The Publican and the Pharisee, and the Struggle for Humility

 

The Publican and the Pharisee, 14th c., Serbian (Legacy Icons)

 

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

 

The parable of the Publican and the Pharisee confronts us with a stark contrast between religious pride and self-righteousness, on the one hand; and heartfelt humility and repentance on the other hand. The Pharisee, of course, is the one who manifests the pride, and it is the publican who manifests the humility. The Lord closes this short parable by declaring the Pharisee “condemned” and the publican “justified.” This is a genuine “reversal of fortune” upending our preconceived notions of piety and righteousness, as forcefully as this must have struck those who initially heard the parable as delivered by Christ. Yet, that reversal of fortune should not obscure other notable factors that are also working within this parable.

For Christ is not condemning the actions of the Pharisee. The Lord is not telling us through this parable that the Pharisee – or anyone else, and that includes us – is wasting both time and energy by going up to the temple to pray, by fasting and by tithing. These are not being condemned as empty practices, thus consigning all such practitioners to the barren realm of hypocrisy and religious formalism. We, as contemporary Christians, are encouraged to enter the church with regularity and offer our prayer to God; to practice the self-restraint and discipline of fasting; and to share our financial resources with the generosity implied by the biblical tithe. We could add other practices to that. In fact, we would do well to imitate the outward actions of the Pharisee in practicing our Faith! 

Yet, on a deeper and far more significant level, the Pharisee got it all wrong. He was consumed by a self-satisfied and self-righteous interior attitude that left no room for God to transform him by divine grace. The Pharisee’s prayer was seemingly directed to God, but in reality it was an exercise in self-congratulations (for not being like other sinful men). Here was a man who did not suffer over low self-esteem! The Pharisee was self-centered, but not God-centered. Something went wrong, and the self replaced God as the center of his energy and passion. The exterior forms of piety that he practiced were disconnected from the interior realm of the heart, where God is meant to dwell and, again, transform the human person from within, so that each person becomes less self-centered and more God-centered with time and patience.

Based on our knowledge of the role of the publican in first century Israel, we can be assured that Christ was not “justifying” the particular “life-style” that made the publicans such notorious and despised figures of that world. In fact, they were always included with “harlots” when reference was being made to the marginalized, if not ostracized, members of first-century Judaism. Rather, the publican was declared “justified” for the very fact that he recognized and was profoundly struck by just how sinful he had become in cheating and defrauding his neighbor as a hated tax-collector working for the occupying Roman authority. He had the experience of true contrition of heart; he realized that he stood self-condemned before the Lord; yet he did not despair but cried out plaintively: “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” Human persons are not saved as sinners, but as sinners who in humility repent before God and then offer the fruits of repentance.

The hymnography for the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee exhorts us to flee from pride and to embrace humility. We live in a culture obsessed with the self and thus not only susceptible, but openly promoting, both pride and vainglory. “In your face” is widely seen as a “heroic” gesture of self-defiance and legitimate self-promotion. Humility is treated as weakness and ineffectual for “getting ahead” or for fulfilling one’s desires. We hear the voice of the Lord and we hear the voice of the world. It is our choice as to which voice we will listen to. And that choice will be determined to a great extent by just what the desires that move us to action are actually for. “For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”

A Zacchaeus Moment - Is there a sycamore tree to climb?

Dear Fathers, Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." (LK. 19:10)

 

 

At the Reader Service yesterday, we heard the story of the "towering figure" of Zacchaeus the publican (LK. 19:1-10).

This is one of the many wonderful paradoxes of the spiritual life that characterize the Holy Scriptures. The paradox is found in the fact that the "towering figure" of Zacchaeus was actually "small of stature." (v. 3) And if indeed he had defrauded his neighbors as he alluded to (v. 8), then he was "small" in even more essential matters. 

Through repentance, conversion, and right action Zacchaeus grew in stature right before the eyes of those who with faith could "see" this transformation. Zacchaeus personifies the type of change that is possible through hearing the Good News and embracing it in thought, word and deed. 

This passage, unique to the Gospel According to St. Luke, is thus perfectly placed as the first announcement of the approach of Great Lent. For in the Orthodox Church, this is always the prescribed Gospel reading for the fifth Sunday before the start of Great Lent. The four pre-lenten Gospel readings to follow will then guide us to Monday, March 7, the first day of the lenten journey that will lead us to Holy Week and then Pascha on April 24. (The Western Easter this year will fall on April 17).

Returning to the Gospel passage, we find the story of Zacchaeus evenly divided into two parts - an outdoor scene (v. 1-5) and an indoor scene (v. 6-10). Outdoors, and in full view of the gathered inhabitants of ancient Jericho, the despised "chief tax collector," the rich Zacchaeus, risks the humiliation of being laughed at because he makes the socially unconventional choice of climbing up into a "sycamore tree" in order "see who Jesus was." 

What may have been acceptable behavior among children, would only have drawn the surprised and scornful stares of Zacchaeus' over-taxed neighbors. I always remember that in a meditation on Zacchaeus, the late Metropolitan Anthony Bloom wrote that the equivalent act today would be that of a renowned corporate executive scrambling up a light pole in a downtown area in order to see someone passing by. (For those with a "boss" that you may not be too fond of, perhaps there may be minor consolation in fantasizing such a scenario and its reaction in your own mind).

There then occurs that life-changing encounter between Zacchaeus and Jesus. For Jesus looks up at the strange figure of this man "small of stature" eagerly looking down upon Him, and says to him in response: "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today." (v. 5)

The transition to the indoor setting is now made when Zacchaeus "made haste and came down, and received him joyfully." (v. 6) Yet one can sense the oriental custom of a crowd hovering at the entrance or even coming and going with a certain freedom. The raised eyebrows and clucking tongues of an undescribed "they" who look on and articulate their stern disapproval - "He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner" (v. 7) - is a reaction encountered elsewhere in the Gospels when Jesus freely chose to sit at table with sinners and tax collectors (cf. MK. 3:15-17). 

This disapprobation on the part of the scribes and Pharisees then evoked his memorable (and ironic?) saying: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (MK. 3:17) 

The Messiah is not bound by religiously sanctioned social convention that divides people into the convenient categories of the "righteous" and "sinners," "saved" and "lost," the "pure" and "impure." Or rather, by making clear that He has come to bring salvation to everyone, beginning with the marginalized and distressed members of His own society, Jesus reveals the inclusive love of God that tears down all such former barriers. Zacchaeus is a striking and personalized example of this inclusive love of God for "the lost."

Never a distributor of "cheap grace" though, Jesus demands repentance and conversion. And this comes dramatically from Zacchaeus when he publicly declares: "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold." (v. 8) In this, Zacchaeus goes beyond what the Law required for such an act of restitution. (EX. 21:37; NM. 5:5-7) 

The Lord then signifies or "seals" the truth of this conversion when He solemnly pronounces the joyful declaration: "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." (v. 9-10)

It is interesting to note that the blessing of Jesus is given to the entire household. The household of Zacchaeus, in turn, becomes a microcosm of the entire design of salvation: The Son of Man came to seek and save the entire cosmos groaning inwardly and subject to futility as it awaits redemption (cf. ROM. 8:19-23) In this, we and our households resemble that of Zacchaeus, regardless of how "righteous" we may consider ourselves (to be dealt with next Sunday in the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee!).

We can never afford to allow our supposed familiarity with a Gospel passage to blunt its sharp edge. It is that sharp edge that cuts through our many defensive layers of evasions and self-deception. Otherwise, the passage "softens" into a didactic story about a bad man changing his life and becoming "nice." 

However, I believe that no matter how well we know the story about Zacchaeus, the only familiarity that we could claim with him is the familiarity of having an equally profound "Zacchaeus moment" in our own lives.

Such a "moment" would initially be characterized by an equal desire to "see Jesus" - above all else. Than we would need to be willing to overcome our own "smallness of stature" by perhaps first overcoming the tyranny of social convention and respectability before we get to our actual sinfulness. This may mean going beyond our own conventional patterns of church going and the "safety" of keeping the demanding call of Christ at a safe distance so that it cannot overly impinge upon our lives.

There may yet be a sycamore tree that we need to climb.

Learning from the Three Holy Hierarchs

Dear Parish Faithful,

"The human person is an animal with the command to become like God."  

- St. Basil the Great

As stated in the Monday Morning Meditation, this last Sunday, January 30, we commemorated The Three Hierarchs - Sts. Basil the Great (+379), Gregory of Nazianzus (+390), and John Chrysostom (+407). Outside of the Scriptures, these 4th c. theologians/pastors are three of the great Founding Fathers of our Orthodox Christian theological legacy. They truly shaped it in a way that remains normative to this day. The link immediately below is to a short summary of how this feast developed in the late 11th - early 12th century. 

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2021/01/30/100350-synaxis-of-the-ecumenical-teachers-and-hierarchs-basil-the-great

In addition, I would like to encourage everyone to read one or more of their works. Their style is quite accessible. They are free of all academic jargon for the simple reason that they were not academics holding a chair in this or that university. They were bishops/pastors guiding their respective flocks in the late 4th and early 5th century Christian world. I have therefore put together a series of links to SVS Press and its editions from the Popular Patristic Series of some of the most prominent of the written works of these Fathers. (And they are relatively inexpensive). Some are treatises, others are collections of their homilies that spanned their lifetimes. All of it is very good.

As we are getting close to the pre-lenten season, perhaps here is a good book or two for Great Lent. As we put aside our iPhones and TV sets during Great Lent to some extent, at least, here is a good way to "redeem the time" in reading solid Orthodox literature.  

If anyone is actually interested, and would like a recommendation or guide in choosing one or more of these titles, please contact me.

St. Basil the Great - 

On Social Justice - Social justice with a clear and definite Gospel foundation.

On the Human Condition - Great essays on what it means to be human from a theological perspective.

On Fasting and Feasts - Wonderful homilies on a variety of themes that still engage us within the Church today.

On The Holy Spirit - An absolute classic that ranks with On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius. Biblical interpretation (exegesis) at its dazzling best.

On Christian Ethics - A great antidote to humanistic, autonomous ethics.

On Christian Doctrine and Practice - A series of treatises covering a wide-range of theological and practical concerns.

St. Gregory the Theologian

On God and Christ, The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius - Again, absolute classics that defend and describe the Holy Trinity. Unmatched.

On God and Man: The Theological Poetry of St. Gregory of Nazianzus - Poetic theology that is free of sentimentalism.

Festal Orations - Another great collection of homilies from one of the greatest Christian rhetoricians off all time.

St. John Chrysostom 

On Wealth and Poverty (2nd Ed.) - A "must-read" collection of six homilies on the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. Opens the mind and heart to Christian charity.

The Cult of the Saints - Great homilies on a theme that still perplexes some Christians.

On Marriage and Family Life - Although written in the 4th c., this still contains some real gems of insight to married Christians raising families.

- Fr. Steven

Meeting the Lord in the Temple

 

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

This wonderful Feast of The Meeting of our Our Lord in the Temple (February 2) commemorates the event recorded in the Gospel According to St. Luke (2:22-40). This occurs forty days after the Nativity of Christ. Hence, this particular Feast brings to a close an entire cycle that began eighty days earlier with the onset of the Nativity Fast on November 15. The Circumcision of Christ that occurred eight days after His birth falls between the Feasts of the Nativity and the Meeting. 

One of the hymns for the Meeting nicely brings out this sequence of events, placing them in the context of fulfilling the Scriptures:

 

Search the Scriptures, as Christ our God said in the Gospels. For in them we find Him born as a child and bound in swaddling clothes, laid in a manger and fed upon milk, receiving circumcision and carried by Simeon: not in fancy nor in imagination but in very truth has He appeared unto the world. To Him let us cry aloud: Glory to Thee, O pre-eternal God.(Great Vespers, Litiya)

 

It is interesting to note how this hymn stresses the true humanity of the Lord by such expressions as "not in fancy nor in imagination but in very truth." Our Lord did not seem to be human, but He was truly human, otherwise He could not have saved us. For, as St. Gregory the Theologian famously said: "What is not assumed is not healed."

Christ is brought to the Temple in Jerusalem by His mother and Joseph in fulfillment of the Law (LEV. 12). Unable to afford an unblemished lamb, they offer a pair of turtledoves. Yet, the Mother of God is carrying the unblemished Lamb of God in her arms and then offers Him to the righteous Simeon. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, St. Simeon prophecies to the Virgin Mary: "and a sword will pierce through your own soul also" (LK 2:35). This has always been understood as pointing to the maternal suffering of the Mother of God who will behold her Son dying on the Cross.

In a wonderful homily, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov (+1944), revealed the humility of the Lord as the beginning of the path that would lead to His ultimate sacrifice:

 

The Infant was born on earth - the eternal God in a humble manger, but there was a place for Him in the Temple, for the Temple was built for Him. And He was brought into His Temple, where it pleased His Name to dwell (I Kings 8:29). But He came there not to receive veneration, but to serve many, in the form of a servant, veiling the radiance of His Divinity with the abject humility of the flesh. 

He came there as a son under the law, obedient to the law which He Himself had given to Moses, manifesting Himself as the model of obedience; for He came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. His Mother came to dedicate Her firstborn Son to God, to give God the Son to God the Father, and to offer the redemptive and purifying sacrifice. In giving birth to the Infant, She did not know sin; but just as He, sinless, came to receive from John the baptism of repentance, so She too, in Her immaculate birth, came to offer a sacrifice for sin, having in Her arms the One who truly was the Sacrifice for the sins of the entire world... 

It is not for glory but for the offering of sacrifice that the Lord is brought into His house, which had to receive and encompass the One who cannot be encompassed. (Churchly Joy, p. 59-60)

 

If we search carefully, we discover that all of the Feasts commemorating the events in the early life of the Lord also point forward to the sacrifice of the Cross and the life-giving death of Christ. Bound in swaddling cloths and lying in a cave at His Nativity anticipates His later entombment when bound in burial cloths. The blood shed at His circumcision anticipates His blood shed upon the Cross. And being offered as a lamb in the Temple anticipates His sacrificial death as the Lamb of God.

In a very wide context, we realize that the Old Testament "meets" the New Testament when the Messiah is brought to the Temple, the dwelling-place of God. Jesus Christ is now the place of the divine presence, for His flesh is the "temple" of His divinity. The representatives of the Chosen People for this meeting are the righteous elder Simeon and the prophetess Anna. The elder Simeon received Christ into his arms and blessed God in the process. The Old Testament (Symeon) meets the New Testament (Christ). We are all quite familiar with the magnificent hymn of St. Simeon, known as the Nunc Dimittis,chanted at every Vespers service:

 

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.(LK 2:32)

 

If we, too, could depart from this life with those words on our lips and in our hearts, that departure would be glorious!

Sadly, the prophetess Anna would probably be seen as a "fanatic" today because "She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day" (2:37) for the greater part of eighty-four years! Both Simeon and Anna realized that this meeting was of the deepest significance possible, for the young Child promised to be "the redemption of Jerusalem" (2:38). For this reason, the prophtess Anna "gave thanks to God" (2:38).

I regret that we missed the Liturgy this year, but considering the depth of the great Feasts of the Church's liturgical cycle, expressed in a kind of theological poetry that amplifies what is found in Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church; and revealed in beautiful iconography, there is much to consider, reflect and meditate on.

 

The Remarkable Mothers of the Three Holy Hierarchs

 

 Dear Parish Faithful,

Yesterday, January 30, we commemorated the Three Hierarchs and Universal Teachers: St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St; John Chrysostom. They were the focus of the homily, and of my Monday Morning Meditation posted earlier today.

However, a good part of the homily was focused on three female saints whose lives are intimately connected to that of the three holy bishops - their mothers: St. Aemelia (St. Basil); St. Nonna (St. Gregory); St. Anthousa (St. John). 

These are three remarkable women who profoundly shaped the lives of their illustrious sons. They are all saints with their own days of commemoration. I am providing a link to a wonderful webpage presentation of the three mothers. This parish is in Australia. I would urge you to read about these women and view the many remarkable icons of them and their sons. You will notice further links embedded there that will take you to a Life of each woman.

https://www.stparaskevi.org.au/saint-anthousa-mother-of-saint-john-chrysostom/