I wish to begin by congratulating many of you for beginning this Holy Race of Great Lent off with your best foot forward. For those that were able to make it to many of the services this past week, you have started this Holy Period off by bearing fruit…the likes of which our Lord demands of us in our lives.
If you did not have a cause worthy of a blessing and did not attend one Clean Week service this past week, you have some real work and catching up to do! St. Paul in his epistle to the Hebrews likens our life in Christ to a great race, and there are many reading this now that lined up at the starting line with the rest of us, but when he gun went off, tripped and fell flat on their face. If this describes you, I say this with love: “Don’t delay!”. If you were at the canon this week, you would have heard: “My Soul My Soul arise, why are you sleeping?” The Church is literally telling you to wake up! The good news for you, is that even if you stumbled out of the gate, the Church offers you another opportunity to consecrate these days to God with more weekday services, and more opportunities for you to pray, to give, and to fast. Do not waste them dear ones!
After the lifesaving services of clean week, we come to the first Sunday of Great Lent where we celebrate “The Triumph of Orthodoxy”. In order to understand what the Church is celebrating today, I want to draw your attention to the beginning of the newest additions to our iconography here at the parish. In the next few weeks, you will see the completion these two trees which tower up the walls next to the iconostasis. On my right, you will soon see the tree of Jesse, of which comes the earthly lineage of the Christ. On my left, you will see an icon called “Christ the True Vine”, and on its branches the 12 Apostles.
I want you to imagine with me what this icon of “Christ the True Vine” would look like if we were able to finish it to scale. In order to do so, we would need a Church the size of 100 Hagia Sophias in Constantinople, so that we could continue the branches throughout the history of the Church. You would see that from the apostles came the branches of the Apostolic Fathers, then the early saints of the Church, then the modern day Saints of the Church. Finally, at the tip of the tree, in the branches near the dome of this massive Church, you would find us! We would be at the very top as the newest Orthodox Christians, who are not yet wearing halos, but who can still trace our roots all of the way back to Christ Himself.
Dear ones, every time you enter into the Church, I want you to look at the trees near the iconostasis, and remember what a true joy it is to be a branch on that tree of the Holy Orthodox Church of Christ. Many of you come from different faith backgrounds, and all had different reasons for searching out the Church and wanting to grafted to those deep roots. Yet perhaps the one reason that comes out the most in conversations with many of you is how this tree of Orthodoxy does not change. It is so deeply rooted, that there are no weekly changes in the services to try and make them more relevant or popular. There are no changes in morality, or how we should live, to try and fit the ebbs and flows of a fallen world. There are no changes to this way of life. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”, and it is on this day, this glorious day of Orthodoxy Sunday, that we celebrate the triumph of this deeply rooted faith over the storms of heresy that have tried to alter and change it throughout history.
Throughout history, and indeed in our own day and age, there are many storms that come and seek to rip our branches down to the ground. There was the heresy of iconoclasm, which still exists today over a millennia later in Islam and even in some Christian Churches. Iconoclasm threatened to rip apart the Church in the 8thcentury. Despite the strong winds of persecution that blasted the tree of Christ for over a century, The Holy Spirit triumphed, and icons were restored to their former glory. The Church survived because of its deep and unchanging roots.
Centuries before that, heretics like Arius, Nestorius, Apollinaris sought to apply fallen human logic to explain the inner works of the Holy Trinity and of Jesus Christ Himself. Despite the persecutions, once again, the Church survived because of its deep and unchanging roots.
Fast forward to today, and the many storms that we have that seek to destroy uproot the Church of Christ. We live in a world where society is trying to convince us that sin isn’t a sin, where so called Christian communities change and distort the Gospel and teachings of Christ to embrace societal norms or to justify a particular political movement, or to justify genocide. Satan indeed uses many tactics to try and destroy the Tree of Christ, and in many instances and many christian communities, he has succeeded.
But do you want to have a cause of great joy this morning? As Orthodox Christians who have been grafted onto the Tree of the Church. no matter how loud and strong the winds of the fallen world will howl, the gates of hell will never prevail and knock down the Holy Orthodox Church and it’s deep roots anchored in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is a cause for rejoicing! It is a cause for celebration!
As Orthodox Christians, we don’t change the tree to fit one of life’s fallen narratives, rather it is the tree that changes us. To be a branch that is connected to Christ Himself, means we live in a constant state of repentance. It means we don’t get caught up in the winds of the storm, but rather look to the strength that is found at our root…and that strength that is found in our ever-growing relationship with God.
Glory. be to Jesus Christ!