St. Paul writes to us in his Epistle to the Galatians, concerned about those who are putting their trust in the Law (again) instead of their new-found identity in Christ, given to them at baptism. Having put on Christ in Baptism and become a new creation, they are turning back to reliance, and that’s the key word here, reliance, on works, on the Law, on what they can achieve, by themselves, independent of God. Obviously, this is a great temptation for us since it’s been around since the beginning and continues to tempt us to this day in the Church.
Every Triodian period before Great Lent, we’re challenged by the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. We condemn the Pharisee’s self-righteousness and pray for the humility of the Publican. But there’s another sin we can commit on the other side, which is complacency in taking Christ and His Church on our terms, neglecting prayer and fasting, the Sacraments, and all the tools Christ God gives us in His love to heal and grow us in the knowledge and love of Him.
When we make Christianity into what we want it to be, what we’re comfortable with, and hold Christ and His Church at arm’s length, we can’t avail ourselves of the gracious gifts He’s entrusted to us to work out our salvation: His rich mercy, healing, forgiveness, deification, joy, and love. We deprive ourselves of the very spiritual ‘air’ we need to breath in order to live in Christ and make real progress in our growth in the life that’s only in Him.
Maybe we’ve converted to the Orthodox Faith and see ourselves as really serious about our knowledge of the Faith, having read so many of the books on various topics of Orthodox interest, but this can’t save us. Maybe we’ve been brought up in the Faith as a ‘cradle,’ thinking that we know more than those converts, but this can’t save us. Maybe we have an ‘ethnic’ Orthodox heritage and believe that we’re real Orthodox because we have Orthodox ‘blood,’ but this can’t save us, just as reliance on our works, reliance on the Law could not save the Galatians whom St. Paul addresses in today’s Epistle. It is not someone who appears to be Orthodox in all the outward trappings that is a true Orthodox Christian, but rather one who is striving to live the Orthodox life through repentance and growth in communion with God the Holy Trinity. The Church is here to give us the tools to deify us, to transform us, to make us by God’s grace more and more into the likeness of Christ, and enable us to share in the divine life of the Holy Trinity.
The reality is brothers and sisters, that none of can rest in where we are at spiritually today. There’s no ‘status’ in the Church, no identity, no work, no practices of the life of the Church that can save us on their own: only our faith and life in Christ God can get us to where we want to be: with God and in God, growing in the knowledge and love of Him, participating more and more in His divine life, the only true life.
God calls us to healing and salvation through deification, that is, a daily participation in His life. And this participation involves us struggling to put our trust in Him and not in our own identity, the things of this world, or the thinking that we are able to have Orthodoxy on our own terms. Rather, we are called to be in the world, but not of the world because our citizenship, that is, our identity in Christ, is in heaven.
St. Paul says it well in today’s Epistle: “… God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
Christ God calls us to a living faith in the koinonia (communion) of His Church, His Body. There’s no such thing as an independent, self-identified, self invented take it or leave it approach to Christianity. We can call that Christianity, but that does not make it so because that is not the Body of Christ He’s entrusted to us for our growth, healing from the passions, and salvation.
Living for Christ, dying to the old self, is not something we achieve on our own, on our own terms. When someone’s sick and offered medicine that will cure the disease, they must take it. Likewise, if we want to find the healing and joy of life in the Kingdom, we need to take the prescribed ‘medicine’ that Christ offers us through His Church. Look around you at the countless Saints that testify to its healing affect. The prescription hasn’t changed. So why delay the step of faith and the disciplines needed to experience more of the life in Christ, more of Him and His Kingdom now? The world’s pressures and temptations don’t allow us to delay.
St. Augustine offers us this truth, “For Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” None of us will find fulfillment apart from an active and growing life in Christ that He offers us through increased participation in His Church, which bears fruit in our daily lives in Christ. He will remain elusive until we give ourselves to Him. This is the whole point of our being Orthodox Christians: we die to the old self with all its competing desires for identity and transitory but illusory fulfillment and embrace true life itself, the Life that Christ alone is, that He so graciously shares with us.
If you’re suffering, if you find yourself in spiritual distress, doubts, fears, lack of faith, if you know your faith is luke-warm, that you aren’t where you want to be or need to be, if you find that something’s missing, ask yourself where you are in entrusting Christ God with your life, your cares, your idenity. Ask yourself how convinced you are of your value before God and His love for you. Ask yourself if you’ve been trying to have it both ways: calling yourself a Christian but actually holding on to the world, rather than taking Christ’s loving hand, which is here to guide us into His Kingdom. We’re never meant to go it alone. Christ gives us His Church. Together we are built up into His likeness, strengthened and emboldened in our witness as His Body.
Together we build up the Church, so that as we are healing and growing, we enable others to partake as well. Participation in the Church of Christ is never static, but always meant to be outgoing in terms of our love and concern for the spiritual well-being and healing, not only of ourselves, but of all others as well. Such is the love of a true Christian, a true Orthodox.
Our Lord has given us all the spiritual medicine we need: worship, service, prayer, the Sacraments, the Scriptures, offerings, fasting, discipline, love. All the tools are available in the Church as a means to a deeper, growing relationship and communion with God the Holy Trinity.
Christ God heals the woman with the issue of blood in today’s Gospel because of her faith, her desire for more of Him. She comes to Jesus; she touches Him. She avails herself of Him, of His love. She does so with a spirit of humility, of Christ-likeness, and so she is given healing.
Likewise, Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, realizes the same thing: faith in Christ alone can save. He doesn’t rely on himself or on the Law to save his daughter. He comes to Christ God Himself for healing. Christ God comes to his house and raises his daughter who has died.
Are you in a place in your life where you want more from God, where you realize you need more of God in your life? God’s desire is to save each one of us. Is your heart open to partake with Him of His life, to deepen your faith in Him? Everything else in which we may be tempted to put our trust is just so much shifting sand. But with Christ, there is forgiveness, there is healing, there is growth, there is joy, there is love. There is salvation. Christ is in our midst!
