Second Terrace

read Jayber Crow

My whole purpose here is to get you to read a book, and that book is Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.

It’s one of those rare books that when you read the last few words in the last sentence, you want to take a step back and take a new different look at things.

Recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2010, Wendell Berry is the author of 25 books of poems, 16 volumes of essays, and 11 novels and short story collections. Since 1965 he has lived, worked, and farmed a plot of land on the Kentucky River with his wife and children. He and his family tried their utmost to subsist completely on what they harvested from their farm, going to the store only for the most necessary un-harvestable things.

As far as I know, Berry, who is all of 86 years of age, continues to till the fields with his horse and plow.

Wendell Berry’s main theme is that people change the land by living in it. And the land changes them. If the land is used well, and if other people are dealt with in a kindly fashion, then those changes will be good, or at least not so bad. He’s been a longtime critic of modern individualism, wasteful consumerism, self-aggrandizement, and conspicuous consumption.

He is a Christian writer who “tries to take the Gospel seriously,” but he makes partisans on both sides uncomfortable: no ideology can claim him. No one in the culture wars wants to hear, nowadays, words like these: “Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy” (from his essay “Economy and Pleasure” -- which is a very fine reflection on the great John Ruskin).

Rightwingers chafe at his pacifism and environmentalism. Leftwingers get hot and bothered by his lack of enthusiasm for abortion rights. Though most  contemporary conservatives (who are really libertarians) would not agree, I think Berry is very much an old-fashioned conservative -- so old that the moderns can't recognize him. But the same thing could be said of Christianity in general these days.

In this mean season of social media, techno-reality, and frenetic restlessness, Berry bucks the tide by his quiet insistence that there is no human life without community and nature. One’s life and work ought to be rooted in and responsive to one's place, and the people around him or her. 

Enter Jayber Crow, who did just that.

Wendell Berry is an acerbic critic in his essays. But in his novels, he’s a gentle artist. He portrays the citizens (or, what he calls the “membership”) of his fictional town of Port William with compassion. Even the villains, who betray human fellowship and violate land and nature, are still treated with humane-ness.

Port William is one of the most richly imagined communities in literature, certainly on par with Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County or Harper Lee’s Maycomb, Alabama. In every one of his novels and short stories (and a few of his poems to boot), Berry has populated this town with honest depictions of human nature, good and bad.

There are joys and there are sorrows. Jayber Crow, as the sole barber of Port William, has gotten to know these stories first-hand from the confessional that old-fashioned barbershops used to be. Jayber (whose name is really Jonah) was orphaned at the age of ten, and was moved to an orphanage in central Kentucky. From there he attended Bible college in Pigeonville, as he had felt, at the time, that he had received the call to become a preacher.

But in Bible college, he wrestled with too many hard questions to allow him to preach in good conscience. “You have been given questions,” his wizened NT Greek professor told him (whose nickname was “Old Grit”), “to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out -- perhaps a little at a time.” 

There’s more than a little of Berry himself here. He’s a Christian, yes, but certainly not what you’d call a “denominationalist.” He is one of many who has justifiably struggled with the organized church. Thusly, he had Jayber opine that “Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.”

Jayber left Bible college and wended his way to Lexington. After a few adventures and misadventures, he ended up back in his hometown of Port William, and set up shop.

He became the oral historian of the town. Oral history is the best kind of history, as it proceeds from the deep collection of community memory. “Telling a story,” Jayber reminisces much later, as he’s retired and over seventy at the time of his narration, “is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told. As almost any barber can testify, there is also more than needs to be told, and more than anybody wants to hear.”

The thing I like best about Jayber Crow is his growing -- and glowing -- recognition of his community in Port William, and what that community means, and the beautiful, poignant thing that community can be. 

Despite his honest problems with religion, Jayber comes to his clearest vision of God and his community -- ironically for him -- in church. Uncle Stanley Gibbs was the church janitor and gravedigger, but had been lately getting himself into trouble with his questionable vocabulary and his being too open about his plans for becoming a tomcat again once his old wife passed on. 

Jayber became Uncle Stanley’s successor, and cleans the church each Friday evening in anticipation of Sunday morning worship. He had avoided attending church for years, but now he sits quietly in the back. He loves the singing (“In the sweet by and by” is his favorite) despite his withering critique of most of the sermons.

One night while cleaning the church, Jayber gets sleepy and lies down on the floor. He closes his eyes and sees all the people of his cherished Port William -- people he observes and loves. The chapter concludes, “They were just there. They said nothing, and I said nothing. I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me. When I came to myself again, my face was wet with tears.”

Now that’s community. That’s what a town can be and should be. Jayber’s best friend, Burley Coulter, says this of what being a “member” of Port William is all about: “The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don't."

The "membership" of Port William consists of any person who recognizes his or her place among -- and responsibility for the well-being of -- all the land, animals, and all the people of the place. It’s being totally pro-life as in “all life.”

Port William is, or should be, your town and my town. Your family and my family. Your church and my church. Your neighborhood and mine.

the mystery of history

There is only one conspiracy that Christians are permitted to believe in. And this is so because ideology (particularly partisan ideology) and real theology cannot co-exist in the same head.

And that one conspiracy is the central Mystery, the essential meaning of all history.

What makes the “good news” of the Gospel so good is that this Mystery — the real meaning of history — is that at the heart of all reality is love.

Love is the mystery, the center of reality. Love is precisely the fact that God gives Himself away to us. Love consists only in the fact that Self sacrifices Self for the sake of the Other.

It is a common misconception that the sacrifice of Jesus in Love began at the Cross. Actually, that sacrifice began long, long before that historic moment on Golgotha.

Love was realized when the Lord surrendered the prerogatives of HIs heavenly divine glory and descended into the Incarnation, when He entered into humiliation. He, the Second Divine Person of the Trinity, was the Divine Spirit of His human soul and body: He assumed all of our nature completely, our total “psycho-corporeality.” His suffering did not begin at the Passion of Holy Week: it began the moment He was conceived by the Theotokos, when He entered into a fallen, darkened world.

But was even this self-sacrifice at the Incarnation entirely new?

No, it was not. For the Holy Trinity itself is in eternity a communion of constant and total self-sacrifice, in which each Divine Person finds his Personal center completely in the Others.

The self-sacrifice of the Cross was a climactic articulation of what had already been inaugurated at the Incarnation, which itself was an expression of what the Holy Trinity had always been, is now, and always will be.

This, all the Apostles said in their Gospel ministry, was the Mystery hidden throughout the ages, lying at the fundamental root of reality.

In their three-year “seminary” preparation with Jesus, the Apostles were sent out two by two to announce the reality of the Kingdom, which is the actualization — the living out — of the Mystery of Divine Love. When they came back, they spoke excitedly of the power of the Gospel, and its blazing defeat of the spirit of antichrist.

It is deeply interesting just how Jesus responded: “In that same hour He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was Thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to Me by My Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.’”

No one really understood the mystery (or "conspiracy"), the real meaning, of history. That is, no one until now — when the Word of God, the Logos and Truth of reality, had come to reveal it in the rhetoric of the Gospel.

Then Jesus continued: “Then turning to the disciples he said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it’” (Luke 10.21-24).

Christianity is the unveiling of the great secret, the mystery of history. Real history revolves around only one great and magnificent golden braid: the revelation of the God-Man Jesus Christ, Who has come to bring that same communion of the Trinity, and to invite human beings to participate in that very divine nature (2 Peter 1.4).

In the divine-human unity of Christ, in His Person, we are offered that same unity in His glorious grace. Communion with the God of love (and beauty and peace and truth) is the "open-source" secret of the ages that has been revealed, and "shouted from the housetops" (Matthew 10.27).

All of the “before Christ” past was oriented toward that moment of His Nativity and the Gospel. The entire Old Testament history, all the “begats,” was focussed on the Birth of the Son of God as Son of Man, from the womb of the Theotokos the God-bearer, the Virgin Mary, the All-Holy Daughter of Israel. That is true history. That is the mystery.

That is the only ideology -- or rather, theology -- that Christians can embrace.

Or be embraced by. 

the unchristian 18%

The 2021 American Values Survey was published by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute on Monday, November 1st.
It’s a reliable gauge of American society -- its shape and its attitudes. The entire survey is a must-read for clergy, politicians, students, and responsible observers.

There are many challenging observations. But the most unpleasant is this:

18% of Americans in general (I am deliberately not delineating party affiliation here) agree that “patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

I suppose that the phrase “saving our country” might be ambiguous. Perhaps, I hope, some of this 18% imagine an attack by a foreign country. But in the context of other survey responses, it’s pretty clear that the perceived attack comes from within American society.

This is partisan violence that is being endorsed here. This is an unapologetic support of civil strife.

I can speak unambiguously here. For Christians who are faithful to the New Testament and to the apostolic tradition, there is no support for engagement in civil strife. In fact, there is only condemnation of partisan violence.

Anyone who supports mob violence, arson, destruction, insurrection, or sedition is speaking from outside the Faith. One might be able to support these actions as an authoritarian, nativist, populist, or anarchist, but one cannot commend partisan violence as a Christian.

The Lord Himself said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5.43-45).

There is simply no room for extremism here. There is no room for any preacher railing against political enemies here. If he does, he must be inventing a different gospel.

Also this: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20.25-28).

This is a complete rejection of authoritarianism, extremism, and partisan violence. The New Jerusalem is marked only by the true righteousness of beauty, peace, and goodness.

If politicians and preachers and pundits (and profiteers) speak positively of violence, they may claim a certain sort of wrathful righteousness, but it is certainly not the righteousness of God.

a man for all seasons

Protopresbyter Lawrence Barriger fell asleep in the Lord on Saturday, October 2nd, in the late afternoon.

"Fell asleep" is our Orthodox euphemism for death, though it is a truth.

I will miss Fr Larry deeply. And I will never get to a point, this side of eternity, when I will not miss him. And, I’m sure, that is true for us all in this God-Saved diocese. My heart goes out to Pani Linda, Laura and Lisa, his sister Pani Mary Bachofsky and his brother-in-law Fr Kenneth Bachofsky and grandchildren and the entire family: they know more than anyone what it means to miss Fr Larry now.

But though our sense of loss is surely less than theirs, it is still painfully great. And as time goes on, we’ll find that it is greater than we know.

Fr Larry was without question the finest theologian and historian (along with +Protopresbyter John Yurcisin) that our diocese ever had. In times like these, we need an Orthodox theologian more than ever -- there’s so much confusion and decline in the world. Fr Larry was a clear-minded treasury of Orthodox memory and theological thought, and he was clear-sighted. He knew the difference between glittering appearances and real substance -- a trait, I’m sorry to say, that is something of a rarity these days.

His irreplaceability soon became apparent for all to see. Married on 8 August 1976 to Pani Linda, he was ordained a few weeks later by +Bishop John R Martin on 26 August 1976. He was assigned as Administrator of the Holy Ghost Church in Manville, New Jersey. He would go on to pastor the St John the Baptist Church in Wilpen PA and the St Stephen Church in Latrobe PA. Finally, he was sent to the St Michael Church in Freeland for his longest tenure, from 1986 to 2020.

Having graduated with a degree in Classical Languages from St Peter’s College (1978) and then from Princeton Theological Seminary (no less) with a Master’s Degree in 1980, his aptitude for learning and wise counsel quickly gained notice. In 1981, he was appointed Instructor of Liturgical Theology at Christ the Saviour Seminary, where he would serve on faculty for the rest of his life.

The Seminary mourns his passing grievously. He could quote the Fathers expansively with deep understanding, especially in the critically important subject of Liturgical Theology. For my part, the transition from my upbringing as an Evangelical -- with all its patent disregard of and opposition to sacrament, liturgy, ritual, dignity and beauty -- to Orthodoxy would have been much, much more difficult, if not impossible. It was mainly through my friendship with this theologian that I not only converted sacramentally and liturgically, but I converted to Orthodoxy philosophically and psychologically as well. This was crucial, as too many of my fellow converts from Evangelicalism are still fundamentalists in their heads.

And he began to write ... and boy, did he ever write well. In 1990 he authored the Diocesan publication “Women and the Church.” The hugely helpful Yours of Your Own came next in 1993 -- a booklet that really needs re-publishing (this time in a better typeface than its current dot matrix xerography). Next came the authoritative history of our Diocese: Good Victory (1985) which is the English translation of +Metropolitan Orestes’ titular See -- “Agathonikea.” He completed his Diocesan narrative with the publication of Glory to Jesus Christ (2000).

His last book was published in 2006: Insights into the Orthodox Faith. It was a compilation of some of his best columns in our Diocesan paper, The Church Messenger.

I loved my time as Assistant Editor of The Church Messenger, working side by side with the then Editor, the equally-missed +Protopresbter Michael Rosco, and Associate Editors +Fr Larry, Protopresbyter and Chancellor Frank Miloro (thank God he’s still with us), and present Editor Protopresbyter Mark Leasure.

I remember looking forward to Fr Larry’s column, “Liturgical Insights,” every month, because I was sure to learn new and important stuff.

One column stands out, never to be forgotten (it’s not in his last book). It was a three page, long, long and arduous, extremely technical, explanation of the Orthodox “Paschalia.” Fr Larry attempted the herculean task of finally putting to rest the arcane mysteries of the dating of Pascha. He had dredged up a barely-legible chart from one of his old and dusty Russian texts. It took me days to photoshop the chart before I could take it to print. I remember Fr Michael, Metropolitan Nicholas, and I, scrunching our eyes and furrowing our brows, trying to take it all in.

To this day, that article is still over my head. I’ll keep trying.

Fr Larry achieved much and his ministry was recognized in a long succession of honors and appointments. In 1991 he was elevated to “Very Reverend,” and to “Protopresbyter” in 1997. As a distinct rarity in our Diocese, he was awarded the honor of the Office of “Protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Throne” by Patriarch Bartholomew in 2001.

He was appointed Dean of the Scranton/Pocono Deanery in 1991. In 1996, he was appointed as a Consultant to the Diocesan Consistory and Diocesan Board of Trustees. And in 1999, he was made Vice-Chancellor of the Diocese.

I was awed by all this: he was not. He told me often that it might be interesting if the order of awards were reversed -- that a new ordinand should start out with a mitre and jeweled pectoral cross, and as time went on, the ranks and awards would be taken away, one by one.

“He’d feel lighter the closer he got to heaven,” he averred, with a sardonic chuckle. My avuncular friend knew, in his bones, that there could be no aristocratic Orthodoxy with a Jesus Who made Himself a slave to humanity, to the dereliction of death.

But to me and to others of those who knew him, the greatest honorific came early on in 1986, when +Metropolitan Nicholas, of thrice-blessed memory, appointed Fr Larry as Theologian to the Bishop, a title he carried to his dying day.

It was his greatest honor and greatest burden. Theology is necessary, a burden laid on every Orthodox faithful, but especially on Orthodox clergy. It is hard: nothing comes easy. It can illuminate. It can make you fall in love with its majesty and beauty.

But it can hurt you with its demand to throw away childish thoughts and lazy assumptions.

Metropolitan Nicholas knew, deeply, that the pastoral leadership of the Orthodox community must be founded upon, and must revolve around, Orthodox theology. It is the wisdom of received Holy Tradition. It is the knowledge of the tragedies and triumphs of church history. It is the reticence and humility, the discipline and clearsightedness, that is crucial for “rightly dividing the Word of Truth” (2 Timothy 2.15), for making wise -- not impulsive -- decisions, for knowing the difference between “all that glitters” and real gold.

Fr Larry told me, on more than one occasion, that one of the best ways to get to know the mind of an Orthodox clergy is to ask “Who is your favorite Orthodox theologian? What are you reading?” He loved to tell us in Seminary how Metropolitan Nicholas would visit his priests’ office bookshelves and look for the books he’d send them every year, to make sure that theological books were doggy-eared, highlighted, and annotated. And heaven forbid that he’d find the tome still in shrinkwrap.

Fr Larry became a counselor to Bishop and Priest, to clergy and laity. His advice and theological acumen were golden. His consultancy was sought by the wise and responsible, by those willing to take advice. If his advice was ignored, refused, or never even sought in the first place, then things inexorably fell apart.

Whenever we talked about these moments of “deliberate disregard,” he quoted W B Yeats to me:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity. (From “The Second Coming”)

While he never did suffer fools gladly, Fr Larry was the picture of calm maturity. His generosity was often given at great personal cost. He patiently weathered onslaughts from positions of outright naivete, patent disregard, lazy scholarship, and just bad manners. On those occasions, when I was with him, he’d shrug his shoulders and mumble something, sotto voce, in Latin (some of you know which line was his favorite).

Still, he weathered it all, steering a course clear from the rocks and shoals, even in the gale of a lee shore.

I came to know Fr Larry 27 years ago. We hit it off when we discovered that we shared a great love of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series (and other great seafaring novels). The ship and the tide, the many exigencies of nautical life, became a metaphorical frame for our many discussions about parochial and diocesan issues ...

... and, most poignantly, about existential horizons.

How I wish for a time machine, when I could go back to those Spring and Lenten afternoons in the old Anthracite Deanery. I’d give much to hear again the Paraklis in Slavonic at St Michael’s in Freeland, hearing the heart-stirring melodies back and forth between Fr Larry and Professor John Kost. On another Sunday, we priests would hear hundreds of confessions at St Michael’s in Binghamton with Fr Jim and the Monsignor Stephen Dutko, the lines of confessands running down the aisles and out the front doors of St Michael’s.

How I wish, with tears, to go back to that sweet moment in the Scranton rectory when Fr Mark and I acted as les serveurs upon the greats -- Metropolitan Nicholas, Monsignors Stephen Dutko and John Dolhy, and Fr Larry. They sang around the table. They evoked the high old country. They spoke in tongues, the old tongues. Fr Mark understood. I did not. But it was mellifluous. It was golden. My heart soared.

My learned, sometimes jovial, sometimes melancholy, friend Fr Larry truly cherished -- always and deeply -- our beloved Diocese, and cherished our people, beset and bewildered by modern culture. He desperately wanted and looked for wise and compassionate pastors and leaders who knew how to set a good course and look after ship and crew, big and small, old and young alike.

Toward the end (these last few months), Fr Larry kept telling me that he wanted us diocesan clergy to come to an unfailing impression that had grown in his thinking in the last year:

His own life, his own meaning, his own justification lay not in his self, but only in the Cross of Christ. He tried to tell others who were struggling in their own difficulties and their bad choices that their own suffering was taken up by the enormity of Christ's all-containing suffering -- a suffering that would be transformed by the Resurrection into life.

Which was an amazing thing for Fr Larry to say. But it was heartbreaking.

I have never known anyone suffer so much and so long as him.

I’m glad that he’s sailed into a “serene and luxuriant and peaceful” harbor, where “all pain and sorrow and lamentation are absent.”

Larry, those of us who still sail on these troubled seas will sail on. You need to know that. We will miss you, our theological commodore, but this squadron will sail on.

Larry, my great friend and older brother, you have suffered too much. I have wept much over your long pain.

You have met Jesus at the Cross.

Now rise with Him.

tracts in public places

I took a look at a tract that was left behind in a public place yesterday.

It said, rightly, that people shouldn't be in denial about the Christian message, and I certainly agree.

But at the same time, Christians shouldn't be in denial about critical realities. Like the reality of climate change: one in three Americans have been hit by weather disasters this summer. Like the COVID-19 pandemic, which has topped over 40 million cases (and about 650 thousand deaths). Like the need for vaccination and public health measures.

Denying these realities harms the Gospel proclamation. It compromises the Christian testimony. Embracing alternative and conspiracy theories is as toxic to the Christian witness as hypocrisy.

What is needed in these emergencies is the true witness of ministry, not the sub-Christian superstition of denial.

To be sure, the atheist use of science to "disprove God" is ludicrous. Science can say nothing about God, because God is not subject to scientific observation. God is not subject to anything or anyone.

At the same time, Christians cannot deny scientific observation. To do so risks confusing faith with superstition. It would have been tragic if Christians had hung their Christianity on the notion that the Earth was flat, or was located at the central lowest point of the cosmos. The expansion of scientific knowledge should add to, not detract from, the wonder at and love of the God of Christian testimony.

Moreover, Christians -- especially Orthodox Christians -- cannot endorse extremist ideologies like anti-vaxxing and anti-masing doctrine -- because "doctrine" is exactly what they are. There are clergy and even monastics who are preaching opinions that are at least heterodox, if not outright heretical. These opinions are couched in florid spiritual rhetoric that camouflages the utter irrational nihilism that is advertised as faith.

This is a "witness" indeed. But it is not the Evangel. Every sinner looking for salvation will notice the absence of the Cross in language like this, and will not hear the voice of the Good Shepherd Who seeks only to save. 

It is a bad witness. It depicts Orthodoxy as a haven for cranks, malcontents, purveyors of hermetic superstition, and partisans of extremist politics. American Orthodoxy should be no place for racism, authoritarianism, or anti-science ideology. American Orthodoxy should only be for the Orthodox Evangel of the kenotic Holy Trinity of Sacramental Love, redemption, and reconciliation ... good theology, instead of sub-Christian superstition and partisanship.

Tracts about the Gospel are an interesting witness of one's faith. But many more and powerful tracts are left behind in daily life that are unprinted. These "tracts" are our witness to the world in our speech and behavior, in our politics, our social interaction and concern for the unfortunate, our response to science and technology.

Our care for the real world is the best tract of all. That is precisely the evangelism of the early church, just how it “turned the world upside down.”

Are we known as extremists? As partisans? As deniers?

What kind of God do we witness to? The old demons of domination, violence, oppression, and dark magic?

Or are we witnesses of God's Word of Infinite Love, Who came to redeem and reconcile?

Christ is the End of the Law

Two Law Theories

There are two opposite doctrines about the Law: one is right (i.e., “orthodox”), the other obviously is not. One such “theory” is the attempt to base your righteousness upon your successful completion of the Law — that is, your getting into heaven because you had enough of a “compliance” score.

This theory is the one St Paul is stridently arguing against in the entire Epistle to the Romans. In this Epistle, and also in the Epistle to the Galatians, St Paul proved systematically and in force that you cannot succeed at “righteousness based upon the Law.” You cannot justify yourself, or achieve justification based on your “good” behavior.

This, St Paul said, is exactly what was wrong with the Judaism that rejected their Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Law — whether the written Jewish Law in the Old Testament, or the unwritten law of the Gentile conscience (Romans 1.18-23) — is the divine calling to humanity to become “like” God, to live like Him, to think and act like Him, ultimately to love like He loves.

The End of the True Law

In other words — and here’s the crucial point — the meaning and purpose, the goal of the Law is the Word of God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God Who became the Son of Man. Jesus has always been for eternity the heart and original design (i.e., “law”) of humanity. When man was created in the Garden of Eden, and God said, “Let us make man in Our image,” that image was the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God.

Christ is the Cause, the Meaning, and Goal of humankind. That is why St Paul in Hebrews says that Christ is the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12.2). That is why he said, in our Epistle reading today, that “Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified” (Romans 10.4).

If the Law’s “beginning and end” is Christ Himself, then it should become immediately clear that there is no possible way to fulfill the Law on your own. The Law that Christ is the end of cannot, then, be a list of legalistic achievements or checkboxes on your moral superiority “to-do” list.

Christ has always been and always will be the purpose of the Law. God’s demands for life as the Law started out in the Old Testament as a kind of progressive education, an anticipation, of the fullness and clarity of the Law in the New Testament. The Ten Commandments were glimmers and gleamings of the Beatitudes that would later come, with the Word of God Himself articulating them with His pastoral voice, the heart of all humanity and creation.

Mount Sinai, where the Law was received on tablets of stone, has been fulfilled and surpassed (not cancelled) by the the Sermon on the Mount.

The Law that is based on the “righteousness of faith” is not a possible and achievable sort of self-achieved smug righteousness. The Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee reveals this sort of self-righteousness, as opposed to the justifying faith of the Publican, which was based on the achievement of Christ.

To the contrary, the demands of God for true life and love are now enabled and made not just possible but made certain by the Lawgiver Himself, who has written the Law not on tablets of stone, but — through the Holy Spirit — on their hearts (Jeremiah 31.33; Ezekiel 36.26). We have entered into solidarity with Jesus Christ as we are His Body, and His Holy Spirit nurtures, grows, and perfects into the fulfillment of the Father’s own cherished hope — that we might, being deified, grow into into full communion with Him and all creation (when He is “all in all,” (1 Corinthians 15.28).

Righteousness DIY

But there are those who try to go it alone, who try to base their righteous on their own achievement of the Law. St Paul says this about them: “For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (Romans 10.3).

Obviously, this is what was wrong with the Pharisees. St Paul would know this well, as he had been a Pharisee himself. And this willful ignorance of the “righteousness that comes from God” has always been a constant temptation for Christians. It is that legalistic self-justification, even self-satisfaction, from having been more (apparently) successful at the delusion of self-righteousness than others.

Legalism is always obvious when others do it. But we have it in our own Orthodox community as well, especially when asceticism becomes a “righteousness based on law.”

Eschatological Legalism

Legalism is a decadent, apostatized theory of righteousness. It is, actually, a heresy. And it reveals its wickedness most clearly when it is applied to life after death and to the end-times (i.e., eschatology). It comes out in the open as speculations about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. St Paul actually quotes foolish questions that are typical of these theories (in the manner he often uses in his epistles):

‘But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down) or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)’ (Romans 10.6-7).

St Paul is saying that those who try to “base their righteousness” on their fantasy of succeeding at the Law get mired in endless questions of who is going to heaven, and who is going to hell. Or how few will be in heaven, and how many will be in hell. Or constructing intermediate stages of purgation and examination (like Purgatory, or a literal series of “tollhouses”), as if there were some tug-of-war between Jesus and the devil over a poor soul.

These legalistic speculations are Pharisaical and toxic. They fly in the face of St Paul’s soul-stirring words of Romans 8.39-39:

“For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

St Paul suggests, shockingly, that these speculations are, in effect, bringing Christ down from heaven and up from hell, thereby denying what Jesus has achieved.

In other words, if you redefine or reduce the Law into a self-elevation into Heaven, then you’ve ultimately ignored what Christ has done in achieving salvation. If you’ve reduced the Law into a judgement tool by which you have sentenced people to everlasting perdition, then you, too, have ignored Christ’s salvation, since you’ve denied that He has destroyed the power of hell.

This legalist “righteousness based on the law” thinks of salvation as a future event, as an event when a person is sent to either heaven or hell.

This is a “salvation” that is deferred until the future, until the point of death.

Against this, Jesus said “I am come that ye may have life, and life more abundantly” (John 10.10). Like right now.

Salvation in the Here and Now

Real salvation — the salvation that is “the righteousness that comes from God,” which is “justification by faith” in “Christ Who is the end of the Law” — this salvation is not far away at all. It is not deferred to the eschaton or delayed into the future. It is in the here and now.

As St Paul says in Romans 10.9, “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Salvation in the here and now means that we are no longer in the condition of “wrath,” which is not active divine punishment or perdition. The teaching that God actively inflicts suffering and pain is precisely what the Pharisees taught, and it flows from the defective doctrine of “righteousness based on the law.”

Rather, the “wrath of God” is the soul’s experience of rejecting God’s righteousness, which is His Love, His communion in the Spirit and solidarity with His Son. If someone turns away from the infinite presence of Love, then he torments himself even in the here and now. He rejects his own essence. He turns his back on his own nature. His whole existence darkens.

This is what Jesus called “the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8.12; 22.13; 25.30).

Prayer vs the Gnashing Teeth

Salvation is the spiritual Paradise that begins even now when we repent and are rescued (i.e., saved) from the outer darkness, as the Good Shepherd has found us — we who are the lost lamb for whom He left the ninety-nine behind.

Jesus goes out into the darkness, the dark storm of existential hell that is, tragically, present in the here and now. And He saves His lambs. Indeed: “we are His people and the sheep of His pasture” (Psalm 99.3 LXX).

Instead of weeping, there is joy. Instead of gnashing of teeth, there is the “peace that passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4.7).

There is — in that very Christological and Pneumatological Peace — the highest joyful work and privilege of Prayer. Prayer is the very height and essence of True Righteousness.

Prayer is the opposite of “gnashing of teeth.” The gnashing of teeth is the seething grieving soul that has turned against itself by rejecting Love. It can only be aware of itself in an egotistical hell (i.e., Jean Paul Sartre’s “No Exit”).

But Prayer is liberation. Prayer is life. Prayer is the pouring out of one’s self for the sake of the other. Prayer is what the Trinity does in being the Trinity. Prayer is the First Movement of Love, and the Only Movement.

The Righteousness of God is based and rooted only on this eternal Prayer of Love. On the other hand, the “righteousness based on the law,” the self-righteousness of legalism, cannot pray and fights against true prayer.

The very worst thing about legalism is that it smothers prayer. But the “righteousness from God,” Christ Who is the end of the true Law, is inseparable from prayer for anyone and everyone, especially in this suffering world.

This Spiritual Paradise of Prayer in the here and now will become, additionally, a Physical Paradise at the Resurrection. It will be Eden Again, where the Righteousness of God’s primordial peace, beauty, and goodness will become total reality.

That is what we are gifted in the here and now with the first glimmers of that ultimate transfiguration occurring in sacraments all around us, that same universal transfiguration worked by the Spirit and the Bride, starting in our hearts.

That, nothing less, is real righteousness.

“The word is near you, on your lips, and in your heart.” Amen.

pray to God for us, fr sergius

 

Fr Sergius Bulgakov fell asleep in the Lord this day 77 years ago in Paris of 1944.

The Nazis were still occupying the fair city, which was, for Fr Sergius and many other Russian emigres, a place of exile. He had been driven out of Russia by the Bolsheviks. He, along with Berdyaev and Ilyin and 150 intellectuals, was forced out of the Soviet Union on the infamous "Philosophers' Ship."

 

Having suffered Bolsheviks and Nazis, and having been sorely disappointed by his own early adoption of Marxism, Bulgakov re-entered the church of his youth, and sought for the rest of his life to proclaim the Gospel to every phase of human existence.

 

He never shied away from tackling difficult tasks. Although he was all too familiar with the limits of human knowledge, and the transcendent mystery of God, he also -- with courage, persistence, and meekness -- took theological and philosophical thought far beyond the comforting limits of usual religious speech.

 

He refused to prematurely stop at conventional limits, as he recognized that these limits had contributed to the church's loss of vitality and persuasion.

 

Knowing that the ways of apophasis, or via negativa, has been much overused, and prematurely deployed, he left us with this evangelistic charge:

 

"Bondage of thought is not theology" (from "Augustinianism and Predestination"). It is irresponsible to too quickly say "it is a paradox," only to excuse one's unwillingness to engage in the apostolic task of "devoting ourselves to prayer and to the word" (Acts 6.4).

 

Despite the claims of his detractors, Fr Sergius Bulgakov was a prince of Biblical and patristic scholarship. He was faithful to the true contours of the real dogma of Holy Tradition -- moreso, perhaps, than those who suggested he did not.

 

Because the Gospel, and Holy Tradition, cannot be contained as an instrumentality of an institution. It exceeds all social, ethnic, geographical, ideological, and historicist compartmentalizations. It cannot be but the mere "content" of a sociological unit.

 

This, Fr Sergius knew and took seriously. He knew that sophiology had always been a theological method that lay implicit in the prophets, the apostles, and the fathers -- but in this modern age, it has become exceedingly and explicitly necessary. It really is not possible to disregard his sophiology, as some have tried to renovate him to make him more agreeable and more compliant with the demands of convention.

 

Bulgakov's many detractors to this day cast aspersions, which have come to be just as conventional (and supercilious) as the contours that this saintly theologian frequently crossed for the sake of the Evangel.

 

As a rule, these aspersions proceed from the familiar opinions of others (as opposed to direct reading). Or they proceed from misunderstanding (from superficial reading) -- Bulgakov frequently describes an errant opinion at length, and more than once I've seen a freshman critic mistake that description for Bulgakov's own position.

 

Or, most likely, they proceed sophomorically from the view that Orthodox dogma is a set-piece, static, written in stone, very much as Scripture is viewed in sola scriptura theory.

 

The Apostolic Proclamation does not change in essence, but its elaboration must be communicated to all times and places and peoples. This is the Great Commission.

 

And Fr Sergius Bulgakov received that Commission and took the Gospel further than most everyone.

 

It is said that at his repose this day seventy-seven years ago, there was miraculous light:

 

"We were witnesses to an amazing spectacle: Father Sergius’ face had become completely illuminated. It was a single mass of real light."

 

Pray to God for us, Fr Sergius, in this night.

the cost of partisanship

Every Fall, in the seminary courses that I teach, we take a good look at the American Religious Landscape Survey. For obvious reasons, it’s pretty important for a newly-ordained clergyman to have at least a notion of what he’s getting himself into when he sets out with the Gospel into the American scene.

It should go without saying that the American religious scene has always been something like the Wild West. Things have always been changing, indeed, but not like they are right now.

Ever since the 1990’s, the fastest growing religious group in America isn’t religious at all. These are the “nones.” As in “no religious affiliation,” or “unaffiliated.” This group has been growing by leaps and bounds. 

Its rise has been shocking to religious observers like me. In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that the unaffiliated rose from 17% in 2009 to 26% in 2018. That is an almost unheard of increase in less than ten years -- a scary rise by nine whole points, which should have been most unsettling to anyone in the religious community.

I felt like Chicken Little two years ago, telling all my evangelical and mainline, Orthodox and Roman Catholic, friends that the sky was falling for sure.

Well, the sky doesn’t seem to be falling -- at least, not falling so quickly, and not falling for everyone. 

This past Thursday (July 8), the Public Religion Research InstituteIn released its brand new 2020 American Religious Landscape. 

Some things are not surprising. Christians of color and non-Protestant Christians (e.g., Orthodox like me) have pretty much held their own with little increase or decrease in the last 20 years. 26% of Americans identify themselves are “Christians of color” (like African-American and Latino protestants). This is a slight increase from 23% in 2006. 22% of Americans are Catholic, and 0.5% are Orthodox (I know that’s tiny, but at least it’s held stable).

But there are two big surprises.

First, the “unaffiliates” are not growing so fast anymore. They seem to have stabilized at 23% of the American population. The shocking growth from the 1990’s to 2020 has settled down from a wildfire to a campfire. 

Still, no one should take too much comfort in this. An enormous 36% of the crucial young adult age group (i.e., 18-29 years of age) put themselves in this “none” category -- and this should be  at the top of anyone’s list of concerns for the religious future of the nation.

The other surprise is bigger. 

For the first time (I think ever), the population segment of white evangelicals is shrinking. "Since 2006,” PRRI reports, “white evangelical Protestants have experienced the most precipitous drop in affiliation, shrinking from 23% of Americans in 2006 to 14% in 2020." 

This is new, arrestingly new. For decades -- since the 1970’s -- it’s been a truism that conservative evangelicals have bucked the tide of religious decline in America. In 1972, sociologist Dean Kelly wrote a famous book called just that: Why Conservative Churches are Growing. He concluded that while mainline Protestant churches were concerned about popular political issues, conservative evangelical churches were concerned with Biblical demands upon life, relationships and responsibilities.

But this started to change remarkably in 2015. The evangelical segment started to decline rapidly (from a more gradual decline in 2006). At the same time, mainline denominations (like Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians) started to increase.

This is something I never thought I’d say. According to this landscape report, there are more Americans who are white mainline protestants (16%) than there are Americans who are white evangelicals (14%).

What accounts for this? There is no new big influx into the mainline churches. Most of their gain seems to be coming from those who had left the mainline community for the evangelical community years ago, but who are simply returning to the church of their upbringing.

The decline of white evangelicals seems mostly to result from the larger changing demographics of America. This is obvious. There is an irreversible change from a white majority to a plurality of ethnicities in the country. This is happening no matter what one thinks about immigration or voting policies.

But there is another factor that has contributed to the decline. When Dean Kelly wrote his book in 1972, the evangelical community was focussed upon concrete “Biblical lifestyle issues.” Since then, the focus has broadened to involvement in political, partisan issues and the “culture wars” -- the very sort of involvement that Kelly had blamed for mainline decline 50 years before.

Now it seems that the chickens have come home to roost. The Pew report of 2019 observed that it was just because of explicit political partisanship that many young adults are leaving the evangelical community, most likely landing squarely in the “unaffiliated” category.

I’ve always told my seminarian students, especially in preaching class, that they should never hesitate to talk about ethical and moral issues from the pulpit.

But they should never, ever, endorse a candidate or preach partisanship. 

And this has turned out to have been good advice.

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!