20090308 Encounters with Christ
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In this podcast, I describe encounters with Christ, ranging from Nathaniel, to Volodymyr, to Woonsocket, to three young Muslims who visited St. Michael's this past Sunday.
20090301 Forgiveness, Stewardship and Mother Earth
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Part I: A world made in Love rewards forgiveness with happiness (now and forever).
Part II: Kyivan notions of stewardship were informed by its agrarian paganism; what is ours informed by?
Part I:
Living according to the Law of Love
Romans 13:11-14:1
St. Matthew 6: 14-21
People still mystify me. If you ask them what it is that they truly desire, most will tell you that they desire happiness. This part makes sense: we were not designed for fulfillment and love, not for misery and hopelessness. We were created for loving fulfillment. The part that mystifies me is that these same people who deeply desire happiness, do nothing to bring it about. Worse yet, they act in ways that virtually guarantee their misery. I can kind of understand it for people who don’t know what it takes to be happy: they might be excused for their failure. Like mice in a maze, hungry for the cheese they smell; they strike out in different directions, but the dead-ends they find leave them only hungry, tired, and frustrated. The world is full of frustrated people.
But we are not like them: as Christians we not only smell the cheese, we know exactly how to get it. God has not hidden happiness in a maze (the world does this): He has made it very clear. As we learned last week, He made this world in love and to run according to this love. We are a part of this creation. To be happy, we need only learn to love; to submit our lives to love; to become love. How hard is that? A world made in love will naturally reward this. It certainly could be much worse.
A Brief Aside: Systems of Lies and Selfishness
[Can you imagine a system that was based on something else? One that rewarded something other than love? I doubt that you have to work hard to imagine such a system: most of you are familiar with communism. Communism created a huge bureaucracy that ran on fear and lies. To get ahead, you had to tell lies and seek alliances with powerful people; people who were powerful in part because of who they knew and in part because lying came so easily to them. Historians describe how Soviet citizens developed a kind of double-mindedness in order to preserve a little bit of sanity and honor. Devotion to love and truth gets you martyred in situations like that. Some of our predecessors here fled their homes at the first opportunity in hopes of finding something better. I pity those that did not make it out. Communism did more than destroy the economies of the former Soviet Union, it created a vast moral wasteland that will take generations to correct. High levels of abortion, alcoholism, adultery & divorce are just part of the communist legacy; the list of symptoms goes on and on.
But communism is not the only system that rewards something other than love. The maze we have built in our own country rewards some some virtues that are derived from love, like hard work and sacrifice; but it also promises to reward false virtues like selfishness, consumerism, and hedonism. Capitalism and democracy are the most efficient ways to organize production and government, but if they are separated from love they will still lead to misery. The same goes for our marriages, our families, and our parish: if they are built on something other than love then they may survive, but they will not bring what we really desire. Staying in unloving relationships adopting the same kind of pathologies and double-mindedness that communist did; and the legacies of living in such systems also take years of constant effort to heal.
We need only look at troubled and broken marriages, workplaces with unhealthy environments, and communities with poisoned cultures to understand the point I am trying to make: institutions that are not based on love do not bring lasting joy. They may bring other things, like the redistribution of wealth [communism], fully stocked grocery stores [capitalism], children [marriages/families], and beautiful churches [communities/parishes], but they cannot bring real happiness.]
The Real World and the Rule of Forgiveness
So while I can understand why some people spend a lot of energy that takes them further and further away from the joy they claim to want, I cannot understand why Christians do this. God is very clear and very specific about what we need to do if we want to be happy. He tells us how to bring joy to ourselves, our families, and our communities: we must live a life of love. Last week He told us about charity and how we must care for those in need. This week He gives us detailed instructions about three more things: forgiveness, fasting, and investing. As today is Forgiveness Sunday, let me focus on it.
Happiness requires that we forgive people. Salvation requires that we forgive people. You cannot live a life in love if you do not forgive. So why aren’t we doing it? This is what I meant when I began my homily by saying that people mystify me; I do not understand the disconnect. Let me make the puzzle clear: We want to be happy. Happiness requires love. Love requires forgiveness. But we refuse to forgive. As a result we cannot love and you cannot be happy.
As a teacher, I have wracked my brain trying to understand which part we do not understand, but I can’t. I daresay that we understand the logic, but that it has not sunk in; love remains something that we choose to do rather than who we are. But as long as that is the case, as long as love remains one of several reasonable responses then happiness will be similarly fickle. If we can honestly chose to love one person but not another; or if we can honestly chose to forgive one person and not another; then we remain part-time Christians. If we can do this, then love for us is like an accessory. But like the baptismal Cross we wear about our necks, love has not been given to us as an accessory, worn only when it matches the clothes we are wearing. It was given to us in order to become the center and basis of our lives, just as it is of the God in whose image we are made. If we do not learn to do this, then we will not be happy. Not now, not ever, and not “forever and ever”.
We must learn to forgive. If we do not, then we must admit that we do not really care about happiness; [we must admit] that we are selfish and vain; and [we must admit] that we prefer gnawing on poison misery than the Body and Blood of Christ. I am not saying that it is easy. People have hurt us. Some of this pain may even have been intentionally inflicted. Overcoming this will require effort. But we have to start now. Hate does not become us; spite deforms us and makes us ugly. Moreover, its poison threatens the health of our relations and this community. We must let go of it and forgive. We must let go of it and love. Unlike spite, love will heal and beautify us.
God knows this is difficult, and as Our Great Teacher, He has given assignments that will help us gain mastery. One of these is our daily prayer rule. Repeated often enough, the prayers in our Prayer Book will teach us how to forgive. For instance, we cannot say; “Lord, save and have mercy on those who hate me and deal wrongly with me by doing me harm and do not permit them to come to condemnation because of me, as sinner” on a regular basis without it changing and healing our hearts. That is why Orthodox Christians are supposed to say it and similar prayers every morning. Today, we will complete another assignment our Great Teacher has given us: after Liturgy we will perform the Rite of Mutual Forgiveness. Each of you will forgive and ask forgiveness of everyone else. This is not empty ritual: it is one of the many things that we do to become happy.
After all, we want to be happy don't we?
Part II: Stewardship, Mother Earth, and the Invisible Hand
It’s been a real blessing to teach a course at seminary this semester. It’s not just that I love teaching no matter what the context (I do); it is just much more satisfying to work with people who share the same assumptions and goals I do, and to do so in a forum where we can actually talk about these and work out their implications. FWIW, I am pretty sure that my students at the Naval War College (where I just finished teaching) shared many of the same assumptions and goals as I, but the secular setting demanded that these be left untouched. This was completely appropriate and enjoyable in its own way, but it really is nice to be able to talk about the most important things (both eternal and local) with beautiful people, and to do so with undisguised love and delight. This is one of the many reasons I love our seminary of St. Sophia’s.
Earth, the mother of Rus’
One of the topics of study this past week was to explore paganism in pre-Christian Rus’ and how it informed (and perhaps continues to inform) Kyivan Spirituality. The data are pretty spotty, so we risk learning more about the historians themselves than about the people of pagan Rus’ (always a risk when good data are rare; in the IC I often learned a lot more about other analysts than I did about Islamist insurgency), but reliable historians (e.g. Fedotov) suggest that Rusyn paganism was heavily informed by her agrarianism. Mother Earth was less a deity than an integrated part of the pattern of life. While the Rusyn pagans had other “deities” such as Perun, Mokosh, Stribog, Dajbog, rusalki, and domovoi, there was less an established pantheon than local expressions of a grounded and local pantheism. Water and forest spirits were important, but the over-riding strength of nature was in the earth and her soil. Spirituality was not directed to gods above, but toward the ground that sustains and enfolds. This was the loam that accepted the seed of Christ, and you have to know that it earthiness affected the nature of the harvest.
We have to remember that Christianity takes on local expressions as it baptizes local cultures: it is imperial only in the sense that it draws out the best of what went before and fills in the empty spots, and draws it all toward the light. Kyivan Spirituality thus took on a special folk/earthy character (more so as you moved down the social ladder and away from the direct influences of Greece and the Northlands). I think we can assume that the Christians of Kyiv had a natural appreciation for God’s creation and man’s place in it. The stewardship they felt toward the earth was that of the husbandman and nurturer. Natural affinity for the soil was less a vestigial remnant of paganism than a stunted remnant of life before the fall; restored, ennobled, and sanctified by Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. Kyivan Rus’ had its own temptations to deal with, but at least in this the Church had something it could work from.
The Invisible Hand that Guides Us
What about us here in America? What is the culture that Christ is baptizing here? In particular, what kind of ingrained attitude towards the earth do we give the Church to work with? How do approach stewardship? I’m afraid that the answer is not so flattering. There are many parts of our culture that are easily baptized (we are a post-Christian nation, after all!), but this is one that needs some serious work. Even the best among us think of stewardship in terms of “sustainability” and “do no harm”; the rest of us approach it as a manager does his factory and workers, a master - his plantation, or (the most popular approach) a consumer - his grocery store. Some visionaries (e.g. PETA) recognize how unhealthy this is for us and our world, but without the Church/Truth to guide them, their sentimental relativism makes them less true prophets than dangerous activists of absurdity.
Thank God, the solution to this problem does not need to be created from scratch. Many of us have spent less than a generation or two isolated from the earth. Our culture retains hints of traditional agrarian values that can be drawn out and augmented with those which many of our newer immigrants have brought. We may not remember how to plow a field, but most remember how to till a garden. We can also educate ourselves. Reading Christian authors such as Vigen Guroian, Wendell Berry, and Rod Dreher (and meditating on Genesis and the Psalms) may not turn us into true stewards, but it can at least help us to see and feel how much we have lost. Perhaps then we can begin the difficult transformation from consumers to husbandmen.
Things I’m working on
In addition to reading Guroian, Berry, and Dreher, I have been trying to nudge my habits in a healthier direction. I’m new at this, so suggestions are welcome:
Gravity and the Consequences of Poor Decisions
The better we understand the world, the more effectively we function in it. Part of the duty of parents and teachers and of the broader community that supports them is to help children and youth learn about how things work so that they grow up to become productive and healthy members of the community. If we neglect this duty, they will learn many more lessons than needed “the hard way” and will suffer as a result. We do not want to see our children suffer, so we teach them as best we can. God is our Loving Father, and He desires the same for us: that we grow in understanding so that we can become productive and healthy members of the Community of Love that is in Him.
One of the most fundamental things that must be learned, both by children if they are to grow into good men and women and by all of us if we are to grow into saints, is that ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. More specifically, we must learn that good decisions have positive consequences, and that bad decisions have negative consequences. With children, we set up a series of punishments and rewards to teach them this fundamental truth. These systems are largely artificial: there is no eternal connection between going to the potty and eating candy; or of finishing homework and playing video games; or of throwing a fit and loosing access to entertainment. As adults, we set up these artificial systems to prepare children for the “real world” where the consequences of poor decisions are more brutal and damaging; and where the unyielding logic of “action and consequence” are often final.
Our family rules may be somewhat arbitrary, but there is nothing arbitrary about the way most of the real world works. And if you do not understand how the world works, you will get hurt and you will end up hurting the people around you, even the people you love. We have to learn how the world works.
Take the example of gravity: it is part of the way the world works. We can say that there are “laws of gravity”, but that is just a figure of speech. There is no Court of Gravity; no lawyer that will plead your case when you violate it; and no judge that will consider the merit of granting you mercy for extenuating circumstances. When we say that there are “laws of gravity” it is just another way of saying that gravity works in such and such a way; that things fall when dropped, that the speed of the drop increases with distance, and so on. Gravity works a certain way. We have to learn it, we have to respect it, and we have to order our lives accordingly if we want to be healthy. Actions have consequences. Making decisions that are in accordance with the “laws of gravity” will have positive consequences; making decisions that ignore the “laws of gravity” will have negative consequences. That is just how the world is. [Note that I say “ignore” rather than “break” the “laws of gravity” because you cannot actually “break” the laws of gravity… they are not that kind of law.]
The study of Physics provides many such obvious examples, but the wise man realizes that there is an order to every aspect of life, and that everyone must learn of and live according to this order if they are to thrive. Actions have consequences; if you don’t submit your plans and decisions to the way the world works, the consequences will be harmful. Let me give some more examples from other scientific disciplines.
In economics, if you produce more of something than people want, or price it too high you will end up with extra product on your hands. If you don’t produce enough or if you price your goods too low, you will run out of product too early. You can call this the “law of supply and demand”, but as with the “law of gravity”, this is just shorthand: there is no economic court. But just as in physics, if you act as if there was no order to economics, then you will hurt yourself and those around you. You cannot pay bills from an empty account. As with gravity, we can pretend economic reality is subjective; but not even the government can sustain such a fantasy for long. All actions have consequences.
In biology, your body is made to function a certain way. If you interfere with these functions, you will suffer. For example, if you consume more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. If you gain too much weight, then systems within your body will begin to break down. Your body requires constant care; if you violate this “law”, you will suffer the consequences.
In sociology, there is a fundamental logic to relationships and the way they work. If you want to sustain a relationship, then you have to understand and act in accordance to this logic. Again, you can study this and develop “laws of marriage” just like scientists have developed the “law of gravity” and the “law of supply and demand”; but all you are really saying is that actions have consequences; and that just as a dropped ball falls, if you engage in things like pornography, gossip, extramarital flirtation, adultery, leaving the seat up, nagging, refusing to communicate, laziness, pre-marital sex, and so on, then your relationship with your spouse will suffer. We can pretend that the “laws of marriage” are subjective; we can pretend as if we can change them or opt out of them; but the underlying reality they describe cannot be changed and the dreadful consequences of such insanity are inevitable. [Of course there are “Marriage Courts”, but while a judge can grant a divorce or recognize a marriage, she cannot undo the years of cumulative damage done by ignorant, mean, or unbalanced people do to themselves and their spouses.]
The Logic of the Spiritual World
The spiritual world is inseparable from the physical world, and it, too, has an underlying logic that cannot be ignored. In the spiritual world, actions have consequences just like they do in the world we see with our eyes. Today, God is trying to teach us, His children, a little bit more about this world and how it works.
Today the Apostle Paul uses the example of violating kosher to teach us that we must always consider how our actions affect those weaker than ourselves; and that if we don’t then we will do damage to them and ourselves. He teaches us that the strong must make allowances for the weak; and that we can often do more good through humble, generous, and loving condescension than we can by an unyielding example or even a gentle word of correction.
Christ Himself uses the Final Judgment to teach about the underlying logic of charity: we learn that just as gravity rewards the dropped ball by pulling it to the earth; God rewards charity and love by pulling charitable and loving people closer to Him. We learn that just as those who deny gravity will be punished with broken bones and the like; those who deny charity will also suffer the very real and inevitable consequences of their willful ignorance.
Love is the most fundamental reality there is. Even the effects of gravity are relative: they diminish as you distance yourself from the Earth; and there are places in this world (such as in space) where dropped objects do not fall. But there is no place that Love does not reach, and there is no way to avoid its logic. You can deny it and pretend it does not exist; you can ignore the beggar; you can refuse to share your life and your goods with others; you can convince yourself that you are good just the way you are. But all these things are foolish because they ignore the logic of love. You can describe this situation in many ways. You can say hatred, selfishness, and apathy violate the “Laws of God”; you can call God the Judge that enforces His Laws; You can say that He punishes those who refuse to love others; you can even step away from theology and use labels like “immoral”, “sinful”, or mean” to describe such hard-heartedness; but all these things are just ways of saying the same thing:
Actions have consequences.
Brothers and sisters: live your life in love. Give generously to the poor. Sacrifice yourself and your pride for the person beside you. God built the world around Love. Live according to this Love, and the consequential blessings will be both real and eternal.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
PS It is true that we get no lawyers when we break the laws of gravity, economics, biology, & sociology, but we do get one when we break the Law of Love: Christ-God Himself (e.g. 1 John 2:1)!
PPS Approaching the question of judgment in this way shows just how shallow attacks on the morality of it are: First, would we prefer a world based on something other than charity and love (e.g. “tooth and claw”)? Second, (and forgive my simplicity) God has given us an automatic “get out of jail free” card in the form of His Son, if we just submit to Him and the power of His sacrificial love. Third, those who live outside of Love and reject Christ’s offer to represent them get an eternity of exactly what they wanted - a life apart from the Love they did not want. The last may sound harsh, but what could be more moral?!
Scientific Support for Humility:
in this parable, God describes how humility is blessed and how pride is not.
Before I was a priest, I was a social scientist. I love comparisons. Scientists use comparisons to isolate the effects of the variables they are interested in. For example, if you want to know what the effect of sleep deprivation is on intellectual performance, you have two groups of similar subjects take the very same exam; but you let one group get a good night’s sleep the night before, while forcing the other to stay up most of the night. Then you compare how well they did on the exam. Because nothing else was allowed to vary, the difference in performance is ascribed to sleep [FWIW, this kind of study has conclusively shown that sleep improves performance on tests, and that a lack of sleep leads to lower grades. This despite a college culture that encourages cramming!].
The kind of work that I did as a social scientist and intelligence analyst was a bit messier because I could not run controlled experiments to isolate the effects of each variable. For example, if I wanted to understand the effect of theology on the Taliban insurgency, I could not run i he insurgency twice; once with radical Islam and the next without. Rather, I would have to compare radical Islamist insurgencies with ones that used other religions and ideologies; trying to find the kinds of cases that allowed me to draw out the independent effect of religion. While this kind of work is important, it is messy and full of nuance. And frankly, after a while, the ambiguity gave me a bit of a headache.
Which is why I am so thankful that God gave us such a clear comparison in the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. He tells us of two men, describes what it is that makes them different, and how those differences lead them to different outcomes. Scientifically speaking, there is nothing clearer.
•The Pharisee exalted himself and received no grace (i.e. he was not “justified”)
•The Publican humbled himself and received grace (i.e. he was “justified” and “exalted”)
The Lord is teaching us in no uncertain terms that if we want to receive grace (if we want to be exalted), then we must humble ourselves and repent. (“God be merciful to me a sinner”). The publican in this parable is like Zacchaeus in last week’s Gospel, and like Matthew before him: they lived sinful lives but repented of these sins. The Pharisee judges and mocks the publican and his encounter with Our Lord, just as the onlookers mocked Zaccheaus and Matthew in their encounters with Christ. The Pharisee thought that his deeds; his righteous fasting, tithing, and obedience to the Law; would raise Him up to the presence of God. It did not: it only increased the gulf between them [i.e. him and God]. He thought that the publican’s sin would completely remove the publican from holiness; and he was right. This is what sin does. But what he was blind to was how the publican’s repentance and humility allowed God to reach down to and into the publican and raise him up to glory (i.e. “exalt” him).
Do you remember the history of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 4-9)? Men thought that their skills would allow them to reach God. This is impossible and spiritually harmful (which is another way of saying; “sinful”). God attempted to teach men humility by confusing their tongues; but the lesson did not stick. Like these men, and like the Pharisee in the parable, we still act as if we were “good enough” on our own. That we have plenty to be proud of, that we have no real sins to hold us back, that humility and repentance are for real sins; sins like “extortion”, “adultery”, murder, and the like. If we continue acting this way after hearing this Gospel, then we do so only out of hard-headedness and pride; because God couldn’t be clearer. [FWIW, the architecture of our churches reinforce this lesson: we do not build towers in an attempt to reach God; we build domes that describe how God reaches down to us, and make them beautiful to show how this unites us with heaven].
We must develop habits of humility and repentance. Even though you believe it with all our heart, the logic of the Gospel may not be enough to move you in this direction. All the disciplines of Orthodoxy are designed to make us spiritually less like the Pharisee and more like the Publican, but let me pull out two examples of Orthodox spiritual disciplines that, if followed, will help us become better, more humble, people:
•Prayer. Make the Morning and Evening prayers in your Prayer Book part of your life. The lessons they teach will, over years of repetition, make repentance and humility seem natural. Read or listen to the Prayers before Communion on Sunday morning as you prepare to come to Divine Liturgy. These, too, are excellent teachers. Augment these with the regular recitation of the full version of the publican’s prayer; “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Jesus Prayer). A disciplined Orthodox prayer life will do wonders for your sanity and your spirituality.
•Love one another. God exhibited His great love for us by humbling Himself to our level; by focusing His salvific attention on each and every one of us; and by dying on the Cross to atone for the sins of every single one of us. It is rare that we are given the opportunity to actually suffer and die to save someone; but every day you have the opportunity to what Christ did: love the person standing before you. This requires real humility. This person may not deserve your attention in any objective sense; in fact, he may be petty, or slow of speech, or offensive, or simply irrelevant and incoherent. But love him despite his nonsense the way Christ loves you despite yours. While he is before you, make him the center of your world, the focus of your attention, the object of your love; and his reception of this love the goal of your interaction. This will not only teach you humility, it will make you a powerful instrument for spreading peace and salvation. And you can work on this even while you are along: praying for individual persons is wonderful way to reinforce this habit.
Let me conclude with a paradox: humility will make you more confident. Humility will give you the backbone to be strong. Humility will remove all fear and anxiety from your life. Christ Himself was humble, and He was no pushover. The humble man is able to perform every good deed without hesitation or remorse; to love without fear of pain or reprisal; and to enjoy the constant reassurance of God’s grace.
As St. Paul taught (Philippians 2: 3-11):
Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be [proud of], but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Let us imitate Christ in His humility; let us imitate Christ in His love; so that we too, might follow Him to Glory. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
