Ancient Church

We are at the midpoint, more or less, of a deeply festive season. We have welcomed the Infant Jesus into the world, in the cold silence of a Bethlehem night. We have joined the shepherds and the angels, the Magi and the beasts of the field, in adoration of God made flesh. In the joy of His coming, we forgo our usual fasting. Our celebration is deep, and heartfelt.

Yet no sooner have we celebrated the Nativity then we see disquieting signs, reminders that the Incarnation is but the first step in an arduous journey of salvation. We are reminded of this on December 27, when we remember the Protomartyr, the Deacon Stephen. On the Sunday after the Nativity, we read of the heartbreaking slaughter of the 10,000 innocents by Herod. And next Sunday, we will celebrate a feast of a different character, that of the Theophany of Christ.

In fact, in the early Church there was only one winter feast, that of the Theophany. For us today, the Nativity and the Theophany are like bookends, bracketing a season of joy and celebration, before we begin a period of ordinary time that leads us inevitably into the somber reflection of Great Lent. We might ask: what links these events? On the surface, there does not seem to be a connection. What does a new born infant have to do with the baptism of the fully grown God-man, Christ? And what does any of it have to do with us?

The answer is not found in the way we see Christmas celebrated around us, in a society which does not celebrate the baptism of Christ at all. It is only in Orthodoxy, in the Church itself, that a true and complete understanding of these events is found. And what the Church tells us is that the joy of this season does not derive from gifts we receive, but rather in what we sacrificially give. Christ, as always, is our unparalleled example. By being born of the Virgin, Christ underwent what the Fathers called kenosis, the complete emptying of Himself. The Son of God consented to a birth in rude surroundings. He entered the world not as a King, but as an infant, dependent upon his mother for care, and upon his guardian, Joseph, for protection. Where the angels sang before his throne in the heavenly courts, he is now surrounded by farm animals. The Incarnation was a voluntary denial of self that led directly to the cross. Even in the Nativity icon we see that link:

Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is born in a cave. After His crucifixion, he will be laid again into another cave, a tomb.

When He is born, he is wrapped in swaddling clothes which binds the limbs of the child. After his crucifixion, he is wrapped again in cloth.

When he is born, he is laid in a manger, a receptacle for holding food. He will indeed become food for us, and his Body and his Blood sustains us in every Liturgy.

But understanding that the child has embarked on a road to the cross does not lessen our joy. As St. Athanasius the Great exclaimed, God became man so that man might become God. The Incarnation is the opening of the door of salvation. It is the only door to salvation, and for that we are filled with gratitude. Yet it is a door which we must choose to enter. The mere existence of an open door means nothing unless we avail ourselves of the road which is offered. And it is in the Theophany that we begin to see that clearly.

It is the universal teaching of the Fathers that Christ submitted to baptism in obedience, in order to fulfill all things. He had no sin for which he needed to repent. Unlike the throngs of others who came for the baptism of John, He had nothing to confess. He needed no forgiveness. Yet in his obedience, the Trinity was revealed, as His Father declared that Jesus was His son, in which he was well pleased, and The Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. The Godhead became apparent. From that, we understand that our own obedience is demanded.

There is an Old Testament story that helps remind us of the link between God’s work, and our own obedience. In the book of 2 Kings, we find the story of Namaan. Namaan was the powerful commander of the army of the King of Syria. At the height of his career, however, he developed the dread disease of leprosy. His wife had a slave girl, an Israelite, who told her mistress about the wonderworking prophet of God, Elisha. He, the slave girl declared, could cure Namaan of leprosy. Word got to the Syrian king, and he sent his commander to the King of Israel, carrying enormous treasure, asking that Namaan be cured.

The King of Israel misunderstood the request, thinking that he was supposed to somehow cure Namaan. Scripture tells us that the King fell into despair, tearing his clothes. The King, you see, failed to see the request through spiritual eyes, but instead interpreted the event through the eyes of the world. He thought that the King of Syria was hoping to start a quarrel, and begin a war which Israel would lose. He did not stop to think that the request was a genuine plea for assistance, nor did he think to send the man to the Prophet Elisha, who lived within his borders.

Elisha, however, heard of the demand. He sent a message to his king, and told him to send Namaan to him. The general came to his house, with his soldiers and his chariots and all of the signs of his power. Namaan was a proud man, and a powerful one. It was not in his nature to approach Elisha in humility. In his mind, he just had this one little problem – leprosy – and if he could just be cured of it, he would go back to being the powerful man he had always been.

Standing in front of the rude house with his servants and his soldiers, what Namaan expected was that Elisha would come out to where he was impatiently waiting, wave his arms around, call on an obedient God and – viola! – he would be cured. He wanted it done quickly, and in accordance with his schedule, at his convenience. Namaan was used to getting things done as he wished.

But God had other plans. “Go,” Elisha told Namaan, “and wash yourself in the Jordan River seven times, and you will be healed.”

Now, I have to tell you, the Jordan is not the world’s most attractive river. It is not huge and grand like other great rivers, nor is it as pristine and delightful as a mountain stream. Frankly, Elisha’s order offended Namaan. There were prettier rivers in Syria, rivers that he would enjoy getting into and bathing. Why did he have to go into the Jordan, and why did he have to bathe seven times? Furious, Namaan turned to leave. He was going to return home. From his point of view it was humiliating to be told to go to some muddy river and wash himself seven times. He was dissuaded, however, by his servants, who said “My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?” So why not go in obedience, and wash yourself in the Jordan? Namaan obeyed, and against his every expectation, he was healed of his leprosy.

Now, there is more to this story, and in the end, Namaan’s leprosy was transferred to a servant of Elisha’s, who acted out of pride and greed. But for our purposes, let’s stop and think about Namaan.

Namaan was a proud man, used to having things his way, and doing as he wished. It was not in his nature to humble himself. Oh, he was open to anything that appealed to his heroic nature, or to any task that he could take pride in performing. But to be asked to dunk himself seven times in a muddy little river was almost more than he could stand. There was no heroism, there was no glory, there was no self, if you will, in Elisha’s command. There was only self-emptying, there was only humility, there was only obedience.

All of us can see ourselves in the person of Namaan. We are proud, and want to do things our way. We have firm ideas about the best way to live our life. We have definite preferences for what is clean and shiny and attractive, as opposed to what looks not shiny and not attractive. We all are drawn to praise for things we have done, and we bask in the admiration of other people. And we all have this little problem – call it spiritual leprosy – that we need taken care of.

In response, we must emulate Namaan. We must set aside our worldly trappings and achievements, and empty ourselves, in imitation of our Lord. We must repeatedly submerge ourselves into the Jordan of repentance, in obedience and in hope, that Christ our Lord, He who has opened the door of salvation, will heal our souls and save us. It is worth noting that the number seven in this story was not just happenstance. In scriptural terms, seven is the number of completion. It tells us that in our Christian life, we must return repeatedly to the Jordan, not for baptism by water, but for what the Fathers call the baptism of repentance. We must constantly humble ourselves before God, acknowledging our shortcomings and our sins. We must constantly submerge ourselves in the waters of the Jordan.

Do you see the lesson for us? At Christmas, Christ is born in a cave, having emptied Himself for the sake of mankind. At the Theophany, Christ is baptized in the Jordan, submerged into a muddy river in obedience and in fulfillment of the divine will, and in His obedience he sanctified the waters of the earth.

That is the thread that connects Christmas and the Theophany. The extreme humility of Christ, and the humble response from us. Think of the infant Jesus in the cave, and know that He was born for you and I. Think of Jesus, who submitted to baptism in that muddy little river, and know that He did that for you and I. Let us respond. Let us humble ourselves to our God, and like Namaan, set aside our pride and our achievements. Let us seek the baptism of repentance, dipping ourselves into the Jordan, for as long as we live.

There is little that has caused such division in the Christian world than the issue of wealth. An entire school of religious thought, known as liberation theology, infected parts of the Roman Catholic church in the 1960s, and continues to this day, teaching that the wealthy are simply instruments of oppression, and that the Kingdom of God is found in seeking what they view as economic justice. Several centuries ago, some early protestant sects taught that wealth was in and if itself evil. On the other extreme, in our day and age, other protestant denominations, particularly here in the United States, teach that wealth is a gift which God will give to every true Christian who “names it and claims it”, and that every “true” Christian should be awarded earthly riches. Regardless of our theology, however, this is an issue we are always facing in our culture. The truth of the matter is that we living in this country are each wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of any Biblical king or ruler. So what are we to think, when we see such polarized viewpoints, and then read today’s rather challenging gospel?

The answer is not found in economic analysis, but in spiritual reality. It is worth reminding ourselves at the outset that there is very little that is inherently evil. Food is given to us for nourishment and enjoyment, but when it becomes an obsessive focus of life, it becomes the sin of gluttony. Sexual intimacy is a God given gift for men and women in marriage, but the misuse of sex produces sins ranging from lust to adultery to homosexuality. Drugs are a way for us to be healed of disease and infirmity, yet wrongly used they become an open door for sin of all kinds.

Understanding that kind of thought provides a way to approach the issue of wealth, and indeed, all of life. In his exchange with the rich young ruler, Jesus is not engaged in economic analysis, but instead in the diagnosis and treatment of souls.

We look at our passage to understand the lesson. A young man, described as a rich ruler, comes to Jesus. It appears that he is seeking justification, or at least some reassurance that he is on the right spiritual path. In response to Jesus’ questions, he asserts that he has followed the commandments all of his life. He has not committed adultery, nor murder. He has not stolen from others, borne false witness, nor failed to honor his parents. He has, in other words, followed the rules. He has obeyed the commandments. In the eyes of the Jews, he was most certainly a righteous man. For us, living today, his way of life would be considered praiseworthy. We are all required, at a minimum, to keep the commandments of God. What could be more simple? But the truth is that the “thou shall not”s of Scripture are only, if you will, kindergarten for Christians. If we want more, if we want to follow the road of the saints and truly become the children of God, we must not think that our spiritual life stops there.

Jesus, seeing the young man with the eyes of God, knew that, and pierced right to the heart of the matter. The issue, as Jesus observes, is not simple obedience of rules and regulations. The issue is not whether or not we can justify ourselves, to make ourselves appear to be righteous or worthy of commendation. The true issue, the key question which every Christian must face, is whether or not a person has surrendered his entire life to God, or does he or she reserve some parts wholly for himself. Put another way, does a person observe the more difficult commandments of the New Testament: that he truly love the Lord God with all of his heart, and all of his strength, and all of his soul, and that he love his neighbor as himself? Or has he compartmentalized his life, so that God is consigned to only one of a great number of boxes, pigeon-holed and kept separate from the rest of life?

Jesus knew that the focus of the young man was his wealth. It was what characterized his life. It was, in the end, the way in which he defined who he was and what he did. It was, in the end, the thing that kept him from God. He thus challenged his questioner to abandon the very thing that, whether or not the man knew it, separated him from God. To that end, Jesus asked the man to surrender that part of him which he kept separate and that he valued the most – his wealth. Keep in mind that in this instance, wealth was simply the symptom of the disease. In other circumstances, with other people, it was something else. Often it was a rigid attachment to the Law itself, or to the odds and ends of daily life. The point is that in each instance, here is something separating the person from true worship, from a genuine relationship with God.

St. Clement of Alexandria spoke to this very issue, when he wrote:

What then…made him depart from the Master, from the entreaty, the hope, the life, previously pursued with ardor? ‘Sell your possessions’. And what is this? He does not, as some conceive offhand, bid him throw away the substance he possessed and abandon his property; but bids him banish from his soul his notions about wealth, his excitement and morbid feeling about it, the anxieties, which are the thorns of existence, which choke the seed of life.

As St. Clement points out, many have disposed of their wealth to no benefit, if their underlying passions remain. And St. John Chrysostom, who himself spoke harshly of the wealthy in his own age, noted that even the poor are lost if they have within themselves the same overwhelming attraction to riches and wealth. For that matter, it is worth remembering that there were people close to Jesus who had wealth: Matthew the tax collector turned Evangelist, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimethea. It is not the money. It is the heart of the one who holds it.

Looked at in this way, we see an immensely important principle that we can, and should apply to our own life. The question is not what do we have in the bank. The question instead is this: how do we define ourselves? How do we see ourselves, and more importantly, how do we appear to God?

For many of us, this is a genuine challenge. It is not uncommon to reserve some aspect of our lives as being outside of our faith. That preserve, that part of our life that is separate from God, can be anything. For some of us, it may be our desire for wealth, or what we do for a living. For others, it may be a seemingly unimportant hobby or passion. It may be the music we like, the clothes we wear, or the television and movies we like to watch. Whatever it may be, we know – if we are honest with ourselves – that this is an area that we like to keep for ourselves. We may even say, as the young man in today’s gospel did, that it doesn’t matter because we are at least obeying the ten commandments, and that we are, on the surface anyway, leading a moral life.

There are two problems with that sort of thinking. The first is that any area we segregate from Christ is an open door for sin to enter our life, because any such part of our life is almost certainly rooted in some passion, some deeply held personal desire. St. Theodoros the Great Ascetic plainly describes how being drawn away from the protecting grace of God occurs in but a moment.

He who gives himself to desires and sensual pleasures and lives according to the world’s way will quickly be caught in the nets of sin. And sin, when once committed, is like fire put to straw, a stone rolling downhill, or a torrent eating away its banks. Such pleasures then bring complete perdition to him who embraces them.

In other words, whether we simply allow ourselves a seemingly harmless pleasure, or give in to a larger passion such as greed or lust, it can cause a cascade of sin and error, leaving us in dire straits, and sorely afflicted.

But there is another reason as well. If we allow ourselves to focus on that deeply held passion or desire, it causes us to miss entirely what God may be saying to us. From experience, we know that our worldly interests create, if you will, a background noise for our lives. We think to ourselves that if we are straying where we ought not, that our conscience will warn us, and that God will call us back. But the background noise of our lives will often drown out that warning, if we are not constantly attentive to the leading of the Lord. In the Old Testament Book of First Kings, there is a passage describing an experience of the prophet Elijah as he awaits the Lord:

And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire, a still, small voice.

The still small voice is the Lord. In our gospel today, Jesus knew that even though the rich young ruler kept the rules, and observed the law, that his desire for wealth, his defining characteristic, was also the background noise that would keep him from hearing the still small voice. It was what would keep him from truly entering the Kingdom of God, because if he could not hear that whispering voice, he would never find the gate.

This is the challenge for us. We may not be rich young rulers, and we may think this gospel does not apply to us. We may lead moral lives, not breaking any of the rules, and we may think that this gospel does not apply to us. But if we are honest with ourselves, we will see something, somewhere inside of us, that we cling to tenaciously, an area of our life which we stubbornly refuse to yield to God. Whatever it may be, we find ourselves faced with the dilemma of the young man – can we surrender that which we hold dear, that we clutch to ourselves and call precious – can we abandon that, for the love of Christ?