The Wisdom of John of Sinai: Hope

In his chapter on faith, hope, and love, John dedicates the overwhelming majority of his time to love. It is, after all, the greatest of the three and the only one that is given as "the very name of God Himself." He does spare a moment talk about hope, the kind of hope that cooperates with love and sustains us as we flounder in an illusory isolation from God.

Hope is the power behind love. Hope is what causes us to look forward to the reward of love. Hope is an abundance of hidden treasure. It is the abundant assurance of the riches in store for us. It is a rest from labor, a doorway of love. It lifts despair and is the image of what is not yet present. When hope fails, so does love. Struggles are bound by it, labors depend on it, and mercy lies all around it. The hopeful monk slays despondency, kills it with his sword.

"Trinket Evangelism"

I thought this was a particularly trenchant critique of the way Christians do evangelism in America. The author obviously slants his criticism toward the Orthodox Church (of which he is a part), but I think his criticisms hold just as true (if not moreso) for evangelical Christianity which thrives on "marketing" the Gospel as if fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on your salvation:

Conversely, if we are not to self-ghettoize, then we also ought not to be overly aggressive in adopting any and all “missionary” methods. Really, billboards? Really? “This blood’s for you” with a picture of a chalice? Come on. We’re not going to win that one people. Budweiser will always be more popular. Is the Gospel a less consumed competitor of Bud? Or of Coca-cola? The same holds with “trinket evangelism,” in which we print icons on anything with a surface size of at least two square inches. It’s all just about “the Great Commission”? Yes, but only if you realize that Great Commission has a liturgical context. As soon as you do that, I think you’ll pause before marketing Orthodoxy as mere commodity. It is one thing to admit many in America use consumerist language to speak of their adherence to Orthodoxy (whether “cradle” or “convert”). It is quite another to promote that model as the model and to embrace it with all the vigor of a small evangelical parish being outgunned by the local Mega-church that stays strong despite its revolving door of membership.

In Other News

The pope is calling for a quick suspension of the use of arms by all sides in the Libyan conflict. I cannot help but hope that this plea is an extension of his previously expressed beliefs about war.

Sunday of the Holy Cross

Scripture:


Revelation 2:2-5a,7

I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first…He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God

Genesis 2:8-9

And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

History:

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 21

Paradise therefore will be restored, that tree will be restored which is in truth the tree of life; there will be restored the grace of the image, and the dignity of rule. It does not seem to me that our hope is one for those things which are no subjected by God to man for the necessary uses of life, but one for another kingdom, of a description that belongs to unspeakable mysteries.

Reflection:

Traditionally, the Sunday of the Holy Cross is not a time for somber reflection on the necessity of the cross or to stress penitence over its horrible nature. Instead, it is a time to focus on the victory which the cross achieved on our behalf. We venerate the cross—not as an icon or an idol but as an event, an act of God—and take comfort in the peace which it affords us. As we cross the halfway point of Lent, many of us sorely need this kind of comfort.

It is interesting to note that the Tree of Life provides a great bookend for Scripture as a part of the greater matrix of creation and recreation. In the beginning God creates us with the potential and the purpose of eternal life, not in the sense of a perpetually beating heart or firing neurons but as participation in His infinite Life. When the world is made anew again, he promises us, as he promised the church at Ephesus in Revelation, a share again in that life which we separated ourselves from. Standing gloriously at the center of this great historical chiasmus of creation and redemption is the cross. The ancients saw a type for the cross in the great trees of promise. In Genesis it represents what we lost; in Revelation it represents what has been promised to us again by grace. The true tree of life, however, is the cross where access to this life was thrown open anew. It is there that Death is conquered, not by cheating mortality through wiles or power but by allowing Life to be subjugated to the humiliation of fatality and proving Life to be greater.

Let that be a comfort to us now. Our trials are transient, and we cannot let them dull our great love for Christ. With the Ephesians, we must repent and press on in the good work of God who has already achieved victory for us if we only will join Him in it.

Prayer:

Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?
Thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
--1 Corinthians 15:54-55,57

Feast of the Annunciation

Scripture:


Luke 1:46-55

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever

Psalm 119:81-83

My soul faints with longing for your salvation,
but I have put my hope in your word.
My eyes fail, looking for your promise;
I say, “When will you comfort me?”
Though I am like a wineskin in the smoke,
I do not forget your decrees.

History:

C. H. Spurgeon, “The Believer Not an Orphan”

In the absence of our Lord Jesus Christ, the disciples were like children deprived of their parents. During the three years in which He had been with them, He had solved all their difficulties, borne all their burdens, and supplied all their needs. Whenever a case was too hard or too heavy for them, they took it to Him. When their enemies well nigh overcame them, Jesus came to the rescue, and turned the tide of battle. They were all happy and safe enough whilst the Master was with them; He walked in their midst like a father amid a large family of children, making all the household glad. But now He was about to be taken from them by an ignominious death, and they might well feel that they would be like little children deprived of their natural and beloved protector. Our Saviour knew the fear that was in their hearts, and before they could express it, He removed it by saying, “You shall not be left alone in this wild and desert world; though I be absent in the flesh, yet I will be present with you in a more efficacious manner; I will come to you spiritually, and you shall derive from My spiritual presence even more good than you could have had from My bodily presence, had I still continued in your midst.”

Reflection:

The Lord is faithful, which is a comforting thought as the fast wears on and we begin to languish in the desert. The Feast of the Annunication (which, in truth is more of a lightened fast in practice than an actual feast) is rather beautifully and meaningfully situated so near to Easter. While the date of Easter always dances around, the Annunciation is always commemorated precisely nine months before the Nativity. As we approach the climax of Christ’s earthly ministry, his passion and resurrection, and recall his promises to come again and to complete his work on earth, we are reminded that two thousand years ago, in a manger, in a stable, in the little town of Bethlehem God proved that He knows how to keep a promise.

He told the Israelites that He would send someone into the world to overcome sickness and poverty and suffering and, ultimately, death. This is the content of the Magnificat; Mary magnifies God for having fulfilled in the child of her womb all the promises of the prophets. And He was, in fact, faithful, far beyond what could have been imagined. He came himself and, rather than setting up a temporal kingdom of the earthly sort, he inaugurated a spiritual, eternal kingdom in which he invited all men to participate. This is the final promise which finds the first seeds of its completion in the annunciation to Mary.

So we recall two things today. The first is that we are not abandoned in this wilderness to live in a constant state of deprivation and self-denial. Easter is coming and, with it, the glorious culmination of our shared journey with Christ. We will walk with him to the cross, and while he finds only violence there, we will find peace. The trial of Lent, however, is only a microcosm for our greater struggle. We await an even greater day when the truths which are typified in Christ’s resurrection become actualized in our own salvation. The Annunciation reminds us that we serve a faithful God, a God who exceeded the wildest possible hopes and expectations of His people when He sent his only Son in the flesh to conquer death. He will not abandon us in our greater turmoil, in this life which is still very much in the clutches of sin and death. Thanks be to God.

Prayer:

Father in heaven! You speak to man in many ways; You to whom alone belongs wisdom and understanding yet desires Yourself to be understood by man. Even when You are silent, still You speak to him, for You are the one who says nothing, yet speaks in order to examine the disciple; the one who says nothing, yet speaks in order to try the beloved one; the one who says nothing, yet speaks so that the hour of understanding may be more profound. Is it not thus, Father in heaven!

Oh, in the time of silence when man remains alone, abandoned when he does not hear Your voice, it seems to him doubtless that the separation must last forever. Oh, in the time of silence when a man consumes himself in the desert in which he does not hear Your voice, it seems to him doubtless that it is completely extinguished. Father in heaven!

It is only a moment of silence in an intimacy of conversation. Bless then this silence as Your word to man; grant that he never forgets that You speak also when You are silent; give him this consolation if he waits on You, that You are silent through love and that You speak through love, so that in Your silence as in Your word You are still the same Father and that it is still the same paternal love that You guide by Your voice and You do instruct by Your silence.
--Soren Kierkegaard

The Wisdom of John of Sinai: Humility

Gregory Palamas spoke of preparing ourselves to experience and to know God through fasting accompanied always by prayer and humility. In a similar way, John enjoins humility in order that we may speak more appropriately about God as participators in Him:

Do you imagine that plain words can precisely or truly or appropriately or clearly or sincerely describe the love of the Lord, humility, blessed purity, divine enlightenment, fear of God, and assurance of the heart? Do you imagine that talk of such matters will mean anything to someone who has never experienced them? If you think so, then you will be like a man who with words and examples tries to convey the sweetness of honey to people who have never tasted it. He talks uselessly. Indeed I would say he is simply prattling. The same applies in the first instance. A man stands revealed as either having had no experience of what he is talking about or as having fallen into the grip of vainglory.

Our theme sets before us as a touchstone a treasure stored up safely in earthen vessels, that is, in our bodies. This treasure is of a quality that eludes adequate description. It carries an inscription of heavenly origin which is therefore incomprehensible so that anyone seeking words for it is faced with a great and endless task. The inscription reads as follows: “Holy Humility.”

John will relate a number of traditional definitions for humility, all of which he says he considered while trying to discover the true nature of humility. He notes, quite aptly, that humility is more than the absence of pride; it is a positive and indispensable virtue.

To exalt oneself is one thing, not to do so another, and to humble oneself is something else entirely.

Many have attained salvation without the aid of prophecies, illumination, signs and wonders. But without humility no one will enter the marriage chamber...

He defines humility first with reference to its opposite and then with an analogy from nature:

If the outer limit, the rule, and the characteristic of extreme pride is for a man to make a show of having virtues he does not actually possess for the sake of glory, then surely the token of extreme humility will be to lower ourselves by claiming weaknesses we do not really have.

A lemon tree naturally lifts its branches upwards when it has no fruit. The more its branches bend, the more fruit you will find there. The meaning fo this will be clear to the man disposed to understand it.

This idea of humility, which we would probably call self-abasement or (worse) low self-esteem, is totally foreign to our culture. Reading it, we are almost instinctively compelled either to reject it or to try to soften its force. John, however, seems to mean precisely what he says and gives an example of its value when temptation arises:

Demons once heaped praise on one of the most discerning of the brothers. They even appeared to him in visible form. But this very wise man spoke to them as follows: "If you cease to praise me by way of the thoughts of my heart, I shall consider myself to be great and outstanding because of the fact that you have left me. But if you continue to praise me, I must deduce from such praise that I am very impure indeed, since every proudhearted man is unclean before the Lord. So leave me, and I shall become great, or else praise me, and with your help I shall earn more humility." Struck by this dilemma, they vanished.

We could stand to apply a liberal helping of humility to our problems in an effort to outwit the enemy.

Patriarch Bartholomew on Fukushima

This is a couple weeks dated at this point, but it is nonetheless important to disseminate. The Ecumenical Patriarch has issued a statement regarding the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. In it, he offers a standard message of condolence and support for the people of Japan. He also takes the disaster as an opportunity to remind us all that the way we interact with God's world has and will continue to complicate and intensify the ramifications of already cataclysmic events. Here is a portion of what the Ecumenical Patriarch had to say:

The disastrous ramifications of this event will become more evident over the next days. Of course, with regard to the earthquake, no human response is adequate. The causes and results eclipse human words. Nevertheless, with regard to the explosion of the nuclear reactor and the aftermath of a nuclear adversity, there is indeed a response that we are called to make. With all due respect to the science and technology of nuclear energy and for the sake of the survival of the human race, we counter-propose the safer green forms of energy, which both moderately preserve our natural resources and mindfully serve our human needs.

Our Creator granted us the gifts of the sun, wind, water and ocean, all of which may safely and sufficiently provide energy. Ecologically-friendly science and technology has discovered ways and means of producing sustainable forms of energy for our ecosystem. Therefore, we ask: Why do we persist in adopting such dangerous sources of energy? Are we so arrogant as to compete with and exploit nature?

I do not know that I agree with everything he has to say and I certainly do not like the way he has phrased some things, but the Ecumenical Patriarch does Christians a service in reminding us that we have a comprehensive duty to work for God on behalf of creation and with creation.