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….

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.

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.