On Washing Feet

St. John records for us the washing of the Disciples’ feet by Jesus before the Last Supper. Peter is embarrassed and doesn’t want to let Jesus wash his feet—not realizing that Jesus has already washed him entirely, for they are already clean because of the word Jesus had spoken to them [15:3]. Peter is already clean, he just needs a little clean up. That Peter needed a little cleaning is, of course, not what bothers Peter. What bothers him is that the Lord and Master wants to do the cleaning, a job normally done by the lowest servant of the house.
In Middle Eastern culture, feet are generally considered unclean. Consequently, lifting one’s heal at someone (exposing the bottom of one’s foot or shoe) is a great insult. It is no coincident that immediately after washing the Disciple’s feet, Jesus cites psalm 41:9: “He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.” By washing all of the Disciples’ feet, including Judas’, Jesus willingly exposes himself to every humiliation that can be poured out on him. If the story ended there, we would merely have another example of the great condescension of God in Christ. If Jesus hadn’t gone on to interpret his actions for us, we could breathe a deep sigh of relief: “Jesus has done great things for us.” But Jesus does interpret his actions: “You ought to wash one another’s feet…I have given you an example…blessed are you if you do them.”
That’s the difficult thing. It is difficult not only because I do not like exposing myself to insult and humiliation, but it is also difficult because I do not have more than a glimmer of an idea what washing other’s feet means in my life today. Washing feet has no emotional impact for me. It’s not embarrassing. It’s not particularly humbling. Now what is humbling and embarrassing to me is to wash the whole body of a disabled adult. Or to wash the dead body of a fellow priest, especially one whom I have known and respected. (In the rites associated with the death of a priest, fellow priests wash the whole body of the departed priest with water, rub it with oil and then dress him as though he were standing at the Altar.) I have only done this once. I’d like to be able to report that it was a deeply moving and spiritual experience—other priests have told me that such was their experience when they have been called upon to perform this act of love. I, on the other hand, felt so awkward and conflicted that I performed my responsibilities as though in a fog. I didn’t let myself think or feel anything. That was five years ago, and still I am processing the experience.
Nurses and care givers (and morticians) wash the bodies of others regularly, so perhaps this image doesn’t help them get at what Jesus was getting at. In fact, “washing” in any literal sense is not at all what Jesus is talking about. Jesus says later that the Disciples are clean because of the word he has spoken to them. And it is from this that I can get a clue as to how this lesson might apply in my life. The words that I speak have the power to cleanse or defile others. What I say can bring encouragement, hope, life; and what I say can bring cynicism, despair, death. When I am with others and the conversation exposes their heels (the dirty part of their soul slips out through their mouth), what will I do? Will I answer in kind, letting out of my mouth equally defiling accusations, innuendos, complaints or cynicisms? Or will I be quiet—always a good choice when you “can’t say something nice”—and bury in myself the filth of my friend? Or, if by God’s Grace I have an uplifting thing to say, will I say that, and perhaps wash a little the feet of my friend?
Lovingly bathing the filth off the body of another is humiliating work, especially as we realize that the same filth we bathe off another is also produced by our own bodies (and souls).

Money Problems?

“We’ve figured out how to solve the problem of our overcrowded little chapel. It will only take five million dollars.” With these words I greeted Lourie and her two small children as she swung by the coffee shop to pick up Andrew. Andrew and I had spent an hour and a half solving all of the world’s problems—especially as they touched our little parish—while Lourie took the car to run around town doing errands. I was joking when I told Lourie that the only problem was money, at least that is what my mind tells me; but emotionally, it was no joke.
Emotionally I get impatient. I look at the needs and the almost magical way they could be met if only we had the money, and feel the frustration level in my stomach rise. Looking outward, I want to coerce or cajole others who seem to have resources into loosening up money to meet what seems to me such a pressing need and such noble cause. But a little deeper down (or is it further in?) I feel something else.
Deeper down I see myself, my own resistance to release resources—money particularly. I have a level of giving that I have become comfortable with. I occasionally go over—for a good cause--but I am not a sacrificial giver. I am not like Sts. Joachim and Anna who gave one third of their income to the Temple, one third to the poor, and lived on the final third. I tithe, which at least biblically speaking, is the minimum level of giving below which one is “robbing” God [c.f. Malachi 3:8]. Tithing is nothing to be proud of. To be proud of tithing is like being proud that you go to church most Sundays, that you avoid meat on church fast days, or that you are faithful to your spouse. These things are not extras, they are just part of a normal Christian lifestyle. I have no basis on which to compare myself with others, for I myself am a charitable minimalist. Ten percent for God, ninety percent for ME, to maintain MY lifestyle.
With the loss of my part-time job, I have become particularly aware of how much of my income is spent on lifestyle maintenance—and here I do not mean the maintenance of a Christian lifestyle. Bonnie and I own our home, so our actual upkeep (after taxes and insurance) requires really quite little. In fact, having recently crunched the numbers, our part-time salary from the mission is sufficient to cover all our necessary expenses. So where did the other money go? Well some went to projects around the house, some went to dinners out and concerts and movies, some went to gifts for children and grand children and others (weddings, graduations, baptisms, etc.), some went to art supplies and software and books (that’s all me), some went to good causes, and a big chunk went to visiting our kids spread out all over North America. All of this expenditure has been reasonable, at least that is what I would tell a parishioner who presented such a scenario to me; but I must admit that it is all lifestyle maintenance. Nothing sacrificial about that.
Don’t get the delusion that this self disclosure is leading to repentance. I’m a hard hearted fellow. The purpose of this self disclosure is to share with you why I can’t rail against others for not being more generous in their giving. Wise Solomon said that as wealth increases so do the mouths that consume it. It is easy to cast our problems in financial terms that those who seem to have more resources than we have could remedy if only they would. It’s always the other guy’s fault. But when I look within, when I look at my own budget and the reasonable extras that go into sustaining my lifestyle, I am struck dumb. With wealth—no matter how much or little—come mouths that consume it.
And looking deeper still, I see an idol. I think his name is Mammon (how did that pesky booger get in my heart, again?) Holy Nativity does not need more money. Trinity Western University does not need more money (Andrew and I were also fantasizing about a minor in Eastern Christian studies at TWU). The problem is not money. In fact, the problem is not outside me at all. The problem is my heart. I do not believe God loves me. I do not believe God loves my spiritual children. I do not believe that God loves all of His children in the Fraser Valley and beyond, Orthodox, not-yet Orthodox, and not-yet-even Christian. Secure in the love of God, there are no needs. And so, I guess, there is a call to repentance after all. My heart must return to my Father’s love, accept it, believe it, trust it.

Envy, Self Righteousness and Pity

I am familiar with Envy—you might even say that Envy is a friend of mine. It’s not that I want to envy, it’s just that I often do. I don’t want to be friends, but we have spent so much time together over the years that it seems Envy has its own comfortable chair in the living room of my heart. Over the last little while, however, Envy has been somewhat uncomfortable in my heart. It seems as though my developing relationship with Pity keeps Envy from coming around so often.
For most of my life I have been a comparatively good boy. This may surprise some. Those of you who know about my rather rough childhood and adolescence may wonder: “can anything good come out of foster care?” I have, by God’s grace, largely been a coward. I have looked at all of the evil and wonderfully enticing prodigalities that dangled before me with so many promises of delight, power, or intimacy, and I just couldn’t get up the guts to risk the evident pain that was often the price for such indulgences. I liked being safe, even if it was boring. But that didn’t keep me from envying those who went for the gusto.
Self Righteousness and Envy are buddies. I didn’t drink or do drugs—I was too intelligent, I saw were they led. Yet those who indulged seemed to be cool, seemed to have so many friends, and I so often felt left out. Even in my group, the religious kids, the celebrities were the ones who returned from the prodigal life, the ones with the I-was-trapped-in-the-party-scene testimony. I was so envious that I sometimes construed the one time I really got high as a life of debauchery just so I would have a good testimony.
Perhaps as a response to this envy, I began more and more to feel anger toward those who couldn’t just say no: “sure it’s tough, but I did it, so you can too.” Stories of death by overdose or multiple abortions or suicide following yet another failed intimate relationship evoked no pity in me, just a cold confirmation that the wage of sin is death and a confirmation that I had been right in not taking such paths. I was angry with those who fell away from the faithful: they were now the cowards, they couldn’t hack righteousness, they succumbed—those idiots!
Of course, these thoughts were always mixed with other thoughts. They were mixed with a sense of fear that I too might succumb. If Pastor X, whom I really thought was a man of God, ran off with the secretary, I too might someday meet my nemesis and I too would fair just a badly. Anger was a coping device. Somehow as long as I was angry at the failures of others, I felt safe.
I was mostly unaware of the dynamic of self-righteous envy at work in me until about two years after I became Orthodox. One of my very best friends, a deacon and our head chanter, began suffering from gout. He was a salesman by trade, and in order to keep emotionally “up” (to make enough sales to support his wife and four small children) because of the pain caused by the gout, he began abusing prescription pain drugs. With the abuse came a mental breakdown that eventually led to his abandoning his family and soon death by overdose. I was angry with him beyond words.
Early on, the bishop met with the other clergy in the parish to discuss how we might best reach out to our prodigal deacon and his family. In this conversation I expressed how angry I was with him. The bishop’s response shocked me. I expected him to understand my anger and try to comfort me (It seems self-righteous envy is really all about me, even in the face of the terrible suffering of others). Instead of comforting words, His Grace said (and here I paraphrase), “How dare you be angry! Your friend needs your love and prayers now more than ever.” The shock was like a slap in my face. His words have become for me over the last twelve years a kind of criterion by which I have come to judge my inner life: “how dare you be angry.”
Slowly I have begun to look at sin and righteousness differently. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that I have come to look at sin and righteousness much less. Instead, I have begun more and more to look at human pain. People hurt. They hurt themselves and they hurt others. Some try to cope with their pain through sin (which leads most obviously to death), others through self righteousness (leading to alienation, a kind of hell on earth), but few find their way clear to the Father’s love. Few find their way to the light yoke of Christ: the burden of bearing one another’s burdens, not your own.
Righteousness and sin have not gone away. I just don’t relate to myself, my friends or God in those terms so much anymore. Instead, I try to let my heart be filled with the pain of those around me (bearing their burden). I believe this is called pity. I am not very good at this, so I can’t say were this will lead, but so far my experience has two distinct features. First, pity makes me pray. When I feel the pain of others, it hurts, sometimes a lot. All I can do with the pain is take it to God—offer it to God with the words repeated over and over again, “Lord have mercy.” The second thing is that I think about myself much less, whether I am right or wrong, sinning or not. And the funny thing is that I also don’t think very much about the rightness or wrongness of the person whom I pity. I just feel some of his pain, I carry a little of his burden; I say, Lord have mercy, and somehow God has mercy.

Forebear Theatening

In Ephesians, as in other epistles, St. Paul fills the last half of the letter with practical advice for Christian living. Here he advises “masters” to “forebear threatening.” Most of us live in circles of relationships in which we are at various times and in various contexts master or slave, parent or child, elder or younger. Almost no one is always only “wife” or always only “child” or always only “master.” However, as a grandfather, experienced teacher and a priest, I often find myself in relationships in which I am master (i.e. supervisor, adviser, mentor, teacher, evaluator, disciplinarian, leader, authority).
I have been paying attention lately to how often I feel compelled to threaten. I am not tempted to threaten in any gross or physically violent way. I merely want to point out certain possible negative out comes. I want to tell someone what might happen if…. I want to energize and motivate certain people by telling them what could happen if they aren’t more this way and less that way.
In discussing this with Bonnie this morning, she said, with the innocent brutality that only thirty years of loving marriage provide, “sounds like witchcraft to me.” And taking another sip of coffee she looked out the window and said, “I need you to cut down the weeds around the garden again.” Ah, the gentle violence of love.
When it comes right down to it, any attempt to manipulate the behavior of others in a hidden way is a form of witchcraft (the pointy hat is optional). This is a subtle matter. Warning and teaching are God-appointed duties for parents, priests and others who are entrusted with such responsibilities. Godly instruction and self-willed threatening may differ only in the attitude of the teacher. When I sense within myself an agenda, a goal for the other that the other is not aware of, then my “teaching” is coming dangerously close to manipulation.

Bear One Another's Burdens

When St. Paul at the end of Galatians tells us to bear one another’s burdens and “so fulfill the law of Christ,” What exactly is he telling us to do? Just three verses later, St. Paul tells the Galatians, “Each one shall bear his own load.” Is this a contradiction?
Most of us, I think, never thought about this. Even if we knew both verses, we would quote them for different purposes. “Bear one another’s burdens” is quoted when we want to motivate others to help out—help us particularly or help someone we care for. “Each one shall bear his own load” is quoted when we want to relieve ourselves of a sense of responsibility to help others out. It is really quite a convenient set of verses.
Of course, St. Paul did not intend for these verses to be used this way. But what did he intend? St. John Chrysostom in his commentary on Galatians gives us a clue. Like any good exegete, St. John first looks at the immediate context for guidance. The verse immediately preceding “bear one another’s burdens” says, “If a man is overtaken in a trespass….” The burden of the other that we are to bear, according to St. John Chrysostom, is the sin or “trespass” that “overtakes” the other. St. John makes quite a big deal about this word, “overtakes.” He says that this word is used because St. Paul wants to emphasize the gentle attitude believers should have toward their brothers and sisters who sin. In fact, St. John compares it to a disease overtaking a person, as if in an unguarded moment a temptation comes upon someone and they succumb, like a man who is susceptible to hay fever who, forgetting to take his medicine, goes for a walk in a field of tall grass only to be “overtaken” with sneezes and swelling and sinus congestion.
The burdens of our brothers and sisters that we are to bear are their trespasses and sins. Bearing our brothers’ and sisters’ trespasses is how we fulfill the law of Christ. (By the way, this should be ringing a bell in all Christians who pray the Lord’s Prayer.)
Erring brothers and sisters are to be corrected, but St. Paul lays out some very specific guidelines about who and how trespassing brothers and sisters are to be restored. First, they are to be corrected by those who are “spiritual.” That is, having given a list of the fruit of the Spirit just a few verses before, St. Paul says that correction can only be administered by those who are bearing the Spirit’s fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. This is good news for most of us. Most of us never—NEVER—are the ones who are supposed to correct an erring brother or sister. In fact, “correct” isn’t the word St. Paul uses at all. The word he uses is “restore.” This is a common name for the sacrament of confession: the sacrament of reconciliation, or restoration. Therefore, in most contexts priests or spiritual fathers or mothers are the ones who restore brothers or sisters overtaken in trespasses. You can relax. Until you are a priest or a spiritual elder, it is generally not your job to correct others, but it is you job to bear the weakness of others. And by bearing their trespasses, you are fulfilling the law of Christ.

Dating non-Orthodox Christians

Single Orthodox Christians have no easy road before them, especially if they suspect that they will be married some day. For most of history and in a large but shrinking portion of the Orthodox world today, single people did not have to worry about who they would marry: someone else chose for them. In the best cases, the people involved had veto power; that is, neither one had to accept the match. But in some cases one or both had no choice. Now we live in a world in which Choice is God. We cannot imagine not choosing our own hair style, clothing and career path; much less not choosing our own spouse.
We vainly imagine this power of choice is the same as freedom, but if we have no basis on which to choose other than our subjective urges, transient likes and dislikes, and fantasies based on movies, novels and occasional glimpses at internet pornography, then choice is not freedom but bondage: bondage to the ideals of a sick culture and the passions of a fallen mind. But this is the reality many Orthodox Christians in North America and Europe today. Some lucky few have relationships with parents or spiritual mentors that are close enough and mature enough to provide some guidance and advice in the search for a mate. Most, however, are out on their own. Even if they do ask for advice or guidance from a priest or parent or other responsible person, many young people are merely seeking confirmation for what they already feel or think or lust for.
So this is where we start: one priest's dating guide for Orthodox Christians.
First, and this applies not only to dating, but to all friendships: Hang out with people you want to become like. This does not mean that you do not hang out with people who are not perfect; that’s ridiculous, no one is perfect. What it means is that you look for Christ-like virtues: kindness, gentleness, self control, faith, joy, etc. People with these qualities or who are seeking these qualities will help you develop these qualities. Now I am going to say something shocking: Orthodox Christians are not always the most Christ-like people you know. (I probably didn’t surprise anyone.) Good people are good people no matter where you find them. Hang out with good people and you will become a better person.
Second, don’t differentiate between “dating” and hanging out, at least not in the early and middle stages of a relationship that may be leading to marriage. That word, “dating,” has killed more potentially wonderful relationships than any other word in contemporary English. “Dating” is a cultural construct defined by popular culture, chiefly movies and TV. Generally the only difference between dating and hanging out is that if you're dating you are admitting that you are sexually attracted to one another—not the best way to begin a relationship that you hope will lead to the martyrdom of Orthodox Christian marriage. Unfortunately, our culture has taught us that sexual attraction is key to finding a suitable life partner; in fact for much of our culture, good sex is the highest form of transcendence conceivable. But let me state the obvious: this is not a Christian culture.
Christians are called to a life of repentance, a life in which Christ is God and my life is His. Sex, even “great” sex, is a normal part of life for married Christians; but, and here is the irony for our culture, great sex is the byproduct of Christ-like loving and giving in the context of a life-long relationship. Feeling sexually attracted to someone you hardly know is certainly no way to determine if someone will make a good wife or husband. A good marriage can never be based on how the other makes me feel. Good marriage is based on my caring for and loving the other, even when it doesn’t always feel good to me.
Third, religion matters. Above I said that good people are good people no matter where you find them, but if you begin to think you might want to spend the rest of your life raising children with someone, then religion is very important. For most people, when things are going well religion is not a very important part of their life (no matter how strenuously they protest that it is). When we feel like things are going well, and nothing feels better than being in love, God drifts to the background, and we basically ignore God. I’m not making this up. Read Deuteronomy 32 sometime. It records the common experience of God’s people: when things are going good (when we “grow fat”) we ignore God. However, marriage, as many have observed, is the remedy for falling in love. Once a man and woman begin the hard work of sharing their lives together, God becomes much more important in their lives. I am not saying that marriage is all work and drudgery. No, not at all. The most wonderful, wonderful gift God has given me is my wife and children; however, marriage has also driven me to my knees again and again. When a couple do not share the same faith and same religious commitment, then when the going gets tough, where do they go for help?
The Orthodox Church allows marriages between Orthodox Christians and other Christians (not non-Christians). The main stipulation is that the couple agree to raise the children Orthodox. This allowance for mixed marriage, however, can be easily misunderstood in our modern world of choosing what’s right for me. This allowance did not have in mind an Orthodox boy choosing a Baptist girl because she’s hot. This allowance came to be in a world in which children were often promised in marriage before they were three years old. They had no choice; and so the church made allowance for the reality of a culture in which a man or woman could not choose his or her spouse. But we have a choice.
Young people, my daughters included, often say that there are no good candidates among the Orthodox Christians they know. I understand this problem. Often Orthodox Christian churches are small and choices are limited. Therefore, if you’re serious about finding and Orthodox Christian spouse, you need to get out and get involved in Orthodox projects, conferences and activities outside your little parish. Organize retreats, participate in diocesan, mission or service organizations, visit monasteries (you never know who else might be visiting), rent a van and crash a archdiocesan convention with seven of your buddies splitting the cost of the room. Be creative.
Let me sum up. It is not a good idea to date non-Orthodox Christians because it is not a good idea to date anyone. It is a good idea to have lots of friends, to learn how to be kind, generous, loving, patient and joyful by hanging out with people who encourage you to be more like Christ. If you suspect that a particular friend may indeed be someone with whom you could spend your life, then enquire if he/she suspects the same thing. If you are too shy to ask directly, then ask a trusted third person to make enquiries for you. Since you are already friends, you can skip the dating thing. You can now continue to be friends discerning together and with your priest(s), parents, and other trusted friends whether or not you are indeed right for each other.

The Staretz Never Came

When I was inquiring into Orthodox Christianity, I (and the group I was a part of) became convinced early on that we needed a staretz, an elder of profound holiness and insight to guide us. At the time, it made perfect sense. In the milieu from which we came, sincere earnestness was the primary—if not the only—indicator we had to spiritual vitality. And since we were an intensely earnest bunch of enquirers, we seemed to ourselves (although we never would have actually said this) to be spiritually alive to such a degree that normal guidance from just any priest would certainly not be adequate for us. We thought we were a special case, but the staretz never came.
After our community had been Orthodox for a year or two, we began to experience a lot of strife among the leaders of the community. The “system” of relationship, leadership and decision making that had created our community and led it to Holy Orthodoxy began to crack. From my perspective, the crisis was perhaps most acutely precipitated by the events leading to the death of our great friend and head chanter, Dn. Timothy. Suffice it to say that our new milieu, the Orthodox Church, provided ways of thinking about conflict and loving those who succumb to weaknesses of various sorts, ways that our community’s leaders did not equally recognize or appreciate. And then, of course, there was the bishop.
We were the first large group of converts that Bishop Joseph had received into Holy Orthodoxy. He had only been in the United States for one year, his English skills were still developing and he was completely unfamiliar with American Evangelical sensibilities. This was a recipe for misunderstanding and confusion if ever there was one. And still no staretz came. Misunderstanding and accusation bloomed like a red tide. Quickly factions emerged. It’s a funny thing about factions in a community: you don’t really have to be on anyone’s “side” to be on someone’s side. The very fact that you don’t vociferously defend (or accuse) the villain (or hero) of the moment makes you a de facto member of one party or another.
The most painful few years of my life were these years of trouble: wishing, hoping and praying for a holy man who could speak definitively and clearly, who could draw a line in the sand so that we could know which was the right side to be standing on. But the staretz never came. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that God did not confirm our delusionary self importance; rather, he let it self destruct. There was no right side or wrong side. There was no line to cross or not cross, as is the case with almost all conflict in the Church (and it’s that “almost” that makes conflict in the church so difficult to negotiate). There were only confused and frustrated people who wanted earnestly to do the right thing; and that earnestness itself was part of the delusion that needed to be purged, along with the assumption that the right thing was anything more than to love one another.

Dark Belief

If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk about what someone has called the dark belief. When God turns out not to be who we thought he was, particularly because the circumstances of our life are more painful than the God whom we had imagined would have allowed, cynicism and atheism (or agnosticism, her sister)seem appropriate coping mechanisms. Initially, there is a perverse joy in attributing to others the worst possible motives because, maybe, you feel like you are seeing clearly for the first time —not that others don’t sometimes have mixed or even completely selfish motives. Eventually, however, cynicism leads to intense loneliness and bitterness. If you are lucky, you meet along the way someone who breaks the mold: unpretentious, he just cares about other people. He too has suffered a great deal. He too has passed through the crisis of denying God because God refused to remain in his life the tame, Sunday School, watered-down and simplified God of his fundamentalist childhood. When you meet someone like him, it is possible to have a frightening experience: hope. It is frightening because you don’t want to go back to the anemic cosmology you had before—you know that will just lead you again to cynicism. But instead of going back, what if you went forward, not assuming you know where it will lead. Follow the light, the good. Long for the good. The ancient monks called this Divine Eros. Even in your physical and emotional pain and confusion, you can find pockets of good, small moments and encounters that bring light, in which someone does or says something that seems to be grace-filled. The world is an ugly place (“do not love the world or the things in the world” St. John said), but it is not devoid of good. Following the good is the narrow way. The narrow way leads to life; but the easy way, the obvious way, to death. In Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor chastises Jesus for making the way too difficult. The Inquisitor claims that he (Scholastic Christianity) really loves the people by simplifying Christianity for the people. Whereas Jesus refused to turn stone into bread, the Inquisitor gives bread (easily understood formulas) so the people do not have to struggle with the meaning of the stones in their life. Whereas Jesus refused honor and clear resolution (“If you are the Son of God throw yourself off…”), the Inquisitor provides honorable positions in society and easy answers. How, the Inquisitor argues, could a loving God force people to live with ambiguity? Most western Christians have grown up with the religion of the Grand Inquisitor, not the religion of Jesus.
The question for each of us is will we follow the narrow way? We do not have to run down the path. Limping is fine. Truth be told, if you could see in the hearts of the people you admire, everyone hobbles, crawls and stumbles toward the light. We are all terribly wounded.

What is worth living for ? A response

You have really asked the fundamental question: What is worth living for? You are right that an external constraint to be good only proves to be a burden that eventually produces some form of mental illness either because of guilt because you ignore the “rules” or fundamentalistic self-righteousness and condemnation of others because you deceive yourself into thinking that you are keeping the “rules.” Why bother? Of course, libertinism only produces more suffering. Suffering is a symptom of our sickness and of the sickness we impose on each other and the world. Suicide may take us out of this world, but it doesn’t change us. At least from an Orthodox perspective, heaven and hell are ways to experience existence, and you don’t have to die to begin experiencing either. I know people whose life is hell and I know a few who already taste heaven. As for me, I experience hellish periods (some last moments, some days); but I smell, sometimes, the roses of heaven, and I try to follow that fragrance.
I think the problem lies in a religious milieu that tends to posit knowledge of God as either emotional high or as ridged conformity to rules. This of course is no one’s dogma, but it is the experience and practice of many, many Christians of all stripes. Finding God, if you really find and know Him, makes suffering through life worth it: suffering has meaning in Christ. The problem is how to find, really find, Christ and know Him.
Genuine life in Christ is full of paradox. I think it begins with hope, even the faintest wish that the Creator cares about me. But this care is not like the Baalim, the gods of the world, who in exchange for sacrifices and offerings of various types promise material happiness and power. This care is rather that of a conscientious doctor who desires to heal the patient, not pander to the patient’s delusions. We are very confused children, sick in our minds and hearts; and if we can begin in hope to trust the Physician—because like physiotherapy the healing process is somewhat painful—the small “deaths” we experience through forgiving ourselves and others and turning away from ways that we hurt others begins to produce a kind of resurrection in our minds and hearts. There are no rules outside our heart, but then again our hearts are sick. We need guidance, a spiritual mother or father to help us along the way. But we live in a day in which reliable spiritual fathers and mothers are rare, and most of us stubble along through trial and error, gleaning bits of wisdom from wise people here and there.
And yet hope shines like a little light in a very dark room. We take small steps toward the Light, toward the True, the Beautiful, the Simple. Along the way we learn about ourselves, how sick we really are, what’s real and what’s delusion, what’s love and what isn’t. And part of the paradox is that the less we care about our healing and health, the more clearly we see ourselves and act and think in healthy ways. The more we look at ourselves, the less we see and the more deluded we become. And so we look to a model outside ourselves: “Looking to Jesus, the Author and finisher of our faith.” I’m not talking about the Jesus of Sunday School and of nine year olds. I’m talking about the Jesus who entered the insane world of a woman who had had five husbands. The Jesus who touched the raving maniac and calmed him. The Jesus who called religious hypocrites vipers and white-washed tombs.

Watch out for big words

A weary priest, after listening to a college student share in rapture all that he has learned from the latest Life of an elder on the Holy Mountain: “Prayer of the heart? Theosis? These are big words. Do me and yourself a favor. Don’t speak those words again until you have either (A) spent a least fifteen years in a monastery under obedience; or (B) you have raised at least five children to love Christ and His Church. Once you have done either of these, then, maybe, you will be able to begin to say these words. For right now the words for you are patience, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control. These words will keep you busy for the next twenty years. Learn to say these little words, then you may come to know how to pronounce bigger words.”
One of the stumbling blocks I find in parish life is that single adults are reading spiritual material written to challenge and stir-up the spiritual life of experienced monastics, and thinking that they understand it! As a pastor, I find that the a young person can carry on happily in his or her delusion—reading more spiritual books, visiting monasteries, and “explaining” Orthodox spirituality to their non-Orthodox acquaintances--until their delusion of spiritual knowledge is shattered by the realities of marriage and family life. I cannot tell how many times I have sat with a weeping young married man or woman who was afraid that he or she had lost Grace.
“By the time I have gotten up two or three times during the night because of the baby,” a young mother says, “I can’t keep my eyes open to say even one prayer from my Rule. Then once I’ve cleaned up breakfast, started the laundry and picked up the house, it’s time to start making dinner. My heart feels so far from God. I can’t even pray in Church. I spend the whole time taking the baby in and out. My spiritual life doesn’t exist anymore.”
A similar tale is told by a young father, working 50 to 60 hours a week at his first real job, trying to make it up the initial rungs of a corporate ladder, barely making rent and car payments. “I try to say the Jesus Prayer as I drive to and from work, but my mind is buzzing with things I have to remember for work or things I have to do at home. I have no peace. When I get home, it is all I can do not to yell at the kids and be angry with my wife. I have not read a spiritual book in years. I am depressed because I seem to have fallen so far spiritually from where I was before the children came along.”
These are not unusual tales, as any parish priest can tell you. Somehow the responsibility of family life throws young parents into a spiritual crisis for which the Church and our culture has not prepared them. While there may be many causes for this lack of preparation, one that seems to be functioning in the church is what Alexander Schmemann called a “monastic trend.” That is, so much emphasis is placed on individual piety, spirituality and asceticism, that young Orthodox Christian adults do not recognize the spirituality of self sacrificial love when the circumstances of life finally force them to practice it.
To a certain extent, this monastic trend (or as a friend of mine called it, “anchoritization”) of popular Orthodox piety is unavoidable. In all western cultures, including many traditionally Orthodox countries (Greece and Russia, specifically), the individual is king. Almost no one lives in an extended family. Technology has made dependence on local community, on the neighbor (whether you loved him or not) a thing of the past. It is really easy to convince myself that I love my neighbor when I don’t even know his name. I succeed if I work hard and am lucky. I fail if I’m lazy and foolish. If I’m spiritually inclined, I grow in my relationship with God through my spiritual activities. Even alms giving is a disembodied act: IOCC conveniently accepts credit card donations and distributes aid to people I will never meet. And of course, all of this success or failure, spiritual growth or not, is at my own pace. No one tells me what to do. I choose my own books, I choose my own spiritual exercises, and if I’m so inclined, I choose my own spiritual father, whom I can ignore if I choose.
Those who actually enter real monastic life discover the communal nature of Christianity right away—they choose nothing. Those who follow the path of marriage often are not confronted with genuine community life until the children come along. For many, this is the first time in their adult life that someone else is telling them what to do. This is the first time they are compelled by love to lay down their life for another. The problem is that no where along the line of their Orthodox Christian experience has it been made clear to them that such self sacrifice is what Christianity is all about. Consequently, young parents are confused: how can losing my “spiritual” life be gaining it?
Books like Mountain of Silence provide a mixed blessing. On the one hand they introduce the Orthodox Church and spirituality to a world hungry for real spiritual life; on the other hand, they do not, they cannot, make evident that the apparently individual spiritual struggle that they describe takes place in a community of self denial and obedience.

For fear of the Jews

One of the phrases that repeatedly appears in the biblical and liturgical texts surrounding the death and resurrection of our Lord is "for fear of the Jews." This is a very misleading, though accurate, translation of the text. It is accurate because, well, that is what the text says. It is misleading--and, I might add, has been used to justify terribly inhuman behavior to Jews throughout Christian history--because it gives the impression that "the Jews" who were feared were somehow a different race or religion from those who were fearing. This is not the case. The followers of Jesus--those who were fearing--were all Jews, too. Gentiles (non-Jews) did not begin to join the followers of Jesus for many years after the resurrection. In fact, the first big argument in the Church was whether or not non-Jews could be followers of Jesus at all.
Within a couple hundred years, the phrase, "for fear of the Jews," actually began to have a meaning that is the exact opposite of what the original writers intended. What the biblical writers intended is something like what I might mean if I said in a letter to my bishop, "We fear the British Columbians." I and everyone in Holy Nativity (except one couple who commutes from the States) are British Columbians. At the time of the Apostles, when all followers of Jesus were Jews, Judea was under foreign occupation by the Roman military. The name "Christian" had not yet been coined--they were just followers of the Way, one of many sects of Judiasm. At that time, Jews were generally in fear of the Romans. But the biblical writers want to make clear that it was thier own people and their own religious and political leaders (and not the Romans) whom the followers of Jesus were fearing. They do not fear someone from another group, a religous or political or racial foreigner. Rather, they fear their own family.
Today, and thoughout most Christian history, "Jew" has referred specifically to a non-Christian religious group, often conceived as a different race from the Christians. Consequently, a phrase like the following, spoken by St. Peter on the day of Pentecost, has almost the opposite meaning today as it did 2000 years ago.
"Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."
When Peter, the Jew, said this, he was speaking to Jews. In this sentence, "you" means "us." Today, "you" means "not us, but them."
Therefore, I do not like the literal translation of "Jew" in biblical and liturgical texts. It just doesn't mean what it used to mean. Furthermore, and this is huge, throughout history this changed understanding has been used as a defense for the undefendable brutality of powerful Christians against Jews. Therefore, wherever possible, I prefer translating "Jews" as either "the people" or "the rulers" or "the Judeans" depending on the context.
Unfortunately, I am on no committies for liturgical translation. I do not have the authority to change texts (only bishops do). However, if you ever hear me reading the Bible or a liturgical text and substitute "Judeans" or "leaders" for "Jews," now you will know why.

Focus North America Ministries

I'd like to draw my faithful few blog readers' attention to an Orthodox Christian outreach ministry called "Focus North America." It is a collection of Orthodox Christian social action ministries in North America. Their web site is www.focusnorthamerica.org Check them out!

George Eliot

Kh. Krista West, in her podcast, The Opinionated Tailor, mentioned once her love for the novels by George Eliot, particularly Adam Bede. Since Bonnie and I are rather addicted to 19th century novels, we are always looking for recommendations. We went out and bought most of her novels (btw, “George Eliot” is the pen name for Mary Ann Evans Cross). I started with Middlemarch and was mesmerized. Bonnie tried to begin with Middlemarch too, but found the vocabulary a little tough, so went to Mill on the Floss, which deals with less educated characters and consequently less obscure, Latinate vocabulary and almost no literary allusions except to the Bible, and they are abundant. After Middlemarch I took an Eliot break and read Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy while Bonnie went right on to Eliot’s Adam Bede—I do have a point coming up; thanks for hanging in there through this wandering set up.

Bonnie couldn’t put Adam Bede down. She kept reading sentences to me, summarizing snippets of plot, and suddenly uttering under her breath, “Oh, this is good.” I rushed through the last chapters of Return of the Native so I could start Adam Bede as soon as Bonnie finished. For anyone who’s interested, like the other Hardy novels that I have read, Return of the Native is delightfully melancholy and depressing stuff: slowly watching human weakness destroy a life on the backdrop of bleak English countryside. Yes, choices have consequences, eventually.

I am now five chapters into the fifty-five chaptered Adam Bede and I see why Bonnie loved it so much. One of the early characters (whether or not she is a main character remains to be seen) is a young Methodist open-air preacher; and her sermon and her technique and the description of her feelings could have exactly described me twenty-five years ago. I was an occasional street evangelist, emotionally charged, conversionist who was sure everyone was going to hell who had not experienced conversion the same way I had. I was not of the puritanical bent, in that I did not condemn anyone; rather, I was of the earnest, pitying bent: I was worried about the afterlife of those around me. I wanted others to be sure that they were saved, as sure as I was; and my certainty lay in my emotionally overpowering conversion experience and my regular booster shots of emotional high, administered at regular intervals by evangelists and praise bands.

It wasn’t until my thirties that I got a steady job and developed enough routine in my life raising a young family to take deep breaths and think a little more deeply about life, God and the universe. Then a terrible thing happened: I began to listen to Bach. Surprise is to weak a word to describe my becoming aware that “the Holy Spirit” was in Bach’s music just as strongly as it was in Bible preaching and worship songs. I struggled with this awareness for a couple of years, noting with growing concern that Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, and, much to my shame, even really good football games seemed to have “the Holy Spirit” too. Then a small light began to shine. Maybe what I have been calling “the Holy Spirit” was really just my being excited about something.

When I look back, I must again and again give thanks to God, that patient Fisher of men. He caught me in his net using the bait I needed, emotional certainty. Or as my Baptist foster mother put it, “to know in your knower.” God used what drew me to draw me; as the troparion of the Nativity states, “Those who worshiped the stars were drawn by a star to worship you, the Sun of righteousness.” Here I can quote George Eliot too, who is clearly no fan of late 18th century Methodism: “Still—if I have read religious history aright—faith, hope and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords [i.e. grammatical logic], and it is possible—thank God—to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings.” Then Eliot goes on to cite an example of someone who selflessly gives up the best parts of her own food in the false assumption that the extra food will help heal the “fits” [epilepsy?] of her neighbor’s child. Although the remedy is “inefficacious…the generous stirring of neighborly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.”

For hurting people, the religious certainty of fundamentalism, be it of the emotional Pentecostal variety or the more cerebral Reformed type, goes a long way to helping them find peace with God and with themselves. It provides a larger-than-life story in which their (my) miserable little life has a place and has meaning. But more than a narrative, Christian religion of almost any sort introduces people to Jesus Christ and the possibility transformation: the possibility that I might come to love as He loved, serve as He served, give as He gave. My own experience (and yours too, I am sure) is sufficient to confirm that not everyone who comes into Christian fundamentalism develops “very sublime feelings” such that they are willing to go hungry to help their neighbor’s sick child. Yet, I think the percentage of Pharisees and hypocrites is no larger among Protestant fundamentalists than it is among Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Orthodox—it’s just that the Protestants may be a little louder than the others.

Elliot has really got me thinking. I can’t wait for chapter six.

Prophetic Ministry

I have been thinking lately about the prophetic ministry. Particularly, I have been thinking about how this ministry is manifest in the Church. Coming from a Pentecostal background, I have a lot of experience in what the prophetic ministry is not. Prophetic ministry does not include utterances in King James English or ecstatic proclamations preceded by “Thus sayeth the Lord.” Nor is prophetic ministry about prediction. Based on the example of the Old Testament prophets and the ministry of Jesus, prophetic ministry is about being aware and helping others to be aware of God’s presence now.

In the Church, this ministry is often seen in the monastic calling but is not limited to that calling. Monks, at least some of the monks I know and many I have read about, are trained to be aware at all times of God’s presence. This awareness helps them to be sensitive to the inner world where angels and demons are perceived as thoughts (logismoi) and spiritual warfare is a matter of emptying oneself of all that cleaves to what is external so that when the evil one comes he finds nothing in them (c.f. John 14:30). And the evil one comes quite regularly; so emptying, or dying to oneself, is not an episodic experience, but a way of being. This way of being—continual self-emptying and awareness of God’s presence—sometimes makes confessors seem clairvoyant.

Although “clairvoyant” is the word commonly used in Orthodox circles to describe an elder or confessor who seems to know what is going on in your life before you tell him, I am uncomfortable with that word. I have associated that word with fortune telling and the ability to read the minds of others. St. Seraphim of Sarov (and other “clairvoyant” elders) have describe their experience of this phenomenon not as a reading of the mind or heart of the other, but as an awareness of what the Spirit of God is saying or doing (as perceived and discerned as thoughts in the Saint’s mind/heart/nous) at that moment. The clairvoyant word of the elder is not something he perceives outside himself (by reading your mind, for example), but merely a continuation of what he does all the time: being aware of the presence of God right now.

Furthermore, and here I get to the heart of what I want to say, without self-emptying love, the whole process quickly becomes a sham. I say this because it is common in some circles (circles I orbit), to label as prophetic ministry the pointing out of the sins of society, organizations, governments and powerful people in general. While clairvoyant elders may point out the sins of others, their ability to see those sins clearly comes from their deep awareness of their own sin and their ongoing struggle to repent of their complicity in the very sin they are pointing out. (btw, for convenience sake, I am using the word “elder” to refer to the one exercising prophetic ministry, but it is possible that grandmothers, parish council chairmen, priests, monks, little children, college students, or even corporate executives and government officials could speak prophetically.)

My favorite biblical example of prophetic ministry is Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Jeremiah condemns the sins of a nation, a corrupted government and religious establishment, and a compliant populace eager for gain at the expense of others. But Jeremiah’s words are the words of a man with a broken heart, a man who so identifies with his people that he refuses to escape the very judgment that he is warning them about. Jeremiah does not condemn the sinners from a mountain top (literal or mental) but from the bottom of a muddy well in the king’s prison court (both literally and mentally—he is in the middle of it, accepting whatever punishments are thrown his way out of love for his neighbor and awareness of God’s presence everywhere: “I called on your name, O Lord, from the lowest pit and you heard my voice” Lam. 55,56.) Even when the siege is over and Jeremiah’s word is vindicated and Nebuzaradan offers Jeremiah his freedom, Jeremiah chooses to return to Jerusalem eventually to be taken to Egypt by the rebellious remnant to experience with his people yet another siege by the Babylonians, the very thing he said would happen if they went to Egypt.

The point here is that seeing other’s sins does not make one a prophet. In fact, it is the effect of sin that we so easily see the shortcomings and sins of others and not so easily our own. A film I once saw portrayed this dynamic quite well. A wealthy suffragette in the early twentieth century mercilessly abused her domestic workers, yet wondered why no one seemed to take her passion for her just cause seriously. One of her domestics (behind her back, of course) speculated that her motivation was boredom, and the conviction that she could run the show better than her inattentive husband. Of course no one took her seriously. In some of its grosser forms, this might be called arm-chair quarterbacking: the delight we have in finding fault in those much more powerful (athletically, politically, economically) than we. When we add to this arm-chair quarterbacking phenomenon the dimension of personal loss, or potential personal loss—in the form of a job or a freedom or an opportunity or a resource—then we convince ourselves that the emotional response within us is nothing other than righteous indignation. But it is more likely just regular anger motivated by self righteousness and selfishness.

Indeed, the loss, or potential loss (or sometimes merely the loss of an ideal), may be due to sin and injustice of others. But to clearly hear within ourselves what God may be saying about the situation and the actions of others, we must first be trained and disciplined in hearing what God is saying to ourselves. Furthermore, to speak in such a way that we may be heard—if God gives us words to speak—we must be well practiced in speaking to ourselves (and hearing those who speak to us) and practicing these words through repentance.

Hiding From God

I got to go up to spend a night at the monastery this week, and while there, Br. Samuel shared the following with me.
In the Septuagint version of Genesis Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, hide “themselves within the tree in the middle of the garden from the presence of the Lord” (3:8). This tree in the middle of the garden is none other than the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from which they had eaten. Some of the fathers speculate that the fruit itself was a fig (not an apple, as is common in the western tradition). If the forbidden tree was a fig (or fig-like) tree, then we can better understand the Septuagint’s “hid within the tree.” Unpruned fig trees grow to be massive bushes with large leaves providing an airy, cool interior area where one is hidden from those outside. In other places in the Scripture reference is made to people resting or hiding under fig trees—it was apparently a common thing in Middle East. It also makes sense that in covering their nakedness, Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves, if this is the tree they are hiding within. In a sense, clothing themselves in fig leaves is that same thing as hiding from God within the tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Perhaps one way this story can be understood is that mankind’s fundamental sin is to hide from God within the knowledge that man has seized for himself. Men and women construct theories and philosophies, fantasies and explanations of all sorts to quiet their consciences and explain away the voice of God calling out to them through all creation: “Adam, where are you?” The serpent’s guile, or deceit, enables us to take what God has created to reveal Himself and to twist it in ways that appear wise to us and yet hide us—or better, hide from us—the God that the whole creation exists to reveal. We are still hiding from God within the tree.

This reading of Genesis chapter three brings insight into a hard to interpret passage in the Gospel of John. When Nathaniel is brought to Jesus by Philip, Jesus says to Nathaniel, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” When Nathaniel asks how Jesus knows him, Jesus says, “When you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” I wonder if Nathaniel represents all men and women who are without guile and so are willing to leave the false security of the fig tree—the theories and theologies that keep God at a safe, mostly irrelevant distance. Nathaniel’s first response to Philip’s exclamation that he had found the Messiah was that it couldn’t be true, it didn’t fit into his preconceived mental picture of the Messiah: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he says. But what shows Nathaniel to be free from guile is that at Philip’s “come and see,” Nathaniel went and saw. Nathaniel did not allow his own mental image or framework, his own theory, knowledge or philosophy to keep him from going outside the comfortable world of his own knowledge to see what others had seen but what he had not yet seen.

Realized Eschatology, Revelation and Repentance

I must confess that when it comes to eschatology I am most convinced by the “realized” approach. Realized eschatology interprets apocalyptic literature (Daniel, Revelation, etc.) not so much as predicting the future (although that is there too), but as revealing through symbols the way things are, the nature of reality. This approach to reading apocalyptic literature does not sell books. There is no immediate sense of urgency (usually playing on fear) that offers those who have the “Key of Interpretation” [available today only for three easy payments of $29.95] insight into what the newspaper headlines “really” mean. Realized eschatology doesn’t even have a key. There is no rational certainty about it because it is all based on interpreting symbols that can mean different things in different contexts. The number seven, for example, can refer to completion or blessing or rest, depending on the context—-not only the context in the text, but also the context of the life of the reader.
Some might decry, “Of what use is a biblical interpretation that offers no certainty?” My answer is that such a reading of the Bible has very little use, if by “use” one means the ability to build on the knowledge, as on a logical foundation, syllogisms and discursive arguments that justify one course of action over another or declare whose side God is on in a land dispute in some corner of the world. If, however, I am looking to make sense of my own suffering and the suffering of the world around me; if I am longing for hope that God is still the King of the Universe, in spite of my struggle and often failure to do good; if want to see that my own little battles to be my better self are really and truly a participation in the Battle of the Ages, then realized eschatology is of great use.
After the Apostle John wrote Revelation, toward the end of the first century, it was the terribly persecuted church in Rome that found most comfort in it. In fact, the relatively less persecuted church in the East found the Revelation to be a rather troublesome book, largely because some charismatic preachers used it to stir up fear with false predictions of the future which distracted the faithful from the peace in Christ and the work of their salvation: repentance, love of God, love of neighbor. But in Rome, the Revelation of St. John was life and comfort. It did not predict the future for them, it symbolically explained their experience now.
I have provided this little introduction to the interpretation of apocalyptic literature because I want to share a little bit of interpretation with you: Revelation 9:1-11, the plague of locusts. Please keep in mind that the events in the Revelation are not in chronological order. The third trumpet does not refer to something that happens after the second trumpet. We may experience any or all of the plagues, trumpets or bowls at the same time. These are symbols referring to the way the universe is.
The first four trumpets (end of Ch. 8) announce partial destruction, “a third of… was destroyed.” These are in a sense shots across the bow of our ship, warnings to repent. Whenever we experience tragedy and loss and yet survive it, it becomes for us an opportunity to think about our life and death and final judgment. The fifth trumpet refers to the fall of Satan and his attack on mankind through passionate temptations of various kinds. These are the locusts with faces of men and hair of women and bodies of horses. That is, these are the temptations for men and women to act as animals. The smoke refers to the temporary blindness and insanity that keeps us from seeing clearly our calling in Christ and the deceptive temptations that beset us. Those with the Seal on their foreheads are protected in as much as they are crucifying the passions and living the new life in Christ. They are not stung by the locusts, the swarm of thoughts that are the seed of sin, because they have learned to be more than natural men; they have become spiritual men (see 1 Cor. 2:13-15). However the temptations are real. The sting is in the tail, not in the face. What feels so good and looks so natural, so merely human, so understandable, has its sting in the tail.
Bishops Joseph has often said that “I am only human” is not an excuse for our failure to live godly lives. We are not “only” human. We are humans sealed by the Holy Spirit, called to become gods in Christ. We are granted the gift of repentance, the ability to change, to see our sin and hate it, not excuse it. And even the bitter pain of the consequences of a passionate life (the sting like a scorpion), in God’s mercy, lasts only five months. Repentance and forgiveness are always possible. Are you breathing? Then God has left open for you the door of repentance. Have you failed repeatedly in previous repentances? Are you still breathing? Then the door is still open, repent again—don’t give up on yourself before God gives up on you. Have you been stung by sin. Are you and those around you suffering from the painful consequences of the scorpions’ sting? Are you still breathing? Repent, the suffering will not last forever; God has limited the power of evil.
The persecution by passionate temptations—-laziness, faint heartedness, lust of power, idle talk—-is a fiery trial, if we will enter the lists. And for those in combat, the Revelation of St. John speaks of “our now” just as much as it spoke of the “now” of every generation of Christians.

The Pitiable Ahab

The Hebrew Bible presents Ahab as a sinful man like no other: “But there was none like Ahab which sold himself to work wickedness.” The Septuagint, on the other hand, does not contain such extreme words about Ahab's wickedness. Both the Hebrew and Septuagint versions of the story of Ahab contain his repentance/humbling after the prophet Elijah prophesies the grizzly outcome of Ahab and his wife Jezebel. However, in several places, the Septuagint reveals Ahab as a much more pitiable character than the Hebrew version does.
To begin with, after the confrontation on Mt. Carmel and the killing of all of the prophets of Baal, during the ensuing rain storm, the Hebrew Bible says that Ahab “rode and went” to Jezreel. But the Septuagint says that Ahab “mourned [wept] and went” to Jezreel (1 Sam./3 Kings 18:45). This reading shows a contrite Ahab, an Ahab weeping/mourning. After the awesome and public display of God’s power over the false prophets (who ate at his wife’s table), and during the first rain in three and a half years, Ahab is humbled, according to the Septuagint. The Hebrew reading, on the other hand, says nothing of Ahab’s emotional response to God’s manifestation of his power in response to Elijah’s prayer.
Then there is the matter of Naboth’s vineyard. Both the Hebrew and Septuagint versions are about the same except that the Hebrew places the story in Ch. 21 whereas the Septuagint places it in Ch. 20 (before the defeat of Benhadad in the Septuagint and after in the Hebrew). However there is a telling addition in the Septuagint’s version of Ahab’s response to the death of Naboth (or is it an omission in the Hebrew version?). In the Septuagint, after Jezebel tells Ahab of Naboth’s death, Ahab “tore his clothes and put on sackcloth.” Ahab’s initial response is repentant, humble, sorrowful; but not too sorrowful, for the next sentence says, “After that Ahab…took possession of the vineyard.” The Hebrew only says that he took possession of the vineyard. The Septuagint even emphasizes Ahab’s sorrowful response to Naboth’s death by mentioning it again at the end of the chapter (v. 27). The Hebrew only mentions Ahab’s tearing his clothes, putting on sackcloth and fasting in response to Elisha’s prophecy of Ahab’s and Jezebel’s demise. However, the Septuagint adds here, “He also put on sackcloth the day he killed Naboth the Jezreelite.”
A third difference between the two versions of this story is in verse 20/21:25. Here the Hebrew text includes the words, “But there was none like unto Ahab.” The Septuagint, on the other hand, not only doesn’t include these words, but adds the word “vainly/foolishly” to the text. Here is how it reads in the Septuagint: “Ahab sold himself to vainly/foolishly do what was evil.” The insertion of these words does not lessen Ahab’s guilt (at least from an Orthodox perspective). Ahab is guilty of doing what was evil. However, the Septuagint presents Ahab as pitiable because he acted foolishly or vainly (i.e. without reason or purpose: “emptily”) as he was led astray or incited by Jezebel.
These three variances in the story of Ahab as it is found in the Septuagint help us interpret other aspects of the story in a way that presents Ahab not as the worst of the worst, but as fool who has “sold himself” and was trapped. We begin with Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel, daughter of the King of Sidon. Sidon is the country just north of Israel and the buffer between Israel and Assyria, one of the major powers of the day; so Ahab’s marriage to Jezebel was certainly one of political convenience. Although marriage to foreign women is condemned in the Law, one cannot be too harsh on Ahab because most of Israel’s kings before him, including David, married some foreign women. Because of the political nature of his marriage to Jezebel and his dependence on the King of Sidon (and ultimately because of his lack of faith in God), Ahab let’s Jezebel kill the Lord’s prophets and maintain at her table 950 false prophets. However, Ahab’s right-hand man, Obadiah, hides 100 of the Lord’s prophets in caves and feeds them during the drought. While Ahab lets his wife get away with murder out of fear of man, he lets his chief advisor get away with treachery, perhaps out of a weak, but present, fear of the Lord. Surely here is a weak and bifurcated man to be pitied.
How might an Orthodox Christian apply such a reading in his or her life? I think the first application is to realize that even the most wicked person may at some level “fear the Lord.” He may be trapped, or think he is trapped, in a terrible situation which compels him to acts that he regrets. Ahab wept, mourned and humbled himself at various times and sufficiently (according to both versions of the story) for God to postpone judgment; yet he is held responsible for all of the evil he lets his wife get away with, including the death of Naboth—which both versions make clear, in spite of Ahab’s initial mourning recorded only in the Septuagint. As Orthodox Christians, we must never assume that someone is too far gone to be touched by the Holy Spirit and a guilty conscience, even if that person is responsible for the deaths of hundreds or even millions of people. There may indeed be such a thing as a conscience seared beyond hope, but only God knows. We don’t.
I think the second thing Orthodox Christians should take from the Septuagint’s telling of the story of Ahab is that “free choice” is never really very free; or at least it is only relatively free. How free is a fool? How free is a weak-willed man married to a strong-willed woman? How free is a double-minded man (c.f. James 1:8) who fears the Lord a little but fears man more? When I look at my own life, my mistakes, my weepings before the Lord, and my ensuing return to folly, I realize that I never want to sin. I am always enticed, deceived by my own rationalizations and driven by lusts and fear. It most often feels like an accident, a mercy from God, that I catch myself in sinful contemplation before it’s too late. I hear a word from a friend who might not have spoken, I read a passage that someone might not have written, I see an act of graciousness that might not have been. Somehow the Holy Spirit pricks my heart through one of His servants and I see my insanity, my foolishness, my Ahab-like tendencies. And of course this makes me wonder: how often have I refrained from speaking or writing or acting, how often have I let fear or laziness or hoplessness keep me from being a servant of the Holy Spirit in the life of one of my fellow Ahab-like brothers?
Lord have mercy on us sinners.

Gregory Palamas: Tearing the Roof Off

The Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Lent is the the story about the four fellows who want to bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus to be healed. When they get to where Jesus is, he is trapped in a house, surrounded by hundreds of people. There is no way they are going to get in to see Jesus. However, some people have just got to have direct contact and will find a way. The way these fellows found was to tear off the tiles on the roof (I'm sure Jesus' host was not very happy about that), strap their paralyzed buddy to the pallet, and lower him down on top of Jesus. "Hey, Jesus, here I am. Heal me." The text says that when Jesus saw their faith(i.e. the faith for the guys who tore off the roof and lowered their friend down), he healed their friend.
The second Sunday of Lent is also the Sunday of St. Gregory of Palamas. St. Gregory is a 14th century theologian who articulated the Orthodox Church's rejection of scholastic theology. I am not an expert on Palamite theology, so if I get this wrong, please correct me gently. As I understand it, and put very simply, the problem with the scholastic approach to theology was that it was completely rational. Based on revelation, one would reason to deeper levels of understanding. Palamas argued that, while rational understanding had a place, knowledge of God came only through direct "noetic" (often translated "intellect") contact with God through inner silence.
In a certain sense, these navel gazers (as they were derisively called by the West)were much like the fellows who tore the roof off to directly contact Jesus. Everyone else stood around respectfully, happy to learn (or at least hear) all that Jesus had to say. They were going to think about it, and perhaps extrapolate from what Jesus said something additionally profound. But these crazy guys who tear off roofs, what can you say about them. They went higher, deeper and quieter than everyone else. They tore apart the roof (which might be likened to the rational structures which may be useful in some contexts [keeping out rain] but merely hindrances in others [touching Jesus]), they went where no one else was willing to go. And they touched Jesus--or rather were touched by him.
The scholastic theologians said (say) it is impossible to really touch God. They say that the light that some hesychasts (the respectful name for those who pursue God in stillness) saw was not really the Light of God that shined from Jesus on Mt. Tabor, but just some natural experience. The Scholastics say this because for them it is rationally impossible for the creature to actually and directly know, experience, see, etc. the Creator. I guess like the crowd around Jesus, they are pretty sure they have it all figured out--except one thing: that paralyzed inner man is not helped by rational understanding. But a couple of old men and women who pray in stillness are showing signs of the life of Christ on earth.
A roof (like reason) is good, but when it keeps me from my Lord, it's time to remodel.

Jim Forrest was with us this week. He is a man who makes you really want to be a Christian. I am not much of a pacifist. In fact, I have a default "John Wayne" attitude toward violence: It's regrettable, but inevitable in a fallen world. (Jim gave me this "John Wayne" idea.) I've generally thought that there were worse things that could happen to someone than to kill or be killed (such as live in fear). However, in recent years, my default "Johnwaynitude" has been challenged. It has not been challenged by exposure to the tragedy of war--I already agreed that violence is tragic. My assumptions have been challenged first by Fr. Gregory, an Orthodox hermit who lives in the mountains above the Sunshine Coast of BC, eats on a few veggies and grains each day and spends all of his time praying and very little sleeping.
Once I spent a few days with Fr. Gregory. On my last day with him, we took a long walk. On that walk one of the things he told me was the necessity that a Christian be aggressively loving enemies, not doing anything to hurt another human being (very terse paraphrase). When we got back to the cabin, I asked him if he would still love me and let me visit him if couldn't yet accept his words about aggressively loving enemies. He smiled at me and gave me a big hug. He said, "Just think about the words, eventually they will drive you crazy." That was two years ago, and I can now attest to serious cracks in the foundation of my sanity.
Jim Forrest stuck a iron poker in some of those cracks and gave a good pull. Part of what it means for me to be a Christian is to realize that not to love is always not sane. Yet I don't love, and I live in a world of non-lovers.
I remember the words of the Psalmist, "Neither do I concern myself with great matters, Nor with things too profound for me." I think there is a sane Rock--the Rock--on which to stand, but my theories that try to make sense out of a crazy world, a world that says it's okay not to love; I think those theories need to crumble and fall away. I can let go of my insanity that tried to make sense of an insane world. It feels quite naked not having answers (fig leaves and goat skins are better than nothing--or are they?). Maybe it is good not to know, but do my best where I am to love. I think I'll try that for a while. May God help me.

Ever Virgin Mary

I’m often asked by Protestants if the phrase “ever virgin Mary” means that the Church teaches that Mary the Theotokos never had sex. If I am tired or grumpy, I just answer “yes” and prepare myself to respond to the predictable objections with off-the-shelf answers. And in most cases, this is all the inquirer wants. However, sometimes, I answer by saying “no.” Then I say that it means the Mary’s heart and mind were always pure, that she was always full of the Light, Life and Grace of God. Oh yes, and by the way, that also had a biological component: she never had sexual intercourse, but that is not what “ever virgin” means.

Passions as disease

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the passions and how they afflict us like a disease. Even when you fight against the passions, I find that I am often tricked by them. Really the only hope I have found is to call out to God (using the Jesus Prayer) when I am strongly feeling a passion. However, if someone doesn’t strongly fight the passions, then they take over his life. Some people fight bodily passions with spiritual passions, thus corrupting the heart to discipline the body. For example, someone may control his appetite out of vanity: he wants to look good more than he wants to eat. That’s the tricky part of fighting passions. It is so easy to let self esteem, pride in one’s self, to be the power that overcomes strong desires (this is often the way the world teaches people to overcome bodily passions). But in the end, pride kills love and cuts one off from God. It ends in either delusion (because one thinks he is better than he is) or in despair (because one thinks that he is worse than he “should” be–he keeps saying to himself, “I should be better than this”).

However, just like a sick man (say he is allergic to peanut butter), there are only two things he can do because he cannot help getting sick. First, he has to go to the Physician (God) to be treated and second, he has to avoid the things (peanut butter) that make him sick. It does no good to say, “I shouldn’t get sick from peanut butter.” The fact is that you do. So if someone, like an alcoholic, gets sick (can’t control himself) from drinking beer (etc.) then he has to stop drinking beer all together. In my life I have found that there are several things that I enjoy, but I just can’t do because often (not always, and so there is where a temptation lies) it results in stirring up my passions. There is no pride or self glorification in this. I am not good because I don’t do certain things. In fact, it is because I am sick that I don’t do certain things. Someone else may be able to do certain things, see certain things, participate in certain activities and not experience the arousal of passions. I rejoice that they are free. I, on the other hand, am quite sickly (spiritually speaking), so I have to be very careful–like a diabetic who continually worries about what he does or doesn’t eat, I have to continually watch out for what I let myself do, think or say; otherwise, I’ll get spiritually sick.