Second Terrace

Thy Kingdom Come

This month of June, the Orthodox Church celebrates two of the most important feasts in the Christian year -- Ascension and Pentecost.

Pentecost depends upon Ascension. And it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the whole reason why Jesus was born, and suffered the Cross, and rose from the dead, was just so He could then ascend to heaven and ask the Father to send down the Holy Spirit.

Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after the Resurrection. He did not go “anywhere,” like somewhere in outer space. Instead, He entered into heaven which is, dogmatically speaking, the communion of the Holy Trinity itself.

It is the humanity of Jesus that ascended. His divinity was never separated from the Trinity. This is hugely important because the human nature that Jesus took upon Himself at the Incarnation (“He clothed Himself in me,” as we sing frequently in Vespers) was brought into the very midst of the Godhead. “When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle (not made with hands, that is, not of creation), He entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9.11-12). 

The “tabernacle” is the divine heaven itself, and the sacrificial blood Jesus our high priest brings is His human nature: “When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until His enemies should be made a footstool” (Hebrews 10.12-13).

The ascending into heaven, the bringing of the sacrificial blood into the Holy of Holies (heaven), and the sitting at the right hand of God the Father are all unified in one great mystical moment. It is the passage of the High Priestly Ministry of Christ into His Royal Ministry. 

From that point onward, Jesus Is now King of King and Lord of Lords: “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2.9-11).

This majestic scene is also witnessed in John’s Apocalypse: “Worthy art Thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for Thou didst create all things, and by Thy will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4.11). The book of Revelation is all about the Royal Ministry of Christ. It is an ongoing unveiling (i.e., “apocalypse”) of His Reign in the world: it is about the present, not about the distant and disconnected future.

“Sit at My right hand,” God the Father said to God the Son at the Ascension, “until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Psalm 109.1 LXX). Jesus is King right now, not later -- from the Ascension to the moment that He returns in the same manner (Acts 1.11) at the final achievement at the “parousia,” Jesus is now being enthroned upon the earth just as He is fully enthroned and glorified in heaven. 

We are already familiar with this beautiful truth: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When we pray this, we pray -- prompted by the Holy Spirit -- for the ongoing and increasing enthronement of the King.

So if Jesus is King now and not later, what or where is His Kingdom? We already know that His kingdom must be different: “My Kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said to Pilate (John 18.36). But it is steadily and mysteriously emerging, more and more, into this world, growing mysteriously like a mustard seed into an enormous tree (Luke 13.19).

Where is the Kingdom? This was asked specifically of Jesus in Luke 17.20-21: “Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, Lo, here it is! or There! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.’”

What is the Kingdom? The Kingdom that was announced by Jesus and the Forerunner is nothing -- or no one -- other than the Holy Spirit Himself. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth is the One Who realizes (i.e., “brings into real life”) the reign of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit develops, through time and through the cooperative work of the Body of Christ, the enthronement of Jesus as the obvious King of all Creation.

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends upon all of humanity. In a beautiful way, this descent follows the descent of the Son of God when He was born of the Virgin Mary. This moment could have only happened if the Son of God came to the Father not only as divine but also as human. Jesus presented to the Father the offering of His humanity, and thus established the “way” of the Spirit to descend upon, as the Prophet Joel says, “all flesh” (Joel 2.28, quoted by the Apostle Peter in the very first Christian homily, at Pentecost in Acts 2.17).

This High Priestly offering was a supplication -- an intense definitive crux upon which all time and space, all creation and history turn. Jesus asked the Father to send “another Comforter”: “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; you know Him, for He dwells with you, and will be in you” (John 14.16-17).

Precisely because of this offering and request, the Father sent the Holy Spirit to descend upon the world. Now, the Holy Spirit is present to all of humanity, not to just a few special prophets. 

In this way, the universal presence of the Holy Spirit (“Who are everywhere present, filling all things”), in His distinct personal role as the “Glorifier” of Christ, extends and presents and realizes the Reign of the King.

The Orthodox Church proclaims that Jesus Christ is King of Creation now, as He is seated now at the Right Hand of God the Father. This is affirmed by the Psalms, the Prophets (mainly Isaiah), and about twenty verses in the New Testament and is witnessed in the Nicene Creed.

And the Creed adds “And His Kingdom shall have no end.” Jesus is the Ascended King -- that is why, technically speaking, the Orthodox Church has no dogmatic room for the recognition of any worldly king or autocrat. We already have a King, and only He truly reigns. In a poignant and ironic reversal of the terrible statement of the chief priests (in John 19.15), we proclaim “We have no King but the Lord Jesus Christ!”

“By the power of Christ,” Fr Sergius Bulgakov wrote in his magisterial The Lamb of God, “human history moves toward its end, which is universal resurrection and the transfiguration of all creation. In this world, all things that are necessary for its transition to the new reality of another world are being accomplished … Christ leads His humankind, despite its antagonism and resistance.”

We live now in Pentecostal history, which is described mystically by the symbolic Millennium in Revelation 20. Christ is King and the Devil is bound: this is depicted in the dark abyss at the bottom of the Resurrection icon. Satan is severely limited in influence by the overwhelming power and presence of the Holy Spirit. The Mother of God and the Saints and our departed loved ones spiritually reign with Him. Even now.

But for now, that is not so obvious. Christ is King, but the world languishes still in darkness (Satan is bound and inhibited, but he is certainly not absent)  -- and that comprises the deep psychic and historical tension in which we live. As Fr Bulgakov wrote in The Comforter, “God is love, but the world is full of malice, struggle, and hatred. The world is full of the immeasurable suffering of creatures.”

But God is Father Who cannot but respond to His suffering children. “The creature cries out and beseeches the Spirit, ‘Come and dwell within us.’ The creature beseeches in the extremity of sorrow; its yearning is unbearable. The Comforter is near … He is unceasingly accessible and clearly known in His breath, in His mysterious presence. Through the sacraments of the Church He gives us living communion with God. He watches over the Church and guides Her; by His power She is for us a higher reality that is not taken away from us and will not be taken away from us -- a joy forever, a light of eternity in this world below.”

Since Pentecost, history is the story of the slow, gradual emergence of Jesus’ Kingdom. It is not an obvious superficial story. It is an emergence draped in mystery, proceeding from heart to heart, out of hidden and unnoticed acts of goodness and love. Obviously, His Kingdom does not grow by wars or politics, worldly power or violence. It grows only by the Spirit:

“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 4.6).

St Irenaeus of Lyons wrote (nineteen hundred years ago at the end of the second century) that “This is the order, the rhythm, the movement by which created humanity is fashioned after the image and likeness of the created God. The Father makes the decisions and gives the commands, the Son carries them out and adapts them, the Spirit provides nourishment and growth, and humanity progresses little by little.”

The Holy Spirit of Pentecost proceeds now “underground” — by miracle, Apostolic Proclamation, sacrament, loving ministry, self-denial, forgiveness, and meekness. It is a procession, and a history, that the news media and society and the politicians will never notice, but it is happening all the same. 

It is why we pray, in that best of all prayers, “Thy Kingdom come.” It is why we are Orthodox, why we love, why we live. 

“Thy Kingdom come” means that we say “Marana Tha” -- which is exactly what the catacomb Christians gladly exclaimed, over and over again: “Lord Jesus come soon!”

“Thy Kingdom come” is an eminently Pentecostal supplication. We pray for the emergence of the Kingdom in our hearts and in our houses. We pray, through the power of the Holy Spirit and our cooperation, for the enthronement of the One and Only King in our souls and in our world.

“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit.”

Indeed: “Thy Kingdom come.”

keeping the republic is hard christian work

James McHenry was a Maryland delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He had been at the home of prominent socialite Elizabeth Willing Powel, which had become a prominent intellectual “salon,” especially during the heady days of the Convention.

The most popular guest of Mrs Powel’s was Benjamin Franklin. One evening, according to McHenry’s notes, “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”

This quote -- “a republic if you can keep it” -- enjoyed “major hit” status last January during the impeachment proceedings. Mrs Powell was never given credit for asking the setup question. And usually, the quote was located, wrongly, on the steps outside the Convention on its last day.

And never did we hear the rest of the story. Upon hearing Franklin’s witty remark about the hard work of keeping the republic, the salonnière Mrs Powell asked the next logical question:

“And why not keep it?”

Franklin responds: “Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.”

The “dish” to which he was referring was sheer naked power. When George Washington was elected the first president, Franklin wrote that “The first man put at the helm will be a good one. Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.”

That’s not all. He continues: “The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy.” 

Here is where I part company with Franklin. We don’t have to worry much about a monarchy. But we always have to worry about the “strong man,” about “authoritarianism.”

I wish people, in general, would be more concerned about authoritarianism than socialism or communism (and no, these two things are not at all the same). Authoritarianism has done more damage in history than anything else. Folks can complain about liberalism (or conservatism) all they want, but no one has done more bloodletting in history than autocrats like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Il Duce, Franco, and Pinochet (to name a few).

These authoritarian autocrats, interestingly, show up on the extremes of both left and right wings. All of them (Stalin in particular) adored Henry Ford’s model of assembly-line industrialization. All of them sacrificed goodness and kindness for the sake of wealth and domination. All of them -- right or left, communist or capitalist -- were adept in the dark arts of totalitarianism. 

Nowadays, in some quarters, it is fashionable to complain about the “soft totalitarianism” of cancel culture, political correctness, entitlements, etc. This is laughable when such complaints are compared to the real totalitarianism of twentieth-century strong men.

And all of these guys (authoritarianism is definitely a male phenomenon, which is not a compliment) were aided and abetted and welcomed with open arms by enthusiastic fanboys. Stalin (and his predecessor Lenin) was cheered by intellectual atheists. Hitler (along with Mussolini and Franco) was heralded by religious conservatives, who naively believed his promises of restoring “traditional values.” Mao and Pol Pot were deified by millions of abused and impoverished workers.

Without exception, the strong men of history betrayed their first fans. Stalin regularly rounded up and executed the most Marxist and atheist intelligentsia (e.g., Leon Trotsky). Hitler sent Evangelicals (and Roman Catholics and Orthodox and many others) off to concentration camps and the gallows (I’m thinking especially of Dietrich Bonhoeffer here). Franco and Pinochet “disappeared” hundreds of thousands. 

And Mao slaughtered his own poor farmers and factory workers. By the millions.

The Republic fashioned by the Constitutional Convention, as is true of all democracies, will always gravitate towards authoritarianism and despotism. It’s just the nature of power, in a fallen world, to arrogate more power to itself: “Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.”

That is why we must always do the hard work of keeping the Republic. This requires a constant watch on the Executive. He must always be subjected to the law. He must not be permitted to flout decency and civility. He cannot be allowed the exploitation of single hot-button issues to manipulate entire constituencies. He must not be permitted to surround himself with a cadre of brownshirts who fall all over themselves to show simpering loyalty and subservience. 

A President (or past or future President) cannot be permitted to construct his own narrative. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s “Minister of Propaganda,” is infamous for popularizing the technique of the Big Lie: if a strong man and his gang repeat a lie long enough, a critical mass of the population will soon come to believe it. What’s more, the Big Lie seems to get more effective the more outrageous it is.

When German citizens heard whispers about the gas chambers at Auschwitz on one hand, and the loud Nazi denials on the other, newspaper editors and civic leaders and reasonable people said, “Well, there are two sides to every story.” 

No, there's not.

The horrifying truth of the Holocaust was conveniently disposed of under the rubric of suspecting “liberal” bias -- in Hitler’s case, he was ever scapegoating the “usual liberal suspects”: who were, of course, Jews and communists. 

And there was another rubric at work: the almost religious devotion to the strong man. Loyalty to him was utmost, even if it meant swallowing the Big Lie.

Keeping the Republic is hard work. It isn’t the easy and simplistic (and disastrous) tactic of “single-issue voting” -- strong men just adore single-issue voters. It is even worse for Christians, particularly Orthodox Christians, to suppose that an authoritarian regime would be advantageous for their religious community. Despite the perceived (and misconstrued) "benefits" of collusion with the state (such as procured in civil religion with a state establishment), there is no credible rationale for a Christian to prefer autocracy over democracy.

On the face of it, a "benevolent" autocrat presents a simpler frame for Christian interaction with society. Democracy, in all its various forms, confronts the Christian community with ambiguity, complexity, and hardship. A democracy can only tend towards a secular society. It cannot permit establishment: at best, a secular society must "level the playing field" for all religious communities. Christians are required to live in a pluralistic environment: they must interact civilly with other religious communities, even with an atheist or agnostic majority. The hierarchy of the Christian community will not have the influence in a democracy as it would in a society with an established church or an autocrat in collusion with the church.

Nevertheless, the church in democracy will be interacting with the liberal legacy which Christianity itself inaugurated. The Church, by its essentially voluntary and personalist nature, should naturally recognize the individual rights of liberalism as its own descendent.

It is precisely this character of democracy -- the personalist legacy of Christianity -- that the Strong Man militates against. And that is why the Church must enlist in the struggle against such authoritarianism.

The best way to resist a wannabe autocrat is to always disbelieve his Big Lie and to hold him accountable. 

We must denounce, over and over again, the whole idea of “party loyalty.” Of all the poisons of the modern age, party loyalty to the point of repeating a Big Lie is most toxic to democracy.

We should demand courage -- not party loyalty -- of our Representatives and Senators, whether Republican or Democratic. If they are too afraid to stand up to a Strong Man or challenge a partisan lie, then they need to find another occupation that doesn’t require that much honor.

dinner at the edge of the universe

“Forever” begins at the edge of the universe. You are invited to dinner at the table there. It is only a Gift: the idea of payment, there, no longer exists. The Host of the dinner was our Victim: but because of the Resurrection, this Victim of everyone has become everyone’s Hope.

The Dinner is free. It is meant to make you free. Free to be. Free to become like Him, which is as beautiful as the sunrise that never sets, always rising.

* * * * * *

What follows is not a sermon. It is more like a “credo,” that is, a statement of what I believe as an Orthodox Christian. It is not just what I believe about Easter. More than this, it is better to say what Easter is all about for me, and for you. I would die for this belief, because this belief -- our Orthodox knowledge of the Risen Christ -- makes us live forever.

If we would die for this belief, it is only because we will rise for it.

* * * * * * *

Sometime (maybe a few weeks) after the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the remaining apostles -- now only Eleven, no longer Twelve -- decided to go fishing. There is nothing like doing hard physical work that is familiar, especially after a mind-bending crisis such as they had just experienced. 

They fished all night, throwing their net over the side of the boat. But all night, they dragged in a completely empty net, each and every time.

In the morning, the Risen Christ, their Friend Jesus, stood on the shore, and He said “Children, have you any food?” (John 21.5). In other words, “Did you catch anything?”

It is sweetly haunting that the Gospel here makes sure that we know that the apostles did not recognize Christ at first. This same “hiddenness” of the Risen Christ occurred with Mary Magdalene in the Garden, soon after the Resurrection, and with Luke and Cleopas on the way to Emmaus (also on the day of the Resurrection).

In the mysterious Forty Days from the Resurrection to the Ascension, Jesus was no longer “contained” or “confinable” by the constraints of the world. “Don’t try to hold onto Me,” Jesus said to Mary in the Garden, “For I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20.17).

The Risen Christ is recognized only when He deliberately worked to appear in Friendship to His friends. Do you remember when, on the night when He was betrayed, He said, “I no longer call you servants, but now I call you friends”? (John 15.15) And when He said, “This is My commandment, that you love one another” (John 15.12); and “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14.15)?

It is clear, here, that we can recognize the Risen Christ only if we know Him in His love for us, and in our love for Him and each other. The world will never recognize the Risen Christ: He is hidden from its view. The devil never really identified what, or Who, defeated him and obliterated the power of Hell. Even if the Risen Christ had appeared on a grand stage in Rome, or on TV today, no one would recognize God, the Risen Christ, even standing right before them. Even Pilate, the powerful Roman, could not recognize Truth when “the very Word of God that is Truth” was standing immediately before him in the Praetorium ... even when he said, in the greatest irony of all time, “What is truth?” (John 18.38).

Truth is Love, and Love is Truth: and Jesus Christ is the Father’s Word of Love to the world. No spectacle or demonstration can prove faith: only relationship, or communion.

Besides, we humans have gotten so accustomed to death that when it is no longer present as an always-there-reality, we are disoriented. When Jesus stood on the shore after the Resurrection, in His risen, glorified flesh, the complete absence of death was so odd, and the presence of glorious life was so overwhelming that the reality of it just could not fit into the poor apostles’ death-familiar perception.

Seeing the Risen Christ for them was like a fish underwater trying to understand the flight of a kingfisher: the fish only sees a flash of white silver and blue. The sky is utterly unthinkable to a creature who is accustomed to underwater, and cannot begin to understand the glories of flight and wind.

So it is with the Resurrection to those who can only think that death is the end and all there is.

* * * * * *

The poor apostles, who had a frustrating time of it, answered “No, it was a bad night for fishing.” Jesus told them to let down their net on the other side of the boat. On the face of it, this advice was nonsense, because your net is going to occupy the very same volume of water below the hull of the boat no matter what side you throw it over. 

But they did. Immediately, a bunch of fish -- 153 to be exact -- stuffed themselves in the net. They were probably “mango tilapia” (sarotherodon galilaeus), what is popularly known in Palestine as “St Peter’s Fish.”

When they arrived on shore, they found Jesus, the Risen Christ, waiting for them. He had already built a fire. A few fish were already grilling on the coals. I kid you not. The Risen Godman — Son of God and Son of Man — grilling fish on shore: it can’t get better than this.

“Come and dine,” He said.

By this moment, the apostles realized just Who this mysterious Person was waiting for them on shore. Surely, the miraculous (and a little comic) haul of tilapia had to ring the bell of déjà vu — because it had happened before at the beginning of their path with Jesus (Luke 5.1-11). This was not the first time that Jesus repeated a miracle in the same way to make a point. So the weight of the full net had to give some indication.

But when they heard His voice, and felt His welcome, when they walked into the light of His Face of Resurrection, and when they sat down with Him at Table and dined with Him, they knew.

Here He was, on shore, risen from the dead.

You can only recognize Jesus, Risen from the Dead, in love.

To believe is to know, and to know is to love.

In the Resurrection, Love is Faith: and that is a miracle that always requires a victory over death, and the destruction of Hell.

Hell cannot tolerate Love at all. And Divine Love, especially so united with Humanity (as it is in Christ), will utterly destroy Hell, and Death, and Sin.

* * * * * *

I think the chief mark that identified Christ at that dinner was His wounds. These were the scars left by the nails that were driven through His palms and feet, and the lance that pierced His side. These wounds are the marks of violence, and by bearing them, Jesus is marked as the ultimate Victim. Not only was He completely innocent (none of us are this: “all have sinned,” St Paul says in his Epistle to the Romans), but He is God the Son. The sheer fact that the Trinity “was acquainted with grief” through the human suffering of Jesus is one of the most heartbreaking and profound mysteries of Time. 

The Holy Trinity is the infinite, tri-personal divine communion of Peace and Beauty. Its divine nature is unchanging, far beyond any vulnerability to passion. How is it even possible that that the God-Man (i.e., “theanthropos”) suffered such ugly violence, to the extreme that He bore the death-sickness of sin of all Time?

The total human suffering of the divine Jesus was the sum total of all human grief and pain that Christ voluntarily took upon Himself, so that the divine grace of the Holy Trinity could totally heal all grief for all time: from all wars, to a lifelong addiction and abuse, to each betrayal and every failure..

Jesus became the total Victim, standing in for the self-inflicted pain of all human evil. “Surely, He has born our suffering. He is acquainted with grief. He is the Man of Sorrows.”

Hell is the gaping grave where all victimizing descends. It is the blackhole destination of every hatred, broken communion, betrayal and violence. You and I were sinking there. Jesus Christ stopped our descent by going there first.

Every sin has consequences that we can never fully comprehend, and these consequences have an accumulating weight, like Jacob Marley’s chain in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” In a way, every single sin makes Hell larger.

Hell is not a creation. Hell is merely a psychotic extension. 

What Jesus did was this. He died on the Cross and descended into Hell as a human -- but because He is also God, the Second Person of the Trinity, His infinite divinity completely swallowed up Hell. Jesus made Himself the inheritor of all the consequences of all sin for all time. He offered Himself as the Victim of all the violence, evil and wicked judgment of the world.

Jesus was certainly not the victim of the Father’s wrath. He was the victim of us. God never wills chaos or violence: but we often do in our sub-humanity.

Every sin is a violence that lands as a thrash on Jesus’ back. Every hatred, every pride, every slander, every lie, every rejection of a fellow human, every cruelty against the weak and the meek ... every single failure to love is one more pounding of the nail into His palm. Even now.

Every embrace of darkness is another thrust of the lance into His side. Even now.

In His human agony, Jesus exclaimed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He did not say this just about the Romans who were pounding the nails, or the Jewish leaders who manipulated this execution to protect their own political turf.

Jesus said “Father forgive them” meaning them, of course, but also us.

It’s true. In every single sin, we are clueless about the consequences of what we do, the chain of bad events that we set into motion with every rejection of love. We are always stupid about our sins: humans rarely mean to be evil. It really isn’t in their nature. 

Sin is not native to human nature at all. Sin is always unnatural. It is a leprous corruption of nature. Always.

And we certainly had no idea that every one of our sins added (and continues to add) more pain to the Son of God’s agony on a tree, one horrible afternoon on a Friday in Palestine, in AD 29, when the sun grew dark and the earth shook with horror.

“Surely, He hath borne our sorrows.”

“By His stripes we are healed.”

He is God Who created everything in His beautiful peace: now, on the Cross, He is Victim of every darkness, the inheritor of all disease ... and suffering … and death … the entire legacy of sin.

This agony is exactly what the Holy Trinity decided to assume just as soon as God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit knew about the fall of humanity into darkness. Which means that God knew forever about the Cross, and His descent into Hell and His obliteration of it as a necessary, objective reality. "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him ... the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Apocalypse/Revelation 13.8).

Jesus descending from Heaven, pouring out His divine life on the Cross to anyone who would receive it and descending all the way to Hell to destroy its bondage was simply the same love that the Three Persons of the Trinity always extended to Each Other.

Hell is destroyed as a mandatory thing. It is no longer a necessity, or a curse, or a pre-destination or even the power of an evil eye. It exists today only as a possibility or a choice for those who are so addicted to Ego that they reject the universal Grace of the Trinity.

No one “has to” go to Hell. Hell is the blackhole of all cursing, pre-determinism, fate, the feeling that “nothing will ever get better." Hell invented the idea that your genes determine your behavior and that you have no free will. Fate, determinism and cursing are all just other words for corruption. 

Every doubt, every unbelief, every bout of despair is the cold, aching winter wind of Hell. You and I need the dawn, and the sky of the new clear sun. That is what human nature needs: our sin-leprosy is healed only by the Resurrection.

After the Cross and Holy Saturday, Hell’s gates are wide open because, after all, the revelation of Jesus’ divinity destroyed them. Anyone who wants to leave with Christ can. But that’s just it. Jesus is the only way out. He is, after all, “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

That revelation of Jesus’ divinity in Hell on Holy Saturday was like a supernova. It is a transformative, healing fire that restores creation to the way it should be, and sets creation on its right course to always becoming deified, always becoming filled with more light.

The supernova started on Holy Saturday. It will completely engulf the entire universe at the Last Day. Who knows how long that will take? No one knows the hour of the coming back of the Son of Man, when He comes, “seated on the clouds in glory.”

* * * * * *

So what do you do when your own victim of your own violence (which is exactly what our sin is) asks you to dinner? Ask the disciples, they’ll tell you.

And they’ll tell you -- this theme was in all their preaching in the New Testament -- that it is only because of the Resurrection that the Total Victim Who is Jesus has now become our Total Hope.

So the Risen Jesus Christ, Whose resurrected reality just couldn’t fit in their usual, dreary point of view, welcome His friends to dinner, and turned their weariness of violence and darkness, into the brightness of hope eternal, a lifestyle of beauty and peace that will never end.

* * * * * *

So what do you do when your own victim asks you to dinner?

I’ll ask you. Because you already know.

Oh, yes you do. 

Because the dinner of the Victim Who has become our Hope wasn’t just held there on the misty shores of Lake Galilee with a grilled catch of tilapia. 

And it wasn’t just there in the pretty picture at the beginning of this article (which, for your information, is the lovely Jordan Pond on Mt Desert Island in Acadia National Park, Maine).

No, it is here, now and always. The Table is the Altar, and the dinner is the Paschal Liturgy today, and every Sunday that is actually a part of this one. Just as the Cross stretches over every sin and cancels it, and the Descent into Hell obliterates every shadow, so the Paschal Feast is the one transcendent Table in which every Sunday partakes.

In this dinner, Christ welcomes you to His Table, and He it is Who serves you His Bread and His Wine, which is nothing less than His Body and Blood ... 

... every Liturgy is a dinner at the edge of the Universe, on the shore that marks the difference between Time and Eternity. 

“Take and eat, this is My Resurrected Body, broken for you, for the remission of sins. Take and drink. This is My Blood of the New Covenant.” 

Jesus is the manna from Heaven, the only antidote for “Hell-disease,” the “spiritual leprosy” symbolized by the physical leprosy depicted so frequently in the Gospels.

Sin should be understood as “infern-itis” — the infectious putrefaction spewing from hell.

But St Ignatius the God-Bearer said that the Eucharist is “the medicine of immortality.”

So …

Eat, drink in this morning shore faith, in the Face of the Hidden Friend, and you will understand, then, the Dayspring.

There is, now, only life for you, and that is life abundant, eternal and free.

* * * * * * *

In one of the greatest sermons ever preached, St Gregory showed his obvious happiness about the Resurrection in his wonderful Paschal Oration:

“I will stand on my watch,” says the wondrous Habakkuk (2.1); and I also will stand with him today, by the authority and vision given me by the Spirit, and I will look steadily and observe what will be seen and what will be spoken to me. I have stood and looked steadily, and behold a man mounted upon the clouds, and he was very exalted; and his appearance was like the brightness of an angel (Judges 13.6); and his raiment was like the brightness of lightning; and he was lifting up his hand toward the East and shouting in a great voice ... And he said, “Today salvation has come to the world, to things visible and to things invisible. Christ is risen from the dead: Rise with Him! Christ has returned to Himself: Return! Christ is freed from the tomb: Be freed from the bonds of sin! The gates of Hell are opened, and death is destroyed, and the old Adam is put aside, and the new is fulfilled. If anyone in Christ is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5.17), be made new!

Rise with Him. Be free. Become new.

Believing is knowing, and knowing is believing. I believe in the Resurrection of Christ more than my own reality, because I am nothing if Christ is not everything. You and I are being drawn toward a New Creation only because Christ is Risen, and is Risen Indeed.

I know this as fact: “For I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that Day” (2 Timothy 1.12).

“You have to” is only the language of sin and death: the devil’s way is the way of “No.” 

But Jesus Christ is forever the Lord of Yes (2 Corinthians 1.20). His Word to you is always this: “You are free to be, unloosed to become. You can become more and more the you that you that I have always meant you to be” -- and that is a never ending, exhilarating growth from one moment to another horizon, bluer, greener, brighter, even more beautiful than the one before.

You can become a kingfisher that soars in the clouds of glory, flying in blue splendor, wending your way toward one horizon, and then finding an even more breathtakingly beautiful horizon beyond. “It will always be this way,” He tells you, in the whisper of the heavenly wind.

As St Paul said, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3.18).

“You have always wanted this to be true in your heart of hearts,” Jesus tells you, His friend, in the Eucharist of the Resurrection, at the Dinner at the Edge of the Universe.

“I am here to tell you that it is true indeed,” He says, “For I have made it so, I have made you for this.”

* * * * * *

Forever begins at the edge of the universe. You are invited to dinner at the table there. It is only a Gift: the idea of payment, there, no longer exists. The Host of the dinner was our Victim: but because of the Resurrection, this Victim of everyone has become everyone’s Hope.

The Dinner is free. It is meant to make you free. Free to be. Free to become like Him, which is as beautiful as the sunrise that never sets, always rising.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

the unexpected tranquil state

the anaphora and civil government

Yesterday was the first Lenten Sunday, and once again we were able to celebrate the beautiful Liturgy of St Basil, which is so rich in theology, pastoral wisdom, and sacred social ethics.

I love the long pastoral supplications after the Epiclesis, during the singing of the lovely "In you, O woman full of grace." This prayer outlines the pastoral theology of the Church in a nutshell: it forms our concerns and establishes our institutional and cultural priorities.

And it, too, says something about government -- even politics, if you will: "Remember, O Lord, this nation and her civil authorities, those who serve in the government and the armed forces. Grant them a secure and lasting peace; speak good things in their hearts concerning Your Church and all Your people, so that we, in their tranquility, may lead a calm and peaceful life in all godliness and sanctity."

When I pray this, I am thankful for our democracy, for a society that values the freedom and dignity and well-being of its common people. And I’m sure that for some, this sounds patently untraditional.

authentic and inauthentic tradition

Yesterday we honored authentic Holy Tradition. Looking back at the history of elaboration, translation, and application of the same Apostolic Proclamation to varied times and places and peoples, it is clear that some things have been added to or associated with Tradition that are not authentic. 

There are cultural and ethnic and local customs, of course. These additions we can celebrate, like the "little t" tradition as opposed to the "capital T" elements (e.g., the ingredients of an Easter Basket, even the Easter Basket itself vs the Paschal Canon).

These are, in the main, good additions.

But there are bad ones. Many, if not most, of these are ideologies that actually distort and displace true theology. Obviously, racism and anti-Semitism have appeared in Church history to our great regret and distress. Nationalism is the heresy of phyletism writ large and so pervasive that its heretical nature is obscured by its over-familiarity. 

And I don't know what to call an alarming tendency to actively promote, in outright partisanship, autocracy over democracy. Previously, this was known as monarchism, and there are some who look back on the times of the Caesars, Tsars, and Kings with nostalgia as if an autocrat would make things better for the church.

Today, there is not so much a wish for a King (like the Israelites in the book of Judges) as there is an admiration for the current crop of "Strong Men" in geo-politics. Somehow, these figures are associated with a more moral and Christian society, and more promising of State support for the Church.

Of course, there is little to substantiate such wishes. "Strong Men" always disappoint and generally turn monstrous (if they hadn't always been that way already). As my ordaining bishop, +Metropolitan Nicholas of blessed memory, used to say frequently of Russia's Putin, "Once KGB, always KGB."

It would be unbelievable that the Russian Strong Man has gained such popularity were it not the plain fact.

Still, I don't think some American Orthodox and rightwing fans of Putin really want Putin. If they had to live under him, they wouldn’t like him. And people who pine away for monarchs of the “good old days” would probably not enjoy living under a monarch.

This is true of all strong men and autocrats. It is also true of that sentimental yearning for different times and places. Neo-integralists (and others) seem to long for the Christendom of the medieval past: but really, who wants to live in a time when one’s attire was regulated by sumptuary laws, or when all the eggs had to be given to the priest (to name just two of so many onerous medievalities)?

contradictions of complaint

The fact is, Christians of certain ideological bents (rightwing, fundamentalist, neo-traditionalist, rigorist, et al) might oppose modernism and secularism all they want, but when no one’s looking, they actually enjoy it more than they let on. Everyone loves their smartphone and their social media. Everyone wants the chance to be a libertine.

Secularism and modernism are favorite objects of religious complaint. There are, to be sure, numerous challenges and difficulties posed by these terms. In general, religion and community seem to have weakened. Creation -- especially its meaningfulness -- has been obscured by commodification. Ethics and mores have been displaced by values. 

But complaints about modernism and secularism are fraught with contradiction. Religious figures who are suspected of being too modern or too secular (or at least, not sufficiently bothered) are called “liberal” or “accommodationist.” These terms, particularly, are perilous. “Accommodationist” can mean an attitude that is too yielding to modern departures from traditional morality. But it can, and does, also mean an acceptance of technology (and morality) of convenience.

The consumption of single-use plastics is a familiar example of an “accommodationist” practice that is intrinsically “liberal.” It adopts the univocal, globalized commodification of Nature that is fundamental to liberal society. If you subscribe to laissez-faire capitalism, you are -- historically speaking -- a tried and true Liberal. This may be discomfiting to those who reserve this term as a pejorative for those who transgress dogma and morality.

The contradictions of religious complaint are rife, and they are sadly unnoticed or disregarded (especially if one is in the grip of an ideology). Anti-modernists welcome some forms of modernism with open arms. Anti-secularists usually deny any possibility of Christian socialism or environmentalism. Neo-traditionalists attempt to construct a consistent, inerrant reading of all the Fathers all at once, but deliberately disregard or dismiss patristic texts that digress from constructs of ecclesiology and especially eschatology.

demands of democracy

There is one complaint, however, that remains consistent. It is an unspoken complaint. I suspect that the consistent reason why there is spoken admiration for autocrats is really because of a deep-seated, unconfessed contempt for democracy.

Democracy (and yes, I know that America is a constitutional federal republic) makes demands on its citizens that some Christians do not like, and are unwilling to fulfill. Democracy demands religious disestablishment and an acceptance of religious pluralism. America was founded upon the premise that it is not a Christian nation (George Washington himself wrote this), and that religions will have to “make it on their own” without any help from the State -- no mandate, no money, no political support. 

Democracy, thus, demands secularism. There can be a sort of minimalistic “public religion” (versus “civil religion”) with a vague reference to “Providence” in some civic language (e.g., “In God we trust,” “God bless America,” “one nation under God”), but nothing that specifically endorses a certain “sect.” In general, democracy accepts, in practice, the “immanent frame” that Charles Taylor describes as the real and unavoidable basis of modern society.

Democracy demands individual rights and freedoms. Yes, the language of “rights” is not found explicitly in Christian Tradition. However, it is a consequence of the Christian witness to society. It can be said with much justification that much of liberalism itself is a consequence of this Christian witness. Universal health care, welfare, debt forgiveness, racial and social justice are deeply associated with “liberalism,” and are just as inconceivable without the presence of the Church in history.

But democracy demands a “laissez-faire” attitude from Christians toward the freedoms of others. This presents hard difficulties, as some of these “freedoms of others” conflict with deeply held convictions in Tradition. The issue of abortion comes first to mind in this regard, and Christians do not have, in a democracy, the advantage of legislating their moral convictions as law. 

Still, one must also appreciate the opportunities presented to the church by a democratic, secular, modern society. Disestablishment itself is an opportunity. Collusion with the State -- especially the use of State-imposed religious coercion -- is toxic to the Church (and to the State). Such collusion insinuates into the Church a strain of power and wealth-protection that is alien to the essence of the Body of Christ.

The constant development of civil rights and social justice, as much as they are despaired of, actually serve to protect the interests of the Church. They echo the “personalist” theology of Holy Tradition, in which every person is valued and treated as Christ Himself (as said in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats). Even though the execution of civil justice is marked by error, contradiction, and occasionally bad intent, what remains as a certainty is that a society that does not even express concern for individual rights is a society inimical to the Church. A governmental structure that upholds “equal justice under the law” and the “rule of law” (versus the “law of the ruler”) is far more humane in its treatment of the poor and the oppressed. And this reversal of the old tradition of power and violence should be welcomed by the Church that has enshrined kenosis and peace in its very DNA, its Scripture and Tradition.

Democracy demands courage of the Christian community. It demands a renunciation of power and a refusal of coercion. It demands a nobility of spirit that recognizes the humanity of all others, a nobility that insists upon the humane, just, and compassionate treatment of all others. It demands gentleness in action and meekness in speech. Christians should be the first to oppose all forms of "hate speech" as the inhumane, anti-Christological thing it is.

It demands of the Christian community that it practices what it was in the beginning and should have always been -- a community that feeds the hungry, that gives water to the thirsty, that gives clothing and shelter to the homeless, that gives dignity to the oppressed and rejected, that gives liberty and freedom to those imprisoned in category, in stereotype, in systemic and institutional abuse.

These demands are obscured and “disregardable” in other government structures. In an autocracy, a monarchy, or in a church that’s been denatured by power and wealth and customary status, the Christian community was able to set aside these demands.

But democracy exposes -- for all to see, unavoidably -- the press of humanity upon the Body of Christ.

And that’s a good thing.

forgiveness is at the heart of things

-- "Murder of Agamemnon," Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1817)

Forgiveness is not just a religious thing. It lies at the root of society.

Usually, we think of forgiveness as something that has sprung out of the pages of the Bible. And yes, that’s true. The Sermon on the Mount makes this plain: "If you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you” (Matthew 6.14).

But forgiveness was never meant to stay put in church on Sunday mornings. It was meant to become the glue, the cohesive bond, that keeps society together.

In the Classical Age of Greece and Rome (and Egypt and other places), forgiveness was definitely not “at the heart of things.” Punctuated by a few exceptions that prove the rule, it was common sense that blood feuds were transmitted from one generation to the next, and that every conflict escalates things at every flare-up.

Obligations and debts were regarded as cold iron and unchangeable doom. Every offense had to be punished to the full, every consequence suffered. There could be no deviation from lex talionis: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

This theme is unceasing in Greek tragedy (like Euripides and Aeschylus). One act of outrage sets into motion the next act of revenge. And then that act is answered with vengeance, and on and on. Greek and Roman writers said that this was just the way things were.

A “myth” is not so much a fanciful story as it is a deep psychological explanation of life. The Clytemnestra myth illustrates this terrible cycle of vengeance. Clytemnestra and her siblings Helen of Troy and the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, were hatched by their mother Leda, after the immortal (and very immoral) super-god Zeus forced himself upon her in the form of a swan.

Yes, you read that right: “hatched,” as in “from an egg.” She and Helen were from one egg, the Gemini’s from another. All because, according to the hard logic of Greek myth, the father was a bird.

Things could only go downhill from there. Her first husband, Tantalus, was killed by Agamemnon of Argos, who then forcefully took her as his bride. She gave birth to a beautiful daughter, Iphigenia. When Agamemnon and the Greek forces were hemmed in by contrary winds, he sent for their daughter, telling his wife that he was going to wed her to Achilles.

Instead, he sacrificed his own daughter for the sake of favorable winds -- whereupon a west wind zephyr blew them to the shores of Asia Minor where they would go on to fight a disastrous war over the next ten years, finally ending in the destruction of Troy.

Upon his return, Clytemnestra, aggrieved and enraged for a decade from the ritual killing of her daughter, took revenge. With Agamemnon lounging in his bath, she and her new lover Aegisthus threw a cloth net over the bather.

Agamemnon was not able to escape or avoid watching his dispatchers take their pointed revenge. Aegisthus himself was settling the score for his own father’s death at the hands of Agamemnon’s father Atreus.

The vengeance-cycle didn’t stop there. Years after she married Aegisthus (of course), she was tracked down by her son Orestes, to whom she gave birth from Agamemnon (Orestes would be Iphigenia’s brother, if you’re keeping track).

According to the playwright Euripides, when he arrived, he immediately slew his step-father Aegisthus. Upon seeing his mother Clytemnestra inside the hall, he hesitated. But then the god Apollo (who was just as nasty as Zeus), reminded Orestes that he was honor and duty-bound to commit matricide. Because, you know, revenge.

Which he does. Whereupon, he was immediately set upon by the terrible Furies (Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone), who tortured him mercilessly for doing exactly what he was bidden to do by the gods.

And that’s just the way things are -- so says Euripides, Aeschylus, and Ovid (who has an even more gruesome story to tell about Tereus and Philomena who also, unsurprisingly, were part of the deadly Atreus clan).

There’s no stopping this tragic zero-sum cycle of revenge, doom, and tragedy in the pagan world.

Which is what makes the appearance of the Judeo-Christian insistence upon forgiveness so remarkable.

Contrary to the cold iron myth of unforgiveness and vengeance, no, revenge is not fundamentally necessary. No, obligation and debt are not eternal. No, violence and domination are not at the heart of things.

Peace, not violence, is at the beginning: love is primordial. Struggle and competition are not basic or fundamental. “God’s place is made in peace, His dwelling place in Zion. There He breaks utterly the power of bow, shield, sword, and battle. He shines wondrously forth from the everlasting mountains” (Psalm 75.2-4 LXX).

What if, then, society has had it wrong all along? What if, at the heart of reality and the foundation of life, the central truth is “gift” instead of “payment”? What if “donation” is at a deeper level than “cost”?

What if “peace” is truer than violence and conflict?

What if “forgiveness” is only natural, and “unforgiveness” (i.e., revenge, grudge, bitterness, keeping long accounts) is not?

In the Orthodox Church, this Sunday is the “Sunday of Forgiveness” and the beginning of Lent. 

At the end of Liturgy on Forgiveness Sunday, everyone, from priest to adult to youth to toddler, asks and gives forgiveness to everyone else. Person by person. Face to face.

It is, as you might expect, a tender moment.

We believe that this is the only way to enter into the sweet season of Lent, which is a lot like Eden to us. Radical forgiveness is the price of admission into this heart-renewing journey to the bright Resurrection.

It is a time of gifts -- and isn’t it a beautiful coincidence that “gift” is the root word of “for-give”?

In this moment of such deep polarity and oppositions, with long registers of aughts and offences, isn’t it about time that we let forgiveness out of the box and through the church doors, and onto Broad Street, into our meetings and businesses and society in general?

Can we not forgive, and give the gift of peace?

Do you want to be Clytemnestra? Or human?

the last judgment and the problem of goathood

And in return for what do they receive such things [“the inheritance of the Kingdom that was prepared for you from the foundation of the world”]? For the covering of a roof, for a garment, for bread, for cold water, for visiting, for going to prison. For indeed in every case it is what is needed, and sometimes not even that fulfills the need completely. For surely, the sick and the one who is in bonds do not seek only for this. One needs to be freed, while the other needs deliverance from his infirmity. But He, being gracious, requires only what is within our power … leaving us to exert our generosity. For even if they had done ten thousand things, the munificence of the Kingdom would be of unearned grace, since in return for services that in comparison are so small and cheap, such a Heaven, and such a Kingdom, and such great honor should be given them.

— St John Chrysostom, Homily LXXIX on Matthew XXV.2

Matthew 24 and 25 make up what is often called “the Olivet Discourse.” This Discourse is all about “the sign of Jesus’ coming and the close of the age” (Matthew 24.3).

From Matthew 21.12 (right after the Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem) until Matthew 24.1, Jesus taught in the Temple. At numerous points He was confronted by the chief priests, Sadducee “scribes” (our term would be religious professionals and scholars) and Pharisees.

Each confrontation was about the Kingdom of God, what is was like and how it would come.
In Matthew 21.28-32, He told the chief priests and the Pharisees that “tax collectors and harlots” would enter the Kingdom before they would, since these undesirable and unlikely persons responded to John the Baptist with repentance.

In Matthew 21.33-46, He upset the same group even more by telling them that they were so mistaken about the Kingdom that they would end up killing the Rightful Heir, the very Son of the Vineyarder — that is, Him.

Right after this, He told the Parable of the Marriage Feast (Matthew 22.1-14). Again, the unlikely were the ones who wanted to come to the feasts more than the expected and first invited ones. It seemed that the “undesirables” wanted the real Kingdom more than the obviously religious ones.

The Pharisees tried to entrap Jesus with a political conundrum in Matthew 22.15-22. Jesus told them, famously, to “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

This is unprecedented in history. No one before had ever suggested that religious faith, God’s Kingdom, was not tied up with the government. This was brand new: until Jesus, religion and government were of one piece.

The Kingdom of God was not separated from this world, but was much, much higher than it. The Christian is not to depend upon changing history. We should always try to make things better, but we can never “put our trust in mortal princes” (as the Psalmist says repeatedly, especially in 117.8-9 and 145.3 LXX).

In Broken Lives and Mended Lives, Rowan Greer offers this wise advice:

The paradox of the Christian life is that the evils we suffer in our earthly pilgrimage must be taken with absolute seriousness, but so must the destiny that awaits us in the City of God. There are no victories or defeats in the present that ultimately matter. All that counts is the final victory for the saints in the age to come. The practical implications of Augustine’s view is that what matters is to endure. The Church can be neither fully involved in society nor fully withdrawn from it … we can endure and so prevail.

The Kingdom of God is at hand. It is also higher, much higher.

This, the Sadducees absolutely did not understand, and they should have the most. But they were further away from knowing about the real Kingdom than the Pharisees, who occasionally had glimmers.

In Matthew 22.23-33, they tried to ensnare Jesus in a paradox: if one women had seven successive marriages and widowhoods from seven brothers (with no children, mind you), then who would she be married to in Heaven?

This was unbelievably cynical because the Sadducees didn’t even believe in resurrection of the dead. Jesus answered and said that the Kingdom of God utterly transcended the sin-bound ways of the world. In the Fall, women were pretty much thought of as property or chattel — “marrying and being given in marriage” is a description of how the curse in the Fall from Paradise worked out: “You shall be dependent upon your husband, and he shall dominate you” (Genesis 3.16). It’s important to note here that the Lord did not cause this condition. An Old Testament “curse” is a prophecy about how things will be rather than a causative statement.

Thus, Jesus is saying that the ancient consequences of the Fall will be overcome in the Kingdom of Heaven.

We will be “like the angels” — that is, freed from sin and death, utterly filled with the knowledge of God. Liberated from the bondages of the world of death.

The Pharisees, hearing the Jesus flummoxed the clergy (which is what the Sadducees were), took another swing. “What is the greatest commandment?” they queried, thinking that Jesus would surely pick out one of the Ten, and they could then get into a picayune argument over which one was better — a sort of endless sophistical and casuistic discussion so beloved by legalistic religionists.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind … and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22.37,39). The Pharisees should have read their Bible better, because Jesus was not saying anything new: He was quoting Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18.

Again, His opponents and interlocutors failed to understand the Kingdom. And they should have. After all, “they had Moses and the Prophets” (Luke 16.29).

The Kingdom is the full incarnation of Divine Love “on earth as it is in heaven.” Divine Love is the overturning of the Fall. Thus, the King of the Kingdom had to be nothing less than fully divine and fully human. He had to be Love itself.

Which is why Jesus gave the Pharisees a strong lesson in Christology in Matthew 22.41-46. “What do you think of the Messiah?” The Pharisees were really into Messianic Prophecy. “Whose son is he?” Jesus pressed.

“The son of David, of course.” That was easy. Everyone knew that. Prophecy made that very clear.

Then Jesus quoted a well-known Messianic prophecy, one of the Pharisees’ all-time favorites: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My Right Hand until I make your enemies your footstool” (Psalm 109.1 LXX).

The Pharisees didn’t see their peril yet. Jesus went on with a mind-blowing riddle: “If David thus calls Him Lord, how is He his son?”

The Pharisees, for all their devotion to prophecy, again failed to understand the Kingdom. They should have picked up on the deep truth of the Old Testament, as King David and the Prophets certainly did, that the Messiah would be, could be, no one less than God the Son Himself.

Son of God. Son of Man. “He came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man … He ascended into heaven and sits at the Right Hand of the Father” (the Nicene Creed).

The Kingdom is Jesus Himself.

Then, throughout the entirety of Matthew 23, Jesus launched into a series of “Woes” and denunciations. He explained to one and all and to the Scribes and Pharisees to their face exactly why they were unable to understand the Kingdom, why they couldn’t recognize the Truth of it even though that Truth was standing and speaking and miraculously working right in front of them, just like He did with the Roman procurator in John 18.37, although Pilate was probably much more amenable.

The problem was simply hypocrisy. In the New Testament, hypocrisy is not inconsistency. That is a modern misunderstanding of the term.

Hypocrisy, rather, is existential schizophrenia. There is an exterior claim of piety, religiosity, and a prideful (but false) confidence of knowing the Kingdom. But on the inside, it’s all lies. There is a complete failure to love. There is a putrid cesspool of avarice and lust, pride and anger. And there is a demonic willingness to engage in domination, power, and violence, an enthusiasm for putting people in bondage and daring, horribly, to dress up their wickedness in religious clothing.

“You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? (Matthew 23.33).” The tragic irony here that is almost always overlooked is that it is the Pharisees who just loved sentencing sinners to hell the most. They were the ones always bringing up hell and damnation.

The main reason why Jesus talked about hell in the Gospels was that He was talking to the Pharisees, who were addicted to damnation.

The Kingdom is much more than having a “Get Out of Hell Free” card in the Pharisees’ game of Prophecy Monopoly.

The Kingdom is Divine Love. It is Jesus Christ, in His Father’s House, where there is the Bread of Heaven and enough to spare (Luke 15.17), where there are many mansions (John 14.2) …
… where, even though the Pharisees won’t like this, there is Room Enough for All. “God is willing that no man perish” (2 Peter 3.9).

If anyone thinks that heaven is diminished if the wrong people are let in, or if too many people make it (or if everyone, even), then that person doesn’t understand the Kingdom. Pharisees (and anyone like them) need people to suffer in Hell so they can enjoy Heaven better.

As He begins to leave, the disciples come to Him and point out, like tour guides, the great structures of the Temple district.

Jesus then appalls them: “Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matthew 24.2).

Which came true in 70 AD, when Emperor Titus and the Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple.

Jesus left the Temple and the Scribes and Pharisees behind, who were now thoroughly upset (and putting the betrayal and crucifixion conspiracy into action).

He now takes His disciples up to the Mount of Olives, which is the very place that the Prophet Zechariah (in 14.1-5) said the Lord would stand and save His people from their enemies.

The disciples approached Him privately and asked, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the close of the age?” (Matthew 24.3).

He doesn’t tell them when. And the signs He describes are, frankly, frequent, if not almost unending. There have been many false messiahs, many mortal princes demanding trust and devotion. There have been many wars and even more rumors of wars. There have been many instances of betrayals and broken relationships.

There have been many horrendous events when people had to flee frightening upheavals, when some survived for no reason, and others perished for no reason.

Jesus said that this is the fallen world rushing down the black hole of sin and death. The ongoing tribulation would be permanent and uninterrupted were it not for the Body of Christ, the “restraining hand obstructing the Man of Lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2.1-7).

Even though it’s been almost two thousand years, this constitutes a single “generation”: “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place” (Matthew 24.34). This whole period is called the “last days.” True, most early Christians took “this generation” literally, many Christians didn’t think it would be this long. St John Chrysostom thought, though, it might be three thousand years or longer before Christ returned.

In any case, Jesus will return. In a world of uncertainty, this much is certain. Jesus will descend once more to the earth, but this time in undeniable, even unavoidable glory.

Orthodox Holy Tradition says clearly that the Second Coming, the General Resurrection, and the Last Judgment are three facets of one single, overwhelming event. There is no divide (which is the meaning of the heresy of chiliasm, which was rejected in the Second Ecumenical Council, and the reason why we say “and His Kingdom shall have no end” in the Creed). There is no Rapture. There is no Seven Year Tribulation. There is no single human individual who is the Antichrist or the Beast — the Antichrist is not a Jew, not a Muslim, not a Communist, nor is he the Pope or any one of the many theories that have been published over the centuries.

There is no literal thousand-year-long Millennium. There is no reappearance of Satan setting off the last Armageddon.

There will indeed come the Great Universal Transfiguration that overwhelms time and space and all Creation.

This is the Kingdom if its infinite, almost terrifying fullness and glory.

It will come as an unpredictable surprise for which we must all be in constant watchfulness and preparation.

This is the lesson of Matthew 25. The coming of the Kingdom is like the Bridegroom (25.1-13), for whom the ten maidens waited. When He came, five of maidens had not adequately prepared, and they were not able to accompany Him to the Wedding Feast (which, obviously, is Jesus’ favorite image of the Eucharist and the consummation at “Kingdom come.”

It is the lesson of the Parable of the Talents in 25.14-30. Preparation for the Kingdom means using the talents, the substance of life, to grow life. It means to give love and gifts freely because we have freely received. Living the Divine Life and in His Love is simply the theosis of “participating in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1.4). Failing to participate is like the fig tree that gives no fruit, and its eventual withering (Matthew 21.19).

What is the Judgment?

It is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. They are separated at the Last Day by the Shepherd King, and they are judged by how they treated that King throughout the entirety of their life.

The sheep are welcomed into the Kingdom. They are welcomed because, as the Lord told them, they fed Him when He was hungry. They gave Him a cup of cool water when He was thirsty. When He was a stranger they welcomed Him. When He was unclothed and shivering in the cold, they clothed Him. When He was sick they visited Him and took care of Him. When He was in prison they came to Him.

The all-important point of this story is this:

At no point until Judgment did they know it was Christ Who ultimately received their love. They just did their job. They did the work of the Kingdom. They didn’t know (yet) that Christ is the heart of all humanity — and it remains true that how every human is treated ends up being the treatment of Christ Himself.

When we love someone, Christ receives that love too. When we hurt someone, we hurt Christ. When we are angry, Christ feels it. But when we are kind and caring, when we give charity, Christ also receives.

This is the reality of the Kingdom. This is the understanding of the Kingdom that the Scribes and Pharisees failed to grasp. Even the disciples were caught up in prediction and future dates.

They were distracted. These things were not important.

The essential signs were not signs of the Fallen World, because those conditions simply prevailed and always tended toward death.

But the true signs were signs of the Presence of Christ, and of His Realized and Becoming Love.

This is an important truth:

The Kingdom doesn’t come at the end of Time.

Rather, Time is swallowed up at the coming of the Kingdom, at the full realization of Divine Love, at the infinite communion of Creation with Creator.

“Then comes the end,” St Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.24-28, “when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ‘For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.’ But when it says, ‘All things are put in subjection under him,’ it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all.”

Today, in the here and now, watch and pray as Jesus said. Understand the Kingdom by loving God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself. Prepare like the Wise Maidens with prayer and fasting. Do the work of the Kingdom and work out the talent-life God gave in freedom and hope: care for others as you would care for Christ, because indeed that’s what you are doing.

Be a sheep in the Pasture of the Good Shepherd King. Enter into His Kingdom, into the joy of the Lord. Even now. Don’t wait for the future.

Thy Kingdom come: Thy Kingdom is at hand.

 

 

on the publican and the pharisee

What Prayer Is and What It's Not

Last Sunday, Zacchaeus showed us the way through the “desert” of the Great Fast. We call it a desert because the Great Fast is forty days, which itself is a “parable” for the forty years of the Israelites in their desert pilgrimage from slavery in Egypt to righteous freedom in the Promised Land.

Our Promised Land is the eternal life of Pascha and Pentecost.

The Way of Zacchaeus is humility and repentance, the “pre-requisites” of Prayer.

Recall that Prayer is the best word we have for our relationship with the Father. This is hardly surprising, because the same word, “Prayer,” is the only word we have to describe the relationship of the Son and the Spirit to the Father — even in Heaven itself.

And that is quite the mystery.

The Son and the Spirit pour out Themselves in kenosis to the Father. That is the only way that true prayer can proceed. Only in humility. Only in the bowing of heads. Only in awed recognition of the Father’s overwhelming greatness and beauty, of His everlastingness and matchless power, of His infinite goodness and love.

Only in humble perception of our own small stature and limitedness.

And, after the Fall, prayer must own up to our own sinfulness, our own enslaving fear of death. Our anxiety and lack of trust.

Today, in the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, we stand in the Temple to learn about what Prayer is, and what Prayer is not. The Lord shows us two men who appear to be praying.

The first one looks and acts the part. He bears all the trappings of religiosity. He wears the ultra-religious garb of the Pharisee sect, which is meant to call public attention to the fact that “Here is a reverend and holy personage to whom you must give respect and preference. Give him the best seat at the banquet. Make way for him. Be very impressed.”

This man’s identity was so appealing that it impressed even himself.

Too much, it turns out.

“God, I thank you that I am not like other men, greedy, unrighteous, adulterous, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.”

Pharisees were known for their “advanced devotion.” Since they were of a “higher spirituality” than the normal crowd, their superiority demanded a superior rigor.

So he was obviously bucked up by his obvious differentiation from “other men” — “Even that contemptible tax-collector over there,” he said.

He went on, checking off his bulleted list of “righteous” achievements. “I fast twice a week”: the Pharisees fasted on Tuesdays and Thursdays (this, by the way, was one of the reasons why Apostolic Christians elected to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays instead).

He also made sure that God knew that he gave tithes (10 percent) not just on the things that were listed in the Law to tithe on, but he gave tithes “of all that I get.”

Everything had to be much better than the norm. He was special.

So. Given what we know of true prayer, how does the Pharisee rate?

Is there a recognition of God’s awesome love, goodness, power, and greatness? Is there humility, a sense of one’s own smallness, like Zacchaeus?

For heaven’s sake, is there even the tiniest hint of asking for mercy?

There is none of that, for one simple reason. This self-righteous, self-important, egotistical Pharisee was not even praying.

The Lord gave away the clue right from the start: “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself” (Luke 18.11).

His religion was a pseudo-religion. It was a performance.

The Evangelist Luke said as much when he introduced this Parable: “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others” (Luke 18.9).

Yes, you read that right: Jesus told this story about a self-righteous professional-pray-er performance artist Pharisee to a bunch of Pharisees.

He later came right out and called this Pharisaical enterprise of self-righteousness as hypocrisy. On one hand, you have that odious “trusting in themselves that they were righteous.”

But righteousness — even in the Old Testament Law — is essentially Love, a love that reflected and participated in God’s own Nature.

So how can it be that a righteousness could ever be something that “despised others”? If Pharisees really wanted to be “super-righteous,” then they would have been Lovers, not Haters.

True Prayer can not permit any kind of Hate.  If you hate, you cannot pray. If you don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive you (Matthew 6.15).

Prayer and hatred are mutually exclusive. Because prayer rises up only on the wings of Love.

Speaking of true prayer, we see it exercised in the unlikeliest of sources.

It was a lowly amateur in the practice of religion, even someone who most would have written off as completely disqualified.

It was (horrors) the worst of the worst of unrighteousness: a tax collector. It was the very tax collector that the Pharisee had mentioned in his “Un-Prayer.”

The tax collector wasn’t doing a very good job. He obviously did not know how to dress religiously. He hadn’t gone to religion school on the art of public piety. One could safely surmise that he was not one of the "tithing kind."

And the idea of him fasting must have been a complete joke.

But yet …

Even though he stood “far off” (that is, in the back pews) and wouldn’t even lift his eyes toward heaven … even though he just did that honest, humble beating-of-one’s-own-breast remorse thing and simply said, “God be merciful to me a sinner” …

… the Lord said “I tell you, this man went to his house justified” (Luke 18.14).

In other words, this man’s prayer for mercy was received, and mercy was given. This man’s religion was real.

This man succeeded, because he really prayed. He prayed what prayer really is, unlike the Pharisee who prayed what prayer is not.

Prayer can only be an act of humility. In humility, we look with compassion and sympathy upon everyone and anyone. We recognize that everyone is immortal, and everything in Creation is imbued with the beauty and wisdom of the Loving Father.

In prayer, we want nothing else and nothing less than to open our hearts completely to the Father. We accept the painful fact that we can only “come as we are.” We ask for mercy from the Only One Who can give mercy, from the Only One Who is Love.

We certainly do not exalt ourselves. We do not check off our list of spiritual accomplishments.

We do not even call ourselves or think of ourselves as “Saved” or “Holy” or better than anyone else.

In fact, we call ourselves “sinners.”

“Every one who exalts himself will be humbled,” like this Pharisee. “But he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18.14).

bloom where you're planted

Bloom Where You’re Planted

 

“Bloom where you’re planted” is good advice for anyone most of the time. Unless you’re in a terrible situation that you have to change, it is always a good idea to take advantage of present opportunities and be grateful for the good things at hand.

It is also good advice for Americans, especially Christians in a modern America.

Lately, the Orthodox community has been uneasy. There’s been a lot of dissatisfaction, even grievance, with the modern world. There is a nostalgia for the “good old days,” a sort of fuzzy, rosy sentimental yearning for another time or another place where life was simpler.

And there is a long list of villains and culprits, or reasons why things are not the way they were. Secularism is almost always listed. So are multi-culturalism, modernism, globalism, technology, and liberalism.

Even things like universal suffrage, toleration, and democracy are complained about once in a while.

In my clergy circle there’s a lot of hand-wringing going on about the decline of Christianity (and religious affiliation in general) in America. It’s true. In 2007, the Pew Research Center found that 78% of American adults identified as Christian. But only twelve years later, in 2019, that percentage declined by 13 points to only 65%. 

On the other hand, the “religiously unaffiliated” -- or, as I like to call them, the “nones” -- climbed from 16% of American adults in 2007 all the way up to an astounding 26%. That’s a shocking increase in just a little more than a decade.

I’m sure that some of my religious friends pine for the good old days when things were a lot more religious -- like when the state supported the church with money, power, and legal preference. Maybe even when church-going was a legal requirement.

Like back in 1753, when a certain John Hunt of the Colony of Virginia found himself in a lot of trouble. A grand jury made up of his genteel neighbors found that he had failed to attend church at the Charles Parish in York County. The presentment recorded in the Williamsburg Courthouse on 21 May 1753 reads as follows:

“John Hunt who stands presented by the grand jury for absenting himself from his parish church being duly summoned to gainsay the said presentment and not appearing, though solemnly called, therefore it is considered that for the said offence he forfeit and pay to the churchwardens of Charles Parish 5 shillings or 50 lbs. of tobacco to the use of the poor of the said parish and that he pay the costs of this prosecution.”

That’s a lot of money for skipping out on Sunday morning (around $250 these days), and that’s a lot of tobacco. At least these proceeds were allotted “for the use of the poor.”

That sort of religious coercion by the state was never a good idea. There were immediate benefits, but over the long term, a cancer set in that de-natured the ethos of the church.

This may come as a surprise: Orthodox Christianity started out as holding strongly to the separation between religion and politics. It insisted that faith is a matter of free acceptance by an individual, not a public function managed by the state. 

Jesus said to Pontius Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18.36). No religion had said that before. The old Christian Greek word for church, “ekklesia,” is a stark reminder of that truth, the completely voluntary nature of the Christian faith. “Ekklesia” means “a called out assembly.” Christianity, at least in its essence, is only called, invited -- that is, never forced, never commanded, never compelled by the state. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, “belief” itself is related to “love” in its meaning -- and we all know that love can only be voluntary and free, never forced. As soon as belief is commanded, it ceases to be belief -- it is only forced intellectual consent.

Although there are some loud voices that say otherwise, Orthodox Christianity in its foundation establishes and insists upon individual and civil rights. No one should be forced to say or do anything of conscience. No one should be denied dignity and opportunity. No one should be made lower than the other. No one should go without basic needs like food, water, clothing, and shelter. No one should be coerced or tyrannized by an uncivil, autocratic rule.

This was the nature, the ethos, of Christianity in the book of Acts.

Unfortunately, stuff happens in history. After its first few centuries, Christianity was led astray into political religion. It got seriously wrapped up in collusion and even identification with the state. In Eastern and Western Europe, the church got infected with stuff like nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism, monarchism, anti-modernism, and a lot of other bad isms. It got way more ideological than theological, which should never have been the case. All these “isms” are faith gone very wrong.

So as the centuries went by, Christianity appeared to most people (young adults especially) as something a lot less than Christian. Worst of all, Christianity evolved from the way one prayed and believed to the way a person or community identified themselves -- like with a politically partisan label.

Coming to America for us Orthodox (and other immigrant communities) was a fresh new start.

Sure, it was secular and democratic -- a kind of society we Orthodox (in particular) never experienced before. 

And sure, nowadays the Christian share of the population is in serious decline.

A lot of my confreres would like to blame this decline on the customary bogeymen of liberalism and secularism, permissiveness and socialism. These things are sometimes labeled as a "soft totalitarianism" -- a label that too many American Christians utilize to claim victimhood from persecution.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. The main culprit is none of those things. And American Christians are hardly victims of real persecution.

Christianity -- and religion in general -- sowed the wind of politicized religion and partisan militancy. Now it’s reaping the whirlwind of decline and disenfranchisement. In a mysterious divine Providence, time and tide are scouring away all those toxic isms that came of that terrible collusion with the state, that romance of power and the sword.

So here we are in a thoroughly secular situation. The agnostic jurist Robert Ingersoll, back in 1876, said that from the beginning, America was a place where religion had to make its own way -- there would be no backing from the state:

“Our fathers,” he wrote, “founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword; that it should be allowed only to exert its moral influence.”

We can live with those words. We should be glad to live in this time and place -- a society that is democratic, secular, pluralistic, globalistic, even liberal, where the sword has been taken away from the church forever. There are opportunities in this situation for the faith that we’ve never had before. Democracy is a blessing. Modern secular society is not a curse.

It is an opportunity. Orthodox Christianity may once again (and maybe for the first time in America) be clearly seen as a society of kenosis and true ascesis. Orthodoxy has always been this way in essence -- but the secular, modernistic, even liberal moment removes the obscuring and confusing dross that has covered up that witness.

Things are modern now, and there’s no escaping that fact. There’s been a lot of toothpaste squeezed out of the tube that can never be pushed back in. We can’t go back to the good old days. Those good old days were probably not so good anyways -- at least not so good for everyone.

It’s about time we hoped and trusted in Providence, and stopped wishing to be somewhere or sometime else.

It’s time to relearn and show faithful, authentically Christian love. We’ve been called to be salt and light in a hurting world.

I'm happy to be in this contemporary moment with you, in the here and now, where we may disagree but still love our common humanity, and love -- if you want to -- our common God.

So to my fellow Orthodox Christians, I offer this respectful and friendly advice:

Bloom where you’re planted. Here and now, and in America.

a second open letter to clergy

A Second Open Letter to Clergy

Dear Fathers,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

For some of us, we are in the interval between the Feast of the Nativity and that of Theophany. We are days away from the Julian New Year.

For the rest of us, we are almost a fortnight into the new year.

We all remain troubled by the events of January 6th (which was Theophany on the Revised Julian Calendar). In fact, the distress is only increasing when we see more images and hear more recordings of the violence, and when we read of the deaths that have occurred at the hands of insurrectionists.

It is hard to compare dimensions of trouble, and to determine which is worst.

But among the most painful reports of the terrorist attack on the Capitol on New Calendar Theophany is the report of the involvement of some of our own brethren, actual Orthodox priests.

Indeed, there were some who participated in the riot wearing a cassock and a pectoral Cross.

This one fact is heartbreaking and soul-crushing. It makes any good conscience weep.

I understand that we all have our own political views, and we involve ourselves in varying degrees of partisanship. Some of us are Republicans. Some are Democrats. Some (I think with less justification) are Libertarians.

But as the Wednesday attack on the Capitol has revealed, there is a sharp moral difference between an acceptable array of political speech on one hand, and participation in demagoguery and sedition on the other.

There are those of us who participated in fascism on Theophany, who have aided and abetted the monstrous rise of sedition and autocracy for the last four years.

I am a theological conservative. I hold the tenets of the Niceo-Constantinopolitan Creed deeply in my heart. I am Pro-Life, and I hold to traditional social mores.

But it is hard for me to recognize a common priesthood with clergy who support sedition and insurrection -- because sedition and insurrection are exactly what January 6th was, and what these last four years have been. 

I am not suggesting any prescriptions here, because frankly, I do not know what there is to be done about clergy who carried the Cross of Our Lord into darkness. I ask the same question as one of these very clergymen posed over two decades ago, when he was offended, not by some immorality, but by an appropriate exercise of economia:

“What partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial?” (2 Corinthians 6.14-15).

We have many questions to think about, and to mourn about. Why are there so many young adults drawn to sedition? Why, historically, have so many of our faithful been drawn to authoritarianism -- especially now, but also over the centuries? Why is American Orthodoxy still so unprepared to witness to the Ascended Christ's peace, justice, and righteousness in American democracy? Must we always protest pluralism, secularity, and the evaporation of the ideal of America as an exceptional Christian nation?

And this: how was it ever possible for some of our own priestly brotherhood to have participated in a crowd that chanted “Hang Pence” and “Where’s Nancy?” -- a crowd that murdered a Capitol Police officer, and caused the suicide of another?

Was it a catechetical failure? Was it a deficiency of Orthodox dogmatic theology, or a lack of Orthodox spiritual formation? Was it an artifact of pre-conversion fundamentalism? Was it ignorance of rational American history and civics? Was it practice in indecent homiletics? Was it an unrecognized addiction to hate speech -- a sort of “political pornography” that effaces the Face of Christ from the neighbor, and programs extremism in its place?

We have, Fathers, much to think about, much to study, much to pray for, much to grieve.

Fr Jonathan Tobias

an open letter to clergy

Dear Fathers,

Christ is Born! Christos Rozdajetsja!

Even though I am on the New Calendar now, I'm too much accustomed to the Old. So I wish you and yours the Joy and Peace of the Season.

"Joy and Peace," in these days of anything but -- it sounds ironic to say that we serve the Resurrected and Ascended Lord Who is even now the Prince of Peace, seated at the Right Hand of God the Father.

Yesterday, we witnessed, on the Eve of the Nativity, an outbreak of violence upon the very heart of our nation. Despite the counter-narratives already swirling in the rumor mills of our fundamentalist counterparts (mainly in the Protestant community), the fact remains that this violence was inflamed and encouraged by our President himself.

It would be a mistake to confine our pastoral concern to this one man. He represents a large movement. Probably about 40 million firmly support his mission and his rhetoric. This may become the most significant issue for American Christianity in the next few years, if not a lot longer.

I have already heard many attempts to justify the behavior of this destructive rage yesterday. Some leading evangelical media leaders like Franklin Graham have suggested that Antifa and BLM are mostly to blame. Many (at least 20 million Americans) believe that the violence was justified, and, at the same time, that President-Elect Biden was at least partly to blame. At least just as many firmly believe the QAnon conspiracy theory of widespread pedophilia and child sacrifice. Many more believe that this violence was justified because of pro-abortion and other socially liberal policies.

Few of these "true believers," if any, will admit that much of the crowd was populated by white nationalists, holocaust deniers, and neo-nazis.

You should know that for myself, I am thoroughly opposed to abortion, and I am more in mind of traditionalist views on sexuality. 

But the fact remains that much of American Christianity has become committed to, if not thoroughly identified with, a rightwing libertarian movement that has now become demagogic and autocratic.

For now, I have no positive suggestions for new programs or initiatives.

But I will say this, Fathers, and we need to think hard and long on this reality:

We are already losing the youth (and many older adults) from our community of faith.

But now we have a generation who was born into the trauma of 9/11. Now they have become completely disillusioned by a church that has been relatively silent about racism, social injustice, and environmental degradation.

We've been eloquent about abortion and other sins. We march in cassocks in the National Right to Life March and write letters to the editor about pornography. Many of us will not hesitate to condemn liberal politicians and communists from the ambon.

But where is our eloquence about the equally outrageous wickedness of social and economic injustice and political demagoguery? 

Then there is the unthinkable possibility that there might exist clergy who not only fail to denounce the violence on January 6th, but actually welcome it. And this is heartbreaking. And I don't know how to respond to this abject possibility.

If we remain silent about the outrage of racism and injustice, strong man politics and global warming, then we will not only keep losing our youth.

We will lose them all. And we will lose conscientious, reasonable adults with them.

The ecclesial status quo will certainly not survive.

I pray in fervent supplication that this will not be so.

With love and hope in the Newborn Prince of Peace,

Fr Jonathan Tobias