Ancient Church

I can scarcely credit it. This is Pascha! Such a long road, but — as always — the journey is half the fun.

It has been an extraordinary Lent and Paschal season. I have written almost nothing since Lent began, but for good reason. Since Forgiveness Sunday, I have spent every weekend in Atlanta, except for those times when I was in Johnstown. We took rooms in the home of a friend, and that is where I have spent a great deal of time living out of a suitcase. It has not been an entirely bad deal: the home features an elderly basset hound, Sadie, who is a kindred soul. I scratch her belly as she moans and groans in what passes for basset ecstasy. When not scratching Sadie, I helped serve: presanctified liturgies, Soul Saturdays, Sunday liturgies. My wife, who was holding down the home fires, recently lamented that she felt like she had missed most of Lent. I, on the other hand, missed almost none of it. But I would not have had it any other way. It not only helped me to learn services that I was a bit weak on, it also gave me a greater sense of the demands of the season. And, Lent being Lent, in between weekends there were distractions: family emergencies, false reports and odd smidgens of weirdness.

That was the pattern through Palm Sunday. The following Tuesday, I returned to Atlanta, toting clean clothes and a box full of work from the office, and settled in for the duration. The week produced the usual things you come to expect during Holy Week. My secretary sent me multiple e-mails every day about one unexpected crisis or another which, while disturbing, were more smoke than fire. Those few still unresolved turned out to be solvable during Bright Week. More distressing was my wife’s car breaking down late on a dark cold night, as she and Marina returned home after a Wednesday unction service. I was too far away to be of real help, and could only pace the floor praying until I got word that they were safely home. It should not be surprising to learn that ultimately the problem was fairly simple: several days previously we had a belt replaced. It was done incorrectly, which led to it breaking, which stopped the car. Easily fixed, but that was of little comfort on a cold and windy night.

But all of that was simply prelude to last weekend. As I noted in the previous post, we had managed to make arrangements to hold our services in the building which we are trying to buy. The place is huge, and while the building that we plan to convert into the church proper still needs renovation, there is a foyer which served our needs nicely. A foyer indeed! It is almost twice the size of the chapel we have been using for almost ten years. Once we set everything up on Friday morning and stepped back for a look, we were amazed. The lighting, mostly provided by small halogen spots, beautifully highlighted the icons. The strange conviction that we noticed the first time we had seen the place — that in some unknowable way it had been built for us — returned. I know how overwrought that statement sounds, but there you have it.

Physical setting aside, here is what was remarkable about the weekend: people came home. A lot of people, some of whom we did not know. Some of those were people who had grown tired of our old spot, a Roman Catholic chapel that was not only laid out in an odd manner, but contained a great deal of statuary. Some people, particularly those who had not been in the United States that long, were just never able to get comfortable standing next to a statue of the Theotokos. When word got out that the new place was statue-free, they returned, and after a quick look round to reassure themselves you could see them standing happily in the foyer/chapel.

There was a second group of returnees as well, although we had never seen most of them. These were elderly people from up north who had moved to Atlanta to be near kids and grandkids. By and large, they live with their children and are dependent on them for getting around. For each of them, that meant attending church where the kids go, and for all of these people that meant the local hulking Baptist church, where thousands of people attend services in shifts. It is not that they were happy about it particularly. Instead, it was a matter of getting along, of trying not to be a burden. Not all of our people could quite figure out the dynamics. I overheard one of our members quizzing a guest. “But you are pravoslavnie! How can you be Baptist?” The answer, of course, is that they weren’t. One of them told me that the Baptist preacher was a kind man, but the eucharist! Her voice trailed off.

Somehow, though, they heard that we had moved into the neighborhood, and four or five of them showed up on Friday night. They sat through the good Friday service, eyes shining, and as we finished, I saw them starting to grab Father and ask for confession. By the time Pascha arrived, they had all received confession, and were ready for the Body and Blood for which they so plainly yearned.

I can’t say that our Paschal service was extraordinary, at least any more than any other Paschal liturgy. What Pascha is not miraculous? But it was exuberant and joyous and deeply emotional. For the first time in our history, we had two chalices when the time for communion came. Father wielded one, I the other. Everyone came. Not just our regulars, but angsty teens brought by parents and grandparents, statue wary Russians expressing joy at being in a real church again, and the pravoslavnie, the Baptist refugees.

Giving the Gifts to someone is an extraordinarily intimate act, even though I am not really one of the principal players. I am simply a witness, as the communicant and the Lord come together in a mystical union. But I am always fixated by it. I forget the servers on either side of me, holding the cloth, and whisper the prayer as the person approaches: “The body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is given to the Handmaid N, for remission of sins and unto life eternal.” As the pravoslavnie came forward, their eyes glistening, I knew that this was for each of them a most mystical Pascha, a miraculous provision of the Lord.

It was over all too soon. Afterwards, we blessed baskets and settled in to share each other’s food and our joy. Kids raced up and down the unfamiliar hallways, and we laughed and hugged and dreamed. We had to take it all down when we finished, of course. God willing, we will close on it next week and then we will truly be home. After the service on Sunday, we talked about that and about what we might do. I suggested that we take a page from the Baptists, and get a church van or bus. We can go around and pick up the elderly people, the ones who go to the Baptist church so they can get along with their families. We should, I suggested, put a sign on the back: “Warning! Pravoslavnie on board!”

How wonderful is Pascha? On what other day will all of the prodigal children come home and fall in love again? On what other feast will even those who had decided that they did not need the Church be found, eyes glistening and voices joyful, in the bosom of the Church? What is greater than Pascha, and who is so great as our God?

Like so much in the Gospels, the passage we read this Sunday from the Apostle and Evangelist Mark is important and significant on a great many levels. We are presented with a scene which contains many people, and a number of specific interactions. There is Jesus, teaching the crowd that has gathered around him, opening hearts and souls to the truth of the Incarnate Word. There are the scribes, as their suspicions and dislike of Christ grow inexorably into open conflict. Inevitably, there is a sharp exchange, and a lesson is taught. It is highly important for us to understand what the conflict was, because that understanding is necessary to us as we grow in our faith.

But I have to confess that for me, as a person who struggles with my own faith and with my own sin, it is often the silent characters, the ones in the margins of both the crowd and the text, who speak most clearly to me. In those characters, I see a reflection of myself, as though I were looking in a mirror. And in looking in that mirror, I understand my Saviour and my salvation on a deeply personal level.

When I look at today’s Gospel, I see two such characters that I instantly identify with. From these nameless people, I learn something important about our faith and about the Church, something that I think is important for all of us to understand. That is because these characters teach us two crucial things. The first is this: that Christianity is not a solo project. There is a reason that Christ created the Church, and did not leave us as free agents, seeking salvation outside of community. Yet paradoxically, the second is this: our faith is intensely personal, that we carry within ourselves the seeds of our own destruction, which we must confront and struggle against.

It is in the nameless friends of the paralytic that we learn of community. The story is compelling. Jesus has been out of town for a few days, and His return home has people excited. St. Mark tells us that a huge crowd came to the house to hear Jesus, so big that they spilled out into the street. It was impossible for even a healthy person to push through the excited people into the house where Jesus was, much less four nameless men who are carrying their ill and crippled friend on his bed.

A lot of people would have given up and gone home. A lot of other people would decide that the best thing they could do would be to stay outside the house and hope that they could get Jesus’ attention if He ever came out. But these four men were not to be denied. Pushing their way through the crowd, they climbed to the roof of the house, and actually broke a hole through the ceiling, and lowered their friend inside the house, to the very feet of Jesus.

We ask ourselves:
Could the paralytic have made his own way to Christ? No.
Could the paralytic have achieved healing in any other way? No

There is a deeply important lesson here for us. As members of the Church – as members of this parish – we are responsible for each other. As Orthodox, we know that all relationships are intended to lead us to salvation. A monastic lives in a community, so that all may achieve salvation. A husband and wife are partners, responsible for the salvation of each other. Parent and child, sister and brother, neighbors and friends – all are intimately involved in the business of salvation. Not in a probing, nosy fashion, but in a sense of constant concern, of unceasing care, of unfailing love, of continual sacrifice.

The four friends show us how this relationship works. They took their friend to Jesus. They did not simply talk to him about Christ, nor did they give him directions to the house where Jesus was and suggest that he visit sometime. Instead, they took him in hand and expressed their love in a concrete and unmistakable fashion.

In the same way, we must watch for each other. We must be available in a multitude of ways – not only physically, but in prayer, in concern, in love. Like the four men in this story, we may find that our faith brings the heavenly response. St. John Chrysostom, speaking of these men, said that:
in this case, they both approached Him, and had faith required on their part. For [Christ] ‘Seeing’, it is said, ‘their faith’ - that is, the faith of those who let the man down…as they evinced such great faith - He also evinces His own power
In the first instance, for the paralytic, it was the faith of his friends that evoked the response of Christ. Their faith healed their friend. Their love was the first step in a road that led to the sight of their paralyzed friend picking up his bed and walking home.

You see, in the end, for each and every one of us, the sorrow and infirmity of our brothers and sisters is our sorrow and infirmity. And, it goes without saying, it should be a comfort to us to know that our own sorrow and pain is shared by those who are now around us.

But there is another side to this story, one that is found in the heart of the paralytic himself. It is one that has particular importance for us as we make our way through the Great Fast. For the Fathers, the condition of the paralytic man was more than a physical ill. Rather, it was a paralysis of the soul. St. Gregory the Great taught that
Couch sometimes stands for pleasures of the body…What is meant here, but that by the bed pleasure of body is signified? And he is commanded to bear as a healthy man, that on which he had lain as a sick one; for everyone who still delights in sin, lies sick in the pleasures of his flesh.
Nor is it simply the sins of the flesh. For all of us are paralyzed in one form or another. We are paralyzed by sin and by fear. We are paralyzed by guilt, or by a refusal to forgive. We are paralyzed by what we refuse to surrender – that habit or fear or belief that we hold fast to ourselves, that we refuse to surrender, but which keeps us from moving forward. It keeps us from reconciliation and love. It keeps us from Christ. For all of us, that “something” is different, and some of us may not even realize that we are languishing in whatever that “something” is. But it is there, and as with the paralytic man, Christ awaits us to come to him, to receive forgiveness. To receive healing.

Yet having healed the man, Jesus then tells him to pick up his bed and go home. Again, this command is deeply meaningful for the Church Fathers. If the couch symbolizes the paralysis we suffer through our enslavement to sin, the requirement that he carry that couch means that the impulses and the tendency toward sin do not leave us, but remains something we struggle with through out our life. And indeed, this makes perfect sense. If we had no temptations that assailed us, we would not progress in our journey toward God. As St. Paul pointed out numerous times, the Christian life is like a long, rigorous race. It is not a sprint, but a contest where the winner is the person who perseveres against temptation and against sin, trusting in God for all things.

St. Ambrose of Milan summed it up: in this story we see – he said – “a complete likeness of the resurrection. (Through) Healing wounds of mind and body, He forgives the sins of souls and makes an end of the infirmity of the flesh: This is to cure the whole man.”

Do you see how this lesson is so timely for us as we make our way through Lent? We are called to carry our brothers and sisters to Christ: not only in a physical sense, but through prayer, through love and forbearance, through forgiveness. And just as we carry each other, we also present ourselves to the Great Physician, for the healing of every wound, every illness, every sin and infirmity. We do this through partaking of the Eucharist, through prayer and fasting, through making confession and through whole hearted devotion to the One who is the Savior of our Souls. Together, we make our way to the Cross, with transparent heart and fervent souls, bearing each other’s burdens and cares, there to meet our Lord.