What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?

My friend Cam, Rector of Trinity Church here in Buffalo, blew my mind out the day we discussed the following question in our Bible study class:

What group in the New Testament most parallels us, here?

The discussion went like this:

What groups can you think of in the NT?

Apostles
Disciples
Military
Gov’t
Clergy of various sects
Jesus’ Family
Villagers
City Dwellers
Samaritans
(ETC)

It went on for a while. Then Cam asked us who *we* were. Us, here in Buffalo, New York, USA. Who are we? Several answers arose as to who we’d *like* to be. Other answers as to who a given preacher might want to imagine us as. But who are we, in general? What group in the stories of Jesus most parallels us, now?

The answer is the Romans. Not the gov’t or the army but the citizens of the City of Rome; whither flows all the produce, the capital of the known world and from whence flows all the political power and decision-making, the taxes, the demands of civilization. She is the magisterial center of the Orb as she knows it. Her citizens enjoy the fruits of every part of the earth, are served by workers from every race and creed and culture. They have the work done for them. They don’t do the work – even when they want to. It would be unseemly for a real Roman to work. Slaves, yes; plebs, yes. But We White People should be above all that.

What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?

It’s hard in our society to understand this question, I think. Mindful of those who might read these notes, “our society” refers generally to the USA, to a section of culture defined by age and location and race. Most of my friends are middle class – earning far more than my Mom did when she raise three kids as a single mother – and even she tried to keep poverty away from us all. Our society here, now, is too successful to help us understand this question. We have, pretty much, “the whole world” here already.

Even my Mom, raising three kids as a single mother on the modern equivalent of about $10,000 in annual income, was quite wealthy compared to the folks who live in most of the world (and in a few parts of the USA as well). But me? Hell: I earn more than twice my Mother’s income and I have no kids. Every month, here in my house, we pay in food, rent and utilities, more than 10 times the annual Gross Domestic Product (per capita) of seven out of the ten poorest countries in the world. In fact, depending on which scale you use for the GDP, my house spends MONTHLY, at least ten times as much as the ENTIRE ANNUAL GDP of the 13 poorest countries. Yet I will manage – at some point in the next few days – to do something stupid with my money. (In fact, I did it after I started the draft to this sermon – stopping at my Boyfriend’s shop and purchasing a cable that cost more than the GDP of the bottom two countries on that same list simply for the purpose of routing my internet music from my desktop to my stereo.)

What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?

I realised earlier this week that I have too many clothes: Not too many for a man who has my social calendar. Not too many for a man who has my budget. Not too many for a man who might need to dress up now and then or get all jiggy now and then or go to a baseball game now and then. No: I have too many clothes for a many who claims to follow someone who said “Sell all you have and give it to the poor.” I was listening to a man speak (can’t say I remember his name) on a podcast and he was talking about a man who had asked him for a shirt. And he wanted to give away his shirt – but not the good ones, you know. And he pointed out, there and then, that this was covetous behaviour He was coveting the things God gave him to share with others.

And try as I might, I still can’t bring myself to successfully give away my clothes.

What would my boss say if I came to work every day in the same things? What would my BF say? What would I wear to Pascha at St Gregory’s church? What will my housemates say?

I have such a cross to bear: I can’t get rid of my stuff!

The American fixation on stuff is traceable – follow me backwards:

1) I was taught that having stuff is better than not having stuff.
2) My parents where taught that same lesson by people who had had nothing.
3) They were taught that lesson by people who fervently believed that God showed his spiritual blessing on us by showering us with material blessing so that working hard to earn material blessing showed God’s blessing all around.
4) They got that fair and square from the Fathers of the Protestant Reformations.
5) Who got it as sort of a fun-house mirrored reflection of the things they critiqued in Roman Catholic theology combined with a distorted focus on only one or two Church fathers – specifically Augustine.

As a bonus I might suggest (perhaps wrongly) that he got it as a material reaction and distortion to his own conversion process from the Gnostics. But without reading the other Church Fathers to balance him out Augustine got the Prots off to a weak start.

It’s traceable right back to the Protestant Work Ethic and, as divorced as that was from historic Christianity so, now, our stuff fetish is divorced from any form of Christianity at all. It’s an addiction. My life is filled with stuff: books, recordings, pictures, electronics, clothes, shoes, bedding…

But I think we can trace a more Eastern route as well: for in the East they succumbed to the Roman state and began to confuse imperial power and wealth with God’s blessing. There’s the other side of our problem – no less heretical, no less opposed to Jesus who was the poorest of the poor. And from that side of the Church we begin to hear stories that maybe Mary and Joseph were quite wealthy. That maybe the wealth of the world was part of the Church from the beginning and that the secular empire – always in opposition to God – can be made to work in Symphony with God’s kingdom in the Church. That’s how Americans end up as the Romans in the Bible.

What does it prosper a man to gain the whole world (the Greek refers to an illusion) and to loose his soul (and here, the Greek actually says something closer to “life”)?

What do you do if you have it all already?

What cross is there that can take away all this crap and give me the chance to “approach the throne of grace”?

O Lord, save your people and bless your inheritance.
Give victory to those who battle evil,
and with your cross protect us all.

So we sing today. There is for us our salvation: the Cross of Christ. If we take up the Cross of Christ we have no way to carry any other stuff.

Today’s feast like the preceding two Sunday’s has nothing, really, to do with Lent. It’s a series of commemorations of political events in the Byzantine world. Today we’re celebrating the Cross’ ability to defend Byzantium (and later, Russia) from Muslims. How ironic that the way the Empire killed Jesus should be seen as leading the Army of Jesus away from his way of Peace.

What does it prosper the Church to gain the whole world and loose her soul?

On the Second Sunday of Lent we commemorate St Gregory Palamas. Gregory was a writer from the 13th and 14th Centuries, living in Thessaloniki or Thessalonica – which most Americans will know vaguely as a city where St Paul sent a couple of Letter. His writing solved a crucial problem in Church theology and, perhaps most especially, drove a sort of wedge between East and West in terms of our understandings, at least on the surface. There is a lot to read about him on the web staring with the Greek Archdiocese’s webpage on the topic.

Today I’d like to point out two cures from Gregory and also point out a caution for us.

Gregory is the cure for the Mental Masturbation we like to call “Theology” today.

I fancy myself a church geek: I know all kinds of liturgical actions, I know minute sillinesses about when to bow and when to prostrate. I know Byzantine liturgical piety ok – and western liturgical piety very well. I can tell you why the little offices are replicas of the Eucharistic liturgy – and therefore should not be tampered with. I know how to clean up the spill after the wine has been consecrated and I know how to play an obscure game in the Roman rite called “Paten, Paten! Who’s got the Paten?” Sometimes I think I even understand Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas.

But I fail at prayer.

When I get up in the morning I sleep through the offices. I mostly forget at night.

Gregory Palamas… brings us here.

Modern folks like to think that theology is all in the head. All in the mouth. We tinker with theology – trying to iron it out, make it smoother, logical and crisp. We think that the latest cultural trends must show up in theology. So we have “God is dead” and “Postmodernism”.

Let me tell you about your marriage.

Imagine sitting down with your spouse – whom you have loved and fought with and feted and fasted with lo these many years. You tell your spouse – him or her – that you’ve read a new book: we’re all just children of primates, apes with less fur and bigger vocabularies. What does it change? DO you still love her? Argue with him? Feast and Fast the seasons?

Imagine you’ve read another book that says we all have three parts in our personality or that we’re nothing but electrons, or that in the end we’re only dust in the wind.

What does it change about the relationship you have?

If you value the relationship. If you value the person of your spouse more than yourself, more than anything else in the world. Will any book change them? If the book is true it may tell you something you need to know about the relationship – but if it is true it is written by someone who, themselves, has such an intimate relationship. But no book can ever replace the experience of laying in your lover’s arms and whispering secrets. No expert can tell you a thing is true if you know it is not – and how do you know? Because in your dance of Love you know the truth.

So it is with God.

And so it is that the Orthodox say that the “true theologian is the one who prays”.

Gregory Palamas saw this 800 years ago: the man who has only head knowledge, logical arguments and book learning knows nothing about God.

The Church knows her husband. She has lived in various levels of intimacy with him for the last 4000+ years – from the covenant with Abraham to Sinai to Babylon to Hannukah; from the Forerunner to Pascha to Pentecost to Nicea; from Boris and Gleb to Innocent to Raphael to you. He has whispered sweet knowledge in her ear on their bed after lovemaking and sent her love letters of wisdom. And nothing that is not-true will be accepted.

We can no more know God through book knowledge and debate than you can know your own spouse through sitting in a bar and “figuring him out” while watching Oprah. You can learn new things and try them out – yes. But they stand or fall on the results. On the experience. On the relationship itself.

You have to go home and live in intimate relationship before experience gives you the knowledge needed.

So it is with “Theology”. We know that “truth” is not a mental proposition but rather is Jesus. Any mental proposition claiming to be “truth” that is not Jesus… well: I hope the mental orgasm was good.

Gregory Palamas requires some Caution here – especially for us converts. I certainly include myself here. God became man in Jesus. Exactly that we might know God. Might touch God. Might hold God and breast feed God – the God in dirty diapers, as I like to say. Jesus as the Divine Lover of the Church, of Humanity. Palamas’ sharp distinction between “essence and energies”, between the parts of God, if you will, that we can know and the parts we can’t, can trip us up. It can become nearly Gnostic of us if we fail to balance his teachings with the reality of the Incarnation. His arguments are not prescriptive but rather descriptive. He’s talking about what Mystical experiences are open to us in prayer and meditation – not about what is closed to us, nor what limits us. He’s talking about the intimacy we can have and pointing out the parts that don’t work. He is not telling us what we can’t do to get there.

And, like any relationship: this is not a one-sided marriage. Do you know the classic comedy image of a husband and wife sitting at the breakfast table? She’s talking while he is reading a newspaper. Imagine that same thing in your bed. How long would you make love to your spouse if they just laid there? Like a dead fish? Maybe even reading a book?

There is in Gregory another cure: one for a VERY common error today. Gregory is the Cure for Cheap Grace.

Especially in America where we are too-heavily influenced by countless layers of “reformation” coming in attempted (or supposed) isolation from that 4000 marriage-bed conversation, where we are not willing to listen to our elders and all too willingly break with tradition exactly because it is tradition: we have come to think of Grace exactly the same way we think of finding a $100 on the street. We think of Grace as “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense” (as my Sunday School teacher taught me). We imagine that all we have to do is sit here and showers of “grace” will fall on us.

Gregory points out that “grace” is God’s actual presence in our life. As this bread and this wine that we are about to consume is Jesus, Body and Blood, present with us, so to is Grace the actual energy of God moving through you. It is the light of God radiating from him, through you to others. It’s an actual thing. A presence. It’s not a “transaction” made for Free. Jesus paid for lunch: You’ve Got Grace! Your boss gave you a free vacation – grace! No.

Grace is God in your life.

When I hear good Irish music I start to tap my feet and bang my fingers. I play the Irish drum, the bodhrán, and when I hear goood Irish music, I start to play air drum. When I hear exceptionally good music, I’ll grab a notebook and a pen and start to be really annoying, playing. Barring all that, I’ll get up and dance. We dance a lot here at that house – especially in the kitchen.

Gregory points out that grace is the music calling you to dance.

But the rest of the Orthodox teaching on Grace is that Grace is TOTALLY wasted if you don’t get up and dance. More on that in a couple of Sunday, but that’s my parting shot for today. This idea that we can just sit down and “get graced” is not what Grace is. That idea of a free lunch… let it go.

Jesus didn’t buy us a “get out of hell free” card – he gave us a way to dance our way out. But we have to get up off our asses and do it. When our Divine Lover calls us to the marriage bed, we are not to “lay back and think of England”. He will leave us as cold as we deserve.

AS I said at the top of the mark, this is where I fail. I know all the technicalities, all the “official” goods, but I fail at this intimacy. I’m working on it – but I’m sure those people who think Grace is a free lunch will get it before I do.

Asking your prayers….

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Give a listen to the CBC’s Tapestry for last week.

I wrote Mary Hines, at CBC’s Tapestry, an email after hearing that broadcast…

I’m a cynic: I admit it. The Olympics – like most sporting events – are
too commercial and too heavily involved in making money on the backs of
“our youth” for me to care. I’ve seen about 30 minutes total of Olympic
TV in the last 15 or 20 years. (It helps that I don’t own a TV, of
course.)

But your podcast had me choked up as I walked to work this AM.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity there is a thing
called the “podvig” or “ascesis”. Among Arab Christians the same word
is “Jihad”. It is the struggle to, as St Paul says, “work out our
salvation in fear and trembling” and to “run the race set before us”.

The more I listened to your discussion with Phil Cousineau the more I
let go of my cynicism and saw the Olympics as an icon of spiritual
struggle. In the Eastern world spiritual is *not* in opposition to the
physical – we are all one person – spirit, body and mind. All three
need to be involved in that struggle. And there I had a learning about
my own body, my own ascesis.

This is Lent for Christians, East and West. We tend to make it petty by
giving up chocolate or the internet. But it is a time to struggle. By
the time you got to Derek Redmond my eyes were more than moist. Hearing
the crowds cheering him on, I thought again of the scriptures telling us
we are surrounded in our struggles by “a great cloud of witnesses”
cheering us on. None of us are alone.

Thanks, Mary, for reminding me it’s not just my food intake that is the
issue – but actually *working* on my body, my process.

Oddly enough, I wrote it before I knew what the Bible Readings were for today.

Watch Derek Redmond cross the line.

Run the Race Set before us.
The Saints Cheer us on.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy: when we celebrate these glorious icons and the presence of the Saints around us. Looking down on us – cheering us on.

Watch Derek again. Look at the crowd.

That’s us.

That’s them.

And Derek’s Dad? Who, in your life, is Derek’s Dad?

I received an email and a phone call this weekend from two friends and Brothers on this race. They didn’t know why the Spirit was having them call… but they reached out. I’m feeling a bit better now.

Let us run the race before us: we’re not alone.

To this end the Church provides many tools.

Fasting:
The cultural purpose of fasting (if you look at it historically) is, really, to bring the rich folks down to the gastronomical level of the poor. We underscore this when we insist that it’s not a full fast unless you are giving the money you save to the poor. Telling a poverty-stricken family in 8th Century Constantinople that they could only eat veggies was for them no hardship. Telling the Czar of all Russia or Emperor of Rome that he and his family had to eat only veggies creates an interesting image.

The traditional fast for Great Lent in the Orthodox tradition is to abstain from meat, fish, dairy, eggs, olive oil and wine for the entire period. Wine and oil are permitted on Saturdays and Sundays (and on certain other days commemorating the Saints) and Fish is also permitted on the Feast of the Annunciation as well as on Palm Sunday.

But the reality is that for most of us, work schedules, odd lunchtime meetings, health concerns and dietary restrictions might be of more import.

Problems only arise if you insist on reading “The traditional fast for Great Lent…” as meaning “I sin if I fail.”

Once – about 6 months after my Chrismation – I visited my family (who are not Orthodox) and I mentioned later in confession that I had been unable to keep the fast – it was Advent at the time. Fr D said, “That is the last I ever want to hear of food in confession.” Fr V said much the same thing the following Lent when I struggled with my blood sugar as if my life were less important than “the rules”.

This is not about rules, rather it is about desire. The purpose of curbing desire (which is otherwise natural) is because of our unnatural tendency to let desire grow to greed – wanting more than we need to live; and thence to gluttony – hoarding more than we need to live. As Americans we need to be especially aware of our greed and our gluttony: we live in such abundance that even ore poorest are sometimes better off than entire populations elsewhere. Our desire should be for them – rather than for ourselves.

If we get so hung up on our food – or our rejection of food – that we can not see the other, the Icon of God before us, then food has become our idol.

Services
The traditional Orthodox parish would be swamped with services through this time of year. Even the “loosest” Orthodox parish will have a couple of extra services each week. The most traditional will add Daily Matins and 3 or 4 week night services for most of Lent. Certainly it makes good sense to make wider use of the Church’s services. But why stop at Lent? If we can, I would have extra services all year. Our struggle is supposed to intensify in Lent – but not fall to lax the rest of the time. Still: we do what we can and, with my day job, I’m limited as well. So there are three sets of special Lenten prayers posted on the “Common Place Prayerbook” website:

The Daily First and Third hours for Lent are very good for morning use. There is no variable material here.

The Ninth Hour and Typika for Lent make a good evening prayer (before Supper).

While the traditional use calls for a full kathisma or section of the Psalms to be read at each office it makes more sense to read one antiphon or stasis of Psalms at each office. Begin with the First Kathisma on the first Monday of Lent and proceed forward on each weekday with the second on the Tuesday, the third on Wednesday, etc. If you don’t have time to read the Psalms at your regular prayer times, consider adding them as a Luncheon devotion, etc.

On Friday evenings there is Little Compline with the Akathist to the Theotokos, although for all other evenings there is Little Compline.

All of the offices include prostrations during lent, as well as the Prayer of St Ephraim with its prostrations and bows. Prostrations are always good acts, involving your full body in your prayer.

Additional tools are acts of Charity – given the recent situation in Haiti it may be very easy to find something to do! But better to stick close to home. Reach out to the homeless man you see every morning on the way to work. Find a way to get some clothes anonymously to a single mother at your office. Buy a bunch of bagged lunches and give them away. These acts of Charity are to be done in a spirit of joy and thanksgiving for the very act rather than somber piety. But most importantly they are to be done with a sense of connection, of relationship. Someone in another part of the world may need your money just as much as someone here… but the person here may hug you, may point out that he doesn’t need your money, will make it clear that she, too, is a person and an icon of God and not a mere object of your largesse.

Charity in the first person is also an act of humility: an act of saying you’re sorry for hoarding, for greed, for gluttony. I have so many shirts in my closet right now: winter ones, spring ones, summer ones. I need only two or three… and the same in socks and jeans and all. But I have more than I can store in my closet: an embarrassment of clothes and wealth. I need lent to kick me in the backside and make me aware of the other person, the other being, of Jesus standing in front of me.

Take time brace yourself and really struggle this Lent. But not just for lent: the purpose is to be ready to struggle always and forever for the kingdom to be made real.

Hebrews 7:7-17 Epistle, Meeting
Luke 2:22-40 Gospel, Meeting

A sketch…

The Sunday of Forgiveness.
The Expulsion from the Garden.
Valentines day on the Secular calendar.*
The Eve of the Meeting of the Lord in the Temple on the CHurch’s calendar.

*And the Western Church calendar: St Valentine is commemorated in the Summer on the Eastern Calendar.

You know the story: after sinning, God comes walking in the Garden in the cool of the evening…

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

And I can imagine all kinds of things… but the patristic comment I most like to see here is God weeping for loneliness.

And then there is this story:

And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the law, Symeon took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said: Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation…

And I imagine all kinds of things, including God weeping in Symeon’s arms, having come home, at last.

How is it that we reject our lover?

How is it that we stand naked before the one who knows us most intimately from age to age, and yet we try to hide. And how is it that when he returns to claim us re, finally, rejoice.

How have I sinned against you? How do I find myself hiding from you, afraid to love you, afraid to let you love me?
Like I do God.
As I do to God when I do so to you…

And we prostrate as equals before each other. But God comes as a child to be held in our arms.

This lover.
This light.

How is it that when we were in paradise, we did not want it. And without it we want nothing more?

We are so used to seeing Lent as reparation for our sins, fasting as a chance to drive away lust and greet and gluttony. But what if it is, instead, the long stretch in the gym before the prom night or the spa treatments before the big interview. What if lent is like the diet we take before the wedding…

When our lover will take us in his arms
And kiss us with the kisses of his mouth
and lead us into the bridal chamber
and close the door gently
and ravish us for eternity in love.

let us begin by so loving each other…

In today’s world how to follow Jesus is a serious question – there are at least 5 groups or collections of groups that I can think of claiming to be the “one true church” that Jesus founded – two of them claiming to go back 2000 years and others claiming to be “restorations”. There are something in excess of 20,000 denominations all with different types of theologies and doctrines, almost all mutually exclusive and there are enculturated tracks where “normal” Christianity takes on the flavours of African or South American or Chinese or Indian or First Nation cultures. Does the Pope belong to the same religion as a Yoruban priestess who venerates the Virgin of Guadalupe and her son? Does Sara Miles worship the same Jesus as the OCA’s Mtr Jonah or Pat Robertson? Is there room in the company of Jesus’ friends for a gay Orthodox priest and a pentecostal preacher who, shall we say, is less inclusive? Keep reading.

If you read Sara’s earlier book, Take This Bread, (or my review of it) might intuit the answers – and you might reject the answers outright. But Jesus Freak took me to some surprising places.

In the intro, Sara asks the reader:

What does it mean to be a Jesus freak? Or, more to the point, what would it mean to live as if you – and everyone around you – were Jesus, and filled with his power? To just take his teachings literally, go out the front door of your home, and act on them?

It’s actually pretty straightforward, Jesus says. Heal the sick. Cast out demons. Cleanse the lepers. You give the people something to eat. You have the authority to forgive sins. Raise the dead.

Throughout the Gospels, as he roams through Palestine, these are the commissions Jesus repeatedly hands to the ordinary people around him. Each is a specific call to action, a task for his followers to carry out on the spot – and to repeat when he’s gone. They don’t always understand, but he insists. You can do this stuff, he tells them. Walk this way. Come and see, don’t be afraid.

Sara pulls us into the image of Jesus as the Divine Boyfriend – in replacement for “bridegroom” which she feels is culturally outdated. It works for her and her friend and pastor, Paul Fromberg, recotr of St Gregory of Nyssa parish (SGN) where Sara works. This image of the Boyfriend plays through the entire text. So hold that thought for a moment.

After the Introduction, the book is divided into six sections. As I was finishing up the second one, my boyfriend, Brodie, asked me how it was going. I was direct: “I’m hating it.” I said! Reading Take This Bread I’d gotten used to Sara’s journalist voice. Mindful – I know Sara and served on the Altar with her when I was a member of St Gregory of Nyssa parish. I know her voice personally. I recognise her nuances more and more as I listen to the sermons podcasted weekly from the parish. Her journalist voice is one I find rather comforting – telling stories, weaving Jesus in; or, we might better say, lifting up the weavings so that we can see Jesus already in the pattern. But the first two sections of the book, “Come and See” and “Feeding” were, to my eyes and heart, pure mysticism. My brain grew very weary. I wanted to ask, Where is my Sara and what have you done to her? Who are you using her name? I was confused. This new voice in the book scared me.

I should have expected it. Sara has changed from the Atheist that I first met at SGN. She has changed from the first Sundays of serving on the altar. Her faith is growing, her preaching is deepening. Of course things have changed! In the introduction she says the most profoundly Orthodox thing ever:

Sara sees that the Church is, truly, the Body of Christ – as literally true as the Bread is the Body of Christ. This is exactly as the saints say:

Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God’s grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man…. The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does “head and members” mean? Christ and the Church. (Augustine)

Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself. (Gregory the Great)

Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person. (Aquinas)

About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter. (Joan of Arc)

- My source for these quotations is a synchronistic series of posts on Inhabitatio Dei

So I plunged ahead. Yes. The first two sections are mysticism: they are knee deep in the kind of things I’m used to reading in certain decontextualized digests and collections of saintly texts. The message I took away was that Jesus speaks various commands and actually expects us to do them: Come, feed, heal, forgive. Do. These are easy commands – his yoke is easy. Sit down and do them or, more correctly – stand up, get off your butt, and do them. This is NOT about religion. Sara says another most Orthodox thing: that Jesus is the death of religion. Or, in her words, “Don’t idolize religion, Jesus reminds his disciples, impatiently.”

But she goes on to point out the major problem with this reading of Jesus: “Of course all of us long for religion. In Jesus’ time every part of life – hygiene, food, sex, money, agriculture, economics, child rearing, health, ethics, marriage, death, and temple practice – was governed by a catalog of religious laws that attempted to shape human life to please the Divine.” We long for religion, and Jesus was human… doesn’t Jesus long for religion? To insist on this particular reading of Jesus is to deny his Judaism in the midst of all the Judaisms that were being practiced in Judea, Samaria and Galilee at the time.

Sara says “it’s easy, at the distance of centuries, to mock a religion that specified exactly which fabrics were acceptable to God, we still share our forebears’ desire to codify our lives in order to manage God.” But, in fact, Judaism still says God is concerned with what kind of fabrics we wear – don’t dismiss it so easily.

Therein lies the complex dilemma. The various cool things that Sara is “discovering” have been there all along. They are part and parcel of the religious tradition she’s dissing. If they got lost it’s not the fault of “religion” or “the institution”. Both of these things are made of the “Laity” the “laos”, the People of God. Even the most pious and hyper-clerical priest in her ivory tower is a member of the Laos. She was raise a layperson by lay people. She was taught by laypeople. She has a family of (mostly) lay people. We can not paint the picture of “the institution” as if the laity are not part of the Church.

Just prior to reading Sara’s book, I picked up issue 16 of Geez magazine. I’ve been reading it right along – shart articles are good for some private time. This was subtitled “The Jesus Issue”. Each article in the issue is a different Jesus – the Activist, the failed activist, the preacher, the judgmental, etc. In his own article, editor Will Braun runs a list:

“If God created us in his image, we have more than reciprocated.” That’s what French philosopher Voltaire said of the human tendency to mould God into our own likeness. Similarly, God’s son has been adapted to a great variety of human-created roles. To capitalist Christians, Jesus was a model entrepreneur. To socialist Christians, he was a hardcore socialist. To eco-Christians, he was a lily-loving environmentalist.

To self-help Christians, he was a motivational guru. And to Christian activists, he was a revolutionary.

Like Will, I used to be in that last category. Early in the book Sara seems to be there as well. Like just about everyone in Geez magazine’s issue 16, Sara is convinced that she’s finally got it right. She’s shoveled off all the religious crap and found Jesus. Right there. AT LAST! Then she reaches out to all the (sadly misdirected) people with her finally-right Jesus as an evangelist.

So, for the first two sections, Sara is wrestling with understanding why people wait for permission to do what God wants them to do. She wonders why people don’t jump up and run away from all the powers that seek to control religion, or all the clergy…

But it’s that very power in the Church (the Holy Spirit, so the Church teaches) that makes all the things possible that Sara is talking about.

So I wrestled here. I wanted to sit down and give her a non-ironic lesson in Church history and doctrine. Non-irony seems to be missing from some of her comments. But there are reasoned answers for all her questions. Does she want to hear them? I know the attitude of her community at SGN to “traditional answers”. They don’t like them very often. But the Spirit is working there: weaving the very traditional into their lives in the guise of the very new. That’s what makes SGN so wonderful. That’ why I kept reading. Even in the words that make me roll my eyes I can see the Spirit’s action.

The Food Pantry is an example of such. Although the hows and whys and mechanics of it are not discussed in the book, the fact is that giving away hundreds of tons of food to poor folks is exactly the most awesome image of Christ I can imagine in an “outreach” mode. It’s like the scene where the Nuns open the doors to their Church in Sister Act, inviting the neighbours in and welcoming the world to God’s Banquet. And I know that the Food Pantry has become a model for others around the nation and the world! They are reaching out with Jesus’ hands to feed the hungry, to give hope to the poor.

Thus it is that having tossed out the baby with bathwater, or seemingly so, Sara rediscovers traditional religion along the way. Really traditional – with a modern twist. Going forward, I should note that in the most religious of Orthodox Christian homes – as well as in the various streams of Jewish Tradition – the head of the house is the priest in the house. Fathers give their blessing – not a metaphor – to their children, to the meals, to betrothals. This is not new, but very ancient. What is new (and I think right) is that this function, which rises from the idea of “the priesthood of all believers”, should, in fact, flow out to all believers. Sara takes us there: but it’s not new.

After the section on Feeding come sections called Healing, Forgiving and Raising the Dead. If the Feeding section can be read as a conversation on Eucharist, then here comes prayer, reconciliation and anointing/last rites. These chapters read much more like the Sara I know. They are more episodic and, to me, more meaty and meaningful. And – because of the priesthood of all believers – they are more traditional. I wonder if that would surprise the author.

Sara’s opening mysticism which seems to reject Tradition in favour of revolution as a model, evolved in succeeding sections into something that, theologically, is sort of a more-sacramental version of a Disciples of Christ style understanding of the priesthood of all believers. There are moments in the book where Sara skirts the line between Anglican Catholic understanding of the ministry (I was amused to hear some people call SGN priests “Father”) and Anglican Protestant ideas of “lay presidency”. Even though – let us be clear – Sara never presides at Eucharist, she acts in the role of “sacerdos” enough in the book that one man introduces her, in another context, as “a priestess of Jesus.”

I enjoyed these parts of the book – exploring the other sacraments. Sara introduces us to real people made of real flesh and blood, just like Jesus. These people are the sacraments: as the Body of Anibal becomes the Body of Christ, or the Body of Laura and Gloria, made of one flesh, become the Body of Christ. The curious image of Divine Boyfriend only has one problem with all this realism: Christ is not the Boyfriend of the Church, but her lover. The two are one flesh. Already. Now. In a sense Sara, translating Tradition into Post-Modern Irony, has presented an image that just isn’t as deep as the Tradition. Jesus is my boyfriend? No, thanks. I want mad, passionate love that leaves me screaming in ecstasy, writhing on the floor before the altar, not some chaste handholding with a chaperone along the garden path. Ravish me with the kisses of your mouth, don’t giggle at me in the malt shop!

In all of Sara’s discussion of sacraments, the “right parts” are done by “real priests”. Don’t worry. But it’s more real than that. It’s more like real life than liturgy. Or, more to the point, real life is liturgy. Liturgy – at its best – points out the holy, the heavenly, in real life. Sara (or some other person in the story) does the work and a priest comes by to be the holy hands at the end.

As a theological aside, consider: When does the Eucharist start? Is it when the presider says, “Blessed is the Kingdom…” or some other time? Perhaps when the congregation is all gathered and silent in their devotion and the bell rings? Maybe when the clergy and sundry get there and start the setup? Perhaps the liturgy begins at home when the laity start to bake the bread with all the right prayers? Is it when the flour is milled or when the grain harvested or planted in soil that has been blessed (or not)? Perhaps when the grapes are pressed or bottled? When the vines are trimmed? Can you draw a line and call it a boundary in the past? When does the Eucharist stop being Jesus? After you eat it? When you pass it out into the toilet? When you leave the Church?

Eucharist always is – it is what we are always to be about, says St Paul. The liturgical rite, lead by a priest, is only the marker in time and space. Feed the neighbours, Jesus is there. Host a food pantry, Jesus is there.

Sara’s priests, in the book, provide the marker for all the other sacraments are always happening as well. But Sara makes it clear: with or without a marker, we’re all called to be Jesus present in the situation. Be the peacemaker, be the blesser, be the healer, be the reconciler. Unlike the mystical section (which, as I noted, I wasn’t liking at all) this was very enjoyable to read. It’s needed. It’s important:

How many of us have ministries as laity? How many of us fail to see them or devalue them even when we do see them? How many of us are in Churches where all the lay ministry in the world means nothing if the priest isn’t around to say his piece. How many times have there been wonderful, growing lay ministries but, because of his own fragile ego, the priest felt threatened by them as if they were encroaching on his own prerogative? How many times have the laity decided something for their life together only to have the clergy shoot it down with their almighty veto power rather than living as if the priest just one more member of the community with his or her own duties and responsibilities? And remember what I said: the laity let this happen. The clergy are just differently-abled laity. (I’m reminded that in the Eastern tradition, the laity can fire bishops and priests – something that is much needed in Anglicanism.)

At the end of the book, Sara works her own reconciliation though. I should have seen it coming: Sara and the Pentecostal Pastor of one of Sara’s clients serving the funeral together at the altar in SGN’s rotunda. It’s not just that Sara’s found the right Jesus and the other folks have not. But I wish this wider, more-inclusive Jesus had been explored more.

Throughout the book I was totally engaged: I might disagree or agree, I might be moved forward or back, but I was never still. Sara calls us to sing and dance as Jesus leads and she’s moving with a fast beat here. The mysticism lost me at times – but I never stopped thinking and the conversation was wonderful.

I had wanted to learn the how of the food pantry – or see more of it. I’ve wanted a food pantry at every turn since leaving San Francisco: I don’t know how, or I can’t figure it out. I make due with feeding as many people as I can. But reading this book, if one wants to try and do the same thing one can’t. Perhaps that’s also an important point. Sara doesn’t imply that each of us needs to do what she does.

The scriptures counsel us to “Work out your salvation…” What is yours? Jesus calls each of us with a tune heard only between the self and the Divine Lover. Sara has showed us her dance – even as she’s not mapped out the exact steps on the floor. But she wants us each to move into our own waltz (or lamabada, or salsa or gigue or whatever) with Jesus. Read her thing – gather strength and hope and blessing to go and do yours!

There were moments when I was painfully envious. Sara is living in a city I love (but can not afford) attending a parish I love (but can’t quite embrace as fully as they embrace me) and she is clearly doing a priestly ministry. WTF am I, after 40 years of saying “I want to be a priest”?

While reading I received an email from a friend. It was not the first such letter or phone call; I get them all the time. The question is the same: where can a gay man or lesbian discover the Orthodox church? Through a network of connections I put a gay couple in touch with an Orthodox priest and parish that would welcome them. The priest, the couple, the person referring: I’ve met none of these in person but God has put me here and I can put them together. Reputation and friends, seminarians and priests, somehow, God has placed me in a nexus that can answer that question (although not in the way that conservatives would like). One of the ancient titles for priest is pontifex and it means “Bridge builder”. As Jesus destroys divisions so it is our place to do it. In the middle of an attack of envy for Sara’s priestly ministry, I had that moment of my own ministry and by God’s grace realised it for what it was. Time again for Eucharist, for Thanksgiving.

Sara reminds us, at the end of the Jesus Freak, that “Ordinary people still hope, suspect and believe they can be Jesus… Jesus is real, and so, praise God, are we. Everything the resurrected Jesus does on earth he does through our bodies.” The scriptures say of Jesus that he is “a priest, forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” The spirit of God is moving in you and through you in the Church. What is true of Jesus is true of you if you can but open your eyes to see it. Go and do!

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2
Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46

But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling-block to the weak… So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

We are given liberty in Christ. But Christianity is, at heart, a religion of communion: communion with God – but that communion with God is only ever experienced (except in rare cases) as communion with each other, here. Our healing, our salvation, our purpose in life is found in the other, in the stranger, in the person next to us, in our neighbour. The Lord says to “love your neighbour as if he was your own self.” In essence: that person over there is me. I am not. He is.

I am defined in my relationships, only.

My personhood is only present in communion with others.

You do not define me (that would be judgement) and neither do I define me (that would be pride). Rather: our relationship defines us.

Paul hints to this in the Epistle today. Jesus touches on it in the Gospel: At the Judgement we shall be judged on our relationships to others as if each relationship to another was to Jesus himself. As if each action we make is somehow for or against this inter-personal communion and as if each action, therefore, effects our relationship with God.

I was 38 before I did something that I’ve regretted for years and can not undo.

Each of us must have a story of “the one that got away”, but I have a story of someone whom I drove away.

And I can not undo it. And daily I regret doing so; live with guilt over doing so, even though I know he is unabashedly more happy now than ever he would have been with me. But I was an ass and I caused him pain – not once but twice in the break up – out of my own pride and my own inability to love back. And I deserve what I get for that, what “karma” I pay for that. And I shall be asked on Judgement day about that.

There are a number of sins that I shall be asked about, I’m certain. The questions won’t be about rules I broke, per se: none about fasting or commandments or mitzvot. Rather, I shall be asked how I made each relationship better or worse. Did I feed or clothe those whom God has given me to love? Or did I send them away scratching the dirt?

The EPistle today makes it clear: we don’t give up meat today and for all of Lent because eating meat is a sin; but rather we do so to train ourselves to love our neighbour. This process is painful. It’s a struggle. But in the end we set out to heal by God’s grace all the things we’ve broken by our own pride. Some of the healing can be done in this life – and some not at all.

Healing, don’t forget, is just another word for Salvation: and no one of us can be saved alone. Salvation is a restoration of that communion we enjoy fully in God.

There are those who read the Gospel today to refer only to other Christians (specifically, in the first century context, to Christians in prison for their faith). There are others – including me – who read these verses to refer to *anyone*. This latter reading forces us to consider those who are not up to snuff, who are not really “Our sort”. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

There are many who don’t want to hang out with “my sort of Christian” (Define that however you will). But these verse don’t ask me to consider that: instead even if they want to make me stumble and fall – I need to take care not to make them fall.

In the light of today’s Epistle, the questions at the last judgment are not summed up as “Did anyone make you stumble?” but rather “Did you make anyone else stumble?”

CS Lewis has his Tempter Demon, Screwtape, say this:

We have quite removed from men’s minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials–namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples. You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the ‘low’ churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his ‘high’ brother should be moved to irreverence, and the ‘high’ one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his ‘low’ brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility.

Now – be mindful that for those reading the book in situ, the language of “altar” vs “table” or “mass” vs “holy communion” were issues of idolatry vs irreverence. They were clearly doctrinal issues related to salvation. To us they might sound silly but these questions hold exactly the same place in their time that questions of sex and sexuality hold for us. Questions of sacramentology and praxis are exactly the same issues as sex.

How do we deal with Church in such a way as to avoid saying “we’re right and they are going to hell”?

My first project this lent to to ask forgiveness of the person I harmed. My goal is to get that done this week or next, in our liturgical context of Forgiveness Sunday. Will he forgive me? I don’t know. Will God?

I believe God will ask him first.

How will each of us fair on Judgment Day? Let us each ask our neighbours.

The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe that is in the temple.

Troparion Tone 4
When you appeared in the New World, O Theotokos,
you fixed your image on Juan Diego’s rose laden tilma.
All the poor, hungry, and oppressed seek you, Lady of Guadalupe.
We gaze upon your miraculous icon and find hope,
crying out to your Son concealed in your womb:
Hear our plea for justice, O most merciful Lord.

Kontakion Tone 7
No longer shall the New World lie wounded in useless blood sacrifice,
for she who is clothed with the sun has revealed the Son to us.
O Mother of the Americas, imprint His Name upon our hearts,
just as you wove your image into the cactus cloth.
Teach your children to cry out:
O Christ God, our hope, glory to you.

The Sunday of the Prodigal is always a hard one for me: not because I am a failure, but because I need nearly every day – to “come to myself” as the Son does in the story, and realise that life in my Father’s house is so much better than here, in my own place.

How many times must I repent?

A Christian Bookstore is full of easy answers:

Praying the “sinners prayer” is supposed to make you “once saved, always safe”. Some Christian communities opine that Jesus paid the price once and for all and that once you “come under the precious blood” you’ll be fine for all eternity.

I think they miss the point: making “salvation to be about paying debts for sins imagined or real. They make God out to be angry and duped – angry at us for our petty offenses and duped by his son into thinking that, even though we continue to commit them they do not matter any more, look, here’s some blood.

The Orthodox Tradition – ancient, Historic Christianity – is rather focused on God as the Father in this parable. The God who – like many parents in our world – loves his children almost to error. When we want to go, he gives us his blessing. When we come back, he’s weeping.

My own life is one of constant conversion – each turn, each new thing, is a blessing for a while, but then I know I have to go further on. Does that mean that I’m getting closer or getting further away?

Each of our paths is different, even within the Christian tradition. Some of us don’t get to walk “inside” for very long and yet our goal is the same: the Father from a long way off running towards us faster than we’re getting to him.

In some readings of this Parable, the younger son is the Gentiles, whilst the older, jealous son is the Jews. I don’t want to imagine that’s what Jesus was saying here. But how many times are we, each of us, in the roll of the eldest son? How many times do we look and see someone having it easy whilst our road is hard? How many times do we look and imagine that they are getting all the blessings and yet we, here, have all the struggles?

So even now, at the end of the sermon, I’ll loop back to the beginning. How do we deal with those Christian communities that are offering the whole “once saved always safe” idea?

The traditional answer is for pious Orthodox Christians to pretend those folks – Lutherans, Church of Christ, Evangelicals, Charismatics, etc – are not even Christian at all. They’re heretics and schismatics. And we are right.

“Once saved always safe” has a parallel, liberal teaching, a mirror image: never not saved. Liberal Episcopalians, Catholics, etc offer this. And Orthodox Christians – many ex-Episcopalians, etc – come back again with “not even Christian at all.

Ah, the joys of being the elder brother.

And the standard reply: “It’s not pride and arrogance to simply state the Truth. We’re right and they are wrong. When they come to their senses, God will throw them a party, too”

When do we get to be the younger brother? Our sins are surely not as big as theirs. We do not wallow in heresy or schism, here in the arms of Mother Church.

Have you nothing that weighs heavily on your heart? Paul says all things are lawful – but not all things are beneficial. Here is a place where we need to look.

I know that there are ways in a man’s heart that sex and lust can take hold and dominate. Perhaps it is true, also, of a woman’s heart. I know there are ways in times of abundance, when feasting and gluttony can take hold in my heart and even my own desire to loose weight for health’s sake can not overcome my desire to eat one more bon bon.

Did the prodigal come straight home, or did he have some turnings?

When Paul speaks of prostitutes, I think he is, in fact, speaking in the first person. He’s been widowed and without a wife for sometime now. Traveling on the road, seeing homes where happy families cavort. He is, after all, a man. What should he do?

Perhaps for you or me, the prostitute is not sexual: I’m getting older now where a warm coat and a gourmet meal are more important than another warm body in bed…

But I can still find myself downstairs chatting with an attractive someone, even as time for Church draws near.

Once the prodigal got home, did he never stumble again?

Time to repent again and come to my self.

That is, God. My true self – not the false self image I craft for my ego’s sake.

Lent is the time to make this journey. To find God before us weeping for Joy. To realise how far we’ve yet to go and how much more we’ve yet to overcome by his Grace in our lives.

The only thing that is once for all is our life in him.

What things hold you back?

Luke 19:1-10 (NRSA)

It’s falling very early this year, no? It’s still mid-January. January 4th if you’re on the old calendar! (I wonder if, on the OC, it’s possible for this Sunday to fall in December? Anyway…) Nex Sunday the Triodion starts. We prepare for Lent. The Journey starts today! And I confess I love Lent! It is my favourite part of the year, my favourite time to stand with God.

I’ve been reading Fr Schmemann’s great introduction to Orthodoxy, For the Life of the World. Most recently I was reading the section on Chrismation and there is a tie-in for us here on Zacchaeus Sunday. We’ll get there in a minute… His journey is not a long one – from his house, up the road, and finally up the tree. He had, of course, a life time of journey before that, all bringing him to this fateful day. The Gospel seems to boil it all down to the symbolism of his tree-climb, which the Fathers saw as a mark of his desire.

Zacchaeus climbed a tree and where have we gone?

When I decided I didn’t believe all of this Christian stuff any more – at the ripe and wise age of 25 or so – I left the (Episcopal) church and journey on a long path through several different religions and “spiritualities”. I also added new levels of meaning to the word “publican” which, at least in the British Isles, means “bar tender”. For a time I was a minister in a non-Christian group – which required an ordination ceremony. My mom was there – along with people from about 5 or 6 different religions. I said on that day that the Holy One sure was full of surprises: because no matter where I went, there He was.

At that ceremony in that non-Christian tradition, two Christian musician friends of mine led the gathered group in a song by Sylvan Dunstan. The first verse reads,

Bless now, O God, the journey that all your people make,
the path through noise and silence, the way of give and take.
The trail is found in desert, and winds the mountain round,
then leads beside still waters, the road where faith is found.

Zacchaeus went up a tree, where have we gone?

Finally, after all that decade of journeying I found myself going, again, to a Church in San Francisco and working for a Roman Catholic university, my Mom laughed and said, “you can’t get away from the Lord.”

Lent is a Journey: everyone will tell you so. Those who make a spiritual practice of reading St John’s great work “The Ladder of Perfection” begin to see the journey as climbing Jacob’s ladder upward. Those who paint icons will tell you of the journey to that inner vision of beauty. Spiritual elders will tell you of the journey to the vision of the Uncreated Light. Today the Gospel tells us of a journey up a tree.

We could talk my journey that brought me here – of your journey that brings your here… but if we focus only on the journey that Zacchaeus makes, we might miss the point: all by itself, climbing a tree to see God-Incarnate can be just as useful as building a Tower to Heaven.

Our Lord was walking that day up the road towards Zacchaeus. A curious thing happens: climbing the tree, Zacchaeus finds that Jesus was already coming to see him. He says, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must abide at thy house.” You almost want Him to say, “What are you doing up that tree, I’ve been waiting for supper all this time, now stop playing and come down!”

It’s not enough that Zacchaeus was looking around: God was looking for Zacchaeus. Mom has it right: you can’t get away from the Lord.

St Nicholas Cabasilas says, “It was not we ourselves who were moved toward God, nor did we ascend to Him; but it was He who came and descended to us. It was not we who sought, but we were the object of His seeking. The sheep did not seek for the shepherd, nor did the lost coin search for the master of the house; He it was who came to the earth and retrieved His own image, and He came to the place where the sheep was straying and lifted it up and stopped it from straying. He did not remove us from here, but He made us heavenly while yet remaining on earth, and imparted to us the heavenly life not by leading us up to heaven but by bending heaven to us and bringing it down.”

That is NOT, however, the only aspect. If we let St Nicholas take us along we’ll imagine that nothing we do is important. God is not some massive chess player with us as pawns waiting to be moved or not. Our desire, our passion, our quest for God is needed as well. James says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8)

But there is more…

Jesus comes to Zacchaeus’ house! There is more than just desire, more than just seeing. You can’t do everything God wants from the ivory tower from up in the tree… you have to come down. Relate to God. Relate to People. You have to be in fellowship. Be in communion. It won’t work otherwise.

Remind yourself where you were when God found you. Yes, even there: come here, Jesus says to you, we’re going to have a meal together – This day is salvation come to this house. Salvation – the Greek word root is “sozo”, healing, health, wholeness. It means not that this man was “Saved” that he’s getting out of hell when he dies. It means this man is restored to relationship with God and with others.

Zacchaeus is, for us, a model of repentance. But for us, in this community, there is something more: the crowd doesn’t really like Zacchaeus, yes? Verse 7 says All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.”

You and I know how people in Church can be. This man was seeking God. God was seeking him. This man and God embraced. And all the “good people” said, “YER DOING IT WRONG!”

The second verse of that song I heard sung so long ago echoes the prayer we utter at each liturgy “for all mankind” – Christains or not, knowing or not, we are all seekers.

Bless sojourners and pilgrims who share this winding way,
whose hope burns through the terrors, whose love sustains the day.
We yearn for holy freedom while often we are bound;
together we are seeking the road where faith is found.

We are all on this journey together – that includes not only us standing in Church. St Paul calls God “Savior of all people, especially – but he does not “only” – of them that believe. Everyone is on this journey. Some may not get there in this life time: and we continue to pray for them after they are gone. Some of us may think we have finally arrived when, as Zacchaeus found, there was something more to do. He thought he wanted only to see this cool guy he heard about. Instead he found himself saying, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore to him fourfold.”

How’s that for a costly tree climb?

Lent is this journey for us. Today, Zacchaeus Sunday, is the day we realise not only that we are seeking God, but, lo, God is seeking us. All of this prepares us for our Baptism – our bringing of our life to Christ. You may remember the beginning of this sermon… where I said I’d been reading Fr Schmemann.

Zacchaeus is not asked to give up much: be is asked to do something different with it, yes. But he is not asked to Stop being Zacchaeus. He doesn’t leave this story as anything other than the Publican he was: he’s just a repentant publican.

When he stands up before the God who has come into his house to have a party… Zacchaeus has his own moment of catching the Spirit. Jesus’ presence, God there, is the Spirit’s presence as well, no? You can’t have on without the other…

Chrismation, confirmation (which we do daily, I think) is each our own Pentecost, says Fr Schmemann.

“Confirmation is thus the personal Pentecost” of each of us, our “entrance into the new life in the Holy Spirit, which is the true life of the Church. It is is our ordination as fully human, for to be fully human is to belong to the Kingdom of God. And again, it is not our “soul” alone – our “spiritual” or “religious” life that is thus confirmed, but the totality of our human being. Our how body is anointed, sealed, sanctified, dedicated to the new life: “The seal of the gift of the Holy SPirit,” says the Priest as he anoints the newly baptisxed, “on the brow, and on the eyes and the nostrils, and the lips, and on both ears, and the breast and on the hands, and the feet.” The whole person is not made the temple of God, and her whole live is from now on a liturgy. It is here, at this moment, that the pseudo-Christian opposition of the “spiritual” and the “material” the “sacred” and the “profane”, the “religious” and the “Secular” is denounced, abolished, and revealed as a monstrous lie about God and us and the world. The only true temple of God is the full human and through us the whole world. Each ounce of matter belongs to God and is to find in God its fulfillment. Each instant of time is God’s time and is to fulfill itself as God’s eternity. Nothing is “neutral.” …

To be fully man means to be fully oneself. The confirmation is the confirmation of each of us in his or her own unique “personality”. It is, to use again the same image, the ordination of each of us to be him or herself, to be what God wants him or her to be, what God as loved in me from all eternity. It is the gift of vocation.

Zacchaeus, the newly-illumined, the saved saint of God, stands up and realises what he has – gives it away. Realises he’s sinned – repents. ALL in response to God’s coming to him, God’s eating with him, God’s presence in his life.

The final verse of that song relies on symbolism that St Gregory of Nyssa found replete in the Song of Songs. His commentary on that work is nearly scandalous for in many passages that we must admit would be “banned in Boston” for sexual imagery, we find the true meaning of God’s searching for us.

Divine eternal lover, you meet us on the road.
We wait for land of promise where milk and honey flow,
but waiting not for places, you meet us all around.
Our covenant is written on roads, as faith is found.’

You are here, now. You feast with God, the eternal lover of your soul and your body and your heart and your mind. Closer to you than any friend or friend with benefits, or friend we cuddle with or spouse we love! When you rise from this table confirmed in your whole self, in your full personhood with God, what will be your covenant? What will be the response that you bring? What will be your life, your fullness, your salvation?

Zacchaeus climbed a tree. Where have you gone? You can’t get away from the Lord.