BE NOT ANXIOUS (Matthew 6.22-33)

June 13th, 2010

St. Botolph’s Parish, 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, 13 June 2010

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. (Matthew 6.33)

‘If you’re dying and you’re holding on’, a wise man once said, ‘you’ll see demons tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, you’ll see that the demons are actually angels, freeing you from the earth’. Heaven and hell do not begin in eternity; and they do not begin after death. Heaven and hell begin now – and you alone decide which is which. If you are dying, and you struggle against the rebellion of your body, against the organs shutting down, you will feel the agony. You will feel it in your tense muscles and your gasps of breath. But, most of all, in your thoughts: a fall into unknown space, regret for all that you have lost or never had. Longing for the loved ones that you leave behind. In your agony, you shake your fist against the injustice of death – and everything that binds you to this life, rises up and torments you like so many demons. But, if you have asked pardon of God and your neighbour; if you focus the fading light in your eyes on Christ our Crucified God and his All-Holy Mother who held him in her arms, on your own patron saint and guardian angel who stand on either side – in short, if you yield to God, you will see what is happening. You are falling asleep in the first rays of dawn. You will soon awake in light unapproachable. Agony or peace, heaven or hell: it all depends on how you look at it. The demon who shrieks ‘Give me your life!’ may in fact be an angel, whispering: ‘Come home’.

Coming into the Orthodox Church is like dying. You die to a whole host of practices that you once identified with being Christian and English: hymnals and organs, old churches dotting the English countryside. You die to old fears of ‘Popery’, incense and ‘Byzantine’ vestments and kissing holy icons with staring eyes. You die to fears of dark ‘foreigners’, with strange accents and fierce, flamboyant ways. Most of all, you die to the notion that the church in which you grew up was a part of the Church of Christ, rather than a church founded by men. You die to a million habits that defined your culture, now that you are a part of ours. You enter a foreign faith. If you struggle against it and hold on to old habits, you feel the agony. You miss old hymns and familiar faces. You long to attend familiar places of worship, or – God forbid – to ‘take communion’ outside the Orthodox Church. I see it all the time in converts who never convert. You shake your fist at the ‘exclusive’, ‘intolerant’ Orthodox Church that forbids you to worship elsewhere or marry outside of it. Every habit that binds you to your former faith rises up and torments you as soon as the Orthodox Church challenges it. Why? Because no one can serve two masters. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Now the consumer culture around you sees no problem. ‘Go ahead’, it says, ‘have it all. Be married to one person, sleep with another. Join the Orthodox Church, then worship anywhere you like. Buy this, sell that. Hoard money that the bankers gamble away. Stuff your life with the latest gadgets, stuff your head with the latest “ideas”. Your life belongs to you, doesn’t it? Why not hold on to it?’ Only our consumer culture never warns you of the cost: never knowing who you are at all.

To ‘have it all’, you must be constantly on the move. You run, anxiously, from person to person, place to place … church to church. You rush around, frantically, hoarding goods that you have no time to enjoy. The perfect consumer, never at rest. So, when the time comes to leave it all and you are still holding on, you see demons tearing your life away.

One of those demons is a priest who tells it like it is. No wonder so few priests ever dare to preach the Gospel. The Gospel is not about holding on, but letting go.

Is it so difficult to understand? To know who you are, you must commit yourself to only one: one love, not many; one life that you are willing to give for the one you love. Ask a monk or nun who is tried and tested in the religious life. Ask a husband or wife who has been married for years. When a newly-tonsured monk rises from under the sheet that covers him, and speaks his new name aloud, he has made his peace with God. He has died to an old life and been reborn to the new. When newly-weds find out, the hard way, that the wedding crowns are really a crown of thorns, they have made peace with God. They have died to an old life and been reborn to a new.

Love cannot survive if you hold on to your old life. It only survives if you die to your self, for love of another. That is the only way that any of us ever finds out who we truly are. It is the only way that we ever find peace.

A consumer culture tells us: ‘Be anxious, don’t miss out on anything’. Christ tells us: ‘Be not anxious, it is all in my hands. Do I not feed the birds and clothe the grass and the lily growing in the field? Are you not worth more than these? Will you live long – will you live well – by rushing anxiously from place to place, choice to choice. How many things will it take to fill your life? asks Christ. How many ideas, hoarded from different churches or books or philosophies will it take to answer your only serious question: ‘What is the real meaning of my life?’ Is life not more than food and drink and clothing, more than moving here and there, unable, unwilling to rest? How long will you serve two, three, or a million masters, and hold on anxiously to the life that you claim is yours? So long as you insist, ‘My life is mine’, you will see demons tearing your life away. But as soon as you commit yourself to the Kingdom – the Kingdom that we bless in the Divine Liturgy, the Orthodox Liturgy –words that challenge your entire way of life, set you free to enter the new.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: the words of the Gospel are harsh so long as you hold on to your old life. Let go, and they are sweet. The crown of marriage, or monastic life, is a heavy cross so long as you hold on to your self-will. Let go, and the burden is light. The Orthodox Church is a severe taskmaster so long as you hold on to Protestant ideas and habits, worshipping where you like, ‘taking communion’ wherever you wish, refusing to die to the past. Let go – and your anxiety is no more. Fix your gaze on our Crucified God and his All-Holy Mother, on your patron saint and guardian angel who stand constantly by your side. Yield to God: ­­surrender your whole life into hands of his Orthodox Church. Then, nothing that brought you here will be lost. The first rays of dawn will begin to rise on the horizon. The new day will begin to break, and the angels that you imagined were demons pursuing you will whisper gently: ‘Welcome home’.

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FISHERS OF MEN (Matthew 4.18-23 / 25-5.12)

June 7th, 2010

St. Botolph’s Parish, 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, 6 June 2010

“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4.19)

‘You have your own church. Why are you interested in ours?’ Those were the words of an Orthodox priest to a prospective convert. ‘You have your own church’. In brief, you’re not welcome here. The young woman, the prospective convert, was raised nominally in the Church of England: ‘C. of E.’ was what she has filled in on forms. Eventually, she starts coming to the Divine Liturgy. She comes mournfully, full of regret of what the West has become. Meekly, ready to receive whatever the True Church teaches her. Hungry and thirsty for the truth that only the Church, which has stood the test of two thousand years, can offer her. Finally, she works up the courage to ask to be received. But, instead of a welcome home, what does she hear? ‘You have a church, go home to it’. It is the sound of a door slammed in her face. This time, it is not racism. It is not those bitter words: ‘If you’re not Greek, or marrying a Greek, you’re not welcome here’. The priest whose parish she has been attending is no racist. Instead, he is typical of his immigrant generation. When he first stepped off the boat, some indigenous people told him: ‘Know your place. Never forget, you are a foreigner. You are our guest, in our house. This territory belongs to the Church of England. You may minister to your people, not to ours’. It was not exactly the ideal mission field! So, for decades, this priest hid away in his little ghetto. He knew his place. At last, when a hungry, thirsty soul, meek and mournful and persecuted by all the bigotry and neglect that folk religion could sling at her, comes to his doorstep, all that he can say is: ‘The Orthodox Church does not proselytise. Go home!’

Orthodox mission in this Christian land? No such thing! What, then, is our mission field? A few tribal elders in Siberia, or maybe the jungles of Borneo? A few ex-Communists in China? Scraps left from a table, after the Jesuits and Methodists have had their fill? For years, I have heard every excuse why Orthodox do not have missions. I have held a candle for a newly-illumined Orthodox soul at the sacred moment of communion, while unconscious, ‘folk’ Orthodox shoved in front in the queue. I have listened to Orthodox clergy fretting: ‘We can’t improve our website, send out information to the public. What will the Established Church think?’ An Orthodox professor once told me solemnly: ‘There are Anglican clergy present. We must watch what we say: we don’t want to be accused of proselytising’. ‘Then go accuse Christ!’ I shouted. ‘Accuse all his apostles!’ We have plenty of good Anglican, Roman Catholic, or Methodist friends: we don’t ‘invade’ them but receiving them into the Church. ‘Why do you take it?’ I have asked the Orthodox clergy. ‘Why hide in the shadows? This is your native land, not mine. Why do you creep up the back staircase, like a tenant who owes rent? Why act as though the Orthodox faith were treason?’ I know why. Our clergy look out on a society that grows more desperately secular by the hour and see only signs saying: ‘Off limits’, ‘No mission here’. Go convert the cannibals, not the agnostics.

So when our disillusioned convert manages to sneak past these border guards into the Church, these priests abandon her. Leave her Orthodox in body, Protestant in soul. ‘You can’t really convert’, they think, ‘so stay just as you are. You’re not one of us and you can never be’. For generations, this was ‘the way’ of our Orthodox people. We kept our place, locked in our ghetto. Inoffensive – and unknown. This is the way of every timid minority.

This is not the way of Christ.

As Christ walks by the Sea of Galilee, whom does he see? Two pagans? No, two pious Jews – Simon and Andrew – casting a net. Does he say ‘Shalom! Keep the faith of your fathers, stay where you are’? No! No greeting, but a command: ‘Follow me, and be fishers of men’. Catch the whole world in your net. Your fellow Jews, heirs of the Covenant; worshippers of Ba’al, Dagon, or Zeus; pious Pharisees, like Nicodemus and Saul of Tarsus – no one, I repeat, no one is ‘off limits’. You shall not minister to ‘your people’ alone; you shall not leave my flock scattered over a hundred separate churches. You shall gather them all into one: one visible Church, one divine Shepherd. All the mournful, the meek, the persecuted, all who hunger and thirst after truth shall be ‘your people’ if they leave everything and follow. See what happens! Immediately, the fishermen drop everything and become disciples. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, leave their own father to follow the Master of all. No easy transitions, no long good-byes. When Truth calls, you follow. So it is with the very first members of the Orthodox Church who walked the shores of Galilee. So it is with us. No human soul is ever off limits; no one who comes to us with a humble heart will we ever send away. We will transform you in the truth, until you are flesh of our flesh – one of us, and will always be.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: we do not coerce anyone into the Orthodox Church. We do not deceive. We do not wander from door to door, handling out pamphlets and taking up time. We say, as the Apostles said, ‘Come and see’. But we say it to all – without exception! We do what earlier generations did not dare. We cast our net over the whole world and draw in living souls. The poor in spirit, those who know that they are poor; the mournful, the meek, persecuted for seeking truth in an age without it. The peacemakers, the merciful in our age of merciless unbelief. The hungry, the thirsty. The pure in heart, whose only desire is to see the face of God. We dare to receive them all, as Father Michael, the founder of this parish, dared; like every pioneer who dared to obey the apostolic command, ‘Make disciples of all the nations’. We dare, as the Holy Apostles dared – to go into all corners of this land and of the globe, proclaiming: ‘If you will leave your old life – your boat, your nets, even your father – you will become one of us, bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh, no matter who you are’. We dare because God dared to become man and forge on earth the one visible Church that we call Orthodox. All this – because we obey the voice of Christ … and refuse to ‘know our place’.

Where, then, is our mission field? Wherever we happen to be. Who, then, are the souls that we strive to convert? Every single human soul that is not yet a member of the Holy Orthodox Church. How do we convert them? By the word of truth, by the example of the true worship, and by the invincible power of prayer and love.

A true fisher of men will do nothing less.

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A RING OF GOLD (Matthew 10.32-33, 37-38; 19.27-30)

June 2nd, 2010

St. Botolph’s Parish, Sunday of All Saints, 30 May 2010

Lo, we have left everything and followed you. (Matthew 19.27)

What could be more ‘normal’ than a box of Cracker Jacks? Do you know what Cracker Jacks are? A small box of stale popcorn and peanuts, all covered in a coat of caramel that tasted like sugary glue. Inside was the ‘prize’, a cheap toy made of plastic or metal, that used to break your teeth if you bit into it. The toy was so cheap that it gave rise to a new idiom: ‘Did you get that out of a box of Cracker Jacks?’ Meaning, ‘that’s about as worthless as it gets’. But popcorn and peanuts – what could be more normal? For example, suppose you are engaged. Why spend money on a fancy ring when you could give your fiancée a nice shiny plastic ring from a box of Cracker Jacks? A normal part of everyday life. (Somehow, I doubt that your fiancée would dance for joy). To buy her a ring that is worth more than cheap plastic requires effort. You sweat and strain and save your last penny; you spend nights, worrying about how to pay the rent. Maybe, go without meals – just to buy one gold ring. A ring worth more, for someone worth more, than the meals that you go without. A plastic ring is normal, O so normal. A ring of gold is rare, unusual, yes, abnormal: out of the range of everyday life. It does not come easily; but the more you sacrifice for it, the more valuable it will be. Who would give someone he loved a ring from a box of Cracker Jacks, instead of a ring of gold?

In an age of stale popcorn and plastic rings, is there anything that we have not placed in a box of Cracker Jacks? Anything that easy to get, is easy to throw away. In the age of disposable nappies, why not a ‘disposable God’? Do you know the term ‘cheap grace’? At the depth of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, talked of cheap grace. The grace of God, parcelled out in free, bite-size chunks. Cheap grace means forgiveness without repentance. Baptism, or should I say, ‘christening’, without life in Christ. Communion, without confession. Christ, without the Cross. Christianity without Christ: that is precisely what one young German scholar called cheap grace, when he heard the term in a Baptist church in the centre of Harlem. Cheap grace is Christianity gone middle class. The reverend canon So-and-So, preaching on climate change and gay unions, for fear of offending Parliament. Or Little Montague’s christening, hidden away on a discreet Saturday afternoon, so Aunt Mildred can make it from her villa in Tunbridge Wells. A private wedding, with organ tunes piped in between the Orthodox chants, to make the in-laws feel at home. Cheap grace: syrupy hymns and saccharine sermons, trimmed down for that ‘feel-good’ factor. In 1937, when the Third Reich was preparing to launch its ultimate secular war, that German scholar in the Resistance warned what happens if you trim Christianity down to size: ‘the collapse of the organized church’, he wrote, ‘is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all – at too low a cost.’ Easy Gospel, empty pews. What could be more ‘normal’ than that? Christ, the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks.

A ring from the box of Cracker Jacks is ordinary. Normal. Easy to understand, within the reach of any normal person. A person who gets married, gets a normal job, and raises a few ‘normal’ children in a ‘normal’ house, so they can attend a ‘normal’ school. If all it took to be a Christian was being normal, we would all wear Cracker Jack rings.

Christ does not ask us to be normal, but abnormal. Not ordinary, but extraordinary. He does not offer cheap grace, but grace that costs. Grace that costs everything.

In a Middle East that still values a man by his tribe, his family, to this day, Christ says: ‘If you belong to your tribe, you do not belong to me’. In an Orient that places family loyalty above all, Christ warns: ‘Anyone who loves father, mother, son, or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’. In a politically correct, middle-class culture that tells us to cover up our religious views, Christ declares: ‘Whoever denies me, I will deny before God the Father in heaven’. This is not cheap grace. It is costly grace. It costs you your life. A gift of God that can only fill you if you empty yourself. Dare to be abnormal – to take up your Cross, and follow a Crucified God.

What do all glorified saints have in common, if not this abnormal life? A life that inverts the normal values. Wealthy saints, like Basil the Great; and poor, like Anthony of Egypt. Urban, like John the Golden-mouthed; or rural, like Sabbas the Sanctified. Saints that wielded weapons, like George the Victory-clad; or wielded only a pen, like Maximus the Confessor. Saints who gave the last drop of blood, like Stephen the Proto-Martyr, or Alban the First Martyr of Britain, or the millions of butchered, buried names in the bloody twentieth century that made the Orthodox Church once more, the church of the martyrs. Or unknown saints, lost in the lonely corners of life: a doctor, Panteleimon, who charged no fees; a monk, Erkenwald, and his sister, the nun Ethelburga – among those millions of monks and nuns who forego a ‘normal’ life for a life that encircles us all in prayer. The saints who are kind, like John the Merciful, or harsh and outspoken, like Athanasius the Great; or both at once, like Nicholas the Wonderworker. Saints can be male or female, kings or paupers, monks clothed in light, or soldiers covered in blood. Everything under the sun – except normal. No saint that ever lived was as ‘normal’ as a ring from a box of Cracker Jacks.

But who would give his beloved a ring that cost him nothing – instead of a ring that cost him everything? A ring of plastic, instead of a ring of gold?

Beloved in Christ: Simon Peter, the ordinary, normal fisherman, is astonished when his Master says: ‘Unless you give up your “normal” life, you cannot follow me’. But, you see, Peter is no more ‘normal’ than the rest. To walk away from your fishing trade and follow a homeless healer who happens to be God: that is not normal. ‘What have we not given up, Lord, to follow you?’ Then Christ replies as abnormally as always: ‘When the Son of Man is enthroned in glory, everything that you gave up for my sake – house, land, family and your own life – will be yours a hundred times over. You shall see it for what it is: the path to me. From a world that is already dead, you pass into the never-ending daylight of the Kingdom’. But, to do so, you must be rare, unusual, out of the ordinary – in short, abnormal. A saint is not a ‘good’ person, a ‘nice’, ‘sensible’ person who gets on well in the world. That is a Sunday School teacher, not a saint. No saint was ever that ‘normal’. On this Sunday of All Saints, let every normal person give his sweetheart a ring out of a box of Cracker Jacks.

A saint gives God the one gold ring that costs him nothing less than his whole life.

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LIVING WATER (John 7.37-52, 8.12)

May 23rd, 2010

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.

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WHAT IS TRUTH? (John 17.1-13)

May 17th, 2010

St. Botolph’s Parish, Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council,

16 May 2010

‘For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice’. Pilate said to him, ‘What is truth?’ (John 18.37-38)

‘What is truth?’ The single most tragic words in the Gospel. Suspended on the life-giving Cross, Christ uttered no cry of pain that was not found in these words. ‘I thirst’ because an unbelieving world has become a desert. ‘My God, why have you forsaken me’, to die among those who do not believe? ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, or what they believe, except they do not believe in me’. They nail him on a slab of wood, hoist it into the air for the wind and the birds and the mocking voices. They leave him to die – all because it is forbidden to speak the truth. It was not the Jews who killed him. It was not the dull-witted soldiers, blindly following orders. It was our indifference to Truth. ‘What is truth?’ ‘Your’ truth, maybe, or ‘my’ truth; but ‘the’ truth? Honestly. Ask anyone in Oxford or Cambridge. They will tell you, ‘the truth looks different from here’. No one truly knows what truth is. It all depends on how you were brought up, plus what you prefer to believe. Truth is unknowable. At least, it is unsay-able. ‘You can say anything you like in the Theological Federation’, a student of mine once said, ‘unless you say that it is true’. Say your belief is true, and listen to the awkward hush fall over the room. Silence: like the silence that hung over the earth, when Truth gave up his life on the Cross.

The one they call Christ stands in front of Pilate, the governor. A dirty, long-haired rebel, a trouble-maker, in front of the clean-cut governor. What is the governor to do but ask, ‘What is truth?’ A noble Roman is allowed to attend the temple of his choice. He may worship any god he prefers … so long as he also worships Caesar. If you prefer Apollo to Jupiter, no problem. There are so many gods to choose from: ‘the truth looks different from here’. To say, as Christ says, that you alone have the truth; that you are the truth, the whole truth, the only truth – who but a seditious madman would say this? They killed him, not because he spoke a truth but the only truth; and every Christian martyr died on a cross or an arena, not because he worshipped Christ in his Church, but because he or she refused to worship anyone else. Who but a madman would be so rigid, so intolerant of others? Who but a madman, or worse – a fanatic?

That is what they said at the First Ecumenical Council. A noble Roman named Arius, an upright, reasonable man, said: ‘There is only one God, right? So Jesus Christ cannot be God, only the best man God ever created. Why can’t we all accept this formula and get along?’ The emperor seemed well-disposed. Didn’t Christ pray ‘that they may be one’? What easier way than a simple Biblical formula that every Christian will accept? A son is less than his father. Simple enough? But what if it is not true? ‘What is truth?’ said Arius and his followers. ‘The truth looks different from here’. The emperor was inclined to say so: no head for theological subtleties. Why can’t all the Christians get along? ‘But what if it isn’t true?’ A war-cry of the fanatics: Bishop Alexander of Alexandria; his short, fierce, hot-tempered deacon, a fanatic called Athanasius; Bishop Nicholas of Myra, so fanatical

that he struck Arius in the face? Why so intolerant, so fanatical? Don’t Christians strive for peace? If peace is won at the expense of truth, the Fathers taught, it is not peace but war; and if Christ is not God from all eternity, he cannot give us eternal life. When Christ gathers his disciples for the last time, he leaves no room for ‘viewpoints’. The truth does not look different from here, from there. The whole Truth, the only Truth: Truth in the flesh raises his hands to the Father. He does not pray that you should have ‘your’ truth and I have mine; he does not pray for the world, but for those whom God the Father have given – out of the world. A new people, called out of the unbelieving desert. ‘May they be one’, he prays, not as a political party is one; not as a coalition is one: no compromise. ‘May they be one, as You, the Father, and I, the Son, are one – absolutely one: one in essence, one in being. This alone is the unity of the Church that Christ, the Truth himself, decrees. Perfect unity in doctrine: not a few doctrines, but every doctrine that the Church has taught and still teaches today. Eternal life: what is it, anyway? A set of ‘viewpoints’, each of them – and none of them – true? ‘This – is eternal life, that they know thee’, not one of the gods, but ‘the only true God’; glorified in the only true Church that Truth himself established, when he walked on this earth. Glorified with the glory that Truth himself had with the Father before the world was made. This is the true glory. This is ortho-doxía: the life’s blood of the Orthodox Church. No union without unity! No peace without truth! No truth without Christ, our true God, who is Truth himself.

If this be fanaticism, make the most of it.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: Truth alone called you here. As an infant in the baptismal font, as an adult sealed with the chrism of the Holy Spirit. No matter how you came into the Orthodox Church, it is Truth who called you. Would you trade in Truth for the desert of unbelief, give him up to the wind, the birds, the mocking voices? Neither would any of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council that we commemorate today. They did not attend the Liturgy because it is ‘pretty’ but because it is true. They did not confess Christ our God because he is nice but because he is Truth itself: not your truth or mine but the only Truth. On this Sunday, when Christ has ascended into heaven and the Holy Spirit has not yet come, we do not ask, ‘What is Truth?’ We are Orthodox, not idio-dox: we do not stand for his truth, her truth, yours or mine. We know Truth as certainly as we know the flesh on our bones, or the breath in our lungs. We see him in his holy icon. We hear him in the voices of the choir and the priest. We smell him in the incense, offered only in the presence of a God. We touch him in wood and wax and brocade. We taste him, in his Precious Body and Divine Blood. Christ our true God, who sends us the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, from the bosom of the Father. The Truth that we hold on our tongues and take into our bodies is no teacher of ethics. We do not eat the flesh of a dead rabbi. We eat the Body and we drink the Blood of the Living God.

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FOR JUDGMENT I CAME (John 9.1-38)

May 9th, 2010
St. Botolph’s Parish, Blind Man Sunday, 9 May 2010

For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind. (John 9.39)

Al masih qam! Christos anesti! Christ is risen!

‘Everyone pretends everything is OK. But nothing is OK’. This is the voice of judgment, out of the mouths of babes. A spiritual daughter of mine said this once in a crisis: and it is absolutely true. Nothing is ‘OK’ in a world that crucifies the innocent. It usually takes a crisis, the Greek word for judgment, to judge what is wrong and what needs to be done. It takes a child to say out loud what we, the adults, pretend is not there; a child, who has not yet learned to be hypocritical, to say aloud: the feet of the idol are clay, ‘the emperor has no clothes’. A child exposes our lies. No doubt, that is why we torment children. See a child, sobbing in the night, whipped for crying out too loudly. A child, sent home to the parents who beat her, by the priest who tells her to obey. A little hand forcibly thrust into the fire to ‘discipline’ it. Soft bones, cracked. A little body, fondled and violated; a young soul, shamed, humiliated, bullied and degraded – by the very people it trusted to protect it. Mommy. Daddy. A teacher. A priest. To seize the innocent trust of a child who has no way of defending itself, to warp it and ruin it – is there any judgment too harsh? What is hell but the inability to love? And who loves less than someone who knowingly abuses the love of a child? ‘The babe that weeps the rod beneath writes revenge in realms of death’. For the poet Blake, for the novelist Dostoevsky, of all atrocities committed on earth, no crime is worse than to abuse a child.

Now imagine doing it in the name of Jesus Christ.

Where does it come from, this inability to love? This drive to punish someone, anyone, for anything at all: even for the crime of being born? Is it Calvinist, Puritan? The Puritans believed that you must beat a child, regularly, to break its self-will. Or is it Victorian? The Victorians left a baby to cry its eyes out in the dark, to teach it to be ‘self-reliant’? Maybe it is Irish Catholic? The old-time Magdalene Sisters, those upstanding Irish nuns, forced young girls into hours of drudgery in steaming laundries. Beat them, publicly humiliated them. Girls who committed the sin of being too pretty. Girls whose fathers, whose parish priests, forced them to do what no child should do, and tried to lock away the secret. All this abuse was permissible – even Christian, they said – because of Original Sin. Every child, they said, is born ‘in utter sin’: born with the guilt of Adam, the first sinner. A guilt transmitted by – what else? – sex. Babies, born so hateful to God that if they died, they should burn in hell. Think of it. A newborn infant, not yet able to make a single decision, locked away in eternal darkness for the unspeakable crime … of being born. If this is so,why should we not lock them away in an attic? Whip them, shame them, until they, too, learn to pass on the legacy of abuse from generation to generation?

Where does it come from, this inability to love? This drive to punish? Wherever it comes from, it does not come from God. Any abuser who thinks he does the will of God is condemned to be forever blind.

Today, Jesus passes by a man blind from birth. ‘Who sinned?’ the disciples ask Jesus. ‘His parents? The man himself? Did God predestine him to be blind, for the sins that he might yet commit?’ ‘No one sinned’, Jesus replies. ‘He was born blind, so that everyone might see the limitless mercy of God’. Bending down, Jesus wets the dust with his spit: the dust from which he created man. He dabs it on the blind man’s eyes and says: ‘Go, wash in the healing waters’. As soon as he wets his eyes, he can see.

Now the abusers cannot stand this. When the Pharisees interrogate him, what do they do? Rejoice? They turn the doctor’s surgery into a courtroom. They turn the hospital into a magistrate’s bench. ‘You had what you deserved. Who is this Jesus anyway? A sinner who breaks the law of the Sabbath? How could a sinner heal you?’ The man once blind now sees. He sees the truth as simply as a child. He turns the logic on its head. ‘I don’t know who he is. But, if he healed me, how can he be a sinner?’ ‘You were born in utter sin, in total depravity!’ those puritans shout and they excommunicate him. Even his own parents will not defend him. When Jesus hears that he is an outcast, he finds him and asks: ‘Do you believe in the true faith? Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ ‘Who is he?’ the young man asks. ‘The one speaking to you’. He falls down at the feet of Jesus and worships. Then, Jesus turns to the Pharisees – to every Pharisee, to the end of time: to the cold-eyed Magdalene Sisters, the Puritan who beats his little child, to the priest who sends a young girl away, bleeding, to her tormenters; and the priest who is himself the abuser. ‘For judgment’, he warns, ‘I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who think they see may become blind’.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. The only darkness is in us. When Adam turned away from God, God never turned from him. God is Life, so Adam died. He brought into this world, not hereditary guilt but death: death in all its forms – above all, the inability to love. That is the only real measure of death; and, if the word of the Gospel condemns those who abuse, instead of loving, it is only out of love for you. The judgment of God is his mercy. For the sake of mercy, God became the little frightened child, bundled in the night. For the sake of his mercy, he healed the sick and cast out devils by the word of power. For the sake of his mercy, he died on a cross not to ‘satisfy justice’ but to trample down death by death. For the sake of his mercy, he takes every frightened child, baptised or un-baptised, into his bosom: because he is the Truth that every child sees. But those who see in him some bloodthirsty, accusing tyrant go blind at the sight of the mercy that the merciless refuse to see. On this last Sunday of Great and Holy Pascha, we finally glimpse the full truth of the Resurrection: in Adam, all die; in Christ, all come to life. Do you doubt it? So I ask: how often do you hear the word ‘judge’ in this Divine Liturgy? But how often do you hear the words ‘Lord, have mercy’? When we sing,‘Lord, have mercy’, we are not pleading with an abusive tyrant. We are defying every abuser from the dawn of time, by proclaiming loud and clear the great and rich mercy of our God.

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LIVING WATER (John 4.5-42)

May 3rd, 2010

St. Botolph’s Parish, Samaritan Woman Sunday, 2 May 2010

“Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst”. (John 4.14)

Al masih qam! Christos anesti! Christ is risen!

A young woman in her early twenties enters an Orthodox church for the very first time. She is dressed for a party. Bright lipstick liberally applied. An incredibly tight black dress that extends barely below the waist, designed to show off, well … her assets. Every inch and curve of her body oozes sex, the wild sexual energy of her age. And, lo and behold, her head is bare. No headscarf! As soon as she comes in, all eyes are on her. Grannies staring at her with that cold, angry look that says: ‘Hussy!’ Girls her own age, with a look of envy that says: ‘Slut!’ Men young and old, with a look that says something else. Does she flaunt every curve when she enters? Does she seduce with her eyes? She flirts with no one. She stands, quietly, intensely, focused on every word and action of the wonder in front of her. Before long, the inevitable: someone says something. Maybe that look of cold disgust. Maybe a word, the word she fears: ‘There is no place for you here’. She is sensitive to it. She leaves, as quietly as she arrived, and never returns.

Years ago, a young woman named Olga showed up in my home parish back in Toronto. Every inch of her breathed sex, from the straight golden hair that fell to her waist to the legs that went on forever. From her habit of doing her nails during my lectures, I figured that she was not too tserkóvnaya, not too familiar with the ways of the Church. But even as she was painting her nails, her eyes were not there. They were focused on my every gesture; her ears, on every word that spoke of God. She was thirsty for more – for more than anything she had ever known. Who knows how many cups of passion she indulged in, with those bright lips and that slinky little dress? How many men she had slept with – if any? Who knows who she was sleeping with now, a girl like that? And who cares? I for one knew only a single fact about Olga: her whole body and soul thirsted for God. I tried to nurture that thirst, to fan the flame inside. No one else did. The priest never noticed. The bábushki, the army of grannies, drove her out. She did not fit into our folk religion of headscarves and plain, long dresses. She was immodest. She did not play by the rules. But I knew, many years after Olga left the church – forever, as far as I knew – I saw that she had what it takes: a flame inside that could light her way through the dark passages to God.

So many young people come to confession and confess that flame, as though it were a sin. As though, if only a girl wore a headscarf and a baggy dress, she could buy her way to salvation. As though, if she doused the flame, drowned the fire, it would not land her in bed with so many men, as she stumbles in the dark. Young bodies, reaching out for a little taste of love in places where you can never find it. Young souls, imprisoned: by the harsh words of us, their elders; fearful of laws, rules, rewards and punishments; fearful of a harsh penance given in ‘confession’ – as though confession were a court of law, not a doctor’s surgery. Any priest who knows his people’s frailty, because he knows his own, will not revel in harsh penances. He will not chain young people to the walls of a church, with rules to regulate every waking moment: they will only tear the chains and run away. But he will warn them: ‘Try and quench your thirst. It won’t go away. Quench it with sex, and money, drugs you sniff and drugs you drink. You’ll still be thirsty. The flame that you now direct in all the wrong places, it won’t go away. It won’t stop burning inside. It is not the flame of lust. It is the thirst for God’.

Today, Jesus goes to a well to quench his thirst. Jacob’s Well in Samaria, the symbol of that unclean, half-Gentile people up north: the Samaritans. A woman comes to draw the water. Now, I suspect she was not wearing red lipstick and a tight black dress: no doubt, she was wearing a headscarf. But who cares? She wasn’t exactly a virgin. When Jesus asks for a drink, she says:‘Men like you don’t talk to women like me’. ‘If you knew who it was who’s asking, you’d ask him. He would give you living water’. ‘Living water?’ replies the woman. ‘Are you great enough to do that?’ Jesus says: ‘Go, call your husband then. You can’t, can you? You’ve had five different husbands, and the one you’re living with is not your husband’. Not exactly a modest virgin: she’s been around. ‘You must be some sort of prophet’, she says, and runs to tell her friends and neighbours: ‘This guy knows it all, he knows my whole life’. The disciples are dumbfounded: look what kind of person, what kind of woman the Master is talking to! A Samaritan. A woman. A woman who, for all they know, has been feeding the flame of her passions for years. How many men will it take to satisfy her? How many men has she slept with – and who is she sleeping with now? Who cares? You can see the face of Jesus when he asks. No cold, angry, harsh look. No judgment. No scorn. Only the gentle smile of One who knows: ‘Drink this water, and you will be thirsty again. Drink the water that I give, and it will become – in you – the well of eternal life’.

That is enough to convert the Samaritans. Those unclean, immodest Samaritans that no self-respecting Jewish man has anything to do with. Samaritans who do not reject Christ but invite him to dine with them, stay with them, and show them the living water: the true faith that God the Father seeks, from strangers, outcasts – and even a brash, Samaritan women living in sin with her boyfriend. The woman’s neighbours tell her: ‘We no longer believe because you told us. We have seen with our own eyes, heard with our own ears what Living Water is’.

But so has she. From the instant she says, ‘Give me this water that I may not thirst’, no one measures the length of her dress or counts the number of men she has slept with. It doesn’t matter any more. She is no longer simply a Samaritan Woman. She is Photeiní, Svetlána – literally, ‘the enlightened one’.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: Orthodoxy is not Sharía but right worship. It is not a code of law to govern every instant and answer every question. It is living water, flowing from the Source himself. Flee down the dark alleyways, flee into every passion that you have the energy to indulge: you cannot flee from that Source. Medicate yourself with drinks or drugs or the subtle games of power that the world offers every day: you cannot quiet the pain or extinguish the flame burning inside. It shall burn until it reaches its goal: and you will thirst, again and again, until you yourself became the wellspring of eternal life. Living water: where can you find it? Here: in the Source himself. The Divine Liturgy: the divine cup, the inexhaustible cup that no one can drink for you. You must drink it yourself.

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TAKE UP YOUR PALLET AND WALK (John 5.1-15)

April 26th, 2010

St. Botolph’s Parish, Paralytic Sunday, 25 April 2010

“Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” (John 5.8)

Al masih qam! Christos anesti! Christ is risen!

‘The Anglican Orthodox’. A well-known critic of this parish, of this deanery, has called us that. ‘Anglican Orthodox’: not ‘real’ Antiochians – they speak Arabic, they come from the Middle East – but disgruntled Protestants in Orthodox dress, second-class Orthodox, on the margins of the Orthodox Church. People who still look, sound, and act more English than Orthodox: like an artificial island of the Church of England suspended on the sea of the Orthodox Church. Is it a fair accusation? Is our community full of ‘phony’ Orthodox? Have I, for one, devoted my life to the salvation of people who are not Orthodox at all? God forbid! But who, indeed, is ‘really’ Orthodox? The Cypriot lady who thinks that her prayer won’t reach heaven unless she crosses herself three times? The Russian granny who thinks the Holy Trinity is made up of Christ, the Mother of God, and Saint Nicholas? And what, pray tell, is a real Orthodox church? A place where folk dancing takes priority over the Divine Liturgy and the ‘Hellenic Community’ buys and sells the priest? But clear away the bowls of borsht and dishes of baklava that pass for the Orthodox faith and one question remains. What must you do – or, rather, what must you become – to be truly, authentically Orthodox? What must you take on, and what must you give up of what you were before?

A generation or two of bishops and priests never asked that question. If you ever asked them, they could not answer. They assumed: no one can truly become Orthodox. Sure, they told you, we will let you into the Church; but, from here on, you are all on your own. You were like a crippled orphan on a pallet, left in an upstairs room to fend for herself. Welcome at the door, not at the dining table. So this orphan, paralyzed by neglect, tried her best to fit into a family that did nothing for her. She dreamed up her own games and imaginary companions. Years passed, as she waited for a kindly aunt or uncle to come upstairs and call her to the family table. She cried herself to sleep every night, bound to the pallet that they used to lift her from the floor. Is it her fault that she clings to the old pallet and has not yet learned to stand on her two feet? You understand my parable. So many so-called convert parishes are like that: paralyzed by neglect, bound to a past that they barely recognise – all because no one took them by the hand and welcomed them into the present. No one believed that converts could stand up straight and walk. But the founding priest of this parish did, and so do I. Instead of adopting an orphan only to lock it away, I open the door. I challenge you, I say: ‘You are not “second class” Orthodox. I will not let you be. I will take your hand and lead you step by step, down the stairs to the family table. You are “real” Antiochians – and you will take your place beside all of your brethren: Ignatius, John Chrysostom, John of Damascus – all the saints of Antioch, the city where the disciples were first called Christians.

But to make this heritage your own, first you must take up your pallet, and walk’.

This is not easy, when you have been lying paralyzed on a pallet all your life. But when was the Gospel ever easy? The light of the Resurrection unbends twisted limbs, brings healing tears to your eyes. But Christ never leaves you as you are. If you would walk in the glorious freedom of the children of God, you must take the first step.

For thirty-eight years, a paralyzed man lay on his pallet like a corpse. Neglected, locked away. Lying in his own filth. No one cared enough to lower him into the Sheep’s Pool in Jerusalem, into the healing waters that could change his life. When Jesus finds him, he does not say: ‘Stay where you are, right there on your familiar pallet’. He asks, ‘Do you want to be healed? Do you want to change your life?’ ‘I have no one to help me’, replies the cripple. Jesus refuses to leave him lying there; but neither does he lift him up, like a stone. He commands: ‘Rise, take up your pallet! Walk!’ Now, all that the pious, religious people – ‘cradle Orthodox’, you might say – tell him is: ‘You should have stayed where you were. What right have you to walk on your own two feet?’ He answers, ‘A man told me to take up my pallet and walk, so I did it’. ‘Who told you?’ they ask. But he does not know. Jesus has disappeared into the crowd.

Later, Jesus finds him alone in the Temple. Time to explain the miracle. Does Jesus ask him, ‘Aren’t you happy that you can walk?’ Instead, he warns: ‘Sin no more, so nothing worse happens’. Was the man paralyzed, then, because he sinned? Of course not! The paralysis was not merely medical. It was his old life! Jesus tells him: ‘Your New Life has begun. The light of the Resurrection has dawned. You cannot go back now. Everything must begin anew. If you want a New Life, you must first put an end to the old’.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: God forbid that anyone here should go back. None of you is second-class Orthodox, ‘phony’ Orthodox, locked away in an attic because you don’t fit into the family. Where Greek or Russian ‘ethnic’ Orthodox shut the door in your face, I open it. I thrust it open and pull you through. What, then, of the pallet that carried you in the days when you were paralyzed: your old habits, your past beliefs? Burn it? No: take up your pallet, and walk. Carry your pallet under your arm. You no longer need it. In the Resurrection, you too are risen. A New Life has begun: but only if you are fully prepared to change, to give up everything if necessary, can you go forward. You cannot cling to a worn-out old pallet; you must learn to walk on your own two feet. I have seen it happen, here. This parish is changing, growing. Real Orthodox, from as far as America, Bulgaria, China, Hungary, Lebanon, Romania, Russia – and even from Canada – have called this parish home. We are not the ‘Anglican Orthodox’, the ‘English Orthodox’, as though yet another ghetto took the place of the one true Church. We are the éthnos ãgion, the holy nation that is neither Jewish nor Greek. Take one step backward, and I, for one, will set myself firmly in your path. The Resurrection has dawned. The New Life has dawned. No one remains fixed to his pallet, paralyzed in the grave. Now is the time to take up your pallet, not alone but together. To walk, not backward but forward, ever forward, into the glorious light of the Resurrection.

Christ is risen!

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THE STONE AT THE DOOR (Mark 15.43-16.8)

April 23rd, 2010

St. Botolph’s Parish, Holy Myrrhbearers Sunday, 18 April 2010

“Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” (Mark 16.3)

Al masih qam! Christos anesti! Christ is risen!

A funeral is uncomfortable for everyone. How could it be comfortable? Death could only comfortable, ‘natural’, if we were meant to die: if death were the sum total of all your life, all your achievements, all your hopes and dreams. A funeral could only be natural if you were already dead. Unfortunately, at many funerals here in England, the corpse is more alive than the mourners. Imagine going to your grandmother’s funeral: your first funeral, your first real glimpse of death. You are a little child, lost in a forest of dark dresses and suits. Suits as stiff as the bodies standing in them. The coffin is already sealed from the moment you enter the room. A few hymns, a stiff awkward eulogy, but otherwise – not a word. A horrible silence. No tears. No twitch of emotion on those icy faces. At long last, when the hearse carries your loved one away, all you hear is one man say: ‘Thank God, no one cried’. What would you carry away in your child’s heart? Silence. That awful, icy silence. The eternal silence … of the dead.

How far is that awkward silence from the sight and sound of an Orthodox funeral! At any traditional Orthodox funeral, you see an open coffin. Your grandmother, your brother or sister, dressed in the clothes that they wore in life. Lying in bed, as one who has fallen asleep. Yes, ‘fallen asleep’: resting, waiting to wake up. As the choir sings those ancient chants, tears flow. An ocean of tears. Women wring their hands, they sob, they cry out. Mourners throw themselves at a coffin. Like Rachel, they refuse to be comforted: they refuse to submit to the death that is unnatural. Death, the ultimate insult to a creature made in the image – the ‘icon’ – of the Living God. At an Orthodox funeral, the clergy dress in white: the white vestments of the holy Resurrection. We sing the hymns of the Resurrection. But our tears flow. We burn and melt, like the candles we light and hold around the coffin. As the choir sings, we draw near and give ‘the Last Kiss’: to the hand, the face of our loved one, who has become an icon of the Living God. Grief and love. If our grief is great, it is because our love is greater. Our grief flows freely, like a river that swallows everything in its path: but it flows directly into the ocean of the Resurrection.

Who at an Orthodox funeral will say, ‘Pull yourself together! Stop making a scene!’ Who but a corpse himself would dream of saying, ‘Thank God, no one cried’? Saint Symeon, the New Theologian, warns: let no one approach the chalice of the Life-giving Body and Blood of Christ our God without shedding tears. Even if you cannot shed the tears of the body, at least be human enough to shed the tears of the soul. What to some is the mark of weakness, to us is the seal of our humanity. ‘Real men don’t cry’, you will hear it said. I say to you: real Orthodox cry. We laugh, we shout, we roar with joy, and with pain; and we cry. Why do you think we anoint the dead with myrrh? The bitter resin of trees, an oil that brings tears to the eyes? We never say to grief: ‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter’. We come to the tomb that centuries of bleak Puritan anger and repressed grief have hewn out of the rock. We stand, with myrrh in hand, at the door of death and we say: ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?’

At sunrise, on the first day of the week, seven women bring spice and myrrh to the door of the tomb. Myrrh? What is it? The resin of a tree from Somalia. Egyptians used it to  anoint the dead; but why? In ancient India, they saw: sniff the essential oil of myrrh and tears will flow. Myrrh opens the gates of grief. To this day, aromatherapists prescribe oil of myrrh to help those who are grieving – to wet dry eyes, to soften the heart, to release the waves of emotion, and heal it. Myrrh is no gentle aroma. Sharp, pungent: but smell it carefully, you will detect a slightly sweet smell. Mary Magdalene, first among the women bearing myrrh, smells the bittersweet aroma. She is beside herself. Her heart, too heavy with grief, so it overflows; her eyes, wet with tears. But so are all our people. Did not our God command us in Exodus 30.23 to anoint the ark of the testimony with flowing myrrh? Did not the Wise Men from the East bring myrrh, with the frankincense and gold, to the Child who was born to trample down death? Did the people not offer Christ wine, mixed with myrrh, as he hung on the Cross? And did not Nicodemus wrap the crucified Body in a linen shroud, mixed with aloes and myrrh? But that morning, they arrive at a tomb that is sealed with a stone. ‘How can we anoint him with myrrh, how can the myrrh bring the tears to our eyes, if no one rolls away the stone? Who is strong enough to roll away the stone from the tomb of our grief?’

What do they find? The stone, rolled aside. The tomb, not empty. A young man dressed in a white robe. ‘Don’t be amazed. I know the One you seek. He is not here. He is risen. Now, go tell the disciples that you will see him in Galilee’. The women are terrified – and overjoyed. They never anoint the Precious Body with myrrh; but the myrrh, nonetheless, releases the weight of grief. The Divine Nature that death can never hold, rolls away the stone of repression: the icy faces, the stiffened, awkward silence of the grave. None of the holy apostles sees the empty tomb that is the fountain of our Resurrection. Only the myrrh-bearing women. The wailing, grief-stricken women who obeyed God and brought the bitter ointment to the tomb.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: you may ask, why is it virtuous to wail over the dead? Is it so wrong to keep a stiff upper lip? But consider this if you judge our traditional Orthodox ways so wild. Everyone Orthodox in this church is anointed with myrrh. Myrrh is mingled with the holy chrism that a priest places on your forehead, eyes, ears, nose, lips, chest, hands, and feet, when you are sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Everyone Orthodox here today has ‘received the Myrrh’: everyone Orthodox is a myrrh-bearer. So when you feel tears welling up in your eyes, roll away the stone from the door of the tomb. You are only obeying your ancestors in the faith. ‘But Father’, you will say, ‘it’s too uncomfortable to cry in public, especially at a funeral. Won’t people think I don’t believe in the joy of the Resurrection?’ Then consider the first witnesses of the Resurrection: Mary Magdalene; Mary, the wife of Cleopas; Salome, the mother of James and John – all the women who brought the bitter perfume, specifically designed to make you cry. They knew what all the generations of our Orthodox people have known. Only a heart cleansed by grief and joy can contain the New Life; only eyes wet with tears can see the Risen Saviour.

Christ is Risen!


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‘MY LORD AND MY GOD’ (John 20.19-31)

April 12th, 2010

St. Botolph’s Parish, St. Thomas Sunday, 11 April 2010

Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe. (John 20.25)

Al masih qam! Christos anesti! Christ is risen!

How do you know? What makes you so sure that saying ‘Christ is risen’ is not a funny way of saying hello at this time of year? ‘Hello’. ‘Good-bye’. ‘Christ is risen’. Any blonde, sun-burned tourist on a package tour to the Greek islands can open up a Berlitz phrase book and mutter ‘Crease-toss a-Nes-tea!’ and have no clue what it means. Sadly, so can the average granny in a ‘Greek Orthodox’ church here in London. So can her priest. Maybe, ‘Christ is risen’ escapes your lips, in between the bouzouki and the belch from too much lamb and ouzo. Across town, the Russians are muttering ‘Christós voskrése!’ in between mouthfuls of sírnaya páskha and bigger mouthfuls of vodka. Now, I am the last to begrudge our Orthodox people having a good time at Pascha. Eat, drink, and be merry, all forty days of the feast! But be sure you know why. Something has changed – a New Life has begun; and it is the difference between life and death. Any pagan fool can turn our Orthodox faith into a folk religion. Any pagan fool can turn marriage, or baptism, into folk customs: a christening, with Great Aunt Mary fixing her floppy hat in the corner. Any pagan fool can turn the church into a little, self-enclosed, in-bred ethnic village, the ‘make-believe’ that the Church turns into, when you no longer believe in God. Too many pig-ignorant priests talk about our ‘Greek heritage’ and our ‘Romanian dignity’, without a word about the Risen Christ. They say: ‘Just say the words, whatever they may mean’.

But what if it all means something? What if Christ really is risen from the dead? And what if baptism is no family affair but descent into his death – and into his Resurrection?

What really happened over the last week? What did you see at the dawn on Great and Holy Pascha? An altar boy, holding a basket of red eggs? Or the Vanquisher of Death? Have you ever seen the print of the nails in his hands? Have you placed your finger into his side? Do you at least believe those who have touched his hands, his side, without break, for two thousand years? Do you believe in Easter eggs – or in the Risen Christ?

You ask: Why expect so much of people? Why expect anyone in the twenty-first century to believe that a dead rabbi, left to bleed to death and rot in the cave, got up and walked out? Why can’t Easter just means whatever it means to you? Chocolate bunnies never offended anyone; no one agonises over chocolate bunnies – unless, I guess, you are on a diet. Why bring faith into it? Because, without faith, nothing that has happened on this Sunday or this Holy Pascha means anything at all. Faith is not a feeling that comes and goes, like a stomach ache. Faith is not an idea, a theory, a subject you get a degree in; if it were, try to define love for someone who has never loved anyone. Faith is not some folk custom that you inherited from your grandmother.

Faith is an act. It challenges you, and, yes, it offends you. It turns everything upside down.

Faith is not something you can inherit. It is an act that you do, you renew, every day.

On the first evening of the week, the disciples hiding in the upper room were full of fear. What a storm of doubts, what a storm of feelings and ideas? What can you trust? Who, in God’s name, was he? A teacher? A man who called Lazarus out of the sealed tomb? How could that mangled body be the Son of the Living God? Suddenly, that body enters through closed doors. No explanation, only a command: ‘Do something! As the Father has sent me, so I send you’. Thomas is not around. The one who said: ‘Let us go, to die with him’. When they tell him they have seen the Lord, his pain says: ‘Why should I take your word for it? Unless I touch his wounds, I shall not believe’. ‘O blessed doubt!’ sings the Holy Orthodox Church on this day. Because of that pain, that doubt, Christ shows us beyond a doubt that he has vanquished death. ‘Do not feel, do not conceive an idea’, he says. ‘Do it, take action! Touch my hands, put your finger in my side’. Thomas cries, ‘My Lord and my God!’ What no other disciple spells out, he cries out. This is no dead rabbi, hanging from a cross. This is the Living God. ‘Blessed are they’, says Christ, ‘who have not seen, yet have believed those who saw. Blessed are they that trust, not in ideas, not in feelings, but in witnesses. Witnesses to my death and my Resurrection. Apostles, and the direct successors to these apostles: bishops of the Orthodox Church and priest after priest, down the centuries, who witness the conquest of death’.

This day, we have witnessed the conquest of death. A child, who now rightfully carries a saint’s name, died and rose again. This is no christening, no quaint, inoffensive folklore, no family affair. No droplets of water, sprinkled on his forehead. Three times, we plunge his body into the death of Christ; three times, we lift him up into the Resurrection. This is no feeling, no idea, no inherited custom. Now, his life begins. This is our act of faith, our act of witness. Blessed is he if he believes the witness of the Holy Orthodox Church, the Body of Christ, into which he is baptised today. But he is human, not a rock. He cannot inherit our faith blindly, passively. Each day of his life, he must decide to believe. To act. To make the act of faith the very basis of his life. This day, twenty-one centuries of holy apostles and successors to the apostles have united him to the Church of Christ. Every day of his life, he must unite himself. A baby born according to the flesh, died today; the new life that he now shares with us, today is risen in Christ. A seed is planted. Now, let it grow.

Beloved in Christ: blessed is the newly baptised servant of Christ, who has not seen, yet has believed – in the unworthy hands that have held him, through the grace that Christ bestows through his holy apostles, on an unworthy priest like me. But blessed will he be on every day that faith excites him, challenges him, even offends him; on every day that he wrestles with doubt, as Thomas and the rest of the apostles did; on every day that he signs himself with the Sign of the Cross, receives the Precious Body and Blood of Christ of his own free will – on the day he sees with his own eyes, touches with his own hands, and says with his own lips: ‘My Lord and my God’.

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