What Are You Afraid Of?

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What are you afraid of?

In the reading today from the holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, we hear the story of our Lord walking on the water in the midst of a storm, coming to His disciples in a boat being tossed by the wind and the waves.  They don’t recognize Him until He speaks to them; and then Peter, still not quite sure, says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to walk on the water.”  Then he does something amazing.  He gets out of the boat, and walks on the water – as long as his eyes are on the Lord.  Once he is distracted by the storm around him, he begins to sink, and must be saved by the Lord.

We know what the disciples were afraid of in that story.  They were afraid of the storm; and remember, there were experienced fishermen in the boat, who had been in storms before.  They were afraid they had seen a ghost – is that really the Lord?  Finally, except for Peter, they were afraid to get out of the boat because they were afraid of dying.  So: what are you afraid of?

Most of us are afraid of death.  We hear about the martyrs, and wonder if we could do what they did, doubting that we can do so.  We hear about those who are given a sentence of death, and who are able to meet it peacefully, and wonder if we could do what they did, doubting that we can do so.  Really, we fear death because, like the disciples, our faith is weak and imperfect.  We sing, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death”; but like the disciples in the boat, we ask, “Is it really the Lord?”  We don’t believe; and so we sink.  As long as his eyes remained on the Lord, Peter walked on the water.  When we allow ourselves to be distracted by the winds and the waves of the cares of this life, and when we focus on them, and not the Lord, we sink, and are perishing.  If we truly believed, we would not fear death.  If we truly believed, we would walk confidently by faith.  If we truly believed, we could walk on water, if need be.

So:  What do we do?  We should live in the way we should even if we do not yet have faith sufficient for us to get out of the boat.  We may never walk on water; but trust in the love of God, and in His mercy, remembering that with a word He calmed the wind and the waves, and brought His disciples out of the storm.  Live as a disciple: praying and fasting, giving, and forgiving; seeking humility, and honoring Christ in everyone you meet – do these things, and we will know that the One walking with us in the midst of the storms of life is truly the Lord; and He will bring us safely to harbor in His kingdom, where death has been conquered, and live does not end.

What are you afraid of?  Live as a disciple; trust in God’s love; and there is no reason for us to fear death.

Church Growth? "Come and See..."

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Is there anyone who does not want the church to increase? Think about that…

Today we celebrate the feast of the holy Apostle Andrew the First-called. He is given the title, “the First-called” because it he, with another of the disciples of St. John the Baptizer, were shown the Lord by the Forerunner. We do not know the other disciple’s name; nor would we know Andrew’s, except that he responded not only to the instruction of the Lord to follow Him, but also by going to find his brother, Simon, and telling him to come and see for himself that the man Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one of God, for Whom they and all the faithful in Israel had been awaiting His coming. When Simon saw the Lord, he was given the name, “Cephas,” which we know as “Peter”; both terms deriving from the words for “rock” in Aramaic and in Greek. Thus, it is also fair to say that St. Andrew was also the first evangelist; although surely St. John the Baptizer might also be given this honor.

When the faithful were forced to flee from Jerusalem because of the persecutions of the Church growing there, the holy apostle Andrew went to the region of Byzantium, and then along the Danube and the Black Sea and even to Kiev before returning to Greece, having established churches, consecrated bishops and ordained priest along the way during his journey. In the Greek city of Patras, he preached the Gospel; among his converts were the wife and brother of the Roman governor, who was furious, and ordered the arrest and torture of the apostle. He was executed by crucifixion; and as he was on the Cross, the faithful came to him, and he taught them, then prayed, was covered with a bright light for some thirty minutes, and then yielded his spirit into the hands of God. He departed this life for the next in the sixty-second year of our Lord.

In the reading from the holy Gospel according to St. John the Theologian, in which we heard about the holy apostle Andrew, we hear as well about the apostles Philip and Nathaniel, and there is a common theme at play. The Lord finds Philip, and say to him, “Follow me.” Philip, in turn, goes to his friend Nathaniel, and says that they have found the One they had been waiting for, of Whom Moses and the prophets had foretold. Nathaniel is skeptical at first; “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” But he responds to Philip’s invitation, “Come and see”; and, when he meets Jesus, he, too, becomes a disciple.

What does any of this have to do with us? I’m sure that most, if not all, of you would answer the question I asked at the beginning in the affirmative: Yes, we want the church to grow. Well, growing the church is a lot like growing a garden. It’s not enough to go to the place where you want the garden, and sprinkling some seeds on the ground, and hoping for the best. If you want your garden to grow, it’s going to take some work: preparing the ground, planting the seeds, watering, pulling the weeds, and so on. The same thing is true for growing the church: it takes work. More than anything else, we need to work at living in the Orthodox way of life, so that what we say agrees with what we do; and we need to be willing to admit our mistakes, when we fail to live as did the fathers and the saints. But there’s a lesson for us in the Gospel about what we need to do, and it’s not terribly complicated. In order to have the church grow, we have to do what the holy apostles Andrew and Philip did: we have to invite people; we have to say, “Come and see.”

In part, this requires us to heed the teaching of the holy apostle Peter, who wrote that we must be prepared at all times and in every season to give an account of the hope that is within us. What hope is that? It is the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, a life on which death has no claim and no hold – the life given to us in our baptism. Our hope is in the love of God in Jesus Christ, by which our sins are forgiven and our souls are saved. If we consider what God has done, and is doing, for us, and if we receive the love God intends for each and every one of us, then we should find ourselves able to say to those we know who are broken and hurting, and to those who are searching, and to those who are in darkness, “Come and see.” Brothers and sisters, if we live with the desire to reveal Christ in us, the hope of glory, if we live loving everyone around us as Christ, and if we will say to them, “Come and see,” the church will grow, God will be glorified, and souls will be saved. May God, through the prayers of the holy apostle Andrew, give us the grace to join in his labors, and to say to as many as we can, “Come and see.”

Why Do You Doubt?

You’ve probably heard of the “Grand Canyon Skywalk”; a horseshoe-shaped structure that extends out about sixty-six feet over a side canyon in the Grand Canyon.

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It is made of two-inch thick glass walls and floor, so that visitors may look out to see the main gorge in which the Colorado River flows through the Grand Canyon; and can also look down to see the side canyon which is 500 to 800 feet below the Skywalk. I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan to make the six and a half-hour trip to pay $75 to walk out and look down through the glass floor at the canyon below any time soon! But I think that imagining what the experience might be like might give us a bit of insight into what happens in the reading today from the Gospel according to St. Matthew.

The disciples of our Lord, some of whom are experienced fishermen, are in a boat during a storm at night while sailing across the lake on their way to Gennesaret. In the midst of the storm, during the fourth watch of the night, they see our Lord walking on the water, and imagine that they have seen a ghost, and are terrified. They hear Him say to them, “Cheer up! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” In an incredible moment of faith, Peter replies, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the waters.” Jesus tells him to do so; and Peter steps out of the boat onto the wind-tossed waves, and begins to walk on the water. He’s doing fine, until he takes his eyes off of the Lord, and he begins to sink. He cries out for help, and the Lord saves him; but also questions him, saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Can you imagine yourself leaving the relative safety of the boat – mind you, it is being tossed about by the waves, so it’s not as if it were safely anchored – to walk on the water? Most of us would probably be so uncomfortable with the glass floor of the Skywalk that we wouldn’t even venture out there, much less try to do something as miraculous as what St. Peter attempted. As such, we need to examine our own lives, and our own faith, and ask ourselves, why do we lack even the small amount of faith that St. Peter had? We should ask, because it is clear that, if we had even a fraction of the “little faith” he had, our lives would be remarkably different.

We lack the faith to work miracles. Could it be that the reason we are not successful in the transformation of who we are and how we live is because we lack the faith needed to do so? The evidence of this can clearly be seen in how often we must confess the same behaviors, over and over and over again. Why does victory elude us? Our Lord’s question is also directed to each and every one of us: Why do you doubt?

I wish there was an easy answer to this question. I wish that there was a simple way to change the situation in which we find ourselves. I think the problem is that we are trying to “walk on water,” but find ourselves sinking into the cares and concerns of this world, as St. Peter sank into the stormy waves, because we so seldom have our eyes fixed on the Lord, Who has called us to come to Him as He called to St. Peter. We see instead the problems of this world, with all its suffering and pain, filled with hatred, disease, famine, war… We seek instead to escape from the problems with our jobs, with our families; we seek the pleasures and comforts of this world, and yield ourselves to our passions, rather than looking for the kingdom of God and the righteousness of that kingdom. When we do these things, we cannot walk on the waves of life, as did our Lord, as did St. Peter.

There is no easy answer; but I offer this to you for your consideration. God loves you. Our Lord Jesus Christ came in love to save you. There is nothing you can do to save yourself; but there is nothing that you must do to save yourself, except to do what St. Peter did as he began to sink. All we need to do is to cry out, “Lord, save me!” – and believe that He is able to do what He has promised. Then, we need to live trusting in that promise: that the power of death has been broken by His death and resurrection; that our sins are forgiven when we confess them and ask to be made clean, and whole; and that we have been given His life to live, so that we may honor and glorify Him, and find peace and rest for our souls.

Brothers and sisters, let us trust in the love of God Who saves us; and let us ask Him each day, each hour, each moment for the grace to keep our spiritual eyes upon Him, that we will not sink beneath the waves of the cares of this life, but may walk with Him through this life until we come to dwell in a life without end in the glory of His kingdom.