Sermon

Good Friday Evening 2009

Does anyone want to make a guess at what the top two emotions are in the world today? Rage and fear. One need listen to a few rap music songs to know that they are filled with rage and hate, and that these constant lyrics that fill the heads of our young people is causing many of them to be filled with rage and hate. All we adults have to do to experience rage is get on any highway for 10 minutes and you’ll find it. Or open up the newspaper and read stories of murder and heinous crime. Rage is fueled by many things. It is certainly stimulated by music, but it is fueled by greed, a sense of entitlement. Take road rage for example—people get angry while driving because they feel a sense of entitlement to the road—who are you to pass me, or clog the highway I wish to travel down at a high rate of speed. How many people cheat at work, idly passing time surfing the Internet—everyone does it, we reason, so what not me? For many people, rage is a daily emotion, we build our lives around it.

And let’s look at the emotion of fear—I’ve spoken to numerous people in church who are in fear. For those who have lost jobs this past year, there is fear that they won’t be able to make ends meet. For those who still have jobs, there is a fear that you will lose your job. It does cross my mind once in a while that the church is feeling the effects of the economy—giving is down—what if there isn’t enough at the end of the year to pay my salary? There is a fear of where the world is going—the economy, politics, declining morality, the percentage of teens and young adults with STDs, rising taxes. I don’t know about you but I fear what the world will be like when my son is 37 like I am—will he have the same opportunities I have? Will he have water to drink or will we have run out? Will the air be clean enough to breathe? Will there still be a place left on earth that he can buy and call his own?

One thing that I have begun to fear is the place of God in our society. We live in a world of political correctness where it is not PC to impose God on other people. I’ve grown to accept that I guess. But it seems like the powers that be in the world are bound and determine to marginalize and eradicate Christianity. It made me sad last week when I opened up Newsweek Magazine and the cover story was about the ending of Christianity in America. Where are the Christians standing up for God? Will someone write an article in some place rebutting the Newsweek article, that indeed Christianity is alive and well in many pockets of our country and we Christians won’t be marginalized or eradicated? I wonder if there will be a year in the near future when we won’t be able to go outside on Good Friday evening for our procession because it will offend people, or if we’ll have to take the cross off the roof of our church because it offends someone. I fear that that day might be coming soon because the tide seems to continue to go against the Christians and because we Christians aren’t doing anything about it—either because we are in denial, or it isn’t a priority, or because we aren’t united enough, or because we are in fear. As an aside, a family left our church several years ago because I said that abortion is wrong at a youth event—they said don’t bring politics into the pulpit. We’ve made abortion and marriage into political issues—these are moral issues. And we’ve abrogated our responsibility to defend morality and have given it to politicians. World history teaches us that every society that has eliminated God has failed. And we need to look no farther than Communist Russia of less than a century ago. A society based on no God that not only failed but led to the deaths of millions of people and impoverishment of many more. That society collapsed and is currently being rebuilt, precisely because it has let God back into it after a century of shutting Him out.

When we look at the events of Good Friday 2,000 years ago, we see that the society in Jerusalem on that day was fueled by the same emotions. There was an abundance of rage and fear. An angry, bloodthirsty crowd demanded that a man be murdered. Crucify Him, Crucify Him, they chanted. Can you imagine parading a criminal through the streets of Tampa, let’s say even a heinous murderer, and all of the citizens of our city screaming “Shoot him, shoot him.” But the man whose life they were calling for was not a murderer. He was a healer, a teacher, a moral man, who had never said an unkind word or done an unkind thing. And He was the Son of God, the Lord of Glory. Not only the people did not recognize Him as Lord, they couldn’t even recognize Him as a good and decent person. Not all in the crowd in Jerusalem were bloodthirsty—there were people who were in tears, who knew that this man was innocent and righteous. There were people who believed He was the Son of God, but who at the critical moment went into hiding, or stayed quiet, or denied Him. There were a lot of people in fear in Jerusalem that day.

Every year on Good Friday evening, when I put down some thoughts to share with you, the primary word that comes to my mind is the word love. This is the emotion of Good Friday. Last night, I quoted John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He sent His only-begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” God’s motive for sending Christ into the world was love. We heard in the lengthy first Gospel lesson of last evening a discourse on love. Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. . .A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. . .He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who love Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. . .As the Father loved Me, so also have I loved you; abide in My love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you and that your job may be full.” And after giving this discourse on love, Jesus made the ultimate expression of love—He laid down His life for all of us. Last night, when I talked about the theme of sacrifice, I mentioned that love and sacrifice are synonymous. You can’t love without sacrificing something. Because love is not just a feeling, but an action. I could say that I love the people of this community, but of use would that be if I was inattentive to your spiritual needs. Everything that we have can be traced back to God—God gave me the talent to be a good writer but did not give me the talent to hit a baseball or understand complex scientific formulas—that’s why I’m not a baseball player or a doctor. My home is not really my home—it was bought with money earned from a job that I do based on a talent that came from God. So, ultimately God is responsible for the house. God also gave each of us free will—the ability to choose right and wrong, the ability to choose to love or to not love. When you get down to it, the only thing that we have that cannot be traced back to God is the choice to love, or not love. The choice to love is not based on God but entirely on me, on you. The choice to not love is not based on God either, but entirely on me, on you. The fathers of the church write that sin is really most succinctly defined as failure to love.

Our faith in God is really based on a choice to love or not to love others in the way that God loves us. And our entrance into His heavenly Kingdom will be based on how much we’ve loved others, or how much we have failed to love others. St. Isaac the Syrian wrote “Every day and every hour, proof is demanded of us of our love of God. For God, every day and every hour proves His love for us.”

Love requires choice and love requires action. I can’t say I love you but am unwilling to do anything for you. Love requires sacrifice. I said last evening that we love someone or something to the degree we are willing to sacrifice for them. But love is more than sacrifice—love requires joy. If I say, “Look, I’m giving up my evening to be here with you and it’s costing me an evening with my son,” then you are going to feel guilty accepting my love. So love requires joy—When we lovingly offer something to one another, we are to do it with a smile on our face, so that the receiver of our love does not know what it is costing us. Our love is also to be unconditional, without pretense, without strings attached. But love requires even more than sacrifice and joy. It requires humility. It requires me to put away pride and to open the door and become vulnerable. Love means not just asking “how are you,” but being ready to alter the course of your day if the answer comes back “I’m really not doing well.”

I asked a group of adults recently, what motivates you to drive the speed limit? Is it concern or love for the other drivers on the road, or fear of getting an expensive ticket? You can probably guess what the answer was. Obedience is often done in fear—love is given in joy.

Love does not mean we are doormats either. We can stand up for truth, but we have to do it in a spirit of love. I correct my two year old son frequently. Once in a while I even swat his behind to correct behavior, but this is done in love, because once we’ve gotten past the melt-down, I always hug him, play with him, let him know that I still love him. We need to stand up for the truth of God—this is done at your desk when you do an honest day’s work, even when your co-workers are surfing the Internet. This is when you follow rules even when others are fudging on them. This is when you stand up and speak the truth, even if others criticize you. Love is when you welcome a stranger. Love is when you want to gossip about someone and decide to keep your mouth closed. Love is when you want to complain and you realize “it could be worse.” Read the Beatitudes—blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, for great is your reward in the heavens. It doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who cave in in the face of persecution” but those who stand fast, who stand proud, who stand right.

I love being a priest. I love being the priest of this community. I love the people of this community. You’ll never know and probably can’t imagine some of the sacrifices I make and ends I go to in order to meet the needs of the people here. I’m not going to tell you because I want you to know that whatever I offer, I offer it in joy. It was a joy to kneel next to a parishioner at the cross last night after everyone left the church. It is a joy to listen to many heart-felt confessions and see tears of guilt become tears of happiness. It is a joy to stand in front of the Holy Altar so often and celebrate the services of the church. Many people have asked me this week, are you tired from the Holy Week journey, all the services? My answer, “I feel great—I can’t wait to get up and do it again.”

You know, life is kind of like the Holy Week journey—the beginning parts of it are not glamorous, somewhat tedius and not many people show up. We move through each page at a slow and sometimes seemingly agonizing pace. Then the middle picks up and before you know it, we’re in the home stretch, and then it’s gone, and those who didn’t take the time to come around missed out on something special. In the early years of life, I mean as children and teenagers, we know comparatively nothing—school is tedius and not many people take it seriously. Then the middle years of life, the pace picks up, more people get clued in, and before you know it, you are in the home stretch and then life is gone—and those who didn’t take the time to smell the roses, and those who didn’t take the time to build a relationship with God, those who didn’t take time to really love, they miss out on something special—the joys of this life, and the joys of eternal life. In a few moments, when we go out for the procession, please meditate on three questions—does your life resemble the lighted candle in your hand, or the darkness of the night. Is your soul alight with joy and love for God, or is it dark? And as you pass under the Tomb of Christ, ask yourself, if I passed from life to death this evening, or next week, is my soul in a state of readiness to pass from death to judgment with God. Remember your answers. And then when Pascha comes and goes tomorrow, get to work on them. Don’t look at Pascha as an ending but rather as a new beginning.

When we go outside, please sing with the choir—Kyrie Eleison, Agios o Theos—an opportunity to witness for the faith to ourselves and those who pass by on Swann Avenue. The Greeks are more than the Greek Festival, but people of faith, of hope, of love, of sincerity, of joy.

Services tomorrow-Reception following-Bring food baskets is you wish

The attendance this week has been overwhelming. And so has my awareness about the great need there is for more pastoral counsel and guidance in this community which I am more than happy to provide. I’m not in fear of the economy as much as I am in fear of God’s judgment on my life. I’m not as concerned about socking away money for a rainy day as I am about putting away treasure in heaven. And when I look at my life seriously and with great reflection, I am not as proud of where I have come, as I am concerned with how far I have to go. I share these thoughts because I love you and I am concerned for you—I am concerned with your spiritual journeys as I am for my own. Jesus closed His discourse on love by praying for His disciples, that “they may be one, as you Father are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent ME. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are on: I in them, and You in ME, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent ME and have loved them as You have loved Me.” My prayer for us as a community this Good Friday is that we will grow together as Christians, with the Truth of the Gospel guiding us, with love for one another holding us together and with love for God and union with Him as our end point, our focus, our goal. Rage cannot survive in the face of love. And perfect love, God-like love, casts out all fear. Kali Anastasi!