I was given the great chance to speak on Leper Sunday at St. Thomas Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church of Philadelphia (Mascher St.). I also happened to bring my bootleg mp3 player/recorder. So, for the first time ever here is the closest thing I have to a podcast:
sermonHere are the things I already know:
1) If English is your 2nd language...I speak very fast.
2) I slipped up and stuttered through a few words...no need to remind me
3) I talk like I have a mouth full of marbles.
So enjoy..comments are welcome..Here is the full text:
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Glory to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One True God, Amen + + +
Beloved Achen, my brothers and sisters in Christ…
We have together embarked on this sacred and penitential journey culminating in our commemoration of the suffering, death, and Glorious Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. On this the 2nd Sunday of the Great Lent, we remember how a leper, considered unclean and an outcast in the Jewish community came and spoke with the Incarnate God.
The dialogue was simple but powerful.
Falling on his face he says, “Lord if you are willing, You can make me clean.” And the Lord, daring to even reach out and touch him, who was most reviled and despised of all people, responds, saying, “I am willing, be cleansed.”
We’d like to consider ourselves to be living lives of adversity. What is it that burdens our minds? Is it our studies? Is it the bills we have to pay? Perhaps we are burdened by our strained relationships. Or, perhaps we’re simply not living the lives we had aspired to?
We have adversity, that is sure, but how many of us can say that we have been truly made outcasts? I consider myself blessed to have never endured a sickness which has debilitated both my health and appearance. Yet, the leper, being both separated from the community and suffering the torments of a vile disease, in the midst of his sufferings, turns to the Lord and says, “Lord, if you are willing, You can make me clean.”
Our Lord, being perfectly God, perfectly man, having existed throughout all eternity and before all creation, both holds the universe in His hands and transcends through it. This very same Lord knows our sufferings and our perils exactly, deeper than we know them for ourselves, just as he knew the anguish of the leper. And when he asks the Lord if he was indeed willing to make him clean, emphatically, the Lord answers “I am willing!”
The leper had asked if the Lord was willing, and Christ in his compassion complied. He did not merely say, “Lord, heal me,” or “Lord, end my sorrows.” He asked the Lord to heal him if that was indeed the Lord’s will to do so. Though his own plan for himself would most assuredly have been for his own healing, whatever he had willed for himself was submitted to the will of the Lord.
Similarly, do we not also ask if the Lord is willing to carry us through our hardships? How often do we feel discouraged and disenchanted when these hardships don’t seem to end? Whereas the leper desired healing, submitted his will to Christ’s will, and was consequently healed, does God heed us individually for our most heart-felt desires?
If we feel as if God does not answer our prayers as he answered the request of the leper, than we must understand that God has created each and every one of us for a specific purpose. Just as God created Adam and Eve in Eden to dwell and commune with Him, so also God wants each and every one of us to abide with Him in His Kingdom. This path we take toward this restoration is designated for each and every one of us uniquely.
While some of us are called to the priesthood, others of us may be called toward monastic vows. Some of us may be called to preach the Gospel in far off lands, while others of us may be called to teach the Faith in their home parishes. Some of us may be called to bear witness through righteous living, while yet still others may be called to receive the glorious crown of martyrdom.
Indeed, in our lifetime or the lifetime of our children, we Christians may be called to suffer persecutions for our Faith once more.
Whatever our calling is, whatever God’s plan for us uniquely is, the plan that we have for ourselves in our minds may not be the plan that God has for us. In fact, while we measure the worth of a calling in terms of wealth and comfort, God’s criteria is vastly different.
We plan for ourselves lives of comfort and wealth. Our dream is to do exactly what we love, everyday, and get paid lavishly for doing so. However, God’s plan is not for every one of us to be materially prosperous in this world. In fact, how many of our saints have discarded their wealth and careers in order to put all of their focus on Christ?
What God wishes; what His will for each of us is: is that we all turn our hearts away from ourselves and towards Him and His precepts.
It can be said, then, that our potential as human beings in the sight of God is maximized absolutely when our own personal will is surrendered unto His. For this reason, Christ Himself instructs to pray to the Father, “Thy will be done.”
We are healed, redeemed, and restored in God’s time. What we suffer today, or for the foreseeable future, is, if we trust in the Lord, and love Him completely, the path that God has set for us. We should not despair in our sufferings nor give in to them. Rather, we should rejoice that God has accounted us worthy to suffer for His name, towards His goal of renewing this fallen world.
This is why the great martyrs of Christian history, for two millennia, have gone to their martyrdom constantly bearing the joy of being in Christ. Whether they were being crucified, stoned, fed to wild beasts, or beheaded, they did not seek to escape, nor did they seek solely to live. They did not question or forsake their belief in Christ, while they suffered tremendously for Him. They simply allowed God’s will to supersede their own, and in death, became truly glorified in resting with Christ.
The well-known Church Father, Polycarp of Smyrna, typifies the Christian martyr. When as an elderly man he was arrested by Roman soldiers for being a Christian, he said “For 86 years I have served Him, and He has never done me any harm. How can I possibly blaspheme my King and Savior?”
When they went to nail him to the post where they would set his body on fire, St. Polycarp refused saying, “He who gives me the strength to stand the fire will give me the strength also to remain on the pyre without moving.”
Just as the Lord worked his will in St. Polycarp, as He did in the struggling leper, so too he calls each of us personally saying, “I am willing.” The Lord is willing to take us to the fullness of our potential in Him.
If we only conform our ambitions to Him, if we open our hearts and our minds and allow the fullness of the Holy Spirit to work within us, than we will indeed achieve spiritual heights beyond our comprehension. In doing so, we will fulfill our true purpose, communion with our Lord Jesus Christ, to Him belongs praise, honor, and thanksgiving, for ever and ever, Amen.
Labels: Lent, Leper Sunday, orthodox, Sermon
