In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
The society in which we live is a society that wants to have its cake and eat it, too. That is the old saying we are taught when we are young. Our society wants both to eat the cake and keep it. Why is this? It is because of a loss of direction, a loss of purpose. The only purpose our society seems to have is to satisfy every imaginable passion and desire. Our society is like a spoiled child. "No" has never been said to that child, and every time there is an obstacle that child throws a terrific tantrum. That is what we have become. Take, for instance, the fact that in our society in North America crime is rampant. People lament that there is no order, and things are going to pieces everywhere. At the same time, this very society at every opportunity lambastes Christianity, which is at the foundation of North American culture.
In these days it is not “in” to be a Christian. In these days if you are a Christian then you are "out of it". You don’t fit in. You’re fanatical, and they say you are a hypocrite. So what? We are all hypocrites. Who is so honest as not to be a hypocrite? Who is so righteous as not to be a hypocrite? It is hard to find such a person. Greek philosophers went around looking for honest people and did not find them. No one finds them. Why? Because we are all enmeshed with sin.
North American society wants to deny the existence of sin. So, our society is full of crime and we have uprooted the source of righteousness in our society. We cry and lament. We recognise that in our society we have done bad things to each other. We say: Oh, but that’s not sin and it’s not my fault either. Someone was bad to me and so even if I steal your purse, take your life, rip your eyes out or destroy your reputation, I can’t help it. Therefore we give people in society the ammunition to say it is everyone else’s fault (except mine) that I do bad things - that I misbehave, that I steal, that I kill, that I do horrible things, that I lie, that I cheat. It is someone else’s fault, not mine.
Our society in the face of all of this becomes very defensive. We don’t want people abusing us in various ways. We don’t want to be the object of theft, rape, murder, pillaging and looting. We want to be protected. So, what do we do? We really do not lead people into repentance anymore, because repentance doesn’t exist in our society any more. We punish. Because we are afraid, we enact legislation. When people do bad things we put them behind bars and then let them out again in a couple of months. All of this is nonsensical and irrational, if we pay attention to it.
We want order, but we rebel against order. We want morality, but we rebel against morals. We want joy and happiness in life, but we uproot that very source of joy and happiness. We want people to be good to each other, but we make ourselves so afraid of each other that we do not dare to be good to each other, in case we get sued (and that’s coming to our country, too). Day by day we fall deeper and deeper, subtly, into this crazy mire. Our own Christian foundation, our Orthodox Christian foundation gets eroded and eroded because the society in which we live is so full of pressure and so persuasive that it is very hard to keep up.
The Lord has very clear things to say to you and to me about this. The fact is that things have not changed. We think that here in almost the 21st century, we are so modern, so up-to-date, far ahead of anyone before us. However, the fact is that what we have done is conveniently to forget all about history. We like to think that everything was naively rosy before or primitively stupid, and that people didn’t know how to live until now.
The fact is that all those primitive people knew how to live. Where they are still alive in the world and where they have been left more or less alone to themselves, they do know how to live. We don’t. The Lord says to you and to me: Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your consolation with your big houses, your “electric everything” and every imaginable comfort and you got it on the backs of the poor around the world. Maybe we do not get it on the backs of the poor right next door, but we have surely extracted it from the poor overseas. And because we are so comfy and cosy now, we cannot expect to be so comfy and cosy after this life.
The Lord says: "Woe to you that are full now for you shall hunger". Probably we will find ourselves hungry in this life. As a result of the unleashing of deadly passions around the world, societies which have been relatively stable and self-sufficient, are ripped apart and people are dying of starvation on land that could perfectly well sustain them and meet every need. However, because they are filled with such hatred, and killing each other and stealing from each other, no-one except the most evil have enough to eat. "Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep". This one runs our society: "Woe to you when all speak well of you for so their fathers did to the false prophets"(Luke 6:25). What happened to the false prophets? They went down with the society they were pretending was all right (but it was dead).
We live in a society that is full of hatred, and fear, and self-interest. What does our Lord say to you, and me? The opposite: Don’t kill or put in prison your enemies. Love them. Don’t sue and put in prison those who do bad things to you. Pray for those who abuse you. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. Love your enemies. How far are you going to get with these things in society these days?
In fact, what the Lord says next, people laugh at us about. He says: If anyone strikes you on the cheek give the other one to be struck also. If anyone takes your coat away from you, let him take your shirt, too. Here is another good one: Give to everyone who begs from you (cf. Luke 6:29, 30). We’re told now: Don’t give to anyone who begs because they might use it to buy a drink. On the other hand, Bishop Gregory of Alaska reminded me about this last year. Talking about this, he said: I do what my father and my uncle said: If the person asks something from you, then he must need it. Who am I to ask what he needs it for? If I start to say: I am not going to give, then I am judging him. Maybe I am going to give something to the person begging on the street, but I don’t simply give; I give with God’s blessing. If this person is misusing that gift, then with that blessing comes God’s ruler on the knuckles. The conscience will prick that person (if there is any crack) when we give to that person who is begging, and if there is any possibility of good coming from it, some good will come.
Here’s what is even harder to take: If anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. His next words are ones that some make fun of and twist around, because they cannot stand the truth. The Lord says: Do to others what you would have them do to you. There is no person with any kind of real sanity, half-sanity, quarter-sanity, eighth-sanity who says: Go ahead and beat me up; I don’t care; I just love it.
People want to be loved. They want people to care about them, to pay attention to them, to respect them as creations of Christ. And that’s why the Lord says: Do to others what you would have others do to you. We want people to love us, to care for us, but we cannot wait for them to do it first. We have to do it because we have, as we will sing a little while later, "seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit". We have been filled with the love of Jesus Christ. We have to be the example.
This is what the Apostle is saying to us this morning. The world thinks, in its cynicism and hatred of Christ, that it is the weak and flabby way to go, to be a Christian. I do not blame them in a sense because some people who call themselves Christians have namby-pambied themselves into a lump of stale Jello. This is a distortion of the love of Christ. The love that Jesus Christ is talking about has nothing to do with warm, fuzzy, gutless, shapeless, formless feeling. It has to do with raw courage, acts of the will, determination, love with no strings attached, willingness to suffer even unto death for the sake of Christ. That is not wishy-washy, fuzzy emotionalism. That is life-giving, no-strings-attached love.
The Apostle Paul said to his disciple Timothy, what is said to all the clergy but is especially applicable to every last one of us: Be an example to the faithful. Be an example of love. Have the intestinal fortitude to do what Jesus Christ said and did, and be like the saints. Powerful. Strong. Defenders of the truth. Those who live the truth. Reveal Jesus Christ in your lives in the way you love so that by your example others will see and believe, and become completely a part of the Way.
Our first responsibility here, today, is to ask the Lord to come into our hearts more deeply, more fully, with greater power by the Grace, the inspiration and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this way, despite our sins, our shortcomings, our selfishness, and our brokenness, others will see His love, will be touched by His love as we live our lives and come to be united with Him. Then, they too, will have the same joy, the same hope, the same power and the same victory that you and I have and that we participate in.
In two more weeks there is going to be in Alaska the glorification of St Jacob Netsvetov. Yet another of the courageous saints of North America, he is the first half-Russian, half-Aleut priest to be glorified as a saint. He was not the first of the mixed-blood priests, but is the first to be a saint. He was a co-worker with St Innocent of Alaska, and with him, translated Scripture and the Liturgy into the Yupik and Athabaskan languages in south-west Alaska. The legacy of this great warrior for Christ is that the Yupik and Athabaskan peoples are the most stubbornly faithful Orthodox people in all of Alaska. And we think we have it hard now. Read the life of this man, going all over on stormy North Pacific and Bering Sea waters, freezing half to death, starving part of the time, and not even an electric anything. What he accomplished in his life!
Later this year two more saints will be glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church, as they were part of the original Russian mission. One priest, Fr John Kochurov, was a great builder of the Church. If you go to Chicago and see our Cathedral, it was built in his day. This man together with Fr Alexander Hotovitsky, also a priest brought here in the time of St Tikhon, a co-worker with St Tikhon, worked in the Chancery in New York City. They then went back to Russia in 1918 as representatives of the Church of North America at the Assembly of the whole Church of Russia. When they went back, Fr John Kochurov became the first priest-martyr of the Revolution and Fr Alexander Hotovitsky died in a labour camp fifteen years later.
Could you imagine the strength of such persons? What would it be like to be a First-martyr like Fr John Korchurov, and refuse to deny Jesus Christ and to die; or to be like Fr Alexander Hotovitsky—to serve, love and witness to Jesus Christ as a slave labourer in Siberia?
Perhaps the Lord calls you and me not to such outstanding and heavy tests of our commitment to Jesus Christ. However, He says the same to you and to me, as He said to Fr Jacob, to Fr Alexander, to Fr John, and to all the others: Be an example. Reveal Christ. Show by your love to Whom you belong. Show by your love to what Kingdom you belong, and let us all do as St Herman, the first and foremost among North America’s saints, teaches: "From this day, from this hour, from this minute let us love God above all, and do His holy will".