Homily from a friend

Got this homily from a priest friend on the mainland. Thought it was bang on.

To all my Greek Orthodox Brethren,

Before I start, I want to convey to everyone that when I preach, I do not do it because I think I am better, more spiritual or holier than others. In fact, I hate preaching to people. However, I preach because I can see the same flaws and weaknesses I have in others. I am the same as everyone else who struggles to live a life in God. I preach because I want my fellow travellers on the Way of God to learn from me and not repeat my mistakes. I don’t want anyone to think I am talking down to them or judging them. I am simply warning them of spiritual pitfalls they may be unknowingly facing, as I faced them at one point in my life. Some pitfalls I still face. I still fall flat on my face sometimes.

So what has me so worked up that I can’t sleep at three in the morning?

I have been to enough Greek concerts in my life to get a fair idea of what happens at those events. The main theme is the artists perform and the fans listen and celebrate. I feel compelled to write this after a concert I attended just a few hours ago. The concert itself was good, and the singer’s voice was superb. The promoter did a great job. It wasn’t the quality of the show or the artist that bothered me. What bothered me was the attitude of the fans, myself included.

What I noticed first as I was sitting in my chair at the beginning of the night were all the faces I recognized from church. However, most of the people I recognized I hadn’t seen in church in almost a year. It was good seeing those people. One gentleman even said to me, “Father, I haven’t seen you in a long time, I’ve missed you.” I replied, “Well, you know where I am each Sunday.” I’ll spare you the excuses I heard.

I wasn’t trying to be rude. However, as a human being, a priest, and someone who cares about others, I do sometimes feel insulted when I am told I’ve been missed by people who haven’t stepped foot in church in a year. I miss them too, and nothing pains me more than seeing empty seats on Sundays. Now, I don’t measure my success as a priest from how many chairs I can fill. I measure my success by how many people know the faith and walk on the right path. However, if I know that all the seats at church can be filled and are empty, I am bothered. Moving along....

When the concert started, the crowd went wild. Half-way through the night, people were dancing on tables, in aisles and on the stage. Flowers were being thrown at the stage, along with dinner napkins. People were trying to get past security to be of the lucky few that were allowed on the stage. People were going crazy trying to snap fuzzy pictures of the band. Most people knew the words to all the songs by heart. The adoration on the people’s faces was clear. I truly believe that for many of the people there, it was almost, if not totally, a spiritual event.

Anyone who has seen the movie “The Ten Commandments” knows about the scene where Moses is given the Ten Commandments as the people at the foot of the mountain lose their faith and start to worship idols and give themselves over to lust. I don’t know exactly when I started thinking of that scene, but as the night progressed, that image became more vivid in my mind, to the point where I became angry. I was angry with myself, with the people there and with the whole world in general.

The person singing on the stage was just a man with an admittedly amazing voice and talent. Nevertheless, he was still just a man. However, we were showering him with flowers. People were reaching out to him trying to touch him. Others were singing along with him as they were dancing on tables. Everyone’s love, adoration and lust were focused on this man. Of the lust, all I can say is that I get upset when people feel they need to dress a certain way in order to impress or be successful. The question I have for everyone is this: Where is Christ in all of this?

If we are throwing flowers at a regular human being, what do we offer to God? Do we offer Him anything at all? We don’t throw flowers at Him, even though He is our Lord. Wait, we threw flowers at his feet once, when He entered Jerusalem (Palm Sunday). We nailed Him to a cross a week later. Instead of offering Christ flowers, we rip flowers off his Tomb on Holy Friday when we greedily attack the Epitaphio for the flowers, like those soldiers who gambled for Christ’s clothing at His crucifixion. Do we try to reach out to Christ through our prayers and a Christian life? Do we try to make him real in our lives through Holy Communion and the rest of the Sacraments? We know the words to every song that comes out, but we still don’t know the Lord’s Prayer or our Creed of Faith! We don’t even know what happens in the Divine Liturgy! Where is the love and adoration for God? When does He get his? People spent significant amounts of money to attend this concert, and yet, churches which are open every week and have no entrance fees are half empty. When the concert finishes, it will be just a memory and some pictures in people’s cameras, or maybe a signature on a picture or a CD. What Christ gives us is something more real than this world, and yet we ignore it and even refuse it. People I had never seen before came out to see this man sing. When Christ calls us to His heavenly banquet every Sunday, do we run, or do we make excuses, like that man that told me he missed me, but couldn’t come to church because he’s busy. Obviously not busy enough to stay away from a concert. But then again, that’s the issue, isn’t it? We care more about our selves and our pleasure now, than for our salvation after death.

When will we stop making excuses for ourselves? We demand Christ help us when we are in trouble, and if we don’t get the answer we want in our prayers, we say God has abandoned us and does not listen. Is our faith that weak? If yes, it is our responsibility to make it stronger. We demand of our priests to bend over backwards for us when we need them, but when it’s time to show some support to these men who are spending their days and nights worrying about us, about our problems, we forget them. We use God and our priests when we need them and throw them away the rest of the time. God calls us to His Heavenly Banquet each Sunday, but we’re “busy.” The priest calls us to church and to participate in the life of the church, but we’re “busy.” Yet, if the priest was ever “busy” and couldn’t run to us when we called him, we would call for his head to roll and we would drag his name through the mud by gossiping and condemning him.

Where is the adoration of God? Where is the excitement at the service of the Resurrection? When I left the concert at 1:30 in the morning, people were still there, having a great time and not even thinking about going home. How many nights have we spent partying and dancing? Yet, one day out of the year, when we get the chance to celebrate the Feast of Feasts, the Resurrection of Christ which is the basis of our faith, we show up at the church, stay for ten minutes to receive the Light, and take off like we are being chased. Do we know how discouraging it is for a priest to see his flock receive the light and walk away while he is reading the Gospel of the Resurrection? Imagine how Christ feels. He is, after all, fully man as well as fully God. The celebration in Heaven continues and we walk away from it. We should be ashamed of ourselves. I know I am.

We should not even call ourselves Orthodox. We carry this title like it’s a birthright, when in fact, it’s a privilege. We think because we are baptized Orthodox we are better than everyone else. We don’t realize that with baptism we are granted membership into the Body of Christ, but if we don’t maintain a proper Christian life, we cut ourselves off from the tree of life. We have the true Faith and yet others are leaps and bounds ahead of us in their spirituality and their commitment to God, but that doesn’t bother us. When the Greek soccer team wins though, watch out. We parade in the streets like it was well, Pascha. We confuse being Orthodox with being Greek, and we think that just because we speak Greek, have a Greek flag on our jacket or our car, joke around with the priest, receive Holy Communion once a year and went to Sunday School when we were children, Heaven is owed to us. Don’t we realize that God owes us absolutely nothing? I tell you, many of us will be shocked with what we will realize on our death beds and on the Last Day, the day of Judgement.

I know it’s scary to turn your back to the world and follow God. I’ve had to do it many times in my life, and I still do it, because I am imperfect and I need to repent each day. However, there comes a point in every Orthodox person’s life where he or she must realize that God is calling us, and if we don’t answer the call, if we don’t care about Him, in the end there will be nothing He will be able to do for us. God cannot save us if we reject Him.

I’m not condemning those who go to movies, concerts and different shows. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. All those things become a sin when we care more about bands, singers or actors more than we do about God. That is when we start veering away from the Way.

It’s time to set our priorities straight. I am not calling for all of us to be monks and nuns. That is a calling reserved for few. However, just because we are not monks does not mean we should not be living ascetic lives. An ascetic life is a life that fights against sin and corruption and walks in the Way of the Lord. This is a call to everyone, lay people and priests. This is a call to me. We make idols of cars, actors, musicians and the media itself, and we offer nothing to God but our indifference for Him and the occasional “Amen.” We don’t even know how to do our Cross right! What excuse will we give Him when it’s time to face Him?

If you think this does not apply to you, then I’m definitely speaking to you.

If I’m wrong in any of this, I patiently await to be proven wrong.