Translating the Tradition

Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett
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Sermons and miscellaneous musings from St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Church in Vancouver, BC, Canada - mostly by Fr. Justin Hewlett. translatingthetradition.substack.com

  1. 1D AGO

    Speaking the Truth Well, in Love

    “Little children, love one another.” These were the words of the Apostle John when he was too feeble and old to say anything else to his flock. All he would say to them was, simply: “Little children, love one another.” Last night, as we were listening to the readings at Vespers, we read the epistle readings for the Holy Apostle Simon the Zealot, whose feast day is celebrated today. It was a mistake, apparently — according to the Typikon, this year that feast is transferred to Tuesday, but I’m glad we made that mistake, because the Apostle John and his writings have a deep and abiding place in my heart. In fact, this mission was originally the Orthodox Mission of St. John the Theologian. Bishop Seraphim eventually said, “Oh yes, well, we’ll keep St. John, but we’ll give you St. John of Shanghai instead.” So I was like, “Oh, okay — who’s that?” John, in his epistle that was read last night, says two things that are pivotally important, that are the core of our faith. He says: “God is love.” As C.S. Lewis points out, it doesn’t say that love is God. It says God is love. If there is one word that can sum up who God is for us as human beings, in terms of our ability to know and understand him, that word is love. And then John goes on to say that anyone who claims to love God but does not love his brother is a liar, and the truth is not in him. Because how can you say that you love God whom you have not seen, if you do not love your brother whom you have seen? It’s interesting that these epistles were chosen for Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were — I suppose we would think of them today as a separatist group within the Roman client kingdom and eventually province of Judea. They were committed to winning Israel’s independence by any means necessary. They didn’t much care about methods or what they had to do or undergo. In fact, a splinter group of the Zealots would apparently sneak up behind Roman soldiers or Roman sympathizers and stab them in the back with a dagger. This is the world Simon the Zealot came from — maybe he wasn’t part of that splinter group specifically, but that was his movement. And yet, among the same twelve apostles, you also have Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector — exactly the kind of person that Zealot splinter group would have crept up behind and stabbed. And they’re both there, among Jesus’ disciples. This is what I want to talk about today, because I think it is absolutely pertinent to us — especially as we look at the Gospel reading we just heard — in our current, highly divided political climate. It is very difficult nowadays, it seems, even to talk to one another, let alone to understand one another. So let’s look at the Gospel reading: Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, which is the feast that has actually bumped the Holy Apostle Simon the Zealot to Tuesday. And, as we do so, I want to front-load our reading of it by thinking carefully about who the two people are who are sitting down and talking to one another — or at least, I think Jesus was sitting down; she might have been standing. Usually we think about this story in terms of the Jewish-Samaritan divide. The Jews hated the Samaritans — that comes up in a number of stories and parables. Jews would even go around Samaria to avoid it. Jesus didn’t: he went through Samaria. Because the Samaritans were imposters, they had a false religion, they only recognized the first five books of the Pentateuch, and even then only partially, and from the Jewish perspective they were interlopers who had taken the land. The Babylonians had resettled the populations, these people had been placed there, and they now occupied what was supposed to be the land of the Jewish people — and they weren’t giving it back. So they did not like one another. So that’s usually the starting point. And that’s a fairly good starting point. But of course the person Jesus was talking to was also a woman. In those days there was more of a divide between men and women, with rules and social expectations around who would talk to whom — and who wouldn’t talk to whom. But more than that, as we go on in the story, we realize this is a very deeply troubled woman. She’s had five husbands, and she’s living out of wedlock with a man who is not her husband. She’s also a bit of a liar. She’s a social outcast. She’s a bit of a zealot for her false Samaritan religion. In fact, if there’s anyone the Son of God — the one who insisted on the holiness of his people Israel, who gave the Law and said “You shall not commit adultery,” who hates sin in every form — if there’s anyone whom this man would not want to speak with, it’s probably this Samaritan woman. She’s a sinner, she’s a liar, she’s an adulteress — or at least there’s something wrong there… it’s not actually specified — she’s a social outcast, she’s a Samaritan. There’s no possible hope of any kind of mutual understanding coming out of this. But of course we’re not talking about just anybody sitting down to speak with her. We’re talking about the Son of God. We’re talking about Jesus. We’re talking about the one who is the love of God incarnate. And so Jesus is tired. He’s sitting by the well. His disciples have gone to the village to find food. And this woman of Samaria comes up — and he talks to her. That’s the first thing we have to think about. And I want us to think about it in terms of our own positions. Is there anyone we wouldn’t talk to? Anyone we’d write off as a lost cause? But for Jesus, she’s not a lost cause. He says, “Give me a drink.” He’s actually putting himself in a relatively vulnerable position here, making a request she could simply refuse — which, in a manner of speaking, she kind of does at first. But he opens up the conversation in a way that both of them can understand. They’re at a well; it’s relevant to the situation. And she says, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Since Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) So the first issue he encounters right away is identity. There’s no question about her identity — she’s a Samaritan woman, that’s clear — but this identity is what should keep them absolutely apart. Identity is a fraught issue today. It divides us and makes us not want to engage with certain people. This is not new. And Jesus doesn’t address that question actually. He doesn’t get dragged into establishing the terms of the conversation before it can go anywhere. Instead, he gets right to the heart of the matter: this woman needs healing. Because this is what love does — love cares about the other person, looks for the best in them, wants the best for them. So he immediately addresses the heart of the matter with: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” OK, so, that’s a bit weird, but it’s something that will be at least a little attractive to her. Living water — what’s that? She does get interested in it a bit later, but initially she focuses on the practical: “Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where are you going to get this living water?” And then — I love this — “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?” Our father Jacob. That’s brash. Possibly even arrogant. She’s talking to a Jew — a descendant of Jacob — and and claiming that he’s “our father Jacob and he gave us this well.” Interestingly, this also is nothing new: Isaac dug wells all over the place and people were chasing him away from each of these wells. Wells are important, and the Samaritans have established their claim to this one and she’s going to defend that claim! Here we have politics. Politics threaten now to derail the conversation. Because this is the Jewish homeland, it’s supposed to be part of the land God gave to the Jewish people, and the Samaritans are occupying it. And we’ve seen in modern times what happens when this kind of dispute arises — in Kosovo, or in the Ukraine. What do we do? We fight. “This is our home. This is our homeland. This is my place. This is my heritage.” And Jesus doesn’t go there. He simply continues on with what he began: “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. The water I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” And it works. She drops the political question. All of a sudden she’s genuinely interested: “Oh, wow. This could be convenient. I won’t get thirsty again… I won’t have to come to this well again…” It is, by the way, noon. She’s alone. There’s a reason for this. Women didn’t draw water alone in the heat of the day — you went with the other women in the cool of the morning. But she’s alone, and for a very clear reason, which is what Jesus immediately addresses next. He says, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” And the woman says to him, “I have no husband.” I love Jesus’ response here: “You have well said, ‘I have no husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband — in that you spoke truly.” What does he focus on? He focuses on the one thing she said that was actually true. Maybe a good lesson for us. We want to find all the things a person said that were wrong: “You made this mistake, and that logical fallacy, and this part of your argument doesn’t work…” No! Focus on what they have right. Focus on the truth. That’s the part that will enable you to build a bridge, to begin to create mutual understanding with whoever you’re talking to. And that’s what Jesus

    24 min

  2. MAY 3

    The Healing of the Paralytic

    We were blessed, today, to have Fr. Nathanael, one of the founding members of St. John’s, with us. Here is his homily on the Gospel for today. Our Gospel reading today was a composite one. The first part is the commemoration of the paralytic, where Christ heals a paralyzed man at the pools of Bethesda. Now, like all the Gospel readings, this is a treasure chest full of jewels. All I’m going to do today is take one or two jewels out of that chest — but there’s a lot more there, and you have to go digging for it yourself. This is why I always encourage people to make it a practice through the week leading up to Sunday: take the Gospel that’s going to be read and read it every day, think about it, meditate on it, try to plumb its depths. That way, when you get to the sermon on Sunday, you’ll already have a pretty clear idea of what the priest is going to talk about. But today — this is the Sunday of the Paralytic. This man was at a pool in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and he had been waiting there for 38 years. That’s amazing. 38 years waiting for his healing. Now, is there significance to that number? I don’t know — there probably is, but I haven’t figured it out yet. What I did want to draw attention to is how Scripture builds symbolism into these events. It points out that there were five porticos around this pool. Well, that’s symbolic. What else is five? The five books of the Law — that would be the first thing to come to mind. So these five porticos surrounding the pool symbolically represent the whole Old Covenant, the Law. And within this Law, every now and then an angel would come down, stir up the water, and whoever got in first got healed. Now the Church Fathers — and I’m not making this up — saw this as a picture of grace coming through the Old Testament. But was it enough grace? Was it for everybody, throughout the whole world, for all time? No, it was limited. And Christ’s grace, the grace we have through Jesus Christ, is not limited in that way. That was the whole point — illustrating that the grace of the Old Covenant was lacking. So Christ asks the man, “Would you like to be healed?” Of course he’d like to be healed — he’s been waiting there for 38 years! But Christ asks anyway, because he never does anything to us that we don’t want. He is very polite. He won’t overpower you or override you. He will ask you what you want. The man says yes — well, an implied yes. He doesn’t actually say the word. And how does Christ heal him? Does he call another angel down and get him into the pool? No. He simply says, “Take up your pallet and walk.” Just like that. It’s done. There’s your healing. Another thing we can easily see in the symbolism of this pool is our own baptism. Whoever went into the pool — that was a symbol of baptism. And so those of us who have been baptized in the Church have this healing. That’s what it really is: an inner healing. We are healed of our sins. Those of you who have been recently baptized — rejoice in this. This is what has happened to you. Those of us who were baptized longer ago may have lost some of that joy. So how do we renew it? That’s what confession is for. I want to encourage everyone here: come to confession, come to healing. The priest is not there to judge you, and he’s certainly not going to gossip about what he hears. Come for the healing. And those of you like Anthony who are looking forward to baptism at some point — know that that is what you’re going to receive. It’s a healing moment. It’s where we are healed of our sins and all the vices and the icky stuff within us that, if we look deeply enough, we actually don’t like about ourselves. That’s the start of the healing of all that. So come to confession, be healed, and let the joy of your healing show to the world. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Scripture readings referenced: * John 5:1-15 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    6 min

  3. APR 28

    Myrrh-bearers and the Body of Christ

    It was finished. Or rather, Jesus’ work was finished — but his body was still hanging on the cross. His spirit had gone from it, but his body was still there. The body is something fundamentally important in our tradition. We often think of the Greeks as the ones who celebrated the human body — you see all those beautiful sculptures — and assume the Jews dismissed it. But not at all. The Jews treated the body as sacred, not perhaps as sensually as the Greeks, but as something created by God from the beginning. For God made man from the dust of the earth, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. It was the breath of God, the Spirit, entering into the body that God fashioned with his own hands from the dust of the earth, that makes us who we are: human beings. And there is both a danger and a power about a dead body, a corpse. So much so that even in our society, which tends to downplay the importance of the body — treating it as configurable, something we can put cyber-implants into and alter however we like — we still have this sense of the body as something terrifying, especially a dead one. You can notice this in the very fact that we go out of our way not to encounter dead bodies. We’re very careful when there is one. I happen to know someone who handles these things, and we’re very careful to make sure that as few people as possible see it, that it’s all dealt with nice and neat so nobody actually has to encounter a dead body. But the body is a part of us. That’s why we preserve and venerate and honour the relics of the saints — because it’s all that we have left of them right now in terms of the physical, in terms of their actual presence. And here, the body of Jesus was a lifeless corpse hanging on the cross. It’s at this point that Joseph of Arimathea gathers up his courage and goes to Pilate to ask for the body. This was indeed an act of courage, because this is the body of a condemned criminal — more than that, a potential insurrectionist, someone who was killed for being the King of the Jews. So Joseph of Arimathea gathers his courage, goes to Pilate, and asks for the body. Pilate is surprised to hear that Jesus is already dead, so he checks with a soldier, who confirms it. He grants Joseph the body. Joseph takes it down from the cross and, with the help of Nicodemus, anoints it with myrrh and aloes, wraps it in a shroud, and places it in his own new tomb. At that point, of course, the Jewish authorities are worried that the disciples might come and steal the body, so they go to Pilate, who says, “Take a guard and make it as secure as you like.” They roll a very heavy stone across the entrance, seal it, and place a guard. The next day is the Sabbath, so Jesus rests in the tomb. Nothing happens. Then Sunday morning, the women come — the myrrh-bearing women, whom we are celebrating today, along with Joseph and Nicodemus, though we usually think of the myrrh-bearers primarily in terms of the women. The women are coming to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body. The guards aren’t particularly worried about them: they haven’t seen the modern movies so they don’t actually know the women can can just pull a cool-looking girl boss move and the three of them will take down the two soldiers and steal the body. So the soldiers are not worried about that and, of course, the women are not thinking along those lines either because, you know, bodies matter. They’re probably not trained in any kind of martial arts and so they’re actually just worried about who’s going to roll the stone away from the tomb for them because it’s really large, very heavy. It took a bunch of people to move that stone into place, and it’s going to be even harder to get it out of place and they’re not expecting that the guards are going to be particularly helpful. Then they arrive at the tomb. The guards are gone. The stone is rolled away. And they encounter men dressed in white who tell them: “Why are you looking for Jesus here? He is not dead. He is risen. Go tell his disciples.” And Mark’s Gospel ends with them running away, saying nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. I think we can infer from the fact that they did indeed say something to the apostles — as all the Gospels confirm — that when Mark says they said nothing to anyone, he means they said nothing to anyone they passed on the street. That would have been dangerous. But they did tell the apostles. They were, in fact, the apostles to the apostles — the sent ones to the sent ones, the first witnesses to the good news of the resurrection. So why do we celebrate the myrrh-bearers? Well, for one thing, it took courage — and courage is worth celebrating. But more importantly, what they did was something fundamentally and foundationally good. Not only were they honouring the body of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ: they were taking care of it. Our Lord’s spirit had departed from his body: he had given up his spirit into God’s hands, and so his body was at that moment the most vulnerable it had ever been — it was dead. He could do nothing with it. He was entrusting his body to our care. He had spoken about this before. When the sinful woman came in and wept and washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair and anointed him, and when Mary of Bethany anointed him with fragrant perfume, he said that they had anointed his body for burial — they had prepared it to be buried. These acts were questioned: “Why wasn’t this expensive perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” And he said, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” What Christ is saying is, first, that the body is important — the body is a part of who he is. But more importantly, he is defending worship, because his body is still here. His body is still among us. We are, in fact, a part of his body: the Church. And the same reverence, honour, and respect that we are called to give to the body of Christ — the same care that we would naturally and honourably show to his body if it were lying helpless in our midst right now — is precisely what we should be showing to one another as we gather here as the body of Christ. It takes courage to do this. It takes courage just to gather sometimes, depending on the social conditions. It takes courage to identify with the body of Christ, because we don’t always have a good reputation in the world. And it requires a depth of love and compassion as we encounter one another in our brokenness here as the body of Christ in the Church. We are all broken, even as Christ’s body was broken. We are all in various ways helpless and vulnerable, even as his body was at that point helpless and vulnerable. And what we need from one another — from those who are alive, from those who have strength and agency and resources, even just the ability to do something — is the generosity, the love, the compassion to allow us to deal with that brokenness. To allow us to allow God to deal with that brokenness. Because he will. And he reveals this in how he deals with the body of his own Son, the Logos made flesh. For God himself does not abandon his Holy One to the grave, as Peter says in his first great sermon at Pentecost. Rather, he heals him and raises him up — raises him up in glory, in new life, in a resurrection body that can no longer be killed, because death has been destroyed. And so as we come and worship God, as we come and worship with one another, this time, this energy, this effort that we put in is the reverence we are paying to the body of Christ. It is our act of courage, our act of compassion, our act of love, extended to Christ as we see him in one another. This is the power of God at work in us. This is the love of God at work in us. This is the resurrection life of Christ at work in us, raising us up from our dead isolation, uniting us to one another in love and in glory — to his glory, the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen! Scripture readings referenced: * Mark 15:43-16:8 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    14 min

  4. APR 4

    Joseph and Lazarus and Injustice

    So tonight, as we approach the end of Great Lent and move toward Lazarus Saturday, the story given to us from Genesis to meditate upon is the end of the story of Joseph. It’s an amazing story — it takes up a big chunk of Genesis, actually. And nothing in it is more amazing than this concluding statement which Joseph makes to his brothers as he reveals himself to them and realizes just how scared they are at the moment of the revelation of he is. He says to them: “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. But now do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.” In other words: what you intended for evil, God used for good. If we look at the story of Joseph from this perspective, well, it’s quite a perspective. Joseph was, of course, the son of Rachel, and therefore beloved of his father Jacob. His mother had one more son, Benjamin, and then she died. And out of his love for Rachel, Jacob foolishly showed favoritism towards Joseph — made him the coat of many colors, honored him above all his other brothers. And Joseph, righteous child that he was, suffered because of his father’s foolishness. Joseph is then given by God the gift of dreams, and he tells his father and his brothers that he sees sheaves of wheat representing all of them bowing down before his sheaf, and then the sun and the moon and the stars bowing down before him. His brothers, who are already resentful of their father’s favoritism, are even more angry, more frustrated, more jealous. And Joseph’s youthful zeal for his God-given gift means that this righteous young man suffers. Then Joseph goes out to look for his brothers, sent by his father. His brothers are out working in the fields and they see Joseph coming: “There’s that dreamer — let’s get rid of him once and for all.” In their jealousy they throw him into a pit, initially intending to kill him, with one of them planning to rescue him before it comes to that. Then, in their greed, they sell him to a band of slave traders who take him down to Egypt. And so, out of jealousy, out of greed, the righteous Joseph again suffers wrong at the hands of his brothers. His brothers pour blood on his coat of many colours, take it to their father, and tell him that an animal must have torn Joseph apart. And Jacob is heartbroken, believing the lies his sons have told him. Meanwhile, Joseph is taken down to Egypt and sold as a slave to Potiphar. Because he’s a righteous young man, he works hard and is honest, and Potiphar notices this and raises him up in his household. And he’s just starting to make a go of things as a slave over all the other slaves when Potiphar’s wife takes a liking to him and tries to seduce him. The righteous Joseph says no and flees — but she grabs his cloak and falsely accuses him of having tried to seduce her. And so, because of lust, the righteous Joseph is thrown into prison, again unjustly treated. In prison he continues, being the righteous young man he is, to work hard and be honest, and comes to the notice of those running the prison, and they put him in charge. And he hears the dreams of Pharaoh’s butler and baker, who are both imprisoned because of some misunderstanding. And he interprets the dreams for them: he tells one of them they’re going to die, and the other: “You’re going to be restored — please remember me.” But because of the forgetfulness of the one restored to Pharaoh’s favor, Joseph continues to languish unjustly in prison. I want us to stop there for a moment and think about this. From the perspective of Joseph, who is in the middle of the story and has no idea how it’s going to end, this just isn’t fair. Nothing’s working out right. He’s suffering at the hands of all sorts of people, wrongly and unjustly. He’s being faithful to God, and nothing but bad things seem to be happening to him as a result. Then, of course, Pharaoh has a dream, and the one Joseph told would be delivered suddenly remembers: “Oh yes, there’s a man in prison who knows how to interpret dreams.” He recommends that Pharaoh speak with Joseph. Joseph is cleaned up, brought before Pharaoh, and says, “I can’t tell you the dream — but God can, the God whom I worship and serve (even though he seems to have done nothing for me up to this point). He can interpret the dream for you.” And he tells Pharaoh that the seven blasted ears of corn that eat up the seven good ears mean seven years of famine following seven years of plenty — as do the skeletal cows that devour the fat ones. What Pharaoh should do is collect a portion of the grain during the years of plenty, store it up, and have someone he trusts oversee its distribution. Pharaoh says, “Good idea. You’re my man.” And he raises Joseph up to be second only to Pharaoh in all the land. But Joseph still can’t go home — he’s still, in a sense, trapped. Then his brothers come down to Egypt. They have no idea who this Egyptian is, who understands their speech even though they don’t know it. He questions them, realizes his father is still alive, but can’t quite entrust himself to his brothers who already tried to kill him. So he gives them the grain, sneaks the money back into their sacks, and sends them away saying: “If you want to come back, make sure you bring your youngest brother, who didn’t come with you this time.” His brothers say they’ll try, though they’re not sure their father will let Benjamin go. Eventually they use up everything they bought from Egypt, and, because they’re starving again, they finally convince their father that they’ll have to bring Benjamin. And then — there’s a little more to the story, but the point that we’ve gotten to here is the moment when Joseph sees his brother Benjamin, whom he hasn’t seen in all these years. He can barely contain himself. He goes and weeps in another room, cleans himself up, comes out, and has a feast set before them in order of their ages — which they haven’t told him — so they’re all a little unsettled by what’s going on. And then finally he reveals himself to them. Now, in Joseph — just as we see much later in Lazarus — we have a revelation of all that God is doing in all the things that he does that seem unjust, unfair, wrong. Why should we bother being good? Lazarus’s sisters come to Jesus weeping: “Lord, if only you had been here, he wouldn’t have died. This didn’t need to happen. We know you can heal the sick — why aren’t you doing this for us?” And the answer is that in all these apparent evils — in the favoritism, in the youthful indiscretion, in the jealousy, in the greed, in the lust, in the forgetfulness, even in death itself — God is at work for the righteous, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. And what he works in and through those faithful ones, what he can work in and through us as we are faithful, is a manifestation of his goodness, of his glory, of his power to save us and to save all those around us. And our job, like Joseph’s job, is actually pretty simple: be faithful, be honourable, do not despair or lose heart, do whatever is set before you with all your might. And, as we live in this way that God has set before us, as we live out the calling to be men and women of integrity, of honour, of truthfulness, faithful to God — God is, and always will be, at work in all the things we experience: in all the injustice and all the blessings, in all the misjudgments and all the honour. He is at work for our good as we live out our calling to love him and to be those he has called us to be, according to his good pleasure. Scripture readings referenced: * Genesis 43:26-31, 45:1-16 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    13 min

  5. MAR 30

    Our Desert Struggle

    So we’re getting to the end of Great Lent, and the Church gives us, on this Sunday, St. Mary of Egypt to think about. I won’t go through the whole of the story of St. Mary of Egypt, but just very briefly, St. Mary was very much not a saint at the beginning of her life. But the story actually doesn’t begin with her. It begins with Elder Zosima, who was a very righteous young man. He lived in the monastery for most of his life, had managed to exhaust almost all the spiritual disciplines, and was actually thinking, “Is there anyone who can teach me anything in this world about being a monastic, about working out my salvation in fear and trembling?” And if you know anything about monasticism, he’s in a very dangerous spiritual place at that point. He then decides to leave the monastery where he’s spent most of his life and goes to another monastery in the desert near the Jordan River. The custom in that monastery is to go out into the desert during the time of Great Lent, for each of the monks to just be alone in the desert with God, and then come back together for Pascha. He goes out into the desert really hoping to find someone who can teach him more about being a monk. As he’s out there in the desert, he sees a shape flitting away from him. He calls out to them to stop, and the figure replies that she can’t turn and face him because she’s a woman and naked — but please throw her his cloak. So he does, and she wraps it around herself. He obviously assumes that this is a very holy person, but is a little bit scared when she calls him by name — Zosima — when he hasn’t told her his name. He really wants to learn from her, because he is a humble man genuinely seeking to further his spiritual work on his own salvation. He asks her for her story, and she tells him with some reluctance. At about 12 years of age, she left home — she had been brought up in a good Christian family — and basically lived on the streets of Alexandria doing what a young woman with beauty could do in that situation, and doing it because she liked it. Nowadays we would probably label her a nymphomaniac. This went on for 17 years. Then on a lark, she decides to go to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Holy Cross, because everybody else is going and she can get free passage with the sailors. She continues in her horrible, self-destructive lifestyle the whole time. Then, of course, it’s the feast, and she goes to enter the church to venerate the Holy Cross — and she can’t get in. She’s thinking, what’s going on here? There’s a big crowd, and it’s not a polite Canadian crowd, so maybe she just small so she can’t get through. She tries again and again, and then she finally realizes: no, she can’t get in because God himself is keeping her out. That is a devastating moment for her. She’s out there in the narthex, and she looks up and sees an icon of the Mother of God. She contrasts her sinfulness with Mary’s holiness, but calls out to her in fear and desperation, asking her to pray for her, to help her, saying that she’ll do whatever it takes. And so she’s then able to just step right into the church. She goes up and venerates the Holy Cross, and as she comes out she hears a voice saying, “In the desert you will find perfect rest.” So she goes out into the desert and spends the rest of her life there, alone, praying to God, eating whatever comes to hand. It’s in this situation that Elder Zosima encounters her. She’s so holy that not only does she know his name, but when he asks her to pray, she says, “Okay, I’ll pray.” He can’t quite make out all the words, and when he looks up, she’s about a cubit off the ground, praying. At which point he freaks out, and she says, “No, no, I’m flesh and blood like you,” and then continues praying. Her one wish was that Elder Zosima should come back to her the next year with the Eucharist — that’s the one thing she had missed in the desert. Well, not quite. She also tells him something else, which I’ll come back to in a moment. So he does. The following year they meet at the Jordan River. He has the Eucharist for her, as well as a little bit of food, and he’s there at the river wondering what’s going to happen, since she doesn’t have a boat and there’s a fair bit of water. Mary shows up, makes the sign of the cross, and walks across the water like it’s dry land. He’s about to fall down before her, and she says, “No, what are you doing? You’re a priest with the Holy Gifts. You can’t bow in this situation — you have the Body and Blood of Christ there.” So he communes her. He’s eager to see her again, and she says, “Come next year to where you first met me.” When he does, the following Lent, he comes to where he first met her. There she is, dead on the ground, with her name written by her head: Mary. She’s passed away, and he realizes from the writing that God has transported her from where he gave her communion to this place — a 20-day journey — in an instant. He buries her with the help of a lion and then tells the other monks the story. The story is given to us at this point in Great Lent — usually with the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, but also on this Sunday — for us to think about as we work on our own salvation in the depths of Great Lent. At this point in Lent, we’re in one of two possible spots. We might be — and this is probably the less likely — in the spot of Elder Zosima: it’s been a great Lent, I’ve actually managed to keep the fast, I’ve been doing pretty well! This is actually a bit of a dangerous spiritual place to be in, but it’s also a fairly natural one. We do this all the time. We saw it, actually, in both of the Gospel readings we just heard. Jesus is telling his disciples how he’s going to go down to Jerusalem and be crucified — and what are they doing? They’re oblivious. They say, “Lord, when you come into your kingdom, I want to be on your right hand, and this guy wants to be on your left.” And Jesus is like, “You just don’t get it.” He explains to them what being in his kingdom really means. Or the Pharisee who invites Jesus to supper with him — he’s thinking, “I’m a fairly important man, I’ve got this great teacher here, everything’s going great.” And then the sinful woman comes in: “Her? What’s she doing here? She’s making a scene!” We kind of laugh at the Pharisee and the disciples, but that’s us. Very often we’re just oblivious to the fact that we’re not really working out our salvation in fear and trembling, we’re not really making any kind of spiritual progress, and we’re not as good as we think we are. However, there’s another place where, by this point in Lent, most of us probably actually are at. I would say it’s where Mary was for a good 17 years of her sojourn in the desert. Because she lived in sin for 17 years in Alexandria and, as she tells her story to Elder Zosima, she says to him that for 17 years even in the desert she was longing for what she had left behind. She was tempted by that way of life. Those thoughts just kept coming back and coming back. She would throw herself on the ground and water it with her tears, sometimes for a day and a night, just struggling to repent. And I think maybe that’s where most of us are at this point in Great Lent. Because Lent is hard. Keeping the fast is difficult. You’re tired. You’re hungry. You really want all those nice things — which are coming, it’s okay, they’re coming! But that is actually an image of the sin that we’re struggling with, and continue to struggle with. And sometimes we find ourselves despairing: I’m not making any spiritual progress. I keep wanting to go back. I keep going back. And if we’re at this spiritual low-point, the temptation is to despair. I find Mary’s story encouraging in one way, because it tells us there is going to be a very long road ahead as we try to turn our backs on sin. Mary was in that life for 17 years, and so in the desert it took her 17 years to repent. That’s encouraging to me, because it explains why it’s so hard to repent. But on the other hand, it can also be discouraging, because she had the desert. She had this whole monastic context surrounding her. She could throw herself on the ground and weep for a day and a night. I can’t really do that — my employer would be calling me up: “You were supposed to be at work today.” “I’m sorry, I’m weeping for my sins.” That’s not going to go over so well. So what do we have? I would suggest that what we have is what Jesus offered his disciples when they were, in their case, kind of oblivious. And here I’ll share a short personal story, because this particular teaching is one I love for very personal reasons. As you know, I was in Japan as a missionary English teacher — as a Protestant — for a whole year. It was one of the most delightful and pivotal years of my life. I really fell in love with the Japanese language and culture, even though the language is a little bit difficult. I particularly liked the kanji — the Chinese characters — because we don’t have anything like that in our language. These characters convey both phonetic sounds and visually embedded meaning. So there I am, this henna gaijin (変な 外人), this strange foreigner, looking at these characters, thinking: I’d like to have my name written in them. My name at that point was Ed, and in Japanese — where every syllable ends in a vowel — that becomes “Edo.” Edo-san, or in some cases Edo-sensei, because I was a teacher. So I picked two characters (normally foreigners don’t do this — you just go with the katakana), one for “e” and one for “do.” The character I picked for “e” I would draw on the board in my probably terrible Japanese handwriting — it was megumi (恵), which means “grace.” The students would all look

    24 min

  6. MAR 24

    The First Sin after the Flood

    So on this Wednesday of Great Lent, we’re given the story of Noah just after the flood to meditate on. The story is about the first recorded sin after the flood. Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth come out of the ark, and God blesses them. It then notes that Ham was the father of Canaan, and these three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. You have a brand new start where everything is clean, fresh, and literally cleansed. And here you have Noah and his three sons, and now the son of Ham, Canaan, and the first recorded sin after the flood. And Noah begins to be a farmer. And he planted a vineyard. And then he drank of the wine and was drunk and became uncovered in his tent. Causes of Sin We don’t know why or what was the cause or exactly what was the temptation for this particular sin. Whenever we think of alcohol and drunkenness nowadays, we tend to think of alcoholism and addiction. Not all sin is addiction, but all addiction is sin. As the Apostle Paul says, “All things are created good, but I will not be mastered by anything.” If we allow even good things like video games to master us, then they become for us something that takes us away from God and therefore is sin. It could be that Noah had a bit of an addiction and was waiting to get the first fruits of the harvest so that he could make some wine and just drank a little too much. Or maybe it was one of the more recent suggestions I’ve read: survivor’s guilt. He just survived an incredible catastrophe, and he and his family are the only human beings left alive; you might feel angry, bitter, or wrestle with “Why me?” Possibly then, instead of turning to God with that, he drowned his sorrows in alcohol. Perhaps even more likely, knowing myself the way I do, when God blesses, we have this tendency to take those blessings for granted. It’s like, “Wow, everything’s going great. Isn’t this wonderful? This is how things should be. They should always be this way.” And then as we think of those things separate from or apart from God, they become sin for us because they’re leading us away from that attitude of gratitude that is supposed to characterize our every interaction with this world that God has given us. Responses to Sin Whatever the reason, Noah got drunk and was literally fall-down drunk in his tent, naked. Then, Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth [the other two brothers] took a garment, laid it on their shoulders, went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away and they did not see their father’s nakedness. One thing sin always does is expose our shame. As other people around us see what we’ve gotten ourselves into, they too see that shame. Then the question is, “How do we respond when we see that shame of sin?” It’s one thing when it’s us, but it’s quite another thing when it’s somebody else. We’re really good at judging. Because we, of course, never sin, and that other person over there, well, that’s just really shameful. That seems to be something along the lines of Ham’s response to his father’s nakedness. He goes to his brothers and says, “Wow, do you see what dad’s like? He’s just dropped down drunk in the tent over there.” But when Shem and Japheth hear this, they take a cloak, hold it between them, and walking backwards into the tent, cover their father’s nakedness so they can’t even see it. This speaks to us of our response, particularly to the sins of others. We can highlight it, point out the shamefulness of it, maybe even mock it and judge it. Or we can do everything in our power to cover for the person, to honor them in whatever way we are able to honor them, even in the midst of this failure of theirs. If we, like Shem and Japheth, are going to do this, we need to adopt a backwards approach—something that is maybe not quite natural to us—and backing up, cover up the failure of our brother or our sister. This is a better way. The Curse of Canaan and the Church Fathers Now Noah wakes up from his drunkenness. And he knew what his younger son had done to him. And he says—and this is interesting, because as I was reading through some of the early fathers of the church, they’re just as confused about this as I am—“Cursed be Canaan.” Wait, what? “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants, he shall be to his brethren.” I find it just a little bit heartening that some of the great fathers of the church are all like, “Hmm. This is kind of weird. Not sure what’s going on here.” My patron, St. Justin the Martyr and Philosopher, suggests that God did just bless them all as they came out of the ark, so maybe Noah didn’t want to overturn God’s blessing. St. John Chrysostom suggests that if you want to make a father really sad, you don’t curse him, you curse his children. I actually rather like St. Ephraim the Syrian’s version—or at least something he heard. He suggests that if you look at the story, you’ve got Shem and Ham and Japheth, and that’s always the order. So the traditional order would be the oldest is Shem, Ham would be second born, and Japheth would be third. But Noah wakes up and sees what his “youngest son” had done to him. Wait, that would be Japheth, wouldn’t it? Or, if you’re thinking about this in more Hebraic terms where you use terms like sons and brothers more loosely, it could be—St. Ephraim the Syrian says—that what he’s actually referring to is the youngest one who’s been named so far, which is his grandson, Canaan. So the speculation goes that quite possibly it was Canaan who saw and told his father, Ham, and then Ham said, “Oh man, we’ve got to tell Shem and Japheth about this.” Whatever the case, we don’t know, and sometimes it’s obscure and that’s okay. We don’t have to understand everything, but for us, I think the most important takeaway should simply be that we need to be on our guard. Be on Guard We need to be on our guard against bitterness, anger, and addiction. That’s why we’re in the middle of Lent trying to disrupt those cycles somewhat. We need to be on guard against ingratitude and taking things for granted. And above all, we need to be on guard, especially during this period of Lent, against judging our brother or our sister. If we aren’t, there’s a curse. But if we are, there’s a blessing for us, because Noah then goes on to bless Shem and Japheth and all of their descendants. That blessing then carries forward through the Scriptures as God’s blessing carries forward in our lives as we seek him above all and in all and seek to glorify him, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Scripture readings referenced: * Genesis 9:18-10:1 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit translatingthetradition.substack.com

    10 min

  7. MAR 9

    St. Gregory Palamas Sunday

    There’s supposedly an ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Well, apparently we’ve all been cursed. People are concerned. Some are worried that Islam is encroaching on our civilization. Some are concerned that with the continual elevation of the culture wars, civil war may not be far off. We’ve been through a pretty weird time with sickness. These are interesting times. If you listen to the hymnography for the saint that we are celebrating today, Saint Gregory Palamas, you would probably not notice—you’d certainly not know from the hymnography—that he lived in even more interesting times. St. Gregory Palamas was a well-educated young man. His education was encouraged and supported by the emperor himself, who was really hoping that this brilliant young man would go into the imperial service. But Gregory instead went into monasticism at a very young age and engaged in the hesychastic tradition. As I said, he lived in interesting times. The Muslims were actually encroaching on their civilization. The Byzantines were being gradually driven back. So that when Gregory was eventually ordained a priest, he was ordained in Thessalonica because that was relatively safe because some of the other places, like Nicaea, had already been taken by Islam. Gregory also lived during a time of civil war. The order of the empire was shaky at best since the Fourth Crusaders had actually taken over Byzantium, and they had only just gotten back their capital city, Byzantium. The imperial family was shaky at best. There was a young emperor on the throne who needed to be protected, and there were people arguing over who should protect him. And so he had different candidates vying for the regency, which actually broke out into civil war. And there was the actual plague: the Black Death. You remember that one, the plague that took out half the population of Europe? That was there in Gregory’s time as well. So he definitely lived in interesting times. More than that, just as we are at some points worried about what controls people might be placing on religious expression, Gregory himself suffered from this, and this is why we remember him. See, one of the problems with God is he’s kind of hard to put in a box. But we human beings don’t like that. We like to be able to explain things, have things nice and rational and ordered. And there was a movement towards that in Gregory’s day. There was a man named Barlaam. He came from Italy. He may well have been influenced by scholasticism that had arisen in the West, which was a very rational approach based on Aristotelian logic, because the West had lost contact with that. And then in the high Middle Ages, in the 1200s, they rediscovered Aristotle, thanks to the Muslims, and realized, “This is great! Logic! We love it. We should apply it to everything, because it will make everything nice and neat and rational and ordered and controlled.” And there’s some good stuff about logic. I like logic. But it doesn’t necessarily explain—or manage to let us control—everything. Barlaam moved from Italy to Constantinople and was invited to see some of these hesychastic monks, the ones that Gregory was now hanging out with and with whom he was actually doing this practice of silence. And it was a fairly rigorous physical discipline of prayer and meditation which had significant spiritual effects. Barlaam came in, and he started interviewing and talking to some of the monks. It reminds me a little bit of maybe some aspects of the internet nowadays. When you’ve got those people who get interviewed, and they suddenly get famous, and they’re not necessarily the best representative of whatever it is that you think. That’s kind of what Barlaam encountered. And so he came away—he was already kind of prejudiced against them with his rationalist, scholastic mindset— but he came away from this encounter basically ridiculing these guys as navel-gazers, because they would actually sit and meditate, looking down towards their navel. And he highlighted all sorts of stories he heard, like someone told him that the spirit came out through the nose and then came back in again, and things like that, which are maybe a little bit weird. And admittedly, when you stop to think about it, a lot of the encounters with God, even the ones that we have recorded in the Old Testament and maybe even some of the New Testament, are a little bit weird. God is not very good at sticking in our little boxes. Barlaam was concerned about this, and he then decided he was going to fix this. So he writes this book, essentially ridiculing the monks and saying basically that God is not knowable. This is a bit of a problem. Because on the one hand, as Orthodox Christians, we know that God is ultimately unknowable. He doesn’t fit in the box. He doesn’t even fit in our ability to comprehend him as human beings. We just don’t have it, not in the sense of being able to know him fully. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t know anything about God. Admittedly that may be slightly overstating Barlaam’s case, but then he was slightly overstating his case as well. Barlaam was slandering the very thing that St. Gregory and his companions were involved in. Because St. Gregory was a well-educated young man, the monks asked him to please respond to this. And so he did. He wrote his Triads, three essays which are interconnected, and there were three of those structures, written at different times in response to Barlaam. Gregory, in addressing the main concern that Barlaam had, which was, how can you see the invisible God? Because what these hesychastic monks—who were practicing inner silence and prayer—were experiencing was a vision of God. They saw the uncreated light, that they identified with the light that glowed from Christ and even from his garments on Mount Tabor. And that was something that they treasured. They were willing to spend an entire lifetime pursuing that, even if they didn’t actually experience that. And here Barlaam was just lampooning them as “navel-gazers”—and, more than that, he’s suggesting that there’s another hypsostasis, another “person”, that they’re worshiping, this “visible” God. And so St. Gregory dives in, and he uses the tools that are at his disposal. He also uses Aristotelian logic (because we like logic: logic is good!) and categories, and he makes this very important distinction between the unknowable essence of God and the knowable, experienceable energies of God. God is ultimately unknowable, St. Gregory says, in his essence, absolutely, in that which is the inner part of him, in that which ultimately makes him what he is. But he is and always has been knowable in his energies, in the work that he does as he engages with the world that he made. He makes himself known to us. And so, as a result of God’s mercy, God’s energies, God’s work, we actually do know something about him, and we can speak positively about him, and we can actually experience God himself. The first thing I want us to consider and take away from this is even in the interesting times that we live in, even in the highly polarized times that we live in, we actually do need to be willing to speak up for that which is good. As the Apostle says, “Let not your good be evil spoken of.” However, it is not unwise or an abdication of responsibility to seek out those who are actually good at talking about these things and saying, “Maybe you should represent us,” because we’re not all experts. We might end up saying things in a way that’s wonky or weird and end up getting picked up on YouTube and ultimately throwing something into disrepute. We are not all experts, and that’s OK. But it is important that we are willing to speak up for that which is right. As St. Peter says, “Always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that lies within you.” And, at the very least, we can speak honestly, openly, lovingly about that which we have experienced. But, when you do speak up, be prepared to suffer for it unjustly. Because St. Gregory did. He ended up spending three years in jail simply for speaking the truth. And we think we have it bad. We worry that people may say nasty things about us on the internet. And yeah, nobody likes having nasty things said about them. But, you know, thankfully, most of us aren’t being thrown in jail for three years. St. Gregory was. And yet he didn’t back down because this was something important. And what was so important? And this is my second point: it is the experience of God. All of our faith is based ultimately not merely on rational theology—although we can come up with a good reason for the hope that lies within us—but it is based on experience. If you look at the Scriptures, what does it record? It records the people of God’s experience of God. f you look at the Gospels, what do they record? They record the people of God’s experience of Jesus, who is God. And they didn’t always get it. This pattern here is not new. This pattern of wanting to control things, wanting to make sure that God fits neatly in our boxes—this is exactly what we heard in the Gospel. Jesus says to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.” And then immediately everybody around him, all the scribes, the Pharisees, all their educated people ask, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And Jesus says, “Well, maybe you need to experience something. So that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go home.” And he gets up in front of them all, and that very crowd that was keeping him out just kind of parts as he walks out with his bed. So, this is not a new thing. And it’s actually really important that we understand that we are able to experience God. But it is also important that we understand that that experience of God should be consistent with

    22 min

  8. FEB 16

    The Warning and the Nature of the Last Judgment

    Those of you who have been coming to St. John’s for a while will know that the Sunday of the Last Judgment and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus are my two least favourite passages on which to preach. Because this is a warning. We are coming to the edge of Lent, and we are deliberately given this passage to contemplate, the passage where Jesus talks about the Last Judgment. And we have to approach it carefully, with balance. But we also have to acknowledge this is very clearly a warning. And so it would be irresponsible of me to tone down that warning. And there is that temptation. It seems to be rampant now, even within the Orthodox Church, to somehow tone down what our Lord is saying here. And I think it’s understandable on a number of different levels. I think the first level on which it’s understandable is that we really are not sure about this whole concept of eternal punishment, of God judging, of this fire that is consuming, that is talked about here, prepared for the devil and his angels. I think the first thing that really gets us troubled about this is that we’re actually not quite sure that God is good. And to be fair to us and to our society, I think that’s part of our Greco-Roman philosophical heritage. Don’t get me wrong. We as Christians like the Greek philosophers. They were getting pretty close, especially Socrates, starting to realize that, hey, maybe all these stories about the gods are kind of crazy, and maybe there really is only one God, and they were kind of groping their way towards it. And so we like them, but they’re not our primary reference point as followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus is. He is the fullness of the Godhead made flesh. He is the ultimate revelation of who God is and what he is going to do. And so he is our primary referent point. If you have any concern about whether or not the Creator and Sustainer of the universe is essentially good, I would point you to the cross. And this is the primary difference, I think, between the Hebraic understanding of God, which is what we are all actually embracing when we come to Christianity, which I think is epitomized by Abraham when he is faced with the impending judgment of God. God speaks to Abraham and speaks to him like a friend, actually, and says, shall I conceal from Abraham what I am about to do? And then he goes on and talks about how he’s about to judge the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, to send down fire and brimstone upon them, to consume them. And Abraham’s response is, “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” I love that response. Because it’s a rhetorical question, so implicit in it is the answer. Well, of course he’s going to. And then, of course, Abraham proceeds to bargain with God and to get him down as far as possible. It’s like, oh, make sure that God is as merciful as he can possibly be. Because, again, that’s the human instinct here. But I think that should be our starting point as followers of the one true Creator God, as followers of Jesus Christ: shall not the judge of all the earth do right? So whatever we have here, whatever this solemn warning is really about, we can rest assured that God is good. I think perhaps the next reason that we struggle with this passage, and particularly with the notion of the judgment of God, is that we’re a little bit sheltered here in North America. For the most part, we don’t actually get to see evil in all of its horror, in all of its absolute, disgusting, horrific wickedness. The guards at Auschwitz, who delighted in causing extra pain to the people that they were planning to exterminate, is now far away. It’s far back in the rearview mirror. The Gulag Archipelago, about which Solzhenitsyn wrote in such sickening detail. Communism has fallen. It’s okay. And so we haven’t experienced, for the most part, any of us directly, any of this kind of level of evil. Now, we do get glimpses of it. I think Tumbler Ridge was one of those moments when we get a glimpse into the power, the extreme danger, the destructive horror that is pure evil. And the thing is—well, I’ll get to what the thing is. Because what I want to start with first is what the judgment reveals. The Last Judgment reveals that God is more horrified by this evil than we are. And he’s going to do something about it. This is the basis on which the Old Testament says, “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord,” which Paul himself quotes to say, okay, you can leave vengeance to God. You can trust that God is going to deal with this. But the third and most important thing that I want to draw our attention to in terms of the reason why we have trouble with this, is a misunderstanding of what exactly the judgment of God is. And for this, we should look at the teaching. He’s just telling us more or less what is going to happen in terms that we can at least begin to understand. So he begins with, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.” This is a very different coming than the first coming. Because where Christ came as a baby, pretty non-threatening, in a manger, in poverty, with not many people knowing about it—this is different. Now he’s coming in his glory with all the holy angels, and he’s going to sit on the throne of his glory. “And all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.” It always strikes me as a little unfair to the goats, because goats are cute too, but they’re also wily. But I think the main thing is that just as any person in Jesus’ day would know how a shepherd goes about separating the sheep from the goats—okay, there’s a sheep that goes that way, and oh, that’s obviously a goat that goes over there—this is the metaphor that our Lord is drawing on to talk about this separation that’s going to happen at the end of days. “And he will set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. And then the king will say to those on his right hand, ‘Come you blessed of my father.’” And here I want to actually back up because there was something here I wanted to highlight, which I forgot to do, so I’m going to do it now, which is: All the nations will be brought before him. This, again, is an important aspect of the judgment for us to consider, and even to begin with, because Jesus begins with it. Everybody is going to be judged. This judgment is universal. The criteria that are about to be established apply not simply to those of us who have heard the gospel, not simply to Christians and Jews or to religious people. No, this applies to everybody in the entire world. All the nations are going to be judged. And the criteria is the same for all of them. So he’s going to separate them as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And then he says to those on his right hand, “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.” And then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you drink? Or when did we see you a stranger and take you in? Or naked and clothe you? Or when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?” And the king will answer and say to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” Then he will also say to those on the left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not take me in. Naked and you did not clothe me. Sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you?” Then he will answer them saying, “Assuredly I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” So this is a very solemn warning, but also a very clear description of the criteria on which we will be judged. So if you’re given a warning, there’s a couple of things you don’t want to do. If I’m to pass on the warning, I must not tone it down in any way, shape, or form, however much I may be tempted to do so. And secondly, I must not change the nature of the warning. And the nature of the warning here is about who we are becoming by our actions. This is the basis on which we will be judged. Because—and here I want to talk about one of the fathers who’s often characterized as possibly being a universalist: St. Gregory the Theologian talks about the salvation of all humanity. But what does that mean? What does it mean to be truly human? What are we as human beings made for? What makes us human, truly human, rightly human, fully human, is that we love. And that’s precisely the criteria that we see here. And love, not merely in the abstract. Not merely a bunch of feelings. It’s like, okay, well, I just feel love for all humanity, and it’s very nice. I just feel that love. No, this is concrete love. This is the love where your grandmother sits you down and says, “You haven’t been eating enough.” And then sets a huge plate of home cooked food in front of you and says, “Okay, now eat.” That is the love we’re talking about here. Like literally, “I was hungry and you gave me some food.” This is what it m

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About

Sermons and miscellaneous musings from St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Church in Vancouver, BC, Canada - mostly by Fr. Justin Hewlett. translatingthetradition.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    86
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Fr. Justin (Edward) Hewlett
  • Show Website
    Translating the Tradition