9TH Sunday after Pentecost (Forefeast of the Transfiguration/Martyr Eusignius of Antioch) – 2012 August 5

Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, August 5, 2012
 
Epistle: I Cor. 3:9-17
Gospel: Matt. 14:22-34
 
Often, we think of God’s will as some overarching plan for our lives.  We tend to focus on the big picture and forget that God’s will for us is revealed every day and is discerned through a daily, if not moment by moment relationship and participation in the life of the Holy Trinity through His Church.  We can forget or willingly choose to forget that “Thy will be done” goes hand in hand with “give us this day our daily (super-substantial) bread,” feeding on Christ through the Sacraments.  It’s necessary for those who love God, who desire salvation, to suspend their own opinions and preferences to learn God’s way, to continue to struggle, to change into the likeness of Christ; they learn to participate more and more in the Life that He is.  We call this participation, deification; it is our cooperation with God, and what it means to grow in faith.
 
The word that St. Paul uses to describe this relationship of cooperation in today’s Epistle is “synergoi,” synergy, saying, “we are God’s fellow workers.”  This is no 50/50 relationship.  We aren’t equals with God.  We cooperate with God’s work in us through our obedience to His teachings, to His Church, to the hierarchy, so that we can be pastored, in order that we may grow in Christ-likeness and change, conforming ourselves to God’s will.  Obviously, this is a great challenge, but a necessary one if we are to grow in Christ and be deified.
 
Allow me to give you an example: The priest, as father of all those communing members of the church he pastors, isn’t here to give you his opinions or personal ideas about Christ, the Church, or the Orthodox Faith.  Rather, he’s here to strive to love as Christ loves, to teach, to preach, to adjure as a father in Christ in keeping with the sure path that has been entrusted to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, through His Apostles and all those faithful who have come before us.  God loves us too much to leave us to our own devises.  Instead, He gives us pastors, spiritual fathers, teachers accountable in His Church, to guide us—if we’re open to receiving their guidance.  The tenets of Orthodoxy can be learned in books; the heart of Orthodoxy is learned thru humility and obedience, and thereby, through cooperation with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
 
In this way, St. Paul reminds us, that “no other foundation can anyone lay that that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”   As I ‘build’ into you, I’m called and responsible to God, to my bishop, for giving you the fullness of the truth of Christ, even if you struggle with it or, God forbid, reject it: think, for example, of the call to come to Vespers, to make regular confession, to carefully prepare to receive the Eucharist, to pray daily, to put Christ first and witness to the Truth that He is to those around us.  These admonitions can all be challenging, but are necessary.
 
For our part, we are each responsible for how we build in ourselves on what we have received, how we receive what is entrusted to us, the extent to which we are willing to cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives through the Church, which has been given to us for us to grow and work out our salvation.
 
Healing, growth, salvation in Christ, requires a dynamic, active, ongoing relationship and communion with the living God, who is Eternal Life.  And so, realizing what is at stake, we live with eternity before our eyes, we prioritize the Kingdom of God over all that is temporal and passing away so that we may be inheritors of that Kingdom and help others to find their way into the Kingdom as well through us, our example and life of faith, showing the way as those who have come before us have, likewise, shown us the way.
 
Our cooperation, our daily “yes” to God, is predicated on faith, or, at least, the desire for faith.  And faith is one of those big concepts that often eludes us or can seem ambiguous, almost like a cliché.  Faith means letting go of our control, our own wills, and trusting God.  Taking a big step of faith can induce fear.  The more pride we have, the more we can fear the spiritual surgery God may be doing in us to grow us in cooperation with His work in our lives for our salvation.
 
The disciples were in constant fear as they followed Jesus and in constant need of faith.  They seem to be placed in one perilous situation after another.  In today’s Gospel, we find them tossed about on the sea, the waves and the wind making them much afraid.  To add to that, Christ comes walking to them on the storm-tossed waves.  Imagine!  They assume He’s a ghost.
 
Christ’s words to them are comforting: “It is I.  Do not be afraid.”  Literally, Christ says here, “I AM; He uses the divine name of God.  Who else has the power over the laws of nature and the elements of nature?  Still dubious, Peter calls out, “Lord, if it’s You, command me to come to You on the water.”  The Lord commands and Peter comes.  This is a big step of faith on Peter’s part.  Peter walks on the water!  We often forget this when we consider this passage.  For a few steps, Peter exhibits the faith necessary to get to Christ.  He keeps His focus on Christ.
 
When Peter gets distracted—in this case, by the winds and the waves, taking his focus off Christ, he begins to sink; he’s now in trouble; his faith wavers.  So it is with us: if we hope to build on the foundation that we’ve been entrusted in the Church—the new life in Christ that is our hope for eternal life—it demands our cooperation of faith, our willingness to trust God, which means trusting His Church.  Faith means repenting when we do sin and immediately striving to get our focus back on Christ.  But as Peter evidences to us: faith is hard work; it’s hard keeping our focus on Christ.  But when we fail to do so, what are the consequences?  We can become fearful again, bogged down in the mundane of the material world, our pride, our passions, our worldly preoccupations—and we sink, we spiritually sink.
 
And so, God in His love for us, knows this about us, and He shows mercy on us.  He gives us the tools we need to help us to keep our focus on Him, to repent, to cooperate with the work of healing, growth, and salvation He is doing in us.  These tools are our daily morning and evening prayers, the Jesus Prayer, calling on the Name of Christ throughout the day, fasting, which reminds us to hunger and thirst after God, all the divine services of the church, Bible study, and, the Sacraments—all of which He offers us and guides us in through His Church.
 
We have need not just of some of these tools, but of all of them.  Being an Orthodox Christian means we don’t go it on our own; rather, we make use of the tools God has given us, we are accountable, we are repentant, so that we may continue to grow further up and further in our relationship and communion with Him.
 
What foundation are you building on?  Are you making use of the ‘gold’ that Christ God gives you?  It begins with cooperation and a teachable spirit, praying for an increase in faith, striving to keep our focus on Christ at all times.  May each of us pray that through growth in faith, we may do the hard work of cooperating with God’s work in our lives, through obedience, humility, repentance, and love for God and His holy Church, making use of all the tools He’s entrusted to us.  In this way, we will be among those who build on the foundation of Christ with ‘gold,’ and not as those who are saved, “as through fire” (I Cor. 3:15).