so that you might relinquish Christ's commandment in order to attain an opportunity for pomp, authority, and outward glory. Thus the Gospel, and along with it Christ, become victims along the path of your utilization and exploitation of chances for gain, comfort, and transient glory. And yet every time an opportunity to betray faithfulness and truth is presented to you, Christ will cast upon you a piercing gaze such as the look He gave to Peter at the time of his denial, a look that will pierce your conscience and the very depths of your being, so that you will perchance turn away from what you have resolved to do.

This is the measure of free faith, and blessed is he who chooses loss, weariness, contempt, illness, or even death instead of relinquishing his fidelity to God. For if he dares to choose this, then he will receive strength that will compensate all loss—a strength he had never known or expected, that strength which we call grace, which means "the gratuitous omnipotence of God," and which is so tightly bound to faith: "For by grace you have been saved through faith." (Ephesians 2:8) It is not just any faith, but rather the faith of one who is bold and defiant of death. This omnipotence makes hard things easy for you, and elevates your flesh and senses above the needs of nature; thus it is that man prays without fatigue, fasts without wasting away, serves without flagging, loves without ceasing…

These my teachers

It seems to me that I was still living in Edmonton, Alberta, just newly married, still following the ways of the world, and of worldly wisdom, evading the Lord's voice, which was daily becoming more and more recognizable to me, while still hoping for some "alternate Beauty" that gave birth to all being—anything and anybody but the God of Israel—groping for any truth that would still let me be Me.

My latest fascination was with popular Zen, with its entertaining stories of the Zen masters and their riddles to enlightenment, called 公案 kōans, questions they posed which defied rational answer and sought to find resolution in the human intuition. I thought things like this were really profound, "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" I can hardly believe I was enthralled by such things, even at the age of 22. At least they didn't keep me captivated for long.

A young man needs a mentor, and I still hadn't found one. My old college philosophy and religion prof, Doc Dana, was the closest I'd had so far in my young adult life. I'd loved the man, at least thirty years my senior, and hung on his words though not always understanding them. He wasn't an eloquent speaker, or a forceful speaker. He got his points across with a strange kind of gentleness and with such a twinkle in his eyes that I never even noticed till my third year at his lectures that he had a withered hand, right or left I can't remember. Since leaving college, emigrating to Canada to join a commune, and then having been ejected from it after hardly six months, I got married and tried to live "on the outside," as we used to call it, or "in the world." (New Age communes were and are especially dualistic, matter vs. spirit, like the ancient Gnostics.)

Anyway, I remember myself walking down a broad street and coming to an old used book shop at the corner. I had some time to kill, and in those days I was a fervent book-aholic, so I meandered inside. I always went straight for the "Philosophy / Religion" section, and that day, for some reason my eyes and hand went straight to a little paperback with The Desert Fathers on the spine. I pulled it out, and my eyes fell on the passage I am going to quote. Something told me, "This is the beginning and the end," and I quickly checked my pocket to see if I had the sixty cents it would cost me. I did, I bought the book, and then walked the rest of the way home, reading like there was no tomorrow.

The Desert Fathers became my teachers, easing me out of my New Age arrogance and getting me ready to meet their Lord, who would soon be mine. What I read in this passage and in the rest of the book never left me. Without me consciously choosing, I began to emulate what I read there, attitudes and practices. The authentic profound had discovered itself to me, and my conversion to Christ had begun. These my teachers succeeded Doc Dana, building on the foundation that he so gently and lovingly laid, that old Presbyterian minister. May his memory be eternal.

Now, from The Desert Fathers, pp. 67-68…

So we came to Nitria; the place most famous among all the monasteries of Egypt, about thirty-seven miles distant from Alexandria, and named after the neighbouring town in which nitre is collected, as though in the providence of God it was foreseen that in these parts the sins of men would be washed and utterly effaced, even as stains by nitre are cleansed. In this place there are about fifty (or not many less) habitations, set near together and under one father, in some of which many brethren live together, in some a few, in some a brother lives alone: but though they be divided in their dwelling, yet do they abide bound and inseparable in spirit and faith and loving-kindness.

So then, as we were drawing near the place, as soon as they knew that strange brethren were coming, straightway they poured out like a swarm of bees, each from his cell, and ran to meet us, joyous and eager, the most part carrying pitchers of water and bread, because the Prophet rebuking certain folk had said, "Ye came not forth to meet the children of Israel with bread and water." And after they had welcomed us, they brought us first with psalms to the church and washed our feet, and one by one dried them with the linen that girded them, as if to disperse the weariness of the road, and in very act to purge the stains of mortal life in the traditional mystery.

But of their humanity, their courtesy, their loving-kindness, what am I to say, when each man of them would have brought us into his own cell, not only to fulfill the due of hospitality, but still more out of humbleness, wherein they are indeed masters, and from gentleness and its kindred qualities which are learned among them with diverse grace but one and the same doctrine, as if they had come apart from the world for this same end. Nowhere have I seen love so in flower, nowhere so quick compassion, or hospitality so eager. And nowhere have I seen such meditation upon Holy Writ or understanding of it, or such discipline of sacred learning: wellnigh might you judge each one of them a doctor in the wisdom of God.

These my teachers were, and are, in Christ. Their way of life is not far from us, if we would take hold of the same Word of God that they held on to, and simply understand it, and live it, as it is. My home and your home, our home, a monastery to God, where He alone is Lord, and where is welcome anyone who knocks.

Brethren, let us love one another.

Cut off for me and you

Today I have been handing over to you not my own thoughts but those of others that have affected and edified me, and since good things come in threes, here is the third, a poem written by a Christian brother in south India. He calls himself "the Postman" and writes anonymously, but I am also slightly acquainted with him personally and know his identity. Some of you also write Christian poetry or, perhaps I should say, poetry in Christ, as I think there is a difference. That's why I am bringing this to your attention, so you can also discover another who expresses his faith in Christ this way and share his gift.

He begins by quoting the Word verse by verse (John 15:1-8), then he writes his poem, Cut off for me and you, and then he concludes by quoting the Word, again verse by verse (Isaiah 53:1-12). Go back and click on the linked title to read the whole poem.
I think you will be edified.

This is how his poem affected me. I wrote…

Beautiful poetry budding forth from the live wood of the Word. Especially poignant, for me, the last four lines…

There when He was cut off
Pierced for my sin
There my salvation flowed out
There I was grafted in.

Those four short lines encapsulate in lucid metaphor drawn straight from the spring of scripture the mystery of salvation.
I thank you and salute you, brother, for sharing this gift from the Most High with us.

What God wants

I was startled this morning to find this post in the "least read" lineup on my son Jacob's blog. It is a long post, and more candid than most people would dare to put in print, about personal happiness and the struggle to find it.

The premise is, "What God wants is tied to what I give, and not to what I want."

It took me awhile to understand what he is getting at, and I kept thinking I saw it, and then as I read a little further, what I thought I saw would dissipate, sort of like tracking a deer in the forest. Eventually, near the end of the post, I came to another statement that was like having that deer right in my sights,

"there are so many scriptures that have been interpreted to state that loving God is wanting what He wants… but it is actually giving like He gives."

Perhaps my blog post should be renamed "Loving God," because that is where Jacob's ended up.
What Jacob has written may not be for everyone, but if you feel adventurous, you can read the whole post here.

We've been given so much…

…and yet we give so little!

True Man

True man is he who doesn’t want to live long in this world. He wants to give his testimony and return as soon as possible, return home to Christ. He isn’t concerned about living a long life; he only wants to live on earth as long as his Lord wants him to live. Why? Because he is already living with Christ in His kingdom. He knows it with perfect certainty. He is redeemed, delivered from every desire and ambition that snares men and chains them to this world, and he is impatient to be free of this body of death, because he no longer lets it use him to sin. He is already living in heaven with Christ; all he wants is to be living there completely. If he must continue living in this world, he knows it’s only to do here what Christ wants him to do, to do what he sees Jesus doing in this world. He wants only to follow Jesus who, though living visibly in heaven, is alive invisibly on earth. And so, true man lives invisibly in heaven while he is living visibly on earth, following Jesus.

True man lives in the Word of God, and that Word is everything to him, and it makes him a child of the Kingdom, it makes him a disciple of Jesus. And Jesus and the Father come and live with him there, making him one of them by giving him the Spirit to live inside him. The Word of God is everything to him, it is his home, his food, his covering, his companion, his teacher, his protection, his inheritance. He is never without it, whether the Book is in his hand or not. The Word of God becomes his words, becomes his thoughts, becomes his actions. It is his strength, it guards his purity, it is his defense against all the lures and snares of the enemy. The Word of God proves His unalterable faithfulness to him and in him, and makes him faithful to God. The Word of God never leaves him, never leaves him alone, becomes a hedge around him, and makes him a hedge around the Kingdom in which he lives with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

True man is the implacable foe of the evil one, and doesn’t yield for a moment even an inch of territory, because the Word of God lives in him, and he lives in the Word. That is his world, and that world is the Kingdom. His citizenship is there while in the body he lives here. He is an unregistered alien in this world, which either shuns him as it goes along with its trifling affairs, pretending not to see him, or when it can’t help but see him, he is seen as a threat, he is seen as dangerous, and he is opposed with every injustice that can be brought against him in the name of the world’s justice. Because he obeys another Law, fulfills another commandment, that of His Lord, he falls under the condemnation of the laws of men and suffers with His Lord, who is put to death every day by the world. This too is an earthly evidence of his heavenly citizenship. He has nowhere to lay his head, no place in this world where he is comfortable, seeing that everywhere is under the dominion of the evil one, and with Jesus he is turned away at every inn, turned away because he is a God-bearer.

True man is too strong for the men who seek their home and their security on earth, and so he finds no friends among them. His strength is not from himself. He seems to wear his strength effortlessly, while others who claim to be strong or who try to be, make excuses for their weakness. But his strength is not from himself, it is from Christ who lives with him and who supplies him from His armory. His eye looks stern and unfriendly to men who have eyes only for the world, because his eye is single, and it looks always upon heaven, and from heaven where he already is living with Christ. His strength is from his Lord, and it shows in his walk and in his stance, in his speech and in his silence, in what he does and in what he does not do. All of this is a threat to other men who seek their strength only in things of this world, in things man-made, in what will not endure.

True man is in the world, but not of it. Why? Because he lives already in the Kingdom of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He lives there and he knows it. He has his proof of citizenship in the Word that never leaves him. He has his passport ready and can come and go through a door that to him is never shut between worlds, a door which, if he chooses to shut it, no one can open, and if he chooses to open, no one can close. He has been given this kind of authority because he can be trusted. Why can he be trusted? Because he has proven himself faithful to his charge, because he renews his faithfulness every day in the presence of his Father, by following the Son of God, by doing only what he sees Him doing. He has already been given the crown of life, because he is willing to lay down his life in this world, because of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.

Brothers, this is our call in Jesus Christ. This is the guarantee of our salvation. This is the life that has no end. This is the treasure hidden in the field that a man finds and then sells all that he has to purchase the field. This is the true man that has been recreated in the image of the Holy Triad who said, “Let us make man in Our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters…”

Brothers, this is true man.

Fearless

This is a building block of my spiritual economy that was just added last week, and though I didn’t intend to write about it, something is nagging me to do so, and so here it is. Perhaps there are others out there who are facing difficult circumstances that this might help.

A man who is fearless, who is afraid of nothing, cannot be defeated. Why? Because he knows that he has nothing to lose. That brought to mind the saying, “There’s no loss with Jesus,” which has been another one of the building blocks of my spiritual economy for a long time. I could see that the two ideas were reflections of each other.

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.

—Martin Luther

The natural man is ruled by his fears. We can see the truth of this especially at present, as our world is coming down piece by piece over the world financial crisis. Looking back, this is probably one of the greatest sins I personally have been guilty of, not acting (for the Lord) because of my fears. When I had my talk with the Lord that night in my arbor four years ago on Yom Kippur, the greatest change in my life that I committed to was this, that I would no longer let fear prevent me from doing anything that the Lord commanded me, regardless of the consequences. Now, Brock was handing over to me a word that expresses this change, “the reason that we are a threat to the world is because we are fearless.”

So, fearlessness also must be an attribute of the follower of Jesus. This is something I’ve known, even something I deliberately committed to, and yet never articulated this way before. You need a word like this to be a flag you can see on the battlefield in the heat of struggle, and now I have one. Fearless.

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matthew 10:28 NIV

God is our shelter, our strength,
ever present in time of trouble,
so we shall not be afraid when the earth gives way,
when the mountains tumble into the depths of the sea,
and its waters roar and seethe,
the mountains tottering as they heave.
Yahweh Sabaoth is on our side,
our citadel the God of Jacob.
Psalm 46:1-3 JB
quoted from memory

Mountains tumbling into the sea, and waters roaring and seething, I have not yet seen, but what has come against me, what has been thrown into my path to discourage and even destroy me, that I have seen. But my friend’s word, which he handed over to me from what the Lord has given him, speaks the truth…

Do not be afraid, it is I.
Matthew 14:27

Brothers of the Revelator

It is precisely where the Church exists in an openly hostile environment that it truly lives. Yet in every environment there are still individual followers of Jesus, or sometimes small pockets of them, both in church and out of church, whom the world hates and despoils, knowing Whose they are. And these one or two, two or three, are usually associated with an extended group who do not know their struggles (yet) but who stay near them and support them in various ways. Some of these, as they wake up, get pulled into the arena with the others already there, where the witness of Christ is undefeatable, right up to their physical deaths. These are those who with John the Revelator can be called συγκοινωνοι εν τη θλιψει (synkinoní en ti thlípsei > Greek, “companions in suffering”)… “because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” (Revelation 1:9 NIV) Do you see the churches full of these? How would you know them if you met them there? Are you one of them yourself?

Exiled to the isle of Patmos, that’s John the Revelator and those who, like him, are “brothers and fellow partakers (συγκοινωνοι) in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus.”

Inclusive

This is a loaded word as ambiguously dangerous as a loaded gun. Recently a pastoral message published in Ðýnamis, the newsletter of my community Aghía Triás in Portland, as well as numerous homilies preached in our midst, have directly or indirectly promoted the “inclusive,” particularly inclusive language and clerical order in the Church. If this were happening in an environment where the world system was dead set against it, I might suspect the Holy Spirit of trying to dawn on us a forgotten or repressed essential truth. What we find instead is that the world culturally engulfing us is askew with insistence on ungendering itself and everything in its path, and though ungendering is its stated aim, the result of its programme is something quite different, the inversion of reality. Unfortunately, this inversion is not of the kind that the Word of God describes when it says, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also… asserting that there is another king, one Jesus!” (Acts 17:6-7)

Inclusive language is increasingly used in biblical and liturgical translation to eliminate the exclusive preponderance of masculine pronouns and common plurals that appear as masculine. There’s a far more serious issue at stake here than whether God is masculine or feminine, a theological one, which is being battered to pieces and left for dead. That issue is the mystery of gender.

Very deep inroads have been made by unassailable feminism in the world culture and now also in the mind of the Church, twisting and altering language to empty it of unwanted meanings. Why unwanted? Because they originate in the language used by the Word of God, which is now being criticized as the product of a patriarchal age. In other words, the Bible is slanted because men wrote it, and men want to be in control. Supposedly, that’s why even God is referred to in masculine terms.

When I address a man or woman in Christ, I address them as brother or sister. When I address a mixed group, I address them as brothers or brethren, never as brothers and sisters, which is the politically correct way of talking. Why don’t I conform? Because I speak the language that I find in the Word of God, where brothers includes sisters.

The current trend in Orthodoxy is to talk about the church fathers as our fathers and mothers instead of just our fathers. This is evident when you hear a priest end a service saying the prayer, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers and mothers, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us.” The service book does not read this way. It has only, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus…” Why do some priests and deacons change the service book texts? Are they ashamed of our holy faith? Whom are they trying to appease? Fathers includes mothers, just as brothers includes sisters.

Back to the mystery of gender.

In the book of Genesis, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image… and let them be masters…’ God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27 JB) That’s in the first account of the creation. In the second account occurs a more detailed description. “Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from the soil. Then He breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) Then, later “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmate.” (Genesis 2:18)

Where did the helpmate come from? Was it made from the soil as was the man? No, but it was somehow taken out of the man. “So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, He took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. Yahweh God built the rib He had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2:21-22)

The two are parallel accounts of the mystery of gender in the human species. Man, the masculine, is created in the ordinary way. But hidden within himself is the woman, who is brought into being, extracted from the man, by God’s act. Man, when first created, included woman. That is what is revealed in the first creation account. Man is created, he is created in the image of God, and then “male and female” are differentiated. But it is in the man that the woman first exists, hidden until God’s act reveals her presence. (I prefer the Orthodox icon representation of this act to the version by mystic painter William Blake, shown above.)

This is a mystery.
Man includes woman, without confusion, consubstantially.
There never was a time when man existed without woman.

Does the language sound vaguely familiar? It should, because man is made in the image of God. And of God we know, He is One, though in Him are included three divine Persons, without confusion, consubtantially. There never was a time when the Father existed and the Son and the Holy Spirit didn’t, though the Father is the principal source of both. In like manner is man the principal source of woman.

Later, holy apostle Paul used the same analogy with respect to Jesus Christ the divine Bridegroom and the Church the divine Bride, and also in respect to human marriage. All of the apostolic teachings about the relationship between man and woman, in marriage as well as in the Church, are based on this same analogy:
Adam includes Eve.
Man includes woman.
Christ includes the Church.
Hence, brothers includes sisters, fathers includes mothers.

Adam was put to sleep and Eve was extracted from his side.
Christ was nailed to the cross
and the Church was extracted from His side.
Again, mystery.
And mystery, that point in kairós (acceptable time)
where God enters our world and decisively acts.

This is the real meaning of inclusive, that through God’s act, man includes woman. There’s no justification to correct the Bible or the mind of the Church.

In so seemingly insignificant a detail as God’s choice of gendered words, one of the key mysteries of existence is revealed. And just as a minute alteration to any of the physical constants (i.e., gravity, magnetism, etc.) would render the structure of the natural world “formless and void,” so does the mindless change of any of God’s words diminish our knowledge of the truth.