Every age and culture has certainly had its own challenges in following God and the truth He’s revealed. Today’s culture with its dominant secular ‘religion’ is no different. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that secular democracy is no guard against religious intolerance. Increasingly, our Orthodox beliefs are coming under assault, religious liberties are being challenged. Here are a few examples: Catholic charities have had their licenses revoked in California for refusing to adopt to same-sex couples or couples outside marriage, the University of Hastings Law School has refused to allow the nationwide Christian Legal Society to organize on campus because they require their members to live a chaste Christian life. Elsewhere, the Church is being forbidden from offering pastoral and humanitarian assistance to undocumented immigrants. In New York, some smaller churches have been forbidden from renting space in public school buildings on the weekend. It takes courage to witness to the truth and speak that truth in love to an unbelieving or even, sometimes, belligerent and ignorant, culture.
This Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing women would have us draw some lessons from their courage, living in a culture as they did, where they faced great dangers for witnessing to their faith in Christ. We remember that while the disciples fled, the holy myrrh-bearing women were the first to bravely come to Christ’s tomb and identify themselves as “followers and believers in Christ.”
We know that the Orthodox Faith is the same yesterday, today, and forever because it’s the truth of relationship and communion with Christ God, as He’s revealed Himself to His Church from the beginning. that Faith has been “once delivered to the Saints” (Jude 1:3), but we continue to learn and grow in that faith, that truth. Being a faithful Orthodox means we don’t change that ‘faith once received,’ but rather, become grafted into it, into ever deeper communion with God through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, ‘owning’ our new identity in Him.
St. Paul warns us, saying, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Rom. 12:2) We have to be vigilant in not preferring our ideas, preferences, and theology to conform to this world, this society, this particular culture, over the timeless truth that Christ is and that He’s entrusted to us since the beginning. We are vigilant so that we can experience the fullness of the life in Him AND the freedom from enslavement to this world and its passions that life in Him produces as its fruit and which is the means of our salvation.
In times of crises in a culture, as we are experiencing now, it’s okay when feeling conflicted between what the Church teaches and the latest that society preaches, to simply follow what the Church has taught since the beginning, what the bishops the priest proclaim of the timeless truth that Christ is. A child, when he is first learning anything, starts out by following what his parent teaches. Only later does he come to understand that touching fire burns you.
Likewise, as we grow in our faith, we learn to love the teachings of the Church not only because the Church says so, but because, through worship, teaching, prayer, and Sacraments, the Truth grows in us through the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit. It becomes ‘owned’ by us—not onerous or burdensome, but intuitive, freely ours, as we grow in love of Christ and one another.
Living in our culture challenges us as Orthodox Christians to such an extent that we may find ourselves ‘unpopular’, labeled politically ‘incorrect,’ narrow-minded, rejected. The temptation to “fit in,” to compromise the faith, can be great. But we cannot be faithful Orthodox Christians, true to our Lord, and embrace that which is contrary to the Orthodox Faith, the life in Him He’s entrusted to us. Otherwise, we not only create division in the Body of Christ, but we withhold healing from ourselves and others in need—and that is no love. Instead, love compels us to be strong and courageous, humble, as were the holy Myrrh-bearing women who came to the tomb when no one else would to anoint the body of Jesus. As we hear in the Resurrectional troparion (hymn) of the Fourth Tone, “When the women disciples of the Lord, learned from the angel the joyful message of the Resurrection, they cast away the ancestral curse and elatedly told the apostles: Death is overthrown, Christ God is risen, granting to the world great mercy.”
We as Orthodox are called on to transform the culture, not to conform our faith to the culture. This is hard; this increasingly sets us apart, maybe even puts our job at risk—someday, it may even be a risk for imprisonment, but this is also the way of love, the way of witness, the way that preserves the hope of salvation for all. Thank God countless Saints before us have been willing to love to such an extent that they preserved the faith in the face of persecution—small and great.
The Myrrh-bearing women and the pious Joseph, were single-minded in their love for Jesus. They came to Him even as all others rejected Him, fled from Him, denied Him in order to keep themselves from being condemned or persecuted. But despite whatever fear they had, the love of Christ, love for Christ, compelled them to come to Jesus and to go forth proclaiming the Good News of His resurrection—even as others attempted to silence them, even as they were threatened to be cast out of the Temple, even as Christians began to be persecuted and killed for this faith we still proclaim. They are a shining example of the strength and courage of humility.
The Holy Myrrh-bearers and the pious Joseph had courage because they loved Christ God. They loved God more than they feared whatever man might do to them if they went forth proclaiming the truth of His resurrection. It is they who proclaim the Gospel of Christ’s resurrection to the other disciples, the Apostles of Christ. The Gospel proclamation begins with them. Likewise, St. John Chrysostom writes, that Joseph, a member of the Council of the Jews, “exposed himself to death” in order to bury Jesus (St. John Chrysostom in The Bible and the Orthodox Fathers for Orthodox, Johanna Manley, p. 52). And, the women disciples likewise ventured all to go to anoint Christ, risking persecution. When the disciples fled, the women drew near with their love.
You and I are called to a greater love, a love that’s willing to ‘offend’ when needed for the sake of another’s eternal soul, for the sake of the truth that is the only hope of salvation. “Perfect love casts out fear.” Our love for Christ enables us to overcome our fears and have the courage to stand up for the truth while also loving those who are confused by “all the winds of doctrine” swirling around us. We love Christ so that those who sin may find healing as we do and that others can struggle, recover, repent as we do. Such is God’s grace and love for us.
The question for us is this: Will we be like those who flee, deny, or succumb to the culture out of fear, or will we be humbly courageous like the Myrrh-bearing women and Joseph of Arimathea, who loved God more than they feared man. Only in this way, the way of true love and courage, do we learn to love our fellow man as we should, to contend for the faith as we are called to do, to give hope to the hopeless and bring healing to the sin-sick, and model such healing and repentance in our own lives. Only in this way, do we protect that which is sacred and those who are most vulnerable in our society. We stand for the Truth, representing Christ as His disciples to a world in great need of healing from sin-sickness and the passions, in great need of the timeless truth of Christ that further unites us with Him who is our eternal life, our salvation. The love of God compels us, the love of God animates us, the love of God shows us the way.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women and the Pious Joseph
4 May 2014
Epistle: Acts 6:1-7
Gospel: Mark 15:43-16:8
