Our pride tells us that we should be able to think and do as we please. We want no one directing us or telling us right from wrong, and we don’t want any consequences for our actions. Our pride tells us that our autonomy from others is freedom and that humility is weakness.
Certainly, Adam and Eve thought they were gaining ‘wisdom’ in their disobedience to God’s will in the garden. This is often the way Satan works: by twisting words. It’s true, Adam and Eve ‘gained’ understanding of good and evil by disobeying God; this was the so-called ‘wisdom’ that Satan promised. From that sin, the whole environment changed: Cain murdered his brother, and so on and so on. And we continue to struggle with this temptation of preferring our own way over the way that God has entrusted to us for our well-being, healing, and salvation.
The problem is, we often see God’s prescription for our healing and protection as something arbitrary, as if God simply thought it up to be a killjoy. But nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, in God’s repeated calling to become His co-heirs, “partakers of the inheritance of the Saints,” as St. Paul puts it today, His love, His grace, we see His divine fatherly patience with us. He teaches and disciplines us to save us, so we can enjoy communion, life, with Him.
Allow me to give you an example from parenthood: I often have to warn Ana not to touch the hot stove or the fireplace. In our case, in order to protect Ana, we’ve established the rule that she can’t even touch the screen on the fireplace—it could fall over on her or Iacob, for instance. I’m sure to her, this seems arbitrary. She doesn’t know (thank God) what it means to be burned, and so, she gets angry when she can’t touch the screen or get closer to the fire. But we know, and so, in love, we direct her to what is good. We discipline her to teach her what’s safe and good.
God is so much more loving than us imperfect parents: He’s striving to save our immortal souls so that we can be with Him forever, communing with Him, growing in holiness. He knows we often don’t understand the consequences of our sins, our prideful independence and disobedience to His prescriptions for freedom from our passions.
Contrary to the impulses we may have, particularly as Westerners living in the 21st century, obedience in the Church is good for us, community and accountability in the Church and to one another in the Church is good for us. They help us to battle our pride, to grow in humility, and therefore, Christ-likeness and communion with Him. Through these counter-cultural virtues, we’re enabled to faithfully participate in the Sacraments so that they deify us, we’re equipped to struggle to live for God, to witness to His truth, and embrace the life only in Him. Sometimes, this growth comes very slowly and always with much struggle because we’re still in the world, but faith is made through such struggle. Struggle is always for this reason, victory.
Christ in the humility that He Himself exhibits to us, bids us come outside of ourselves and our self-focus so that we may be Christ-bearers to one another. We do so by living the faith once received by the Saints before us, submitting our own preferences (or those of the culture around us) to the Truth Christ prescribes for us through His Church. This too is humility: receiving the faith that Christ God has entrusted to us and striving to impart it through our example to others.
Along with growth in humility, we need accountability and obedience. We need the priest as confessor and pastor—this is true from the bishops on down. The priests, in turn, need their bishop, just as the people need their priest to love them as a spiritual father, to look out for their spiritual health, to care for them, and to encourage them in their growth in Christ. We’re all invaluable to the Body of the Church. Together, we build up that Body, each contributing our particular gifts and talents. Together, in our mutual accountability and submission to the order Christ has established, we become partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in God’s Kingdom.
Today, we commemorate one of the great Saints of the Church—Euthymius—who was a great model of humility exercised through obedience and godly submission. “Obedience,” he says, “is a great virtue. The Lord loves obedience more than sacrifice, but disobedience leads to death.”
Euthymius can say this because he rightly knew that the Lord wants to keep us who are in the world from being swallowed alive by the culture. He knows the temptation to compromise the faith to get along: he fought the good fight of faith against the Nestorians, speaking the truth in love. Euthymius rightly knew that God in His love for us, just like a parent keeping his child safe, desires to heal and save our souls to give us the joy of His Kingdom. God sees where our belief and actions lead, and so He gives us warnings, teachings, and accountability in the Church to keep us safely on the path, further up and further in His life.
The struggle to be obedient to Christ God, to submit our lives to Him in our age, means that we may be rejected by others. Christ calls us to hold fast to the faith. He says to us today of those who suffer for His truth: “Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven…”
Like a parent loving a small child, so God loves us: He alone sees all ends. He knows the “why” of His teachings and admonitions on us to live a holy life. He’s in care of each of our souls, desiring our growth in Him and life with Him. When we submit ourselves to the life in Him through His Church, we do so, not following some modern re-interpretation of the Christian Faith, the latest fad in worship or new popular ideas about redefining God, but rather, we follow the Way that’s been revealed, the way that’s led countless sinners before us to become the most glorious of Saints and fellow partakers in God’s Kingdom.
Christ bids us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. Living in this world, but not being of this world, witnessing to His truth, goes contrary to the way of our culture and those who do not know God. But Christ assures us of this paradox, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
St. Euthymius knew this truth of Christ’s way, of self-denial, obedience, and humility as the way to leads to life with God and growth in that life. He taught it and he lived it to the end. He fell asleep with these words on his lips: “Every virtue is made secure by love and humility. The Lord humbled Himself because of His Love for us and became man. Therefore, we ought to praise Him unceasingly…” May we too follow the way of humility, obedience, and mutual accountability, that Christ has shown us through His life and that of all His Saints, so that we can become fellow partakers in Christ’s Kingdom and experience the peace and joy of life with Him.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Epistle: Hebrews 13:17-21 (Saint); Colossians 1:12-18
Gospel: Luke 6:17-23 (Saint); Luke 18:35-43
