Homily for the Sunday of the Fathers of Nicea 2016

As preached by Brother Christopher

Holy Wisdom Church

          Next week on Pentecost, for the first time in about 1200 years, the heads of the autocephalous Orthodox churches are scheduled to meet in Crete in a great and Holy Council. This has been in the planning for close to a hundred years; everyone in Orthodoxy knows and agrees in principal that it is desperately needed. And yet in recent months there are disturbing signs that all of the planning and hard work is once again going to fall short of of realization: the Church of Georgia stated recently that it could not sign one of the chief documents on relations with the non-Orthodox churches; just this past week the Church of Bulgaria said that it is not going to attend the Council at all, and the Antiochene Church has also threatened to boycott the event due to a jurisdictional dispute with the Patriarchate of Jerusalem over the Church in Qatar... there are even reports of heated disagreements over seating arrangements for the hierarchs that threaten the Council. It leaves one wondering if we shall ever get beyond the pettiness that has so often crippled Orthodox church life in recent centuries. Put cynically, “Where’s an emperor when you need him?” 

          All of this is strangely relevant to today’s celebration, when we honor the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council that was held long ago at Nicea in 325. That Council was called by the Emperor Constantine and intended to establish clarity and unity in Christian doctrine and church life. The issues were far more contentious than those we’re carping about today: for example, whether Jesus was really one essence with the Father -- whether he was the Eternal Word incarnate, or whether he was, as Arius claimed, merely a magnificent creature, the nicest of guys. Those Fathers also came out with a common creed that expressed the essentials of Christian faith that have remained in place even to this day. Those hierarchs met in council together throughout that year, argued passionately for their beliefs and ultimately came to a common clarity of faith through dialogue and discernment. What would Orthodox Christian faith be without that initial Council? It leads one to wonder, “we claim that we are the Church of the Fathers. Yet how faithful to the spirit of those Fathers are the games we see being played out in advance of the coming Great and Holy Council?” We will have to wait and see whether the movement of the Spirit at Pentecost is able to rouse the Council set to meet in Crete, or whether we shall have to simply put up with more frustration and embarrassment as a Church that cannot seem to read the signs of the times as a true kairos moment. Lord have mercy! 

          In this morning’s gospel the high priest Caiaphas states, “You know nothing at all.  You do not understand that it is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”  Caiaphas doesn’t realize the true import of what he has said: this passage has often been used to show that Jesus died for our sins. While that is true, unfortunately it has been understood in a toxic way -- particularly in the Christian West -- to reinforce an atonement theology grounded in substitution. Jesus is the one who dies in our stead. He is the scapegoat, the perfect victim who appeases the Divine anger for all of our sins. It is a strange concept: God requires Jesus to die on the cross to free the debt we owe, to pay the penalty for our own sin and disobedience. God demands payment, and so Jesus‘ sacrifice becomes a juridical transaction. If that’s what it means to be saved, then it turns God into something of a legalist. 

          But there is another way of looking at Jesus’ sacrifice that seems to me much more in harmony with the gospel. The salvation offered to us by Jesus is contingent on revealing just how completely, how unconditionally we are loved. Jesus was put to death because he preached a message that was at variance with the Jewish status quo. His was a true Gospel, good news, a message that revealed God’s kingdom as one of  inclusion, as open to all who repent. By challenging the hypocrisy, rigidity and narrowness of the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus angered them to such an extent that they conspired to put him to death. And they did. But Jesus on the cross reveals the extent that God will go to help us understand God’s limitless love for us. He will go even to the death. And that is just the mystery of Christ that Paul understood and was transformed by, that he speaks of in his letter to the Ephesians when he prays that we will have

“the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

That is what the Fathers at Nicea were ultimately about, what they saw in Jesus and what they intended to pass on to us. Please God, may the Fathers at this coming Great and Holy Council be as faithful and vigilant as those who met at Nicea so long ago. 

Sermon 137; Is2:1-5; Ac 1:1-12; Lk24:36-53: Ascension: Abandoned

As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church

Glory be to Jesus Christ!

I'm leavin' on a jet plane/ I don't know when I'll be back again. For some reason, while thinking about this feast and the scripture passages from Luke’s gospel and Acts, these lyrics from that old song kept coming to mind. John Denver; Peter, Paul and Mary and many others sang that song. It is about a departure with no return expected. Many of us may have experienced that special fascination of watching a plane take off from an airport, rise into the sky and fly away, slowly shrinking to a small speck and then disappearing from view. And if the plane also had a friend or loved one on board, the emotions around that departure can become quite intense. We may not know if we will ever see that person again. Or we may know that we will never see that person again. In which case, feelings of loss, grief, sadness, disappointment, estrangement and abandonment may arise. My guess is that the apostles at the Ascension had some of the same feelings. The icon of the feast shows their confusion and fear.

Back in January 2007 at Br Elias funeral, I spoke about our loss: “The reality of his departure from us will sink into each one at a different time and in a different way. In our house, we may have begun to get used to his absence over the past year since he was away most of the last 12 months in hospitals or rehabilitation centers, but still he was at the other end of the telephone, he was there when we visited him and he did fight to come back and be with us for a few weeks despite his deteriorating health. But after today, when we gather to pray in church, he won’t be there, when we gather around the table for meals, he won’t be there when we gather to relax in our recreation room, he won’t be there either. And we will know it and we will feel it and we will feel the emotion of that loss welling up inside and we will cry. And that’s ok. It’s grieving. It must be done. We must cry over the loss of Brother Elias even as we celebrate the life that was with us but is now with God.”

After the funeral, Fr Alexis Vinogradov came up to me and said that as Orthodox we understand that even though he died he is still with us. And I said that is well and good but what I meant was that physically he is no longer with us. But of course, when someone is no longer with us physically, still we do feel that person’s presence in other non-tangible but real ways. We can be reminded of the person’s humor at recreation, or of their cooking at meals or of their presence in church during services. They can return in dreams and at times we may simply feel their presence in the room even though physically they are not there. This is the mystery that Vino was talking about and it is at the center of this feast. Indeed, the beginning and end of the paschal season is marked by this mystery. At Pascha Christ returns from the dead, only to depart again at the Ascension. Remember at the beginning of the paschal season Christ told the apostle Thomas, blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe. And here at the Ascension, Christ is telling the apostles that he will not leave them orphans, he will send them the holy spirit; even as he disappears from their sight. So this leaves them and us with the call to believe in something we cannot see. And we are asked to do this at the very time that we feel abandoned.

This feast is about more than Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is about our connection to that realm into which we will all pass. The Ascension is both separation and preparation. We are being prepared to receive the unseeable Holy Spirit. The Spirit that is God’s presence everywhere, in all things and in all living beings. That spirit is in every one of us. That spirit is what carries us to Jesus, to the realm beyond this physical world. The icon of Holy Wisdom behind the altar has the mandorla, the image of uncreated light and the passageway to the realm of Kairos time. The same mandorla is depicted in the Ascension icon on display in the narthex. In that icon, Christ, though further removed from us in the image, is at the opening created by the mandorla, going before us preparing the way as he said he would. The Spirit moves between both Chronos time [the time ticking in our present physical world] and Kairos time [the realm of timelessness] and is the conveyance that brings us God’s presence and indeed the presence of all those who have gone before us and ultimately conveys us to God.

So how does this feast help us to deal with abandonment, [separation, broken connections, departures]? By reminding us that no one is abandoned or lost. Not only does God remember all but God brings all together. We experience that reality every time we feel God’s presence and indeed the presence of others. The laws of the physical world may rearrange the pieces of this earthly puzzle, but in that realm beyond our reach, all the pieces are put back together as the fulfillment of God’s plan. No one is lost. No one is left abandoned.



Christ is in our midst!