Commanded to Come Home
In his book Mere
Christianity, the famous Christian apologist C.S. Lewis gave us his
description of the new man in Christ. He
wrote:
Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth. Some...are still hardly recognizable; but
others can be recognized. Every now and
then one meets them. Their very faces
and voices are different from ours:
stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They will not be very much like the idea of
"religious people" which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to
themselves. You tend to think you are
being kind to them when they are really being kind to you...
Now, here we are, you and I, one
year later. How much have you grown in
your likeness to God? How much have you
become this new man? Or, 365 God-given-days
later, have we sadly remained the same-perhaps, more deeply embedded in the
fallen ways of the world: still
susceptible to ignorance and folly, still giving way to fantasy and wild
imagination, still wasting precious time?
Even though we may faithfully
attend churches full of truth and grace, why are we not moving more intensely
from glory to glory, as Scripture
teaches? Rather than becoming more like the
God Who created us, why are we becoming more like the demons who provoke
us? Could it be that we are not becoming
these new men in Christ simply because we do not understand that we are
supposed to?
The Holy Orthodox Church teaches
us that Salvation (which is to be our greatest concern) is far more than just the
forgiveness of our sins, but is, rather, "the genuine renewal of mankind." What does this mean to you and me as we work out our salvation in fear and
trembling? First, let's go to the
Garden...
Holy Lights Turn Dark
In that beautiful Garden of Eden,
where man was placed to grow in the likeness of his Creator, he and the woman
who came forth from him enjoyed the paradise of the senses as well as the
paradise of the soul. The first couple was placed there to prove their faithfulness
to God. God watched them as a loving
parent watches his little ones. In that
holy and fragrant atmosphere, Adam and Eve were to establish a strong adherence
to good. This sanctified goodness would
have led them to greater and greater blessings, maximizing for all eternity the
enormous potential they possessed. The bliss that filled and nourished their
souls was indescribably sublime. It
radiated as light from their being for it was nothing less than the Light of
God Himself! This bliss, this heavenly radiance, this sweet reality of being
created in the Image of the Inexhaustible One was to grow, never to end. Yet, trouble was to come.
At the instigation of the devil,
at the seduction of the clever one and his words, the pure stream of their
innocence was defiled. With their godliness provoked and their spiritual
balance upset, the first man and woman weakened and turned from their holy
calling. Once tempted, Adam would have to make a choice either to trust and obey
the God Who created him, or to turn toward his own inflamed and attractive
reasoning-a reasoning that invited him to be like God, but without Him. Within
his mind, heart and soul, man turned toward himself. In this blatant act of disobedience (he had a
choice; he could have still repented), in this radical departure from the Holy
One Whose Grace protected and preserved him, man cut himself off from the very
source of his own being. This could mean only one thing-he would surely die!
In the priestly prayers of St.
Basil's Liturgy, we are reminded of the consequence of this disappointing
action:
But when he disobeyed you, the True God who had created him, and was
led astray by the deceit of the serpent, he was made subject to death through
his own transgressions. In your
righteous judgment, O God, you exiled him from paradise into this world and
returned him to the earth from which he had been taken...
Through Adam and Eve we lost the
life of paradise. The world, darkened by
sin, was changed From that time on the earth produced a harvest only with much
labor. Together with good fruits, weeds began to grow in the fields, animals
began to fear man; they became wild and began to hunt for prey. Illnesses, sufferings and death appeared.
Even more, we lost the very close
and direct communion we had with our God. He no longer appeared to man visibly,
as in Paradise. Man whose glory it was to see God, converse
with Him, be nourished by Him, suddenly became as an emptied vessel thrown down,
a vessel that once held the most precious treasure of all, God Himself. In that real time and space fall of man, we
not only lost the paradise of the garden, but, more sadly, we lost the paradise
of the soul.
God Forgives Us
Now God did not want this for us.
He did not wish us to be broken and
empty, devoid of His sanctifying grace like some beaten-up doll without
life. And so, after millennia of
darkness and despair, when the time was right, He came-the Captain of our Salvation-to
rescue us from this brutal, unending storm; He came to rescue you and me in the
very Person of His own Son.
As the new Adam, Jesus assumed
the entirety of our sick and fallen nature. He put on our diseased and fallen flesh with
all of its sores. In our flesh, He lived a perfect human
life. And on the Cross, that Roman tool
of execution where they hung Him between the very heaven and earth that He
created, He died a human death, totally assuming our disobedience. In this
supreme emptying of Himself and the powerful Resurrection that followed, He
conquered death! More deeply, He
conquered that broken condition of our soul that could no longer find the Light
of God. And in this corrective movement
of divine love, into our dying humanity, into the soul of man, He poured a new
life, a new power. And after bidding His eternal peace to those whom He found
trustworthy, His little band of renegades, His disciples, who would soon be
introduced to this new power in the coming of His Spirit, He ascended back to
Heaven in our glorified humanity, back to His Father, back to our Father.
Do you see how He, as man,
restores us to God, as God? Do you see
how He takes that which was distant and defeated and renders it restored and
resplendent? Do you understand how man
and God (in Christ) are united again, as it once was, and is to be? Through this act of perfect love, our Lord
opened a new path for all mankind, for He has, indeed, forgiven us. Behold the depth of His forgiveness!
But exactly where is this new
path and power to be found and rightly journeyed upon?
God Renews Us
It is found in all of its
fullness and glory in the great and holy receptacle that we call the Orthodox
Church. She is a reality as true and
powerful as Her Head for it is taught and experienced that Jesus Christ and His
Church (His Body) are one and the same!
Jesus is a real, breathing, flesh and blood man; His Body, you and me,
bound together by the unifying radiance of His Divine Being, is also flesh and
blood. It is here within this
soul-cleansing community where the vision of our inner world is
restored. It is here, immersed within her mystical life-which only begins at
baptism-where we are slowly and gently raised to the "ascent that never
wearies." It is here aboard this Ark of
Salvation where the deep spiritual waters poured out upon man are safely
and wisely navigated, without error, toward the dawning world of life
everlasting. She is in Her essence otherworldly. And through Her, living,
transfiguring energies come from God and mystically unleashed to reconciled man
(repentant man), She brings fallen man home to the natural reality of his first
created beauty. Only in God's Church can
we be renewed! Only within Her
God-designed boundaries can we truly return home! Anywhere else-no matter how it is labeled or
cleverly constructed, no matter how emotionally satisfying or intellectually
stimulating it may be-man will remain fallen, scattered and utterly confused,
quite distant from the authentic work and journey he is to be on.
God Commands Us to
Come Home
The Lord walked among us: as man, He laughed and cried with us; as God,
His Fatherly voice called to us. And
like no other, His words bestirred within our hearts and souls the distant remnants
of a reality lost, a reality He had come to restore.
Now, it is my humble
understanding (which I pray is clear and grace-filled), that the whole saving
work of Jesus Christ took place for one reason: that our Lord's entire life, from His humble Birth
to His glorious Resurrection from the dead, as well as the building of His
Church and the sending of the Holy Spirit that fills Her, converges to
spotlight before us the shining reality of this one most unmistakable and
soul-stirring conclusion-that we are
nothing less than creatures who have
received the order to become God (St. Basil the Great). And God wants to
see this order fulfilled simply because He loves us and wants us back.
Do you understand that we are
being summoned from the very throne of our Creator to return home, summoned to
fulfill a much higher calling than many of us may have never been taught, or
even imagined? After all, it was God
Himself Who spoke these words to us: I
said, "You are gods, sons of the Most High-all of you" (Psalm 81:6
and John 10:34). And do you understand that if this summons is
to be fulfilled, we must first accept the clear and well-spoken diagnosis of
His Church-divinely planted as a ready and fully-equipped Hospital-that we are
spiritually sick and dying; that we are inauthentic, unnatural beings, no where
near what we've been created to be, even after we are dripped and dried of the
regenerative waters of our Baptism?
Baptism is simply a door. It is a great and holy door, indeed; yet, it
is only the beginning, the entrance that leads to the first, crawling steps of
what it means to be newly born in Christ.
And once we embrace our condition
as unacceptable and dangerously far from God, tearfully rejoicing in what He
has already done, the sweet answer of His grace will start us on our way. We, too, then, will begin our deifying journey
home, a journey of vigilant effort that will humble the soul, and bring to it the
transfiguring grace of God. At first, it will be a clumsy crawling, but
take heart: it will turn to the joyous,
skillful running of one who, while on the way, radiates divine glimpses of a heavenly
design. Our Holy Tradition is rich in the
deep vein of this teaching; we should seek it out. For St. Symeon the New Theologian tells us that-God
is not united except with gods.
* * *
It's pretty obvious that, for many,
the Christian life ends at baptism.
Could this be the reason we remain the same? Now, it's true, there may be growth here and
there, brought about by some oppressive situation or sorrow, some gem of
instruction, but very seldom due to the voluntary, godly struggle we are
encouraged to carry on that would bring transformation and salvation to our
souls. And because the greater calling
of Psalm 81 is rarely articulated (which would fuel the remnants of our Divine
Image), it is unlikely that it will be sought after, and if it is not sought
after, it is prophesied that it will be less and less realized: Help, Lord; for there is no longer any that
is godly, for the faithful have vanished from among the sons of men (Psalm
12:1). What makes this even more severe
and worth our centered attention is the reality of its irreversible and eternal
consequences, as well as the fact that there will be no other Christ come to
save us. There will be no other
God-given time to return home.
I wonder if, for the sake of
keeping our people happy, we have not unwittingly reduced the radical call of
the Lord-you must lose your life to save it-to a less demanding and more
world-pleasing gospel that simply calls us to be good and do the best we can, a
soul-numbing, therapeutic message that is not from Jesus at all? And in so doing, have we not blindly
forfeited the possibility of our ever finding the Kingdom of God
within? The Kingdom of God that Jesus said is within you. The whole of
biblical history points to the reality of this Treasure. It is just waiting to be found! Yet, if the hard soil of the heart is not
more deeply tilled, and, yes, troubled on occasion, so as to remove the jagged
and heavy stones that conceal its majestic presence, it may never be looked
for, let alone found.
Let me ask you, have you ever
gone treasure hunting? Any treasure
hunter, even a beginner, will tell you that if your metal detector alarms you
to a treasure nearby, you don't just stand there with your mouth open and stare
at the ground. You don't waste your time
thinking about it. You grab hold of your pointed shovel and start digging. Only then
will you unearth your treasure. But if
digging is discouraged because it messes up the ground, or we are led to
believe that hidden things will simply emerge on their own-somewhat like night
crawlers on a damp, moon-lit evening-then precious things may remain hidden; perhaps,
forever. Yet, a clear sign that we are
on our way to salvation is that we begin to seek out hidden things (St. Isaac of
Syria). And the most precious of these-the Kingdom of God-will not be found
until we move some earth, that is, the
fallen flesh that stubbornly resists us and stands in our way.
Returning home to God means that
we return to the forgotten journey of becoming
like God: other divine sons and
daughters of the Father, by grace. For it
is taught that when God breathed life into the soul of man at his creation-giving
him a ray of His divinity (St. Gregory the Theologian)-He made man in communion
with Himself, so that man would share the same divine light and life which
radiates from His Eternal Being (St. John of Damascus). It is a calling that will require much struggle
on our part, a struggle that we call asceticism
(some unpracticed in this realm of spiritual athleticism confuse it with
monasticism: all are called to struggle). It is a calling that asks you and me to turn
from the foolishness of our self, which cannot be trusted, and turn instead to
the wisdom and love of God, fully-the very opposite of what Adam and Eve did in
the Garden. It is a calling to come out
from all that is dark and disobedient regarding His commands and to begin living
according to the light of them. This hard work of obedient struggle, of quiet
vigilance, will, in time, wear down and ultimately destroy our misdirected and stubborn
wills, and safely turn them toward that which is more natural and illuminating
to our souls. By centering our lives in
Christ rather than our selves, and being found among the faithful whose primary
concern is the salvation of their souls, we will begin pulling down from heaven
a power so wise that it will transform us now and for all eternity. And we will humbly find within ourselves the
inner signs of our becoming these new "spiritual" men and women in Christ:
Everything becomes new, says the Russian Abbot Nikon-the mind, the
heart, our wills, our entire condition, even our bodies. The mind of a new (spiritual) man is able to
comprehend events which are far off, in the past or even in the future; he is
able to see the essence of things and not merely appearances, to see the souls
of men, angels and demons, to understand much of the spiritual world (beyond);
We have the mind of Christ, says the "spiritual" Apostle Paul (1
Corinthians 2:16).
Salvation is far more than just
the forgiveness of our sins; it is the
genuine renewal of mankind. Could it
be this simple, so evident that you were just unaware of your high
calling?
Become the New Man in
Christ-Heaven is Waiting!
