Here's a wonderful example of theological training enhancing and enriching preaching...
Meatfare Sunday Sermon by Fr John Behr at St Justin Martyr Orthodox Church, Jacksonville, FL, USA, on March 10, 2013 http://st-justin-martyr.org/2013/03/guest-speaker-father-john-behr/
Readings:
St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians 8:8-13; 9:1-2
Prokeimenon. Mode 2.
Psalm 117.14,18
The Lord is my strength and my song.
Verse: The Lord has chastened me sorely.
Brethren, food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if any one sees you, a man of knowledge, at table in an idol's temple, might he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother's falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall.
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
Judgment Sunday (Meatfare Sunday)
The Gospel of Matthew 25:31-46
The Lord said, "When the Son of man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Transcript
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is both Meatfare Sunday and the day in which we remember the Last Judgement. The readings we have just heard are from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians and the Gospel According to Matthew. Both of these readings speak to both of these aspects directly. And in really complementary ways, they're very very profound readings that we heard this morning. With Meatfare Sunday of course our preparation for Great Lent begins to take on already this week, not next week, this week it begins to take on a very concrete dietary aspect.
As the name indicates today is the last day for eating meat, lent into the forty days of Lent and then to Pascha. So today begins as it were a warm up, a warm up for the exercises for the asceticism that lies ahead of us. Now it's very very easy to miss altogether the point of these exercises of these practices. The purpose of all of these efforts is not simply to do what is expected of us but to allow ourselves to be weaned from the dependency on everything that might separate us from God. Anything that might separate us from God, that we've become dependent upon rather than Him. We need to be weaned away from that. Not because those things are in any way bad at all, but because they distract us from God.
It's because of how we relate to these things not because of what they are. It's not because it's meat, it's not because it's milk, it's not because it's food, it's not because it's whatever else it might be. It is because we have become dependent upon these things and we think that is where our life lies.
I often ask my students at St Vladimir's Seminary when they first come in, in their first year, first week, I ask them "how many people here" I say, "cannot do anything until they've had their cup of coffee in the morning?" Invariably half of a dozen hands go up if not more. And I say "you bunch of idolaters." [laughter]
Because the reality is we can do without coffee, of course we can do without coffee food and drink for a whole day, we can go on water for a whole week. I mean we can do without these things, not because coffee is bad in anyway whatsoever, but because we think we depend on coffee. That we can't do anything until I've had my cup of coffee, or unless I've had my meat everyday, or my chocolate, or whatever else it might be. We've made ourselves dependent upon these things, we think that we're dependent upon them, but we're not. And when we think we're dependent on them, then they have actually become our gods. We worship them. We live our lives in subservience to them, and that is what needs to be broken. And we do that when we're fasting, not in order to discipline our bodies, but we're fasting so we can use our bodies to discipline our minds. We fast from these material things, from these foods, these drinks, from meat, from whatever else it might be, and thereby our weak little minds come to learn that in fact we don't depend upon these things. That I can get up and say my morning prayers before I have cup of coffee.
So that is the point of these practices. Nothing wrong with the meat, nothing wrong with the milk, nothing wrong with anything of the good things that God has give us, and there's nothing wrong with getting pleasure from them. But if we live for the pleasure, if we think that this is what it's about, and if we become dependent upon them or subservient to them, that is a dependence which needs to be broken and will be broken through the practice of fasting.
But then in fact what we heard in the Epistle from the Apostle Paul was even more dramatic than that. He says food is not the issue, it makes no difference to God what is in my stomach, God is not concerned with what food is going into my stomach, or what my diet is, we are free in all of this. And it's this freedom that we have which makes whatever we do of any value anyways, not because we're slaves but because we're free, that we undertake these things. So if we freely, willingly and in fact eagerly undertake the disciplines which the Church sets before us in the weeks to come then we might just begin to realize that we don't depend on our creature comforts, and only then might we come to realize that we depend upon God. Because in truth most of us don't think that most of the time. We think we depend upon our jobs, upon our houses, upon our coffee, upon our chocolate or whatever else it might be.
Only then, only once you've broken those forced dependencies, only then will we come to know that we depend on God, only then will we come to know God truly and only then will we come to know God acting in us. But in fact, the freedom that Paul was speaking about was even more radical still, because in his letter to the Corinthians he was talking about the freedom to eat meat which had been offered to pagan idols, in pagan temples. Eating food that has been offered to idols, that is the very paradigm, the very height of religious devotion, after all it is in fact what we are doing, we come together as the body of Christ to partake in His Body, our central act, our central sacramental act is one of eating. So when Paul says that in fact we're free to eat the meat which has been offered to pagan gods and pagan idols in pagan temples, it is a really dramatic statement. Some really strong language indeed. But he says we can only do this because we know that the pagan idols are non-existent, they don't really exist, they've got no substance, and therefore there is no pagan idol, there is no pagan god, it doesn't exist, the food that has been offered to them is completely free for us to eat.
But then he warns us, if our eating such food, and this freedom to eat this food is really the height of freedom, if our freedom to eat this food causes a scandal to our brothers, perhaps leads them astray, such that they might also eat food offered in a pagan temple while they think that the pagan god is real, we've led them astray in that case, and we've misused our freedom to the destruction of others. And we are responsible then for having misused our freedom in a way which has injured the very one for whom Christ has died for.
So as we move ever closer to Great Lent, we're reminded that we are totally free, with a provisor that whatever we do must be done for the building up of the body rather than the destruction of the body. The building up of the body.
So having being confirmed in our liberty and having being warned what a dangerous liberty it is, and having heard over the last two Sundays, with the Publican and the Pharisee, and the Prodigal Son, having heard about God's inexhaustible love, about God's inexhaustible patience, that He's ready to receive every sinner who returns to Him, whenever they return, we are then reminded in today's Gospel of the opposite side of the same truth. That the God who receives sinners back does so as their judge.
As we heard today in the Gospel, when Christ comes sitting in Glory, Sitting upon His Throne, when Christ comes again in Glory, He Comes as our judge. Let's make no mistake about that. We enter Great Lent with this image before us, we enter Great Lent with a period of preparation for the return of our Saviour, we're waiting for Him to come and that waiting will intensify all the way through Great Lent and especially during the opening days of Holy Week when we wait for Him to come as a Bridegroom in the middle of the night, the one Who will return unexpectedly in the middle of the night, the one who will take us as He finds us, and in both cases, today and when He comes in the middle of the night at Pascha, we are presented with a humiliated Christ, the Bridegroom, the Man of Sorrows.
So in today's Gospel, Christ identifies himself precisely with the lowly, with the outcast, with the unwelcome, the hungry, the sick, the ill, the destitute, the stranger, the one in prison, those are the ones whom He identifies himself with, they are His brethren, and what we do to these we do to Him.
In all of this, Christ is not a judge in the sense of somebody who takes records, evaluates the evidence and then pronounces a sentence. Not a judge like that at all, definitely not. God bestows His bounty and His love upon the sinners and the righteous equally, rather the reason He's a judge is because it depends upon us. It depends upon how we react to Him. St Ireneaus points out that the word judge when we describe God as a judge, He's really recognizing our choice, what have we chosen to do, whatever we choose to do He will recognize it. So it all depends on us, depends on our state, depends on how He finds us.
And how we will respond to Him when He comes again depends on what habits we build up now. What habits we build up now, this will determine whether we become a vessel of His judgement or a vessel of His glorification. So His judgement is one we're bringing upon ourselves even now in every action we do, in all our dealings with others, here and now, everyday, every moment we are working out our judgement. And notice at what is expected of us, is nothing particularly great, there was nothing said in the Gospel about did you fast or did you not fast, nothing about that whatsoever. Instead we are presented with people, the poor, asking for food, just for some bread, not for a banquet. We're presented with others who are asking for a roof, a piece of clothing, some cold water, a visit, very little, they're not asking much, and they're certainly not asking for anything which is not in our power to do.
Now in all of this, we are presented with people asking us for this, if we harden our hearts against them, if we fail to respond to the opportunities that Christ gives us in them, then we are already passing judgement on ourselves. If we are building up hardness of heart in our daily actions with other people now, that hardness of heart will form a habit which we won't be able to break.
If we cannot receive Him even now in His brethren, we will no longer know how to receive Christ when He comes again.
When Christ comes again in Glory, which He will do, we will be told to depart into eternal fire. Fire which wasn't prepared for us, it's prepared for the Devil. If we cannot respond to our neighbour in need even now, then the very glory and splendor of Christ, when He returns, will simply be too much for us. For others it will be joy eternal, for us it will be pain and searing pain, for it is the same Christ in each case, if we cannot respond to Christ in our brethren now, there's no way we'll be able to respond to Him when He comes in glory. It's the same Christ in both cases, even if we don't recognize that.
But that's not our proper inheritance, that is not what we are called to do, that's not what we are created to be like. It's striking in the Gospel reading today, that those who did open their hearts, those who did open their goods, their time, their homes to others, they were also surprised at Christ's words. They said "when did we do this to You?"
Just think about that, they were doing all these things and they said, "when did we do this to You?" So they were not serving the poor out of a sense of duty, they were not saying "well Christ told us to do this therefore we better do it and doing this we'll be rewarded for it"
No, they weren't doing it like that at all, they were simply acting out of love. And in doing so, acting out of love, they begin to acquire a heart of love. A heart of mercy, a heart of flesh and blood, a heart of love, a heart which opens them up to receive the glory and splendor of Christ when He comes, and that Christ says, that is the inheritance which is been prepared for us from the foundation of the world. Seeing God in one's neighbour, responding in a Christ-like fashion, that is what it is to be in the image of God, that is what it is to be living in the paradise of God, in the Kingdom of God, that is what it is to be a Human Being.
So let us pray then, as we prepare ourselves for the approaching Lenten season, and also as we prepare ourselves more generally, let us pray that we are able to see every moment, every single moment of our life as being under the judgement of God and under the judgement of the returning Christ, because it assuredly is. Amen.
+ Fr John Behr, Meatfare Sunday Sermon at St Justin Martyr Orthodox Church, Jacksonville, FL, USA, on March 10, 2013 http://st-justin-martyr.org/2013/03/guest-speaker-father-john-behr/
* ATT: 75 mins, Sermon length: 16mins 18secs
Meatfare Sunday Sermon by Fr John Behr at St Justin Martyr Orthodox Church, Jacksonville, FL, USA, on March 10, 2013 http://st-justin-martyr.org/2013/03/guest-speaker-father-john-behr/
Readings:
St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians 8:8-13; 9:1-2
Prokeimenon. Mode 2.
Psalm 117.14,18
The Lord is my strength and my song.
Verse: The Lord has chastened me sorely.
Brethren, food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if any one sees you, a man of knowledge, at table in an idol's temple, might he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother's falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall.
Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
Judgment Sunday (Meatfare Sunday)
The Gospel of Matthew 25:31-46
The Lord said, "When the Son of man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
Transcript
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is both Meatfare Sunday and the day in which we remember the Last Judgement. The readings we have just heard are from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians and the Gospel According to Matthew. Both of these readings speak to both of these aspects directly. And in really complementary ways, they're very very profound readings that we heard this morning. With Meatfare Sunday of course our preparation for Great Lent begins to take on already this week, not next week, this week it begins to take on a very concrete dietary aspect.
As the name indicates today is the last day for eating meat, lent into the forty days of Lent and then to Pascha. So today begins as it were a warm up, a warm up for the exercises for the asceticism that lies ahead of us. Now it's very very easy to miss altogether the point of these exercises of these practices. The purpose of all of these efforts is not simply to do what is expected of us but to allow ourselves to be weaned from the dependency on everything that might separate us from God. Anything that might separate us from God, that we've become dependent upon rather than Him. We need to be weaned away from that. Not because those things are in any way bad at all, but because they distract us from God.
It's because of how we relate to these things not because of what they are. It's not because it's meat, it's not because it's milk, it's not because it's food, it's not because it's whatever else it might be. It is because we have become dependent upon these things and we think that is where our life lies.
I often ask my students at St Vladimir's Seminary when they first come in, in their first year, first week, I ask them "how many people here" I say, "cannot do anything until they've had their cup of coffee in the morning?" Invariably half of a dozen hands go up if not more. And I say "you bunch of idolaters." [laughter]
Because the reality is we can do without coffee, of course we can do without coffee food and drink for a whole day, we can go on water for a whole week. I mean we can do without these things, not because coffee is bad in anyway whatsoever, but because we think we depend on coffee. That we can't do anything until I've had my cup of coffee, or unless I've had my meat everyday, or my chocolate, or whatever else it might be. We've made ourselves dependent upon these things, we think that we're dependent upon them, but we're not. And when we think we're dependent on them, then they have actually become our gods. We worship them. We live our lives in subservience to them, and that is what needs to be broken. And we do that when we're fasting, not in order to discipline our bodies, but we're fasting so we can use our bodies to discipline our minds. We fast from these material things, from these foods, these drinks, from meat, from whatever else it might be, and thereby our weak little minds come to learn that in fact we don't depend upon these things. That I can get up and say my morning prayers before I have cup of coffee.
So that is the point of these practices. Nothing wrong with the meat, nothing wrong with the milk, nothing wrong with anything of the good things that God has give us, and there's nothing wrong with getting pleasure from them. But if we live for the pleasure, if we think that this is what it's about, and if we become dependent upon them or subservient to them, that is a dependence which needs to be broken and will be broken through the practice of fasting.
But then in fact what we heard in the Epistle from the Apostle Paul was even more dramatic than that. He says food is not the issue, it makes no difference to God what is in my stomach, God is not concerned with what food is going into my stomach, or what my diet is, we are free in all of this. And it's this freedom that we have which makes whatever we do of any value anyways, not because we're slaves but because we're free, that we undertake these things. So if we freely, willingly and in fact eagerly undertake the disciplines which the Church sets before us in the weeks to come then we might just begin to realize that we don't depend on our creature comforts, and only then might we come to realize that we depend upon God. Because in truth most of us don't think that most of the time. We think we depend upon our jobs, upon our houses, upon our coffee, upon our chocolate or whatever else it might be.
Only then, only once you've broken those forced dependencies, only then will we come to know that we depend on God, only then will we come to know God truly and only then will we come to know God acting in us. But in fact, the freedom that Paul was speaking about was even more radical still, because in his letter to the Corinthians he was talking about the freedom to eat meat which had been offered to pagan idols, in pagan temples. Eating food that has been offered to idols, that is the very paradigm, the very height of religious devotion, after all it is in fact what we are doing, we come together as the body of Christ to partake in His Body, our central act, our central sacramental act is one of eating. So when Paul says that in fact we're free to eat the meat which has been offered to pagan gods and pagan idols in pagan temples, it is a really dramatic statement. Some really strong language indeed. But he says we can only do this because we know that the pagan idols are non-existent, they don't really exist, they've got no substance, and therefore there is no pagan idol, there is no pagan god, it doesn't exist, the food that has been offered to them is completely free for us to eat.
But then he warns us, if our eating such food, and this freedom to eat this food is really the height of freedom, if our freedom to eat this food causes a scandal to our brothers, perhaps leads them astray, such that they might also eat food offered in a pagan temple while they think that the pagan god is real, we've led them astray in that case, and we've misused our freedom to the destruction of others. And we are responsible then for having misused our freedom in a way which has injured the very one for whom Christ has died for.
So as we move ever closer to Great Lent, we're reminded that we are totally free, with a provisor that whatever we do must be done for the building up of the body rather than the destruction of the body. The building up of the body.
So having being confirmed in our liberty and having being warned what a dangerous liberty it is, and having heard over the last two Sundays, with the Publican and the Pharisee, and the Prodigal Son, having heard about God's inexhaustible love, about God's inexhaustible patience, that He's ready to receive every sinner who returns to Him, whenever they return, we are then reminded in today's Gospel of the opposite side of the same truth. That the God who receives sinners back does so as their judge.
As we heard today in the Gospel, when Christ comes sitting in Glory, Sitting upon His Throne, when Christ comes again in Glory, He Comes as our judge. Let's make no mistake about that. We enter Great Lent with this image before us, we enter Great Lent with a period of preparation for the return of our Saviour, we're waiting for Him to come and that waiting will intensify all the way through Great Lent and especially during the opening days of Holy Week when we wait for Him to come as a Bridegroom in the middle of the night, the one Who will return unexpectedly in the middle of the night, the one who will take us as He finds us, and in both cases, today and when He comes in the middle of the night at Pascha, we are presented with a humiliated Christ, the Bridegroom, the Man of Sorrows.
So in today's Gospel, Christ identifies himself precisely with the lowly, with the outcast, with the unwelcome, the hungry, the sick, the ill, the destitute, the stranger, the one in prison, those are the ones whom He identifies himself with, they are His brethren, and what we do to these we do to Him.
In all of this, Christ is not a judge in the sense of somebody who takes records, evaluates the evidence and then pronounces a sentence. Not a judge like that at all, definitely not. God bestows His bounty and His love upon the sinners and the righteous equally, rather the reason He's a judge is because it depends upon us. It depends upon how we react to Him. St Ireneaus points out that the word judge when we describe God as a judge, He's really recognizing our choice, what have we chosen to do, whatever we choose to do He will recognize it. So it all depends on us, depends on our state, depends on how He finds us.
And how we will respond to Him when He comes again depends on what habits we build up now. What habits we build up now, this will determine whether we become a vessel of His judgement or a vessel of His glorification. So His judgement is one we're bringing upon ourselves even now in every action we do, in all our dealings with others, here and now, everyday, every moment we are working out our judgement. And notice at what is expected of us, is nothing particularly great, there was nothing said in the Gospel about did you fast or did you not fast, nothing about that whatsoever. Instead we are presented with people, the poor, asking for food, just for some bread, not for a banquet. We're presented with others who are asking for a roof, a piece of clothing, some cold water, a visit, very little, they're not asking much, and they're certainly not asking for anything which is not in our power to do.
Now in all of this, we are presented with people asking us for this, if we harden our hearts against them, if we fail to respond to the opportunities that Christ gives us in them, then we are already passing judgement on ourselves. If we are building up hardness of heart in our daily actions with other people now, that hardness of heart will form a habit which we won't be able to break.
If we cannot receive Him even now in His brethren, we will no longer know how to receive Christ when He comes again.
When Christ comes again in Glory, which He will do, we will be told to depart into eternal fire. Fire which wasn't prepared for us, it's prepared for the Devil. If we cannot respond to our neighbour in need even now, then the very glory and splendor of Christ, when He returns, will simply be too much for us. For others it will be joy eternal, for us it will be pain and searing pain, for it is the same Christ in each case, if we cannot respond to Christ in our brethren now, there's no way we'll be able to respond to Him when He comes in glory. It's the same Christ in both cases, even if we don't recognize that.
But that's not our proper inheritance, that is not what we are called to do, that's not what we are created to be like. It's striking in the Gospel reading today, that those who did open their hearts, those who did open their goods, their time, their homes to others, they were also surprised at Christ's words. They said "when did we do this to You?"
Just think about that, they were doing all these things and they said, "when did we do this to You?" So they were not serving the poor out of a sense of duty, they were not saying "well Christ told us to do this therefore we better do it and doing this we'll be rewarded for it"
No, they weren't doing it like that at all, they were simply acting out of love. And in doing so, acting out of love, they begin to acquire a heart of love. A heart of mercy, a heart of flesh and blood, a heart of love, a heart which opens them up to receive the glory and splendor of Christ when He comes, and that Christ says, that is the inheritance which is been prepared for us from the foundation of the world. Seeing God in one's neighbour, responding in a Christ-like fashion, that is what it is to be in the image of God, that is what it is to be living in the paradise of God, in the Kingdom of God, that is what it is to be a Human Being.
So let us pray then, as we prepare ourselves for the approaching Lenten season, and also as we prepare ourselves more generally, let us pray that we are able to see every moment, every single moment of our life as being under the judgement of God and under the judgement of the returning Christ, because it assuredly is. Amen.
+ Fr John Behr, Meatfare Sunday Sermon at St Justin Martyr Orthodox Church, Jacksonville, FL, USA, on March 10, 2013 http://st-justin-martyr.org/2013/03/guest-speaker-father-john-behr/
* ATT: 75 mins, Sermon length: 16mins 18secs
