St. Botolph’s Parish, Great and Holy Pentecost, 23 May 2010

‘He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water”.’ (John 7.38)

‘What religion are you?’ ‘Orthodox’. ‘What kind of Orthodox? Greek Orthodox? Russian Orthodox?’ If I had a pound for every time I heard this, I would be rich enough to buy us a church. Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox, the idea is clear: the Orthodox Church is inescapably tribal. Occasionally, when a stranger asks about my robes, I have to tell him I am a Greek Orthodox priest. ‘Orthodox’ by itself means nothing to him; Antiochian means even less. Once a stranger muttered, ‘Oh, uh, yes, Greek’, and looked decidedly relieved: the adjective told him, this is not a real faith, only an ethnic accident. Time did not permit me to explain that I was no more a ‘Greek’ than an Irish Catholic is a Roman. If only this tribal nonsense were limited to strangers! I know Orthodox, ‘as English as a London double-decker bus’, who honestly imagine there is a Greek Church as separate from the Russian (or Romanian, or Serbian) as the ‘English Church’ (that is, Anglican) is separate from the Methodist. Converts of this ilk want to make up an ‘English Orthodox Church’ to make sure that each former Anglican, or Methodist, or Baptist has a ‘national church’ of his own. A Bantustan for every tribe. Each tribe, drinking only from the waters of its own river. God help the outsider who tries to drink from it. Orthodox Apartheid: the order of the day. No Orthodox Church at all; only a ‘family of national churches’, so why not invent an English one? As many churches as there are tribes, yes? Discover a tribe, invent a church.

That is how far we have fallen away from Christianity. Bantustans: homelands! But here, by Liverpool Street, right in the throbbing heart of multi-racial, multi-cultural London – here, where everyone, from all over the earth, wanders in – here, on the frontier: we are tired of the waters of Apartheid. We are tired of drinking the stale water from a stagnant river. We have living water to drink.

Living water, flowing on the frontier. Do you know what a frontier looks like? Everyone’s home, and no one’s. There is a frontier in northern Israel, a rocky upland plain from the base of Mount Lebanon to the ridge of Mount Carmel. A wide plain, where the migrating birds cross over from colder climates to Africa and back every year. King Solomon gave this green, rocky plain to Hiram, King of Tyre in the land of Phoenicia, in thanks for the cedar wood used to build the Temple in Jerusalem. But, as soon as he did, the land was crawling with immigrants. Immigrants from all over. The throbbing heart of a multi-racial, multi-cultural land. So Israel called this region Glil ha-goyim, ‘the district of the Gentiles’: Glil, ha-Galil, al-Jaleel, or ‘Galilee’ for short. Galilee of the Gentiles. Galilee, the land on the frontier. Here, where Jew and Gentile mingled inevitably; where there was no Greek or Russian, and tribes found it hard to stay separate. Multi-racial, multi-cultural Galilee, where our Lord Jesus Christ grew up in the town of Nazareth.

On the Feast of Tabernacles, Christ makes his way down to Jerusalem. On the last day of the feast, he stands and proclaims the message of his ministry: ‘Whoever believes in me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’. On the feast that honours forty years of wandering in the wilderness, Christ declares: the whole world is a wide, open frontier. There are no tribes, no homelands, no Holy Bantustan. The waters of Apartheid have all dried up. There is only true belief – and false. No sooner has he spoken but some say, ‘He’s a prophet’. ‘No, he’s the Christ’. But from Galilee? ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’? Mixed, multi-racial Galilee? The Christ comes out of Bethlehem, not Galilee. So the Pharisees, the pure-blooded Jews, send officers to arrest him. They return empty-handed: ‘No one ever spoke like this’, they say. ‘You idiots’, the Pharisees shout, ‘he’s from Galilee! He’s not even a real Jew!’ Nicodemus the Pharisee answers: ‘How can you judge him unless you hear him?’ ‘What!’ they shout. ‘Are you from Galilee, too? Look it up! No prophet will ever arise from Galilee’, district of the Gentiles; Galilee, foreign Galilee, where the tribes mix in with each other until there is no pure tribe left. But this is the great promise of the living water: a river of living water, flowing straight from the throne of God. The river, so wide and vast that it carries every tribe away in its current. Washes them clean, mingles them together, until a New People emerges. A People that is neither Jewish nor Gentile: a third race, a People called Christian.

The rivers of living water that Christ promised, this day flow freely. This day, the promise is fulfilled. On Holy Pentecost, when all the disciples are gathered in one place, tongues of flame appear over each head. The Holy Spirit that hovered over the face of the deep, the Spirit that Christ breathed on them to ordain them – no sooner do they receive this Spirit than Peter goes out to preach to a people assembled ‘from every nation under the heavens’. The curse of Babel that created nations, tribes, and tongues is overcome, for all time: each hears in his own native language but all hear exactly the same. The death of nations is the birth of the Church. Now, no tribe drinks the putrid water of nationalism from its own river – because all drink the same, living water, the Spirit poured out on all flesh. But mind you, this is no mindless babble; no shriek, no howl, no nonsense words, like the ravings of a demoniac. Babel is overcome. The Spirit poured out is the pnéuma tês alitheías, the Spirit of Truth. The Galileans are not drunken with wine; they are drunk with Truth. In place of stagnant water, living water flows from the hearts of all those who truly believe; in place of tribes is born … the Orthodox Church.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: welcome to Galilee! Galilee of the Gentiles, where those born without the promise are united to the promise. Welcome to the death of tribes, and the birth of the Holy Orthodox Church. To enter the Orthodox Church, you must pass in through a door – be it a Greek door, a Russian, a Romanian, an Antiochian – and leave at the doorstep all habits that are foreign to the Church. I have devoted myself to rooting out those habits. But ‘Greek’ or ‘Russian’ or ‘Romanian’ are only doors, not the house; and to linger perpetually on the doorstep – including an ‘English’ doorstep – is never to enter the house. On this Holy Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, we say: ‘Come in! Come, all you who are thirsty. Forsake the stagnant waters of your Bantustan; drink the living water of the True Faith’. Everyone finds a home here, if he is ready to surrender his whole life to the Spirit of Truth. Here, in the throbbing heart of the multi-cultural city, we testify that no prophet arises from Galilee: only the Christ himself. What united those on Pentecost but the rivers of living water? And what unites us here? English and Irish and Americans, Cypriots and Swedes and Palestinians, Romanians and West Indians, visitors from all corners of the earth, both cradle Orthodox and proselytes, united on the frontier of heaven and earth. Each telling, in his own tongue, the mighty works of God.

St. Botolph’s Parish, Saint John of The Ladder,  14 March 2010

“This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.” (Mark 9.29)

Everything depends on the quality of the vodka. Drink a vodka made of fine grain, drink moderately, eat zakúski – the little snacks that go with it – and a fine vodka may loosen your tongue, not your head. But drink too much of the cheap home brew, on an empty stomach, and you will vomit your guts out. Or wake up so hung-over, you wish you were dead. Or see insects crawling through your walls. Cheap vodka brings on the madness. You foam, you grind your teeth, you become rigid. When you are out late in a city like London, you see people foam, grind their teeth, become rigid for every kind of reasons. People crawling in back alleys, drinking oceans of the cheap stuff on an empty stomach. It’s cheaper than heroin and crack. In parts of Vancouver, where my wife used to work, it was not unusual to see a woman crawling on all fours at three in the afternoon. Her arms, full of more needle holes than you could count. Her body shriveled, as much from cheap liquor as the diseases she picked up from her clients. Her mind twisted, mutilated by memories that are killing her, piece by piece. I know what a city is like. The faces, the sounds of madness: madness, wherever it comes from. The groans of addicts, garbled voices of twisted humanity. People mutilated, inside and out. Labels like ‘schizophrenic’, ‘paranoid’, ‘borderline’ – they tell more about the psychiatrists who invent them than the patients they label. What do I see in a drunken, addicted, trafficked woman, scrounging for a needle on the mad streets? I see the roots of repentance.

When you hit rock bottom, you know what it means to repent. You know that it does not happen overnight. No magic formula, no dramatic gestures. It starts as soon as you hit rock bottom – when you have to admit: ‘My life is out of control, and there’s nowhere left to hide’. What do you think repentance is? Abstaining from meat, eggs, or dairy in Lent? That’s a diet, not repentance. Saying all your prayers, every day, all attentive and warm inside? That could be only self-hypnosis, not repentance. Feeling guilty, disgusting, useless? That’s self-loathing, not repentance. Feeling clean and wholesome and good, patting yourself on the back for the commandments you keep? That’s pride: the opposite of repentance! Repentance is never a feeling; feel as good or as bad about yourself as you wish, that is not repentance. Repentance is not a magic act that transforms you in an instant: ‘Give your life to Jesus’, and everything will be OK. Repentance does not mean getting clean, keeping clean, though it may clean you up on the way. Repentance is a series of steps. Painful, gradual steps. Steps, up a ladder. One by one, day by day.

Repentance is a struggle. You lie in a gutter and look up at the stars. You stop drinking, and start again. You open a prayer book and don’t see the words on the page in front of you. You want to believe in God but you can never see his face. Hear his voice. Why do you bother? Your own thoughts throw you into the fires of your own worst fears. They drown you in regrets. Then, you panic. It’s like you’ve gone crazy, foaming at the mouth, fainting. You wake up in the dark. You want to scream. All the while, your thoughts say: ‘God doesn’t notice. God doesn’t love you. God isn’t there’. Do you know how it feels, to struggle to believe in God? In God! To believe in yourself? If you’ve never wrestled with doubt, self-doubt that twists your mind, you believe in yourself – not the Living God.

Faith is only easy if you have never really believed. Today, a man comes to Jesus who struggles to believe. An alien force possesses his son. Since the boy was little, it seizes him, dashes him against rocks. It hurls him into the fire, then into the water to drown. He foams at the mouth and turns rigid. Madness? Epilepsy? Then ask the disciples to cure him. They can’t: no medical knowledge, no magic words help at all. God is silent. A man who has hit rock bottom asks Jesus: ‘If you can, help my son’. ‘If I can?’ Jesus answers. ‘If you can believe’. Believe? What about my doubts? My fears? A little, dwindling belief, constantly struggling with my doubt. ‘Lord, I believe’, the father says. ‘Help my unbelief’. It is the perfect prayer. Absolutely raw, absolutely honest. The prayer that the father of lies dreads. A prayer from the back alleys and gutters of the city. A prayer from the throat of twisted humanity. ‘Help my unbelief!’ Jesus says to the devil, the father of lies: ‘Come out, and never enter him again’. The body convulses and faints, as though he were dead. Jesus takes him by the hand – and he lives. ‘Why couldn’t we cast it out?’ the disciples ask him. ‘We are all men of faith, clean and wholesome and good. We said the magic words. Why did nothing happen?’ Jesus protests: ‘How long do I have to put up with you? You don’t get it, do you? It isn’t magic. It isn’t a feeling. It isn’t a matter of rules. It’s a series of steps. Steps, up a ladder. One by one, day by day’.

In two thousand years, the Holy Orthodox Church has learned one thing about faith: it is not easy. It isn’t meant to be. Faith is not an opinion. It’s not a feeling, a leap in the dark. Faith is repentance, change of mind; and repentance is a series of steps. When you are trapped in the cycles of suicide, the suicidal madness that drags you through the gutter, the madness that mutilates you inside and out – there is no quick fix. Faith, least of all. We don’t worship our own strength. We worship the Living God, who is infinitely greater than we. So we grope in the dark. Real faith always asks, always seeks, stumbles and falls. Falls, and rises. Rises, and falls. That is the proof that it is real faith. We wrote the book. Six centuries ago, a monk of Antioch named Yuhanna wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent. It isn’t a DIY manual: follow these steps, you’re there. St. John of The Ladder wasn’t a self-help guru, offering a quick fix. The rungs of the ladder are wide. Each step is gradual. In the unseen warfare with the mad thoughts inside us, thoughts that plunge us into the fire of fear and the water of regret, we are tempted to think: ‘What’s the use? I’ve fallen again’. But, if you look closely at the ladder of divine ascent, the only climbers that fall off the ladder are those who imagine that they are already there. Those who fall and rise again, those who struggle on – those are the ones who repent. Those are they who live.

Beloved in Christ: a man once asked a monk, ‘What do you do all day in a monastery?’ The monk answered truthfully: ‘We fall and get up, fall and get up, fall and get up again’. In this age of uncertain, paranoid fears, when we deny the tragic struggle of life and live under the illusion that a politician will rescue us; when communal values fall apart and the ‘I’ in me pulls away from the ‘we’; when each of us, in our own way, struggles simply to stay sane, day by day – we say to all unbelief: the most courageous act of all is to believe. To climb the steps, the rungs of the ladder. To believe, when it is hardest of all to believe – all because we lie in the gutter and never forget the stars. We fast from our trust in our own strength. We pray: not with the brain, or the gut, but the will that dispels the father of lies when we utter the honest words: ‘Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!’