In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

When it comes to being a human being, a regular, recognisable human being, there are some standard characteristics that you expect to see in such a person, regardless of the gender. It is into these characteristics that we normally grow up. If we’re really, really going to be true human beings, then we’re going to grow up as human beings patterning ourselves after the most perfect of them all, Jesus Christ, Himself, and His Mother, the Theotokos, also. The foundation of that identification is love, love and a perfect relationship between this human being, and God, and His will. Because, again, as we know from Scripture, and as we also know from our inheritance, God is love. Everything about God, and our relationship with Him, has to do with this love, working out this love, expressing this love in one way or another.

Today, we heard about these two demoniacs, who were so fierce no-one could pass by them. These demoniacs were people who became possessed in one way or the other by the devil, and they were living, at the very best, an irrational life. But it was far worse than being just an irrational life. It was a completely distorted life. It was a twisted life, a caricature of human life, you could even say, because their behaviour was the opposite of what a normal human being should be behaving like, and especially a Christ-imitating human being.

When the Lord healed the men, instantly they were restored to being normal human beings. This is like the other case we hear about during the course of the year of a particular demoniac in this region being healed, and being restored to his own right mind. There are other persons in the Scriptures being delivered from possession by the devil, and being restored to their normal, integral personality. They were restored to a personality in harmony with the Lord, a personality in harmony with God’s will, and a personality in harmony even with itself. We know it is highly irregular for swine to be raised anywhere on Jewish territory. However, human beings have always been like this, and it is important for us to understand that. Yes, the Law is the Law, and the rule is the rule, but people take the Law into their own hands anyway. In this particular out-of-the-way region, hidden from the sight of most people, swine were being raised.

When the legion of demons entered the swine, immediately the little pigs, that were going about their normal business as pigs do, went insane, jumped in the lake, and drowned. That is a very, very clear illustration of what happens when we separate ourselves from the Lord, play around with the powers of darkness, and say, ourselves: I want to do it my way, and I’m going to try to make the Lord conform to my way (instead of the other way around). As soon as I do it my way, without consulting the Lord first, and go in a contrary direction, already I am becoming like those demoniacs, and like those pigs. I am behaving irrationally. I am giving myself over into the hands of the powers of darkness when I do this. For you, and for me, the only way we can live, is to live in harmony with God’s will (with His love, in other words), and to live out His love.

Today, we are celebrating the memory of the Fathers of the first six Ecumenical Councils. A lot of people in our western cultures like to talk about these Fathers as if they were, in the course of those several centuries, and their various Councils, developing Christian doctrine on the basis of some logical development (or even worse, on the basis of some philosophical principles). Those Councils had nothing to do with doctrinal development. We don’t know about development. This is the Orthodox Church. There is no such thing as change when it comes to what we believe about God, what we believe about our Saviour, Jesus Christ, what we believe about the Church, and what we believe about all of creation in this relationship. There has been no change.

So why these Councils, and why these definitions? These Councils came about exactly because there were in various periods, people who had it in mind that they could come up with a better way to say things so that people could understand, and grasp things. It has not changed until this day. We are just the same. In their attempt, they distorted everything, and made people crazy in the end. These were people who were falling away from understanding, and living in harmony with what God revealed Himself to be - which is the point of everything. God reveals Himself to you, and to me, and we have to live in response to that revelation of who He says He is. Who are we to tell Him to be different? He reveals Himself still to this day in the same way to believers everywhere.

He is the same, as the Epistle says. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” – “unto the ages” is what the Greek says there. God is the same. His love is the same. We think we can redefine Him, as Arius tried, for instance. That’s why the first Council came along. Arius tried to suggest that Jesus Christ is not the uncreated Son of God, but some sort of voluntary creature who decided to be the “sacrificial lamb” as it were. But that’s not at all what this is about. Because if the Son of God, Himself, didn’t do what He did, reconciliation with the Father didn’t happen. Yet we know that reconciliation with the Father did happen, because that’s our experience for two thousand years.

There were others who came along, and thought that they had clever ideas, too, like Nestorius, who had a hard time accepting that Mary could be the Mother of God. He tried to change her into being just the Mother of Christ, thereby reducing Christ Himself. It is very complicated. It’s more than just a little bit difficult when we are thinking, thinking and thinking, and trying on the basis of our criteria, our logic, and our philosophies to make sense of the Christian faith. The tail cannot wag the dog, and the cart can’t go in front of the horse.

Our experience of Jesus Christ, our experience of His revelation of Himself to us must, absolutely must, lead or define, and determine everything. This is what those Fathers were doing in all those seven Councils (actually there were eight, but the eighth has not been recognised universally yet). They were listening to the Holy Spirit as well as they could (in the context of all that arguing, and debating - sometimes for a year or more), to come to a real understanding of Who is Jesus Christ; what is our Tradition of Him, and how can we with words as clearly as possible, talk about it. And that is what theology is. That’s all that theology is – talking in clear, correct words (and you have to say even in inspired words) about our experience of God.

Nowadays, people are talking about theology as if it is something you can learn in some university somewhere. People go, and get a degree, and then call themselves a “theologian”. In calling themselves theologians, these people will say very strange things about Jesus Christ, things that do not connect with Him at all, and our two thousand years’ experience. So what sort of theology is this? It’s only philosophy, and egocentric idea-systems trying to dress themselves up as theology.

Very few people can speak theology, and those are persons, generally, who don’t have a university degree to prove that what they are saying is right. Papers mean nothing. Nowadays, universities, having turned into technical schools, produce pieces of paper that mean only that you know how to pass an exam, and tell the professor what he or she wants to hear. That’s all a university degree can really tell anyone about anything. It certainly does not make a theologian, even if you go to St Vladimir’s Seminary. Just going to St Vladimir’s Seminary, and even getting a Master of Theology, or a Doctor of Divinity, or whatever, does not prove that you are an Orthodox theologian. You have to prove it with your life. Then the Church will tell you that you are a theologian. If anyone ever says: I am a theologian, he is already the opposite. Everything that we do, and live, is somehow opposite to the way the society is working. I have to admit that society is not our sanest of entities in the current world.

So what is our call from the Lord in the context of these swine, and in the context of the Epistles today? Our responsibility as Orthodox Christians is in the context of the love of Jesus Christ, and in living in obedience to the love of Jesus Christ. Our responsibility is to become human beings as closely resembling Jesus Christ as possible. That’s also what we should be trying to do as a believing community, as a Christian family: trying to live as well as a Christian family ought to live, as closely as we can to the example of Jesus Christ. In doing so, we become an example of what is sanity, real sanity, real humanity to the people around us.

People like to make fun of us, however. For us, time is a little bit flexible (sometimes very flexible). Food seems to be an obsession to us, not that we want to eat so much, but we want to feed others so much. We want to give people food, and we want to offer them hospitality. In all our Orthodox cultures, the faithful practically kill themselves trying to give hospitality to people who come to their homes. This is all the expression of this love.

There are people alive still in Canada who remember when very many more Canadians, even Anglo-Canadians, behaved more like that. But probably since I was about twenty or so, that way of living has catastrophically fallen away from most Canadians. Canadians in general have fallen in on themselves, and they look to themselves, and they are afraid of other people. We have to show the example of how human beings are supposed to live by how we live, and by not being afraid of other people who are created in God’s image. They are a wreck, because they are broken. We can show them how they can be healed.

That’s our responsibility. It’s not so small, and it’s not so easy. However, it is, as Father Alexander Schmemann said, full of joy. Father Alexander always talked about joy, and he said that if joy is lacking from us, from anyone, then Christ is lacking from us. There cannot be Christ in us without there being joy. Even when we are suffering a lot, in the middle of that suffering, there is still joy in the heart, there’s still hope, there’s still confidence, there’s still a sense of direction. There’s still life, even though there is great, and intense pain.

Let us cultivate that joy, that love of Jesus Christ in our hearts, and exercise that love, and joy on each other. Let us do our best to show Christ to each other, and together to sow a seed in this city that is going to grow, and produce not just twentyfold, not just forty or fiftyfold, but at the very least, a hundredfold, to the glory of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, bringing people into His Kingdom, joining them to His Body, with us to glorify Him together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America