Sermon
One thing you still
lack
Hope springs eternal
for all football fans this time of year.
With college football starting in a few days and the NFL season kicking
off in two weeks, every fan of every team has hope, that this could be their
year. However, there are a lot of fans
whose teams are lacking. The Bucs have issues
at quarterback, the Seminoles have questions with coaching, and the Bulls lost
their kicker. If you offered the
statement Jesus made in this morning’s Gospel lesson, “One thing you still
lack,” no question for these three teams the list would have at least a few
things on it. Gator fans, on the other
hand, if asked, “what do you still lack to have a championship-caliber team”
would probably answer, “nothing.” After
all, they’ve just been voted the pre-season favorite to win the national
championship by the most convincing margin in history. However, one thing you still lack, for sure,
is surviving the next four months with your championship-caliber team intact. Injuries, slumps, and untimely turnovers hang
over every team, no matter how good they are.
No championship is won before the season begins. As they say, “That is why they play the
game.”
This Tuesday, we begin
a New Ecclesiastical Year. Yes, the New Year
for the church begins on September 1. We
will have Divine Liturgy on Tuesday to mark this milestone. Patriarch
Bartholomew has also declared September 1 the Day of the Environment, and we
will also pray for our planet on that day.
And so for Orthodox Christians, hope springs eternal this week, as we
are given yet another chance to begin anew.
The football teams I
have just mentioned correspond to various kinds of Orthodox Christians as we
approach the New Ecclesiastical Year.
There are the Christians whose lives are a mess, who need to make major
changes to get back on track. There are
the Christians who lack one thing in their lives—perhaps it is faith, perhaps
it is commitment, perhaps it is time, perhaps it is trust, perhaps it is
generosity—most of them know what it is, but there is one thing that keeps them
from a solid relationship with God. And
then there are the Christians whose lives seem to be all together. But just like the championship-caliber
football team eager to start the season, they too have to walk through the ups
and downs of life, the set-backs and the disappointments, with faith still
intact, in order to cross the goal-line, so to speak, into heaven.
Saint Paul reminds us
in the Epistle Lesson to the Corinthians which we read this morning, “Brethren,
I remind you in what terms I preached to you the Gospel, which you received, in
which you stand.” Paul preached the
Gospel with boldness, with zeal, with enthusiasm and with humility. He boldly told the truth of Christ, his zeal
for the Gospel was unwavering, he took
the message enthusiastically to all whom he encountered whether they received
it or rejected it, and he also preached the gospel with humility, recognizing
himself as the first among all sinners, the one with the greatest need for
repentance and improvement. He
continues, referring to the Gospel, “by which you are saved, if you hold it
fast.” The Gospel contains the truth of
salvation, the path to paradise. The
Gospel is accessible to all—every person of every background can be saved by
it. Even the one who has yet to embrace
it still has the time to do so. The
power of the Gospel does come with one important caveat: “if you hold it
fast.” The Gospel has little power to
the one who is lukewarm, or uncommitted to the faith. A strong faith ultimately brings the greatest
of rewards. A weak faith is really not
much faith at all.
In the Gospel lesson,
which we read from Matthew each year in August and from Luke each year near
Thanksgiving, a young man approached Jesus and asked how he could receive
eternal life. Jesus answered him, to
follow the commandments—do not kill, or commit adultery, do not steal or bear
false witness, honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as
yourself. The man answered Jesus “All
these I have observed, what do I still lack?”
Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess
and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow
me.” The young man went away sorrowful
because he had many possessions. Jesus
told His disciples “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The lesson of this
morning’s Gospel is not that it is a sin to be rich. The lesson is not that rich people can’t go
to heaven. The lesson is that Jesus,
wanting to save everyone, especially this young man who came to talk to Him,
looked into the man’s heart and saw one thing that was keeping him from God. For this man, it was his riches. For each of us, if we look at ourselves
critically, there is at least one thing we can improve upon and thus improve
our relationship with God. And for many
of us, there is one thing, an Achilles’ heel, so to speak that keeps us from a
stronger relationship with God. It might
be making time to pray, or breaking a sinful habit, it might be being a better
steward, or being more honest at work, or overcoming a big set-back or
unattained goal, or it might be having faith period, believing year in and year
out, that the Orthodox Christian faith will not only lead us to heaven, but
will make a big difference in our lives on earth as well. As we begin this new Ecclesiastical year, I
encourage you to identify at least one thing, to make one New Year’s resolution
about improving your Christian life and begin it this week.
It was at this point
in my sermon writing last evening that I was interrupted by a phone call from
the Metropolis of Atlanta. One of our
campers this summer, a girl, 17 years old, committed suicide Saturday
afternoon. Details in the phone call
were sketchy, only that it happened at home and involved a gun. Like the rest of the camp staff, I am still
in shock that one of our young people decided to end her life yesterday. Like others on the staff, who saw her only
weeks ago, we are wondering were there signs that were missed? Obviously, this news reshaped the rest of my
evening, as I spent the evening on the phone counseling my camp team, all of
whom, myself included, are feeling a measure of guilt that perhaps we missed
something we shouldn’t have. There are
always a few kids at camp that raise red flags, that worry us about this kind
of thing happening to them—This girl was not one that made that list. That’s why this is all the more shocking—you
would never have guessed this girl would be the one to commit suicide. And if she could do it, how many others are
out there, that we are missing, not only at camp, but in our communities, our
neighborhoods, and our children’s schools.
You may not know this, but suicide has touched three families in our
parish in the five years I have been here.
Getting back to the
Gospel, there are a lot of people walking around the world who on first glance
look like they have it all together. But
take the time to look a little deeper and you’ll find at least one critical
thing is lacking. Jesus was not
criticizing the young man in this morning’s Gospel when He told him that he
lacked one thing. Rather He was being
loving and compassionate towards him. If
the desire of Jesus is that all should go to heaven and be saved, then His act
of telling a young man that there was one thing standing in the way of that was
an act of mercy, not an act of judgment, an act of love, not an act of
criticism.
The events in my life yesterday
evening, again reassure me of the importance of the Orthodox Church. The church is here to seek and to save the
lost, to find the young man or the old man, the young woman or the old woman,
and to help them identify and overcome the obstacles that keep them from
God. This morning after church, we have
two meetings that are of a business nature.
We will have two short Parish Assemblies back to back, to decide two
issues facing our church—first, there are two pieces of property for sale which
are worth little to the church—they are more liability than asset right
now. We have an opportunity to dump them
and rid ourselves of a liability.
Second, a few years ago, we established an endowment. While there are
many positives to having an endowment, one of the reasons I don’t especially care
for endowments in churches is that many people see endowments as vehicles to
keep the church going in the future, if we don’t have enough money to pay our
bills. This kind of reasoning is
predicated on a sense that either the congregation of the church will shrink in
the years to come, or that people will not be generous enough to pay all of the
bills. Both lines of reasoning go
against the ethos of the Orthodox Church, which encourages generosity and
requires growth. Even though we are in a challenging economy, I am not worried
about our future—God wants a church in Tampa, and as long as we are Godly in
our church, God is going to bless our church, and everyone who contributes
generously towards it. The original goal
of the endowment has proved unattainable, so we need to discuss what to do with
the money already in the endowment, since it is not even 15% of what we are
required to have in order to utilize and spend money from this fund. The second meeting has to do with the
upcoming Greek festival, now just 10 weeks away. Festivals and business meetings are part of
the church life, but they are not the cornerstones of why we have a
church. Parish Assembly Meetings are
opportunities for the community to come together and plot progress, not
opportunities to argue and vent frustration.
And Greek festivals are good opportunities to not only raise funds, but
to share our faith, fellowship and heritage with the greater community.
We need people to
attend the meeting, we need people to help at the festival, we need everyone to
continue to be financially supportive of our church, even in a bad economy,
because we need a church that finds the young man who is missing something in
his quest for salvation. Because we need
a church that finds the young woman before she decides to put a gun to her head
and end it all. Because we need a church
that takes the lost Christian and finds him.
Because we need a church that takes the Christian who is missing one
crucial thing and helps him to discover it.
Because we need a church that encounters the Christian who has it all
together and makes sure he or she survives the challenges and setbacks of life
and makes it through unscathed.
As we begin a new
ecclesiastical year, hope springs eternal for all Orthodox Christians, just as
it does for all the football teams beginning a new season. May this upcoming New Church Year be one of
spiritual growth for you as individuals and for us as a community. May we efficiently get through the business
of the church, so that we can all move to the real business of the church,
helping one another reach the Kingdom of God, by working through the difficulties
and disappointments of life that constantly make the journey a challenge.