Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday of the Fathers of the 1st Ecumenical Council
27 May 2012
Epistle: Acts 20:16-18, 28-36
Gospel: John 17:1-13
C.S. Lewis famously said that there are three choices when it comes to Jesus Christ: liar, lunatic, or Lord (Mere Christianity). Today, it’s common to hear people making Jesus into whomever they want Him to be, so that He fits their lifestyle, their own ‘personal’ beliefs. Little reference is given to the historic Jesus, the Christ of the Church. Modern man has flipped the axiom: it’s no longer we who need changing, conforming to the likeness of God, but rather, God whom we think to change and conform to our likeness. Needless to say, this won’t work—we will have made of the transcendent God a ‘straw man’ who isn’t the God who has revealed Himself to us.
Many today want to hold onto vestiges of who the historic Jesus is for the sake of legitimacy, so that there erroneous beliefs will care more weight, sound reasonable. But many don’t want to go as far as accepting Christ as Lord and God, except perhaps in word. We all hear people say that they are ‘Christians,’ but they want Jesus without the Christ and Christianity without the Church, which turns out to be no Christianity at all, but rather a ‘man-made’ religion.
St. Paul warns us in today’s Epistle saying, “savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock” (Acts 20:29). In fact, the history of the Church is replete with a great number of such ‘wolves’—the Gnostics, the Arians, the Nestorians, the iconoclasts—just to name a few—all of whom sought to have Jesus conform to their ideas, their likeness. They even called themselves part of the Church, but without submitting themselves to the authority and continuity of the Apostolic Faith.
For the early Christians as for faithful Orthodox today, the idea of being a Christian apart from the Church, is an oxymoron. The two belong together as our head belongs to our body; they cannot be separated without losing something integral to what is Christianity, the Way of Christ.
A watered-down Jesus, who represents some non-judgmental and vague notion of ‘humanity,’ ‘peace,’ ‘friendship,’ is not the same Jesus Christ, the Logos of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, who loves all by calling them to repentance, healing, and salvation, to new life in Him through ‘water and the spirit’ (John 3).
Likewise, a ‘no rules, just right’ ‘church’ can’t stand the test of time, or possess the tools of salvation we need; it won’t hold anyone accountable, or know how to refute heresy or even recognize heresy—those ‘savage wolves’—when they come to ravage the flock. And so, this kind of ‘church’ cannot represent to us the timeless Truth that is the God-man, Jesus Christ.
Today, ‘denominationalism,’ the idea is, that we’re all part of the Capital “C” Church no matter what we believe as long as we ‘have Jesus,’ has become the hallmark of American Christianity, but it’s just another heresy. But what does it mean to ‘have Jesus’ if we water down the Gospel or conform it to our culture to become more ‘inviting’ at the expense of the fullness of the truth?
The Mormons, to give one example, maintain they’re part of Christianity, even though they don’t believe that Jesus is God. Some Protestant groups are even beginning to recognize them as just another denomination, even though their beliefs are nothing less than modernized Arianism, which the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, soundly condemned in 325 A.D. because of their belief that “there was a time when he (Christ) was not.” This heresy clearly conflicts with the “Faith once received.” Christ is not a creature but the Creator.
Even in some Protestant circles, however, Jesus is reduced to little more than “friend”—something far short of the Messiah, the Logos of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, revealed to us through the Scriptures and worshipped in the Church through the ages. If Jesus is ‘dumbed-down,’ then we can’t be sure that we’re coming to know or grow in Him, and then how can we find the healing from our passions and the salvation that is the active life in Him?
Indeed, here’s the rub: the only Church (with a capital “C) that’s stood up to the heresies that have tried to ‘water-down’ Jesus or adulterate the faith once received, the only Church that has preserved the Apostolic Faith and accountability in the conciliar authority that Jesus Christ entrusted to His Church through the Apostles and the descent of the Holy Spirit and defended the flock from the “savage wolves” throughout history, is the Church Christ founded, i.e., the Orthodox Church. This is a historical reality testified to from the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 through our continued adherence to the Seven Ecumenical Councils to this day.
When we as Orthodox today read the early Fathers—Saints like John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John of Damascus, etc., we find ourselves in agreement with them and their faithful interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, the Book of the Church. The tenets of the Orthodox Faith, our understanding of the Scriptures, haven’t changed. As Orthodox, we don’t find ourselves having to explain away aspects of the faith or the Scriptures, the prayers or teachings that are ‘inconvenient’ or which are increasingly at odds with our culture. The Truth, Jesus Christ, doesn’t change and so our Faith doesn’t change either.
Back to Lewis, Jesus doesn’t give us the option to water down our belief in Him if we are to find the fullness of life in Him, the fullness of the Life that He is, healing and salvation. To paraphrase Lewis, Jesus is either a crazy man (lunatic) who made crazy claims that He couldn’t live up to—which we know is not true; He’s a liar, who said things that were clearly not true and were proven to be lies—this we also know not to be the case; or, He is Lord! He is God!
And what do we see in Jesus: He fulfilled the prophets, turned water into wine, healed the woman with the flow of blood and the man born blind; He made the lame walk and the deaf speak, He cast out demons and fed the 5,000 and forgive the sins of the many. And most significantly, He raised the dead and conquered His own death by rising again, His empty tomb the proof. He ascended again in glory and sent the Holy Spirit, a Reality testified to by all those who experienced and continue to experience the new life in Christ through the sacramental life.
Salvation has always been for Orthodox Christians communion (koinonia), participation in the life of God the Holy Trinity. And this life is revealed to us through Jesus Christ in His Church by the power of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised us would “lead us into all truth.”
When we receive Christ God into ourselves through the Holy Eucharist, when we participate in the sacramental life of His Church, when we pray, when we worship Him, we are growing in that life that He is, we receive the “fountain of immortality.” We don’t need just part of Jesus, or Jesus on our terms, or just some of the tools of salvation found in the Church. Rather, we need all of Jesus—the whole Life that He is, that is in Him.
We need Jesus Christ to convict us, help us, save us, have mercy on us, heal us, and grow us into the fullness of godly manhood, womanhood that we are created to be as part of the new race of Adam. The Fathers of the First Council re-affirmed the Apostolic Faith that Jesus Christ is God. Only if He is life can He have raised Himself and can He raise us from our sin and death. We need Jesus Christ to save us. This demands of us that we conform ourselves to Him and not the other way around. The historic reality of Who Christ is as God, of whom He has revealed Himself to be as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, His continuing presence in His Church by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the witness of countless Orthodox Saints through the ages, give testimony that the Truth, Jesus Christ, is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
