A Fredericia Matthews-Green Reader



A Frederica Matthews-Green Reader

Selections from:

Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy

At the Corner of East and Now: A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy

Other Articles

Contents:

❖ An Interview with Frederica Matthews-Green…3

❖ Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy………………………….… 10

o “Prologue: In the Passenger Seat”………….. 11

o “Cheesefare Sunday, Forgiveness and Vespers”………………………….…………… 21

o “Icons and Sunday of Orthodoxy”….…….... 28

o “Inspiration Plate”………………………….... 41

o “Presbyterian in St. Louis: Stuffiness vs. Awe”………………………………………….... 43

❖ At the Corner of East and Now: A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy………………….. 47

o “Prologue: At the Corner of Maple and Camp Meade Road”…………………………………. 48

o “10:12 AM: Prayer for the Catechumens: Not Seeker-Friendly”……………………………… 59

❖ Other articles ……………………………………….… 67

o “The Meaning of His Suffering”……………. 67

o “Sin: Infraction or Infection?”……………..… 73

o “Whatever Happened to Repentance?”……. 75

o “God isn't dead–I talked with Him this morning.”…………………………………….... 83

o “To Hell on a Cream Puff”……………….…. 86

o “Gagging on Shiny, Happy People”……...… 97

o “How Can God Permit Suffering?”……. 100

o First Visit to an Orthodox Church—

Twelve Things I Wish I'd Known…………… 103

o The Kissing Part………………………………. 112

o Embarrassment's Perpetual Blush…………... 115

o Sex and Saints …………………………………118

An Interview with Frederica Mathews-Green

The Church

-A View From the East

Frederica Mathewes-Green

Author

The author of numerous books, most recently, The Illumined Heart, Frederica Mathewes-Green is a commentator on NPR's Morning Edition, a book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times and a columnist for ecumenical websites. Her book, Facing East, charts her movement from being an evangelical Episcopalian to her embrace of Eastern Orthodoxy.  Among other things, we asked Frederica to help us understand why a number of evangelicals are attracted to Orthodoxy.

MR:  Can you tell us a little about your spiritual pilgrimage?

FMG:  I was raised nominal Roman Catholic and abandoned Christian faith as a young teen. More than abandoned it, I emphatically rejected it as something embarrassing. I spent my high school and college years exploring various alternative religions, though I praise God that I was protected from becoming deeply involved in any of them. By the time I was a college senior I'd settled on Hinduism as the "grooviest" of all faiths. When my husband and I were married, out in the woods in 1974, I read a Hindu prayer at the ceremony.

But he, an erstwhile atheist, had read a Gospel as a philosophy class assignment, and was moved by the authority of Jesus: "If Jesus says there is a god, there has to be one." This fell far short of Christian faith, but he nevertheless arranged to enter Episcopal seminary in the fall-not intending to be a pastor, but wanting only to continue to study theology. At the time he was most attracted to the German deconstructionists and Bultmann. I was wary of all this and firmly anti-Christian, but willing to tolerate his odd hobby.

We spent that summer hitchhiking in Europe. On June 20, 1974, we arrived in Dublin and went out sightseeing. We went into a church, and I wandered around evaluating the architecture and sculpture. Near the altar I saw a statue of Jesus and stood looking at it. The next thing I knew I was on my knees. I could hear a voice within speaking to me, saying, "I am your life."

It was a galvanizing experience. I didn't know what to make of it, and I still was alienated from Christianity, but I did feel from that moment on an irresistible pull toward Jesus. I bought a Bible and began reading the Gospels, and didn't like them. Yet that heart-pull kept dragging me forward, against my stubborn mind. In the fall, when my husband started seminary, I enrolled as well. It wasn't until December when a friend asked whether we'd ever given our lives to Christ that we actually knelt down and made that faith commitment. God was very patient with us, and led us continually into deeper faith.

When we graduated my husband was ordained, and I decided to wait to be ordained later; the Episcopal church had just approved women's ordination, and it was still hard for women to get jobs. After a few years, when I saw how hard a pastor's job is, I decided that it wasn't my calling. We had babies, I taught natural childbirth classes, and we were generally very happy pastoring Episcopal churches that were in the "renewal" movement."

But gradually we noticed that the main body of the church was moving away from us, with approval of theological and moral innovations that we couldn't support. The turning point came at the General Convention of 1991, when the House of Bishops voted on a resolution stating, "Clergy should abstain from sex outside of marriage." The resolution was defeated. We realized that something cataclysmic was happening in our church, and for the sake of our faith and our children we would have to leave. We felt that this would have to mean returning to the roots of the faith, since we had seen firsthand what can happen in a church that is swayed by the times. We considered joining a breakaway "continuing" Anglican church, but that felt like going further out from the limb to a twig. We then presumed that Roman Catholicism was our destiny, but as we read its theology we felt that it had altered the faith (they would say "developed") that was held by the earliest Christians.

MR:  What brought you to Eastern Orthodoxy?

FMG:  We probably would not have known about Eastern Orthodoxy on our own; it didn't seem like a church you could join, but like something you had to be born into. However a Lutheran pastor contacted us saying that he was inviting a number of pastors to his home to hear Fr. Peter Gillquist speak. My husband went and asked some hard questions, very suspicious that Orthodoxy taught mistaken doctrines or works-righteousness. Fr. Peter later said that he thought of all the group my husband would be the least likely to convert. But my husband was impressed by Fr. Peter's answers, and particularly that he didn't give his own answers but referred my husband to sources in the church fathers that supported Scripture.

It was attending an Orthodox vespers service that really sealed it for my husband, however. The worship just overwhelmed him, and he felt that this combination of awe, gratitude, submission, and love was how Christians were supposed to be before God. I remained concerned that we were supposed to "stay and fight" in the Episcopal church, and kept saying to him, "God needed chaplains on the Titanic. Even if this ship is going down, maybe we're supposed to stay with it to the end." My husband responded, "God needed lifeboats on the Titanic. We know where the ship is that isn't going down, and the best thing we can do is get people over there."

We were chrismated in January 1993, ten years ago now. We left a very comfortable living in the Episcopal church-my husband was on his second chief pastorate-to start all over at the very bottom with only five other families. Holy Cross Church has been a wonderful success, and our only regret is that we didn't do it sooner. All three of our now-grown children are active in church and see their dad as a hero who risked everything to do what he knew was right.

MR  What does "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church" mean to an Orthodox person?

FMG:  Orthodox people have a lively sense of living in the church of the early centuries-not merely keeping alive the memory of early church practices and teachings, as in a scrapbook, but of being in one living timeless church that arches over the centuries. So this phrase from the Nicene Creed would mean what it did in the fourth century. In the face of multiple heresies (particularly Arianism, at that point), the Church is one, is united. It is one because the Holy Spirit keeps eliciting the same faith all over the world and through all cultures and in all times (at that time, meaning, of course, the known world, Africa, Asia, and Europe). So we mean the "one" faith of that era, not the lowest-common-denominator faith you'd arrive at if you added up the beliefs of everyone who call themselves a Christian today. It is the faith held by all true Christians of that era, which arises from the grass roots and directs us in the Holy Spirit, which is what discloses the "one" church.

Holy-we believe that Jesus intended to found a visible church on earth, a recognizable Body. "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church;" we may disagree about what he meant by "this rock," but there's no such doubt about "my church." Insofar as the visible church lives up to its calling, it is Holy, but of course in practice it strays from its calling due to fallenness of its leaders and members. Weed and wheat grow up together till the last day. Nevertheless, there is a real field with recognizable borders; the field isn't theoretical or invisible.

Catholic-Roman Catholics interpret this term as meaning "universal," so that each individual parish is just a little piece of the whole. For Orthodox the term means "whole, complete," and each parish is the entire Church; all the parishes added together are also the entire Church. Where the faith is, there is the one, holy, and Catholic church, in entirety.

Apostolic-continues the meaning above. It is apostolic if it continues in the faith of the apostles, teaching unchanged the faith of the Scriptures and early church. I say both Scripture and unwritten teachings transmitted from one believer to another, because some things, of course, were not written down. This was either because of the difficulty of circulating books, or because of the danger of books falling into the wrong hands. Some elements of the faith were transmitted only by word of mouth during the centuries of persecution. A person who was trained to follow in the footsteps of the apostles and entrusted with teaching the faith would be carefully examined and commissioned by the laying on of hands, as St. Paul mentions. This laying on of hands didn't magically transmit authority, but it recognized and sealed it, in a worthy person. So when we say "apostolic" we're not primarily talking about the laying on of hands, as if that magically transmits authority. We're talking about the preservation of the faith accurately from generation to generation, and this was confirmed and sealed by the laying on of hands.

MR:  Most Protestants believe that the Scriptures teach that the "gospel" (specifically, the "forgiveness of sins and resurrection of the body") creates the church, not vice versa.  What's the relation of gospel and church in Orthodoxy?

FMG:  Orthodox would agree that it is the Gospel that creates the Church. Jesus' saving acts, followed by the sending of the Holy Spirit, permits us to be reconciled with God and instructs and leads us in the faith. So you might say that the Gospel (meaning, the events of the Gospel), or the Holy Spirit, or the faith, create the Church-all would be true.

On the other hand, the Scriptures are something that welled up within the Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Church was obliged to discern which writings were worthy of being read in worship and which were not; which went into the Gospel book kept on the altar, and which into the Apostolos book kept elsewhere. There was as you know heated debate about some of the books. By the end of the fourth century it was pretty well decided; the Church had arrived at a reliable list of books for both Gospel and Apostolos.  Those Scriptures were then the Church's main authority and guide; the Church had given birth to its teacher.

MR:  Does the church ever change in the Orthodox understanding?  For instance, the debate over icons: at one point Orthodoxy banished icons, but then accepted them. 

FMG:  Change is a word that requires a backdrop. I once had an Orthodox priest insist to me that the Church does change, because we have now added to St. John Chrysostom's prayer "for those who travel by land or sea" the words "or air." The entire last ten years of the Episcopal Church flashed before my eyes, and I thought, "Ignorance is bliss."

A good analogy might be to whether a family's Christmas traditions change. If the family ceased going to worship on Christmas, that would be a cataclysmic change! If they decided to open two gifts, not just one, on Christmas eve, that would be a minor change. Likewise, one who enters the Orthodox "family" gradually comes to see what it means when it says, "We don't change."

Here's an example. The general rule for fasting is to abstain from meat, fish, and dairy products on Wednesdays and Fridays, and during the four major fasts. Already in the second century Church fathers are speaking of these fasts. Some Orthodox today follow these guidelines closely, and others mostly disregard them; furthermore, under the individual spiritual direction of your pastor you might increase or decrease these fasts to suit your health, ability, and spiritual maturity. (The fasts, by the way, are meant to strengthen self-control generally; they are like exercises, and not ever seen as penances or ways of paying for past sin.) Ways of keeping the fast can vary, from person to person and even community to community. This is why St. Ambrose told St. Monica, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," and don't worry about keeping the Saturday fast that we do in Milan.

However, the rule for receiving communion at the Eucharist is to fast from all food and drink from the time you get up that morning. Nobody would think of changing that fast (except for serious health reasons). Preparation for the Eucharist is taken very seriously in Orthodoxy, and this fast is one thing that cannot change.

Now, you wouldn't necessarily know that until you had been "in the family" for awhile. Some things change, some things don't.

The tumult over icons is not quite the same thing. Iconoclasm was instituted by the state and resisted by the church; many faithful Christians died because they refused to trample on pictures of Jesus, whom they loved so much. The sixth and seventh ecumenical councils vindicated the use of icons and established safeguards so that icons are not worshiped or treated idolatrously. No ecumenical council rejected icons.

MR:  As an Orthodox person, how do you respond to the obsession in contemporary culture with relevance, being "postmodern," etc.?

FMG:  I think it's entirely misguided. Even two old boomers like my husband and myself knew ten years ago that we didn't want to join any church that prioritized being relevant. The Gospel is already relevant, because it's timeless; hitching it to time-bound fashion only trivializes it. I think this insight is the wave of the future, ironically; I think that we will increasingly see it become fashionable to disdain passing fashion, a situation that makes Orthodox heads spin. For example, a friend recently told me that her Southern Baptist church has established a Celtic service, complete with chant, candles, and incense (at least until those with allergies complained). She said that boomers mostly go to the 9:30 "contemporary" service, where they can have all those middle-aged things like rock music and humor and skits. "But the older people wanted an earlier service, and the young people, of course, wanted something more traditional." Those words keep echoing in my mind: "The young people, of course, wanted something more traditional." If the church of the future wants to be up-to-the-minute, hip, and relevant, it had better look into tradition 

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Frederica Mathewes-Green



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Facing East: A Pilgrim's Journey Into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy

Prologue: In the Passenger Seat

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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Saturday, December 21, 1991: Vespers

He was an Episcopal priest, but he was standing in an Orthodox church on this Saturday night and thinking about Truth. At the altar a gold-robed priest strode back and forth swinging incense, moving in and out the doors of the iconostasis according to rubrics that were as yet unfamiliar. Golden bells chimed against the censer, and the light was smoky and dim. Over to the left a small choir was singing in haunting harmony, voices twining in a capella simplicity. The Truth part was this: the ancient words of this Vesperal service had been chanted for more than a millennium. Lex orandi, lex credendi; what people pray shapes what they believe. This was a church that had never, could never, apostatize.

She was his wife, and she was standing next to him thinking about her feet. They hurt. She wondered why they had pews if you had to stand up all the time. The struggling choir was weak and singing in an unintelligible language that may have been English. The few other worshipers weren't participating in the service in any visible way. Why did they hide the altar behind a wall? It was annoying how the priest kept popping in and out of the doors like a figure on a Swiss clock. The service dragged on following no discernible pattern, and it was interminable. Once the priest said, "Let us conclude our evening prayer to the Lord." She checked her watch again; that was ten minutes ago, and still no end in sight.

It was a long journey from that evening to my present life as an Orthodox priest's wife. For many, converting to Christianity, or changing denominational allegiance, is the result of a solitary conviction. As I ponder my pilgrim's progress to Orthodoxy, however, I realize that I didn't make the trip alone, but in a two-seater. And I wasn't the one driving.

This is more relevant than may initially appear. Something about Orthodoxy has immense appeal to men, and it's something that their wives--especially those used to worshiping in the softer evangelical style--are generally slower to get. The appeal of joining this vast, ancient, rock-solid communion must be something like the appeal of joining the marines. It's going to demand a hell of a lot out of you, and it's not going to cater to your individual whims, but when it's through with you you're going to be more than you ever knew you could be. It's going to demand, not death on the battlefield, but death to self in a million painful ways, and God is going to be sovereign. It's a guy thing. You wouldn't understand.

When I asked members of our little mission, "Why did you become a member?," two women (both enthusiastic converts now) used the same words: "My husband dragged me here kicking and screaming." Several others echoed that it had been their husband's idea--he'd been swept off his feet and had brought them along willy-nilly. Another woman told how she left Inquirer's Class each week vowing never to go again, only to have her husband wheedle her into giving it one more try; this lasted right up to the day of her chrismation. I can imagine how her husband looked, because that's how my Gary looked: blissful, cautious, eager, and with a certain cat-who-ate-the-canary, you'll-find-out smile.

That night at Vespers a few years ago I was one of those balky wives. Gary and I stood side by side feeling radically different things, but the pattern could have been predicted from the beginning. When we first met over twenty years ago, he was a political animal who just didn't think much about God; I was a passionate agnostic, angry at God for not existing, eagerly attacking the faith of Christian friends.

Gary's shell began to crack when a professor required his philosophy class to read a Gospel. As he read the words of Jesus, he became convinced that here was one who "speaks with authority." Since Jesus said there were a God, Gary began to doubt his doubting.

This reasoning left me unconvinced. By the time of our wedding I was going through my Hindu phase, but didn't object to visiting cathedrals on our honeymoon hitch-hiking through Europe. One day in Dublin I looked at a statue of Jesus and was struck to my knees, hearing an interior voice say, "I am your life." I knew it was the One I had rejected and ridiculed, come at last to seize me forever. It was a shattering experience from which I emerged blinking like a newborn, and decades later I still feel overwhelming awe and gratitude for that rescue, that vast and undeserved gift. It's like the story of the farmer who had to whap his donkey with a two-by-four to get its attention. I imagine that, when God needs a two-by-four that big, He must be dealing with a pretty big donkey.

True to form, Gary needed Truth, while I needed a personal, mystical experience. In the years that followed we went to Episcopal seminary together, were baptized in the Holy Spirit together, and spent several years in the early charismatic movement. He was ordained a priest, and we moved to a new church every few years, having babies along the way. When the charismatic experience grew stale, he rediscovered the high liturgical tradition of his childhood, while I went into spiritual direction and centering prayer. Though there are pitfalls along each of these paths--high-churchiness can devolve into form-but-not-substance, mysticism can float into goo-goo-eyed self-centeredness--neither of us lost our central commitment to Jesus as Lord. Wherever we went, God kept us near himself and each other.

As I shifted my aching feet on the floor of that dim church I wondered whether Gary's new direction would ever make sense to me. What had pushed him in the door of this church in the first place was growing unease with changes in the Episcopal Church, changes both moral and theological.

For example, in July of 1991 I was present for a vote of the Episcopal House of Bishops, a resolution requiring ordained clergy to abstain from sex outside of marriage. When the ballots were counted, the resolution had failed. I remember thinking, "This isn't a church anymore; it has no intention of following its Lord."

Meanwhile, it became fashionable to doubt Jesus' miracles, the Virgin Birth, even the bodily Resurrection. Before his consecration as England's fourth-highest ranking cleric, David Jenkins claimed that miracles were in the eye of the beholder. Of Jesus' physical resurrection he sniffed, "I'm bothered about what I call 'God and conjuring tricks.'" He was consecrated Bishop of Durham in York Minster Cathedral on July 6, 1984; two nights later, lightening struck from a cloudless sky and burned down a wing of the building. Beholders thought they might have seen a miracle.

Home in Baltimore such shenanigans were wearing on my husband. He banded together with five other "troublesome priests" and wrote a document asserting seven points of theological orthodoxy; they called it the Baltimore Declaration. It prompted a minor dust storm, but the national church lumbered on its way as undisturbed as a water buffalo by a mosquito.

Gary at last decided that he could no longer be under the authority of apostate bishops; he had to be in the line of Truth. But where to go? He briefly considered the "continuing" Anglican churches, but felt he couldn't climb further out from the branch to a twig; if anything, he had to return to the trunk. Also, he began to believe that the compromising flaw lay at the very heart of Anglicanism. The beloved doctrine of "comprehensiveness" suggested, "Let's share the same prayers, the same words about the faith, but they can mean different things to you than to me." Not a common faith, but common words about the faith--mere flimsy words. A church at peace can survive this way; a church attacked by wheedling heresies must tumble into accommodation reducing orthodoxy to shreds.

Roman Catholicism was the next obvious choice, and we looked into the Pastoral Provision whereby married Episcopal priests can become married Catholic priests. But, ironically, pro-Provision literature gave us serious doubts. One book by a priest's wife painted an unintentionally grim picture; would we have to sell our furniture and live in a furnished apartment, never be allowed to retire, be ordered to teach high school instead of pastor, and be fourth on a huge staff, under supervision of people whose views were uncomfortably similar to those of the Episcopal bishops he was fleeing? Despite that author's cheery "it was worth it all," it sounded to me like jumping from the frying pan to the fire.

Then there was the matter of theology. We remained worried by traces of salvation-by-works in Catholic practice, and a habitual tendency to frame human relations with God more as business transaction than love affair. Catholic theology seemed in general too overdone, compelled to parse every sentience and split every infinitude. I call it "driving nails with your forehead."

Gary was invited to join a small group of Protestant clergy for an evening with Orthodox evangelist Father Peter Gillquist, and he went carrying some hard questions; Father Peter later said he thought Gary was the one present that night who would never convert. But the questions were evidence of urgent wrestling. Gary particularly needed assurance that the Orthodox cling to salvation given by God's loving grace, not earned by human effort. Father Peter directed Gary to the fourth-century commentaries of St. John Chrysostom. In a sermon on 1 Timothy, for example, Chrysostom says that the best purpose of the law is to reveal that it cannot save us; it then "remits us to Him who can do so."

Then I re-encountered a history lesson that had eluded me in seminary, but now took on vital importance. For the first thousand years, the thread of Christian unity was preserved world-wide through battering waves of heresies. The method was collegial, not authoritarian; disputes were settled in church councils, whose decisions were not valid unless "received" by the whole community. The Faith was indeed common: what was believed by all people, in all times, in all places. The degree of unity won this way was amazing. Though there was some local liturgical variation, the Church was strikingly uniform in faith and practice across vast distances, and at a time when communication was far from easy. This unity was so consistent that I could attribute it to nothing but the Holy Spirit.

Then a developing split between East and West broke open. The Church had five centers: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome. The bishop of Rome was accorded special honorary status, but no unilateral power to determine doctrine or to command the other bishops. However, by the eleventh century the concord between the four Eastern centers and Rome was disintegrating. The East believed the papacy was seeking expanded power over the worldwide church, and balked particularly at Rome's insistence on adding the word filioque ("and the Son") to the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith which had been in common use since 325 A.D. So serious a change as rewording a creed would have to be won by consensus in church council, not imposed by command.

While the filioque controversy sounds at first picayune, it had theological reverberations that are significant, as disputants at the time realized. In an effort to elevate the second person of the Trinity, it dilutes the singular authority of the Father, and changes the Trinity from--visually speaking--a triangle with God the Father at the top, to one tipped over, both Father and Son above the Spirit. Orthodoxy is indeed "patri-archal," that is, the Father (the pater) is the arche, the source and font of all.

In Orthodoxy the all-male priesthood is not based on the idea that women can't represent Jesus; if replication of the specifics of the Incarnation is the goal, only a first-century Jew could come near that. In Orthodoxy, it's not Jesus, but the Father whom those serving at the altar represent, and whatever else a woman can be (and, in Orthodoxy, she can be anything else: choir director, lector, teacher, head of the parish council) she cannot be a Father. She can be a Mother, of course, and so there is a recognized and honored role for the priest's wife, with a title: Khouria (Arabic), Matushka (Russian), or Presbytera (Greek).

The filioque controversy, then, had implications that reach further than initially appear. The bishops of Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem objected that the Holy Spirit would not have waited a thousand years to clarify the role of the bishop of Rome, and that a church council would be necessary to amend the Creed. The conflict grew worse, and the legate of the pope excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople on Christmas Day of 1054 AD. The patriarch returned the favor, and the split was on.

When West severed from East in this four-to-one split, the Orthodox churches continued united, as they have to the present day (Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and so forth being just national expressions of the same worldwide church). Unlike the Western church, the church of the East went through Christianity's second millennium without being shattered into fragments by theological disputes. This is despite horrific persecution and martyrdom: twenty million Russian Orthodox are estimated to have been martyred in this century alone.

Once unchained from the need for consensus with other bishops the Western Church continued freely developing Christian doctrine, while the East had laid the task to rest with the end of the seventh Ecumenical ("world-wide") Council in the eighth century. As Western Christian theology grew more elaborately defined, it offered more fodder for protest, and eventually for Protestantism. Five hundred years after the East-West split the Reformation emerged, spurred by a desire to whittle back to the simpler original. But though some Reformers read the Church Fathers and made an effort to learn from Orthodox leaders, barriers of geography, culture, and language made cross-fertilization difficult. For the most part the Reformers relied on the Bible as their only guide, and it's a book that sincere people can interpret in wildly different ways, as shown by the existence of nearly twenty-five thousand different Protestant "Bible-based" denominations. Subsequent generations continued the split from ancient practice. Like untrained gardeners going into an overgrown garden, successors to the Reformers hacked about with machetes, slashing unknowingly through material that had been affirmed for the first thousand years: the sacraments, the honoring of Mary, the eucharistic Real Presence. Protestants were trying to rediscover the ancient Church, but instead they created a dancing array of sorcerer's apprentice brooms, all trying to sweep one another clean.

The constant experience of doctrinal disagreements contributed to a Western tendency to make the Christian experience more about ideas than about heart-driven living faith, more what you think than what you do; more assensus than fiducia, more ideas about God than surrender to him. The Orthodox Church, escaping this sort of discord, could admire a butterfly without having to pin its head to a board. Orthodoxy has had many failings and controversies, but they are most often about use and abuse of earthly power; they are not about theology. It's not yet perfection on earth, but there is to a refugee Westerner a certain bliss in bypassing theological arm wrestling about things too big for our puny understanding. For example, rather than over-defining Jesus' presence in the Eucharist, or tossing out the concept entirely, Orthodox are content to say that the bread and wine become his body and blood simply because they "change." In Orthodox theology there is a humility, a willingness to let mystery remain beyond comprehension.

The stance of an Orthodox believer is similarly humble and childlike: we are sinners, receiving the overwhelming love of God, and we stand before him in gratitude. This is, I think, one of the reasons we kiss so much: we kiss icons, the Gospel book, the cross, and each other. Most Sundays we use the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and we thank God for sending his Son "into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." Grateful repentance is such a constant in Orthodox worship that mystic surfers, looking for smells, bells, and thrills, rather than submission to Jesus as Lord, find they can't take more than a couple of weeks--not without conversion.

I paint here in hindsight a rushing tide of conviction about the truth of Orthodoxy which swept my husband away. At the time, I was having none of it. Orthodoxy was too foreign, too old, too fancy. I didn't care what they said, I just couldn't believe that this was what the worship of the early church looked like--all the cluttered doodads of gold, incense, and fancy vestments.

My vague assumption was that early Christians just sat around on the floor, probably in their blue jeans, talking about what a great guy Jesus was. It was embarrassing to review Scripture and realize that from Exodus to Revelation worship is clothed in gold, silver, precious stones, embroidery, robes of gorgeous fabric, bells and candles; I don't know of an instance of scriptural worship that doesn't include incense. God ordered beauty, even extravagant beauty, in worship even while his people were still wandering the desert in tents. Beauty must mean something that no-nonsense, head-driven Christians fail to grasp.

Gary was rarin' to go, but I put on the brakes. Oddly, I wasn't concerned about finances, even though becoming Orthodox meant throwing away a fifteen-year career when our three kids were entering their teens. Nor did I feel loyal affection for the Episcopal Church, either nationally or in our little parish (where, as a cultural conservative, I often felt like the odd man out). But I was afraid we would be leaving for the wrong reason: because we weren't happy. Too many people break up marriages, shirk obligations, and betray commitments because they feel insufficiently fulfilled. Besides, even if the Episcopal Church was lost to apostasy, didn't God need chaplains on the Titanic? Hadn't we better stay where he planted us?

Gary finally won me over by saying, "You know what God needed on the Titanic? Life-boats. We know where there's a ship that doesn't sink. Let's try to get as many people to safety as possible." So on January 30, 1993, I found myself standing before Bishop Antoun as he anointed me with holy oil, calling out "The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit!" "Seal!" the congregation shouted. Five other families came with us from our Episcopal parish that day, and two weeks later we celebrated our first liturgy, at a homemade altar, in a borrowed space, with borrowed appointments. Three years later, Holy Cross Mission numbers forty families--nearly every one a convert.

A continent away someone I've met only by mail is writing me a letter. She's a multi-generation evangelical, descended from missionaries and professors at Christian colleges. Now her husband has begun looking into Orthodoxy and shows the signs, so familiar to me, of beginning that plummeting dive. Her words, too, are familiar:

"This is a church whose disciplines and life, I feel, appeal initially more to men. To me it all seems so...hard. In my spiritual walk up to this point my heart has led my head. I might go to church mad and unrepentant, but with a worship chorus in a lilting tune, or a heartfelt spontaneous prayer, my heart would begin to soften. I'd come out ready to live the obedient life.

"Orthodoxy makes sense in my head, but I yearn for something to grab my gut and help me over the hump labeled 'self.' All the 'soft' music, etc., that used to draw me is missing and I'm left in this massive struggle with my will. Does that make sense? Doesn't a spoonful of sugar help the medicine go down, and all that?

"And how do women eventually come to terms with this somewhat austere church?"

How did I? Now I can't imagine ever not being Orthodox. Here is my home, my joy, my fulfillment; I tasted and saw and nothing can compare. But how did I get past the bare truth part, the aching feet part, to discover the rich, mystical beauty of Orthodoxy?

A kaleidoscope of images flashes through my mind. The textures, the scents, the music of the liturgy, a continuous song of worship that lifts me every week. The Great Fast of Lent, a discipline far more demanding than I'd ever faced in my Christian walk. Kneeling on Holy and Great Thursday and listening to the hammer blows resound as my husband nailed the icon of Jesus' corpus to the cross; seeing my daughter's shoulders shake with sobbing. Easter morning giddiness and champagne at sunrise. Hearing my son say that, after a year of the Divine Liturgy, he didn't like the sentimental hymns of the last 300 years any more: "They make me feel further from God." Seeing icons change from looking grim and forbidding to looking challenging, strong and true. True.

Truth turns into Beauty in unexpected ways. What was strange and perplexing has become my sweetest home. As I look over my shoulder, I can see this friend not far behind me on the road, on the cloverleaf of conversion, and it's by now a familiar sight. Her husband is driving, and she's in the passenger seat.

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HarperCollins, 1997

ISBN 0-06-065498-8

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

Facing East: A Pilgrim's Journey Into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy

Cheesefare Sunday, Forgiveness Vespers

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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Sunday, March 5: Forgiveness Vespers

"Lent begins on page 15," M. David is fond of saying. On the evening of Cheesefare Sunday about thirty of us are standing here and there on the green linoleum floor, holding the little purple service booklets that will bring us to that moment. We were surrounded by evidence of the current concern of the building's daytime tenants, and it wasn't Lent; as at schools and shopping centers, the decor here plunges manically from one holiday to the next. As soon as the St. Valentine's red came down the St. Patrick's green went up, and handmade versions of leprechaunsand pots of gold adorned the walls. Pinned up behind the choir was a shamrock cut out of cardboard and painted with a thin wash of green, with a border of silver glitter. Upside-down letters still commanded through the paint: "EEP REFRIGERA." Holy Cross Mission was honoring St. Patrick, too, in our own way--his icon was on the windowsill above the table of preparation--but tonight we were thinking more about the journey through Lent to Pascha.

The Vespers of Cheesefare Sunday evening begins like any vesper service, with litanies and psalms. The variable verses or stichera appointed for this evening begin with abasement and move to jubilation: "Let us begin the fast with joy! Let us cleanse our soul and cleanse our flesh!...That we all may see the passion of Christ our God, and rejoice at the holy Pascha!" As we follow along in the purple booklets I watch the page numbers count down.

At page 15 my husband moves toward the table of preparation. There's a silent pause as he change from gold vestments to purple-black brocade, a sweep of fabric that seems to blot the light. When he returns to the altar we sing the next "Lord, have mercy" to a new tune, the minor melody used in Lent. The moment was grave yet exciting, something like the first lurching ascent of a roller coaster. No turning back now.

We sing through the litany, say the Prayer with Heads Bowed, and sing the Song of St. Simeon, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." Basil's son Michael then leads us in chanting forty "Lord, have mercy"s, running the words together Byzantine-style: "Lord have mercy Lord have mercy Lord have mercy Lord have mercy," he intones. Michael is a slender man in his late 30's, and when he sings he opens his Greek-black eyes very wide but holds his mouth nearly closed. I believe this is the opposite of what voice coaches usually recommend, nevertheless, it lends the song an effective dark and cave-like tone. The forty-fold "Lord have mercy" is a distinctively Orthodox practice; it's rumored there's a bumper stickerthat says, "Honk 40 times if you're Orthodox."

We come at last to the fourth-century Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian, a prayer used frequently during Lent:

O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

At this point the booklet instructs the worshipers to make a prostration. We fold where we are standing, dropping to our knees, a process which takes longer for some than others. We place our palms on the floor, then lean forward to touch the floor with our foreheads, then stand up again. A prostration is a shuffly process. Seeing prostration was one of the first things that moved Gary toward Orthodoxy; he said, "That's how we should be before God."

The Prayer of St. Ephrem goes on:

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

Another prostration here. More shuffling.

Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages.

A third prostration.

This is followed by saying twelve times, "O God, cleanseme, a sinner." With each one we make a deep bow and sweep our right hands to the floor, a movement called a metania. Orthodox worship is a full-body event.

We sing through the dismissal, but no one moves to go. My husband turns from the altar to stand before the gathered worshippers. "Now we are going to do something the Devil hates," he says. "Any time brothers and sisters in Christ stand face to face, and ask for each others' forgiveness, and give forgiveness, the demons shudder. We intend here," he went on, "to build an outpost of the Kingdom of God. These outposts are built brick by brick, person by person. With every act of forgiveness, we extend the Kingdom of God in our midst."

He gives directions for all the worshippers to form a long line, extending to his left; they move into place, standing along the side-wall and facing the center of the room. Then he says, "The first person in line--in this case, my son David--will stand in front of me. He'll make a prostration or a mentania--you can do whichever you want--and ask for my forgiveness. And you can say this however you want: 'Forgive me for all my sins against you,' or 'Brother, please forgive any way I have offended you,' or any variation, whatever comes naturally. I'll offer forgiveness, then I'll bow to him and ask him to forgive me as well. Then we'll embrace.

"After that, David, you'll move over here to my right. The next person in line will go through the same forgiveness process with me, then with David, then stand on David's right. And so forth; we'll continue until everyone has moved over to my right side, and every person here has exchanged forgiveness with every other one."

The six of us in the choir begin singing quietly the song that we will trumpet on Pascha morning: "Let God arise! Let his enemies be scattered!" Gary and David stand face to face, or as nearly so as they can; David at 15 is several inches taller than his dad. David's dark blond hair curls on his shoulders and his blue eyes behind wire-framed glasses are wide and peaceful; this son is a quiet, centered sort. I watch father and son bow to each other, and murmur unheard words. The rest of the congregation watch quietly, and David looks a little awkward; he hates being the center of attention. David and Gary embrace, and tears sting my eyes. I look quickly back to the music.

A moment later I look up to see David embracing his younger brother Stephen. Where David is a cool stream, Stephen at 13 is a geyser, full of passionate opinion, deep sentimentality, wide-flinging love and, not infrequently, anger. There were things to be forgiven there. The brothers embrace, David bending stiffly over; powerhouse Stephen is compact, nearly nine inches shorter.

By the time the choir finishes the anthem and joins the end of the line, about half the worshippers have moved to my husband's right. One at a time I bow to people I worship with every week, looking each one in the eye, men and women, children and aged. Each interchange is an intimate moment, and I feel on the wobbly border between embarrassment, laughter and tears. Just to pause and look at each fellow worshipper for a moment, to see the individual there, is itself a startling exercise.

Individuals respond to the ritual in individual ways. When I ask 12-year-old Melanie to forgive me, she says, "Not that you've done anything, but okay." Basil is giving out enveloping bear hugs with exclamations of "Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus!" His son Michael offers a courtly, "I forgive, as God forgives." Choir director Margo is teary-eyed as she hugs me, and bursts out in a whisper, "I love you!" Down the line, as worshippers dip and bend, embrace and move aside, it looks like a dance, a dream-paced country dance laced with dreamy smiles.

I come to my daughter Megan, who will be eighteen in a few days. She has made it safely to adulthood past an adolescence that had it rocky places; yes, there are things to forgive here too. I bow to her and manage to say, past the lump in my throat, "Megan, please forgive me for any way that I have offended you." I could think of a million mistakes I had made. She looks at me, her lashes wet, and says, "I forgive you, Mom." Then she bends to touch the floor and stands again, and says to me, "Please forgive me, Mom, for everything."

Can a mother do such a thing? You bet. A moment later we are in a marshmallowy embrace.

Back in the cafeteria Rose is packing away the book table, putting everything in boxes until next week. Her husband, Tom, is sitting nearby at one of the dining tables; Rose doesn't permit help with this careful process. Tom is wearing a happy, somewhat surprised expression.

"That wasn't so bad!" he says as I come in the room. "You know, I'm not one of those people that's big on hugging. I don't like to hug a lot. But that wasn't so bad!" He threw his arms around his own shoulders and gave a squeeze to demonstrate. "That was OK!"

Tom and Rose make a contrast in several ways: she's Dutch-blond with thick, cascading locks, while a fair proportion of Tom's locks have departed completely. She has a dry, droll wit and a subdued manner, but Tom is habitually as bright and bouncy as a boy on Christmas morning. When we started homeschooling the kids for the first time this year, we called on Tom for help; Gary teaches David, and I teach Stephen, but we send Megan to Tom's house for physics. There are some things even I can't be an instant-expert on.

Rose is stacking small icons face-to-face, and placing them by layers in a cardboard box. Book tables are a staple of Orthodox churches; there are few Orthodox bookstores where our peculiar goods can be bought, and these packable shops fill the need. On the spread table there remained copies of about thirty books, mostly about Orthodoxy, saints, and prayer; incense, charcoal and small censers, for home use; Orthodox magazines; and the seal used to press an imprint in altar bread as it rises. There are stacks of church calendars, which are usually funded by the local funeral parlor. I was amused by these calendars when I first saw them, because they demonstrate so clearly the Orthodox passion for displaying icons in every feasible way, and even some unfeasible ones. My leaning, as a calendar designer, would be to decree that the tiny squares allotted for each day were too small to stuff with icons; the written notes needed for the day would have to be absurdly abbreviated, or even turned sideways, to fit, and the icon itself would be too small to appreciate. Obviously the designers of Orthodox calendars do not agree.

There are also icons, or iconic images, on a stack of t-shirts and sweatshirts printed by our home-grown iconographer, Carolyn. Carolyn owns a silk-screening shop, and when she began painting icons it felt natural to put some on her t-shirts. But not long ago when I was wearing one an Orthodox monk teased me, "How are we supposed to venerate that icon?" The Orthodox custom is to kiss icons, an awkward prospect when one appears on the front of a lady's shirt. I went back to Carolyn with this jest, and she said, "But they're not really icons. I left the names off, on purpose." On a real icon, she explained, the name of the subject floats near his head; the t-shirts bear no such "Hi, My Name Is" labels. (Another priest tells me, with a smile, "But when you really love a saint, you don't have to see his name to want to kiss him.")

There are pro-life bumper stickers and others reading "Orthodoxy: Proclaiming the Truth since 33 A.D." We all use this, though it doesn't quite hit the mark; still, it improves on the previous version which read "...Telling the Truth..." That one seemed to imply we were telling something else before 33 A.D.

Larger stretches of table are becoming visible as Rose fills her boxes. "This is great," she says. "It looks like I'm going to have a whole empty box left over. I guess that shows I did sell some stuff this weekend." The last thing to go in are the prayer ropes, or chotkis; these are analogous to a Roman Catholic rosary, but are loops of knotted black yarn. For each knot, the user recites the brief "Jesus Prayer": "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." This prayer discipline has spread far beyond the bounds of Orthodoxy, thanks to a popular Russian book of the last century, The Way of the Pilgrim (and J.D.Salinger's reference to that book in his novel, Franny and Zooey). Prayer ropes come in a variety of sizes, from 33 knots to 300; many Orthodox, like my husband, habitually wear a small rope around a wrist.

My sons, divested of their acolyte robes, come in, and I set them carrying boxes to Rose's trunk. As my husband follows them in, Tom tells him happily, "Hey, that was OK!" He put his arms across his chest, hands on shoulders. "I'm not used to hugging so much. But once I got into it, I really didn't mind." He hugged himself again. "That was OK!"

It took an hour or so to take down the icons, blow out the candles, and pack everything back into the altar. Though there were more helpers, the mood was relaxed and chatty, and no one was in a hurry to leave. At last the altar was shrouded under its gray blanket in the corner, and the old oak table once more commanded the center of the room.

As we stepped out the front door my two boys broke into a run, shouting, "I get the front seat!" Megan put her arm around me as we ambled along. I looked up at a black sky spattered with stars.

In a few weeks we'll be standing here again, under the gray-dawn sky, preparing to go in to begin the Easter service. My husband will pound on the door, as we all stand clustered behind him, trembling a little with the chill and anticipation. He will shout, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be lifted up, O ye everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may enter!" Someone from inside will respond with the line, "Who is the King of Glory?" We'll all know the answer to that.

A desert stretches between that night and this, but it is a desert that will disclose sudden, startling blooms. I wait to see them.

Lent has begun. Pascha is coming.

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HarperCollins, 1997

ISBN 0-06-065498-8

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

Facing East: A Pilgrim's Journey Into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy

Icons and Sunday of Orthodoxy

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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Sunday March 12: Sunday of Orthodoxy

Jesus is lying on his side on my dining room floor, leaning against the radiator, balanced up on one finger and one toe like a gymnast. He is flattened, just a sheet of painted wood, and from pointed toe to the tip of his halo he is about four and a half feet tall. For protection, for storage, Jesus is swathed in a blue tablecloth that has been knotted around his ankles and pulled up over his head. When I push it aside I can see his form, a crucified body without a cross. His extended arms are like the wings of a bird; he floats in sorrow, head sunk toward one shoulder, eyes shut, face washed with death.

His arms are spread like gull-wings; he flies like Superman to save us. But Superman flew twinklebright with punchy fists out front, and our Jesus floats, wide-armed, fistless, hands open and drilled useless with holes. He comes to save us broken, hobbled and swathed here on my dining room floor. It is the only way he can save us; it is the only way we can be saved.

For many, many years, I didn't like icons. I kept this a secret. People I respected loved icons dearly, so I knew there was something I just didn't get. I didn't admit this because I didn't want to look dumb. My kids have a saying: "I played it off." It's what you do when (how familiar!) you want to pretend you understand something: laughing at an obscure joke, nodding at an opaque reference, all in the name of saving face. A friend would pause before an icon and I would hear that sharp intake of breath, and her words, "Oh! Isn't it beautiful." "Yes," I'd agree, "how marvelous." I searched the image, trying to find something other than a wizened, severe and apparently angry Christ. I was thinking, What's beautiful about this? But I played it off.

I can see, in retrospect, that my problem wasn't with the role of icons, just the style of them. When Megan was a toddler we spent many a bedtime story with a little yellow cloth book titled "The Little Lost Lamb." The shepherd climbed over rocks in search of his lamb; he would not let it go. The last page showed Jesus surrounded by children, and the text read: "Jesus is our Good Shepherd. He loves us and will always take care of us."

"This is Jesus," I told little Megan. "He loves you. We love Jesus," I said, and kissed the picture. "I love Jesus, too," she repeated, and gave it a noisy smack.

When David came along I went in search of something sturdier for permanent display. I bought a small laminated plaque of a gentle, smiling Jesus, and wrote on the back the date and this inscription: "So that David can know Jesus." Again, we kissed this picture goodnight. I knew this was only the thinnest glimmer of who Jesus was, that it omitted a great deal of what Christianity entails, but I urgently wanted to establish this beachhead: Jesus is real, he loves you, you can love him too.

My problem, then, was not with using images of Jesus, or depictions of Bible stories or heroes of the faith. I knew our love wasn't being lavished on a laminated plaque, but being offered through the picture to the Lord himself. The image was like a window, a seen object opening us to things unseen.

I had a dim idea that Orthodox icons were something different from this; I thought they were end-in-themselves objects of worship, idols. I was wrong. Orthodox often use the same analogy I did, calling icons "windows into heaven." St. Basil the Great explained that "Honor shown to the icon passes to the prototype it represents." It's not the wood and paint that matters, but the Lord pictured there.

So why did the Lord pictured there have to look so scary? A dozen years ago Gary and I were at the cresting wave of the Episcopal renewal movement; every Wednesday night I played guitar at the Prayer 'n' Praise service, and we sang happy songs about a Jesus who loved much and demanded little. Everything about renewal was bouncy and bright; icons looked then like the manifestation of a sad faith, a faith that was cramped and sour.

But eventually the renewal movement began to taste stale; it seemed forced and even a bit desperate. There had to be something deeper. I had been in spiritual direction for about three years, keeping a brief version of daily hours and spending nightly time in wordless adoring prayer, when I read about a show coming to Baltimore's Walters Art Gallery: icons, as early as the tenth century, that had never before been seen outside Greece. Gary wanted very much to go. Yes, that would be wonderful, I said--playing it off.

The Walters, to its credit, had endeavored to present the icons as something more than merely "good art." Gary Vikan, the Guest Curator of the show ("Holy Image, Holy Space") wrote, "we had a second, more ambitious aim. Namely, we hoped to present the icon on its own terms, not simply as art, but as sacred art...born of equal measures of art and spirit." To that end, the show began with carved wooden church doors, then led to a reconstructed chapel of icon frescos. Byzantine liturgical music, haunting and strange, drifted through the air. I began to understand the mood of solemn awe that inspired these paintings.

Directly in my path stood a towering icon of Jesus holding an open book, right hand raised in blessing. Red letters floated on the gold background on either side of his head: IC XC, H Sophia Tou Theou; Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God. His face was a subtle mix of emotions: though the brows were knit, the brown eyes were wide and kind. Light wrinkles radiated from the corners under his eyes, even suggesting a smile. The text on the book was in Greek too advanced for me, but I could make out the root for "forgive."

Moving closer, I realized that the sheet of plexiglass covering the icon was smeared. No, I saw with surprise, that was lipstick. In fact, there were a dozen kiss-marks scattered over the face of the plexiglass. Kisses! Who would kiss a painting in an art museum? And who would feel moved to kiss this painting in particular? This icon wasn't as harsh as some I'd seen, but it was still a far cry from Megan's Good Shepherd.

The path led on to another standing icon, this one two-sided, scarred at the bottom where a pole had been attached for procession. The side facing me had the familiar outlines of a Madonna and Child, but this Madonna was different from any I'd seen. Her heart was clearly broken. The Virgin's eyes stared wide with shock and sorrow, dark-pooled and seared with pain; they darted sideways, away from us, away from her child, resting unfocused in mid-air. Her head was ducked forward, held low in an attitude of helpless imploring; her halo had turned a dull brown-green. One hand was lifted to gesture toward the child, not a gesture of pride but of helpless resignation. The watery fingers were transparent, ripples in her robe showing through.

I thought about "a sword will pierce your heart also," and wondered what she could see that we couldn't. When I walked around to view the other side I got my answer. A brutal image filled the panel: Jesus dead, head sunk to one shoulder, magnificent and broken.

The sight arrested me; I felt pinned to the spot. The image was badly damaged, with large areas of paint peeled away and exposing the pitted raw wood. Jesus' head filled the center of the panel, tipped to one side, as round as his tilted halo and capped with streaming black hair. His eyes were closed and eyebrows lifted peacefully. His mouth was relaxed, drawn down, with only a touch of red on the lip as a reminder of life. All over the surface of that beautiful face ran the scars and scratches of 800 years, and all over the plexiglass were dotted the kisses of the faithful.

The magnificent head was set on an inadequate body: arms thin and useless, held pinched against the torso; shoulders round as wheels; an unnatural wide-ribbed breastbone. He had no neck; the head was not joined to the body, but laid awkwardly over the upper chest like a coin. This broken body was set before a wooden cross, and behind it the background was not gold but a somber dark blue. The border was a brilliant crimson.

I don't know how many minutes I stood there transfixed by the searing beauty of this silent image. I felt that there was something here I had not met before in religious art, indeed in conventional Western devotion. So much of my journey to that point had been focused on me, whether it was the giddy fun of renewal or the more recent self-improvement project of spiritual direction and centering prayer (a kind of Soul Aerobics). But looking at this icon I felt aware of nothing but Him. I was flooded with love for His sacrifice. How could it be that He would do this for me, who had once spent years in anger and rebellion, ridiculing Him and even trying to undermine the faith of Christian friends? Yet He had come to claim and rescue me when I was lost, endangered as a lost lamb on a rocky cliff. For me He had suffered this ultimate humiliation, abandoning all His power. I read the plaque on the cross above his ruined head: Jesus Christ, the King of Glory.

That was enough for me. When we reached the end of the exhibit, Gary and I picked up a handful of brochures; they included photos of several of the icons, including, fortunately, the King of Glory. At home we set up shop in the garage, sawing boards to size, spray-painting them red, and sticking the cut-out icons on with decoupage glue. I wanted this King of Glory with me everywhere. I put one over my desk, one on the bedside table, one over the kitchen sink, one over the washing machine, even one on the dash panel of my car. Gary, meanwhile, had bought some full-size icon posters and was applying them to larger stretches of lumber. The garage fed out a strong scent of spray aerosol every time the door was opened, and a fine red mist was settling on all the stacked boxes. Spare minutes after dinner found us rushing back in to saw another board or smooth wrinkles from the damp paper faces. We thought we were making icons.

Today after liturgy we're sipping coffee while waiting for Carolyn to begin her Sunday School lesson on the painting (properly, the "writing") of icons. She lays out one at a time the ones she's currently working on, images of the Virgin and saints at various points of materialization. This lesson in icons was scheduled for today because this first Sunday in Great Lent is called "Sunday of Orthodoxy," or sometimes "Triumph of Orthodoxy." The Triumph has to do with icons.

When a Christian bows before an icon and kisses it, why isn't this idolatry? A fervent battle raged over this in the eighth and ninth century; when the iconoclasts (icon-smashers) were in the ascendance they did such a thorough job that few icons from before the tenth century now remain. But the concern had simmered intermittently in Christendom for many previous centuries.

One defense, which strikes me as sweetly childlike, was "How could they be idols? They're pictures of Jesus. If it was a picture of Baal, that would be an idol. But Jesus is God!" The icon of a holy person or scene could not be unholy.

At the same time, the pro-icon party, the iconodules, were clear that the icon's tangible substance did not capture or imprison divine reality. St. Theodore the Studite (d. 826) suggested that it was like the impression left by a signet ring. Whether pressed into wax, clay, or any other material, it leaves the same seal; these materials can faithfully convey something they do not intrinsically possess. "The same applies to the likeness of Christ," St. Theodore wrote, "irrespective of the material upon which it is represented."

A frequent defense of icons is that it is not the image that receives the honor, but the Lord whom it depicts. The icon is a focal point, an open window through which we offer devotion, not an end in itself. Leontius of Neapolis (died c. 650) said, perhaps testily, "When the two beams of the Cross are joined together I adore the figure because of Christ who was crucified on the Cross, but if the beams are separated I throw them away and burn them." Of course, we treasure the physical icon just as we might a photo of a distant loved one, and the more ancient and beautiful an icon is the more precious it seems. But Orthodox have no illusion that an icon itself is a god. They distinguish between worship--given only to God--and veneration, the honor which may be accorded an icon, a saint, or the Theotokos.

Still, there seems something shocking about using representations of Jesus in our worship. It is the same shock that is sometimes called "the scandal of particularity"--that God who is ineffable and invisible, who commanded that no image of him be made, took flesh and became a baby. He became visible, concrete, with shocking specificity: a man of a certain height, build, and eye color, eating a real roast fish on a Sunday afternoon. Because God chose to become visible, we can represent him, the iconodules insisted; we can represent any person or event in his story because these are manifestations of God's will to invade earthly life, to make himself concrete and visible. What he chose to make visible, we should reproduce in visible fashion; "What God has cleansed you must not call common," the overly-scrupulous St. Peter was warned.

The iconodules grasped that to diminish the role of icons was to undermine the Incarnation. If it were conceded that matter was shameful, or evil, or merely inconsequential, all of orthodox Christology would begin to totter. The countless battles over the full humanity of God the Son had taken centuries to resolve, and iconoclasm, they saw, was a last infiltration of the anti-Incarnation spirit. Just as Jesus come-in-the-flesh was a sign of God's intention to restore his whole earthly creation, icons are a foreshadowing of that restoration: a holy seal impressed on humble wood and paint.

The use of icons was vindicated at a church council meeting in Nicea in 787; this was the seventh and last ecumenical church council, the first having also met in Nicea (to write the Nicene Creed) in 325. I say "the last," but in theory there could always be another, if the Holy Spirit so moved. These seven councils, where the whole church met to come to consensus on theological disputes, constitute the foundation of the Orthodox faith.

This morning at the end of Liturgy we recited a portion of the proclamation written at the seventh council, and it is triumphant indeed. The instructions say we are to read this "in a loud voice;" one of the pleasures of Orthodoxy is the opportunity to be emphatic all together!

As the prophets beheld, as the Apostles have taught,

as the Church has received, as the teachers have dogmatized,

as the Universe has agreed, as Grace has shown forth,

as Truth has revealed, as falsehood has been dissolved,

as Wisdom has presented, as Christ awarded,

Thus we declare, thus we assent,

thus we preach Christ our true God,

and honor his saints in words, in writings, in thoughts,

in sacrifices, in churches, in Holy Icons;

on the one hand worshipping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord;

and on the other honoring as true servants of the same Lord of all

and accordingly offering them veneration.

Louder! the instructions read.

This is the Faith of the Apostles,

this is the Faith of the Fathers,

this is the Faith of the Orthodox,

this is the Faith which has established the Universe.

By the end we are thundering. That settles that.

I watch Carolyn's hands as she lays out the icons. They are artist's hands, strong hands with short nails, and they are nervous hands. Carolyn is the other soprano, and she stands next to me in the choir, kneading her hands together, especially when a difficult passage comes up. She is younger than me, and a good bit slimmer. Where my voice is, how you say, full-bodied, hers is delicate, with a birdlike tremor.

Carolyn's shiny brown hair swings at her shoulders, and her eyes are wide and turquoise green. They often look startled. She is the hippest dresser in the parish; where most of the rest of us do some variant on Church Lady, Carolyn wears black leather stomper boots, khaki and black dresses, and a red bumpy-leather jacket that I envy. She runs a T-shirt printshop a little further up Frederick Road, and is one of our original pioneer band. Her husband, Keith, travels; he's road manager of a perennial on the soul music stage, and we rarely see him at church.

Carolyn clears her throat and begins reading her notes in a formal voice. "Traditionally, icons are painted by monks and nuns, in a monastery dedicated to painting icons. With fear and trembling I attempt to do this." When we chuckle, she goes on, "Not too much trembling, because then I couldn't paint a straight line. Icons are painted with prayer and fasting--I struggle with both of those!--so Lent is a perfect time to be painting icons."

A while ago, Carolyn had told me that it was icons that originally drew her to Orthodoxy. She had always been an artist, and noticed that in art class they just skipped over Byzantine art: "It was treated like 'This is what they did before the Renaissance, before they knew how to 'pain.'" Icons gave her a new freedom. "Now I can paint Christ and Mary and not feel intimidated--I was always intimidated that I couldn't paint the Madonna and Child like Raphael. Now I can do it, I can copy icons. And I just love it." Thus far she has painted a large crucifixion scene and many smaller icons as well; parishoners regularly commission eight-by-tens of their name-saints. The corpus lying on my dining room floor is also one of her offerings.

On the Thursday night before Pascha, Holy and Great Thursday, my husband will carry a large wooden cross around the church, then lay it on the floor and hammer this corpus to it. Carolyn, when she finished painting it, had to create those holes for the nails to pass through; she laid the icon down and drove through Jesus's hands and feet with an electric drill.

The first icon she displays is a Virgin and Child. These are usually one of two basic styles. The Virgin Hodegetria ("of the Way"), portrays a dignified Mary gesturing toward her son with an open hand, showing the way; the icon that so impressed me at the Walters show was a variation of this type. The other is the Glykophilousa, the Virgin of Tenderness or "Sweet-kissing Jesus" that shows mother and child cuddling cheek to cheek. Variations on these two types abound. Carolyn explains that icon painting moves from darkness to light, so on this Theotokos she has laid down the darkest colors and just begun to highlight the robes. The faces of the mother and child are blank silhouettes of a surprising dark greenish brown.

"That color's called 'first flesh,'" Carolyn explains. The next icon, of St. Mary of Egypt, has acquired "second flesh," a shade lighter and more red. Mary of Egypt was a fifth-century courtesan who fled to the desert in repentance; she is depicted as she was found by a monk fifty years later, withered and dark, with wild gray hair. The third icon, of St. Helena, has gained "third-flesh," and with it facial detail and expression. Helena was the mother of the fourth-century Emperor Constantine, and discovered the relics of the Cross in Jerusalem. She wears an elaborate robe and a fan-shaped crown studded with jewels, which looks interesting next to Mary of Egypt, who's wrapped in only a scrap of green robe.

Next, Carolyn reads some "Rules for the icon painter:"

- Before starting work, make the sign of the cross, pray, fast, and pardon your enemies.

- During work pray in order to strengthen yourself, physically and spiritually.

- Avoid above all useless words, and keep silent.

- When you have chosen a color, stretch out your hands interiorly to the Lord and ask his counsel.

- Do not be jealous of your neighbor's work, his success is yours also.

- When your icon is finished, thank God that his mercy granted you grace to paint the holy image.

Carolyn explains that icons are to be of historical incidents, not speculative. "We can show Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as a dove, but not God the Father." Occasionally you'll see God the Father depicted as an old man with a beard--Michaelangelo did this on the Sistine Chapel ceiling--but the Church frowns on such conjectures. "What about the 'Old Testament Trinity'?" someone asks. This familiar icon was painted by the Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev about 1411, and shows the three "angels" who came to tell Abraham and Sarah they would have a son; they are sitting down to the meal Abraham prepared. Popular devotion holds that the angels actually represent the Trinity. "We can't just paint our idea of the Trinity, but that dinner was an actual, historical occurence," Carolyn explains. "We can paint that."

When Carolyn says that icons are usually flat, though they may have a raised border, I ask if they are ever more three-dimensional than that; it strikes me that I've never seen Orthodox statues. No, Carolyn says, they're flat because they're supposed to be like windows; you're supposed to have the sense of looking 'through' them, not at them. Three-dimensional representations have a tempting way of taking on a life of their own.

Smiling Jeanne, Frank's wife, breaks in. Their conversion from an evangelical Episcopal parish is still recent, and old friends and family are still somewhat baffled. "I have difficulty explaining to my evangelical family why I have icons. They raise their eyebrows and..." she shakes her head and laughs. "So I had been asking the Lord to give me the words to share with them. This week I was keeping my little 3-year-old grandson, and he wanted to phone his mom. They had a nice little conversation and he said, 'Bye bye, Mommy,' and he 'kissed' the 'phone'." The group begins to chuckle; we can see what's coming.

"When my daughter came to pick him up, I said, 'Did you get your kiss?' She said, 'Yes!' and just beamed. I said, 'Do you think he was kissing the telephone?'" This brings on a wave of appreciative laughter.

As Carolyn carefully layers her icons and puts them away, Sheila prepares to spread out her project, our epitaphion. On the Friday before Easter, Holy and Great Friday, Orthodox process around the outside of the church carrying a wooden bier, on which is laid a sizeable fabric icon representing Jesus's dead body; creating a needlepointed epitaphion is an enormous undertaking.

Like Carolyn, Sheila is an artist, and her personal style is artistic; today she is wearing a long brown cotton sweater over a long purple cotton dress, brown socks and sandals, and abalone-shell purple earrings. Her gray-brown hair escapes from bobby pins and flies out like electricity. Unlike Carolyn's wide, water-color eyes, Sheila's are dark and intense behind red-framed glasses.

"I was asked to develop an epitaphion for use during Holy Week," Sheila begins. "It depicts the death of Christ--what, in the West, we call the deposition from the Cross." Sheila began by assembling several examples of epitaphion, then chose a border and a center image. The border is borrowed from a modern piece, and runs around the four sides of the image; it is inscribed with the words: "Noble Joseph, taking down thy most pure body from the tree, did wrap it in clean linen with sweet spices and he laid it in a new tomb." The center is based on a more ancient icon, and shows the long, pale body of Jesus lying very straight on a terracotta patterned platform. His little bent feet bear dots of shocking crimson. Mary is sitting on an inlaid wooden stool and cradling his head, and she is bent so nearly double so that they are almost face-to-face. It is a sad echo of the "Sweet-Kissing" Virgin; her face is pink, but Jesus's is a mix of pearl gray and yellow.

St. Joseph of Arimathea and St. John also hover over the body, similarly bent double. St. Joseph clutches the edge of the white shroud in both hands, and stares at the body in sorrow; St. John has characteristically cradled his cheek in his palm, and looks on with a distracted gaze.

Sheila had sketched the design full-size on white paper then, laying 16-squares-to-the-inch needlepoint fabric on top of it, carefully daubed the color on dot by dot. From there the project had gone to Joan, our champion needlepointer. Joan is a stylish, trim woman with silver hair and unerring classic taste; today she wears a toast-yellow wool suit, black sweater and gold jewelry. She and Sheila demonstrate vivid fashion alternatives. So far, Joan has worked the figure of Mary and the face of Jesus; "I had a terrible time doing this," she says, "because I was so drawn up in the pain and agony." She shows us how she taped the church's intercessory prayer list to the edge of the canvas as a constant reminder. She handles the project with evident awe.

"Jesus looks so 'dead'," Rose blurts.

"Yes, isn't it marvelous?" Joan responds.

We invite anyone who knows how to needlepoint, or would like to learn, to take part in the project. Sheila had initially projected three years of work, but perhaps it could even be ready next Lent; this year we will once again borrow a spare epitaphion from another church. Sheila begins rolling up the work; I see that her hands, like Carolyn's, are strong, and she grips the piece firmly. "My heart is in this," she says.

Sunday of Orthodoxy concludes each year with a Vespers service that brings together all the Orthodox parishes in the area. Greek, Antiochian, Russian, and other Orthodox jurisdictions are not separate denominations, but different geographical expressions of the same world-wide Church. They hold the same beliefs and use the same liturgy; the chief difference, as far as I can tell, is the kind of pastries served at coffee hour. Logically, all Orthodox living in America should constitute an American Orthodox Church, and Russian missionaries came across the Bering Strait to Alaska in 1793, intending to evangelize and provide just such structure. The Russian Revolution eventually disrupted that, at a time when a flood of Orthodox immigrants from many lands was arriving and seeking services in their different languages. Parallel church structures were then set up, almost as an emergency measure. The multiplicity of hyphenated-Orthodox churches in America is something of an anomaly, and there is a movement to unite them.

Tonight we gathered at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, a beautiful new complex of buildings on a wooded hilltop just north of Baltimore. The members of Holy Cross who attend look around a little enviously. But the airy, spacious church doesn't quite please; it has pews, and even an organ. Too Western for us. When we get our building, we want it to look like an Orthodox church.

This phenomenon might fall under the heading, "No zealot like a convert." But a more subtle dynamic is also at play. I keep finding that those Orthodox still close to their immigrant roots are most inclined to want to look like ordinary Americans. A woman raised in the Greek church or immigrant parents explained to me that, as a child, she found it embarrassing when people noticed she was fasting; she wished she could pass as Episcopalian. On the other hand, fed-up American converts (many of whom used to be Episcoplian) gladly embrace Orthodox distinctives as a way of challenging the status quo. Born and bred in the culture, we're eager to look countercultural. While the members of Holy Cross are dazzled by St. Demetrios' size and grandeur, more than one fellow-parishoner whispers to me, "But in 'our' church, we aren't going to have pews!"

The nine priests line up for the procession, each one holding the icon that represents his church. As they pass by, I can recognize them: there's St. Matthew, with his best-selling book; St. Andrew, with his X-shaped cross; and two churches named after the Theotokos, or Virgin Mary: Annunciation and Nativity of the Virgin. My husband holds the icon of the elevation of the Holy Cross, and walks at the head of the line, as the priest most recently ordained. As the last he goes first.

This year only the priests process, but at my first Sunday of Orthodoxy all worshippers were invited to join. Everyone had brought the icon of his name-saint, and we shuffled in a long procession around the interior of the dark church. I saw near me a little boy of three, waiting to join the line. He held in one drooping hand his icon, and in the other gripped a small figure of Batman. He had brought both of his personal action figures, the main one and a spare. I'm glad no one asked him which was which.

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HarperCollins, 1997

ISBN 0-06-065498-8

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

Facing East: A Pilgrim's Journey Into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy

Selection from:

Inspiration Plate

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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Thursday, June 29: Feast of Saints Peter and Paul

Today we conclude the fast that falls between the octave of Pentecost and June 29; last year it was only two days, but this year it’s been ten. Gary is out of town, and Megan is staying with friends, so tonight I’ll take the boys to the all-you-can-eat buffet at the shopping center. It’s a branch of the chain called Old Country Buffet, but we call it Wide Country Buffet, because the doors are twice as wide as those on every other store in the shopping center. Makes you think.

Today may have historic repercussions, because the pope is meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew to pursue healing of the ancient schism between East and West. To celebrate Christian unity, I bought an icon. Actually, it’s a Protestant icon, and it’s ceramic. To tell the truth, it’s a plate. I bought it at a thrift shop.

….

Today I found a plate that showed a pink-lipped Jesus with tumbling golden-brown curls gazing upward into a stream of pale yellow light. He is wearing an unfocused, benign expression, but his halo of short yellow dashes suggests surprise. There are vague pastel colored shapes behind him, reminiscent of stained glass windows, so maybe he was in church when this picture was made.

On Jesus’ white blouse is written in gentle script, “Inspiration.” I suppose this means that Jesus was feeling inspired just then. When he returned to the next meeting of his men’s Bible study, and they asked, “When did you feel closest to God this week?,” this is the moment he’d describe.

Is this an icon? If so, it’s not a very good one – too sentimental, too soft, and too ahistorical. But it could no doubt fill the role of an icon for some Protestants. They would hang it on the wall, in the dining room, much as we put icons in our icon corner. It would remind them of spiritual realities and make visible the constant presence of the Lord in their midst. Perhaps my disdain is mere snobbery. This image of Jesus is nothing if not sincere.

But what to do with it? The plate is resting here on my desk by the computer, and it poses a problem. Kiss it or put a sandwich on it?

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HarperCollins, 1997

ISBN 0-06-065498-8

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

Facing East: A Pilgrim's Journey Into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy

Selection from:

Presbyterian in St. Louis:

Stuffiness vs. Awe

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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Sunday, August 27: Venerable Poeman the Great

The soaring walls are palest pink with white pilasters. The chandeliers are magnificent. I look at my watch; about now our little group of seventy worshippers is taking communion, in that funny little schoolhouse with the green linoleum floor.

"Wow" I whisper to Nick. "I'm just thinking, this is so different from my church."

"Oh, yours is more high church?" he asks. The question seems so odd that I have to ask him to repeat it.

"No" I reply, "it's not that. I guess, in terms of stuffiness, we're about on the same level. But we have a dinky, borrowed space. I was just thinking how big this all is and how new and impressive." Though this isn't exactly what I'd want for our church, I'm jealous all the same.

We begin with a few lively praise choruses; Nick whispers that our other editor, Marvin, who's the same brand Presbyterian, would hate this. I guess the bouncy tunes are silly and lack the dignity of the fine old hymns. You could also argue that they're theologically questionable, emphasizing the security of worshipper more than the majesty of God. I can't argue with that.

But from my perspective there's nothing sacrosanct about "dignified" hymns a couple of hundred years old. All of those four-lines-and-a-chorus hymns now have a man-made quality to me; they're all us talking about various aspects of God or ourselves....

Not that I have any illusions that our prayers were written by angels rather than men; in one sense, ours are just as man-made as this morning's Presbyterian fare. But because of multiple distances of geography and generations, Orthodox liturgy for us Westerners is more free of contemporary cultural markers. The truth of the faith stands out more boldly when it's not set amid familiar, reassuring tokens of good taste and religiosity....  

....

Way down below there is a flowing expanse of stage, with the empty chairs for the choir lined up in lengthy rows. No choir today; rehearsals for the new year are about to start....What strikes me as odd, though, is that the stage with all its chairs is completely unoccupied except for a man sitting just right of center. Turns out this is the pastor. As the service progresses he gets up and says a prayer or makes an announcement or (at the end) preaches a good long sermon, but when he's in neutral he's just sitting there.

I'm not sure why this seems odd to; lots of times during our service the priest is just standing there, praying or singing along with the choir and congregation go through a hymn. Then it hits me: there's no altar here. At our church, everything points to the altar, a visual anchor for our attention, reminding us of the presence of God. Here, with no choir filling the rows of chairs and nothing else to focus on, we all look at the pastor. He looks back at us; he's the only person facing this direction. Well, here we are.

He's an attractive, well-spoken man, comfortable in his authority and flashing with good humor. The initial prayer he offers is addressed to God and dwells on our unworthiness and need for repentance and God's grace. The content is impeccable, but there's something about it, perhaps the delivery, that makes me think the pastor believes we need to hear this more than God does. He's probably right.

Why does this seem different from prayers at home, other than the fact that it's spoken while we incessantly sing? I can't quite put my finger on it. There are more songs, more prayers, and reading from Scripture. I'm enjoying the service, but somehow it still feels preparatory, like we haven't gotten down to business yet.

I suddenly realize that I'm waiting for that special seasoning of humility and--intimacy. The prayers of the Eastern Rite are so tender, so personal, so forgetful of self and riveted on God that they have an intimate touch. It's a context in which falling on your face in prostration seems appropriate; indeed, it seems the only reasonable response to God's mercy and majesty. I can't imagine that happening here. What they do they do well--great teaching and fellowship, and the music is a gas. But it feels to me like preparation for a payoff that isn't going to come.

After the service I meet a lot of nice people; it sure is a friendly church. And an active one: people are breaking up into different small groups and Sunday school classes....On the way out I pass in the hallway a carved wooden table inscribed "In Remembrance of Me." Yes, Nick tells me, this is the altar. They carry it into the church when they're going to have communion. For an Orthodox, it's a shocker to see the altar stashed away like this; it looks so forlorn. Yes, some people see the Eucharist differently than we do.

....

...I explain to Nick that I had a new insight at church today. It's that there's such a thing as a stuffiness scale, and different churches (as well as whole denominations) fall at different points on the scale. The high Episcopal practice I used to know would lodge at the top: acolytes drilled to turn in perfect unison, the altar party symmetrically spaced, kneeling and rising as one, the congregation reciting psalms antiphonally with a four-beat pause between lines.

I expected Orthodoxy to push this fanciness through the roof and was surprised to find it more relaxed, less stuffy...

....

On the stuffiness scale, as I'd said before, our church is probably the same as Nick's. But there's another scale of measurement, which is awe. How does the service gather worshippers into the presence of God? In a high Episcopal service there is a great sense of God's dignity and majesty; matters are charged with gravitas.

In Orthodoxy it's more intimate, less dignified; more tender, less formal. The intimacy is with God; we speak prayers of repentance, charging ourselves as the chief of sinners, bowing to the ground in humility. Each of us cries out for mercy, reminding ourselves of our unworthiness before God and his overwhelming, unmerited love. It's intimacy, not just formality. He's not just an impressive CEO who really, and I mean this, is a great guy who deserves our deepest respect. He is The One Who Sees, who sees us naked and helpless, and the one who saves, through the extraordinary gift of the blood of his Son. No wonder we're on our knees with our foreheads on the floor.

I tell Nick that from my humble perspective, we just barely peeped into that awe scale today. We talked a lot about God, and much of the talking was well said and useful for spiritual growth. But we didn't actually bow before him and repent and cry out for mercy--not in the way I mean. Do you guys have another service where you do that?

"Well, did you hear the first prayer?" Nick asks. "That we more like what you're talking about."

"That was more like it than anything else," I say. "That was a pretty good prayer." I think I'd better shut up about this. I don't want to sound ungrateful for the hospitality, and it was a really fine church with friendly people and lively music and a meaty sermon. I just wonder if they get hungry for that prostrate-in-worship part.

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HarperCollins, 1997

ISBN 0-06-065498-8

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

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At the Corner of East and Now:

A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy

Prologue: At the Corner of Maple and Camp Meade Road

Re-Scandalized

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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      A little church on Sunday morning is a negligible thing. It may be the meekest, and least conspicuous, thing in America. Someone zipping between Baltimore's airport and beltway might pass this one, a little stone church drowsing like a hen at the corner of Maple and Camp Meade Road. At dawn all is silent, except for the click every thirty seconds as the oblivious traffic light rotates through its cycle. The building's bell tower out of proportion, too large and squat and short to match. Other than that, there's nothing much to catch the eye.

      In a few hours heaven will strike earth like lightning on this spot. The worshipers in this little building will be swept into a divine worship that proceeds eternally, grand with seraphim and incense and God enthroned, "high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple" (Isaiah 6:1). The foundations of that temple shake with the voice of angels calling "Holy" to each other, and we will be there, lifting fallible voices in the refrain, an outpost of eternity.

      If this is true, it is the most astonishing thing that will happen in our city today.

      I believe it is true. I didn't always. But I now believe it is the most important thing I will do in my life. When death strips away from me all the shreds of foolishness, self-indulgence, gossip, and greed, this will remain, one of the few things to remain. In the moment after communion I press my lips against the chalice, a kiss of surrender, veneration and gratitude. It is the one true centering moment of my oblivious cycling days and weeks. On the chalice I see the face of Christ painted in enamel. I look at him and he looks at me. He has been looking at me a long, long time–long before I would look at him.

      It is strange that I would be here. Back in my college days I was pretty dismissive of Christianity. To be more accurate, I was contemptuous and hostile. Though raised in a minimally Christian home, I had rejected the faith by my early teens. I remained spiritually curious, however, and spent the following years browsing the world's spiritual food court, gathering tasty delights. The core of my home-made belief system was "the life force;" the raw energy of life, I'd concluded, was the essence of God, and the various world religions were poetic attempts to express that truth. I selected among those scraps of poetry as they pleased me. My senior college year I gained a startling insight: I realized that my selections were inevitably conditioned by my own tastes, prejudices, and blind spots. I was patching together a Frankenstein God in my own image, and it would never be taller than five foot one. If I wanted to grow beyond my own meager wisdom, I would have to submit to a faith bigger than I was and accept its instruction.

      At that point I chose Hinduism. I can't say it was a mature decision. Frankly, there weren't a lot of Hindus attending the University of South Carolina in the 1970's, and I chose it in part because I thought it would look really cool on me. I enjoyed the vivid poetry and mythology of the faith, but can't say I engaged it deeply. When all the world's religions were coquetting to be my choice, Christianity didn't even make the lineup. I considered it an infantile and inadequate religion. I found it embarrassing, childish–probably because I associated it with my own naive childhood. A rhetorician could have told me which logical fallacy this was, to presume that since I was immature when I was a pre-teen Christian, the faith itself was immature.

      Now I stand in front of the chalice and meet Jesus' steady gaze. I have been fasting from all food and drink since last night, and standing up in this swirl of incense and chant for almost ninety minutes. I'm hungry and my feet ache. Yet all I want is more of him. To see the beauty of your face, Lord Christ, this is all I want.

      I didn't become a Christian because somebody with a Bible badgered me till I was worn down. I wasn't persuaded by the logic of Christian theology or its creeds. I met Christ. This was, at the time, a big surprise, and pretty disconcerting.

      It happened not long after my wedding. Gary and I were married out in the woods, me wearing sandals and unbleached muslin with flowers in my hair. You can picture it: the women in tie-dyed dresses and floating batik scarves, the jovial black lab with a red bandanna around his neck, the vegetarian reception under the trees. When archeologists discover my wedding photos hundreds of years from now, they'll be able to place the date within five years.

      We'd saved up enough funds to stretch our European honeymoon to three months, as long as we traveled by hitchhiking and discount train seats, lived on bread and cheese, and stayed in the cheapest hotels. (In one northern Italian town we figured out why it was so cheap: all afternoon we sat on the little balcony and watched women go in and out with different men.) On June 20, 1974, we took the ferry from Wales to the Irish coast and hitchhiked up to Dublin. We found a hotel, dropped our bags, and went out in the late afternoon to see what we could sightsee.

      In a block of business buildings we came upon a church and decided to go inside for a look; even declared Hindus can't travel Europe without being exposed to some church architecture. I strolled around the dimly lit building, admiring stained glass windows and stonework. Eventually I came upon a small side altar. Above it there was a white marble statue of Jesus with his arms held low and open, and his heart exposed on his chest, twined with thorns and springing with flames. This depicts an apparition to a French nun in 1675; she heard Jesus say, "Behold the heart which has so loved mankind."

      I can't really explain what happened next. I was standing there looking at the statue, and then I discovered I was on my knees. I could hear an interior voice speaking to me. Not with my ears–it was more like a radio inside suddenly clicked on. The voice was both intimate and authoritative, and it filled me.

      It said, "I am your life. You think that your life is your name, your personality, your history. But that is not your life. I am your life." It went on, naming that "life force" notion I admired: "Beyond that, you think that your life is the fact that you are alive, that your breath goes in and out, that energy courses in your veins. But even that is not your life. I am your life.

      "I am the foundation of everything else in your life."

      I stood up feeling pretty shaky. It was like sitting quietly in your living room and having the roof blown off. I didn't have any doubt who the "I" was that was speaking to me, and it wasn't someone I was eager to get to know. If someone had asked me a half-hour earlier, I would have said I was not sure the fellow had ever lived. Yet here he was, and though I didn't know him it seemed he already knew me, from the deepest inside out. I kept quiet about this for a week, trying to figure it out. I didn't even tell Gary, though he must have wondered why my eyebrows kept hovering up near my hairline.

      This wasn't one of those woo-woo spiritual experiences where everything goes misty and the next day you wonder if it really happened. It was shockingly real, as if I'd encountered a dimension of reality I'd never known existed before. Years later I read C. S. Lewis' novella, "The Great Divorce," which begins with the charming idea that every day a bus crosses the great divide from hell to heaven. Anyone who wants can go, and anyone who wants can stay. The thing is, heaven hurts. It's too real. The visitors from hell can't walk on the grass, because the blades pierce their feet like knives. It takes time to grow real enough to endure heaven, a process of unflinching self-discovery and repentance that few are willing to take. At the end of the day, most of the tourists get back on the bus to hell.

      This experience in the church was real like that, like grass that pierces your feet. In that explosive moment I found that Jesus was realer than anything I'd ever encountered, the touchstone of reality. It left me with a great hunger for more, so that my whole life is leaning toward him, questing for him, striving to break down the walls inside that shelter me from his gaze. I am looking for him all my life, an addict.

      What we do in this little stone church is pretty strange: what's strange is that it should seem so unremarkable. The whole Christian story is strange. Frederick Buechner describes the Incarnation as "a kind of vast joke whereby the creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers." He concludes, "Until we too have taken the idea of the God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken."

      But we have taken the idea as seriously as a child can. America is far from spiritually monolithic, but the vast backdrop of our culture is Christian, and for most of us it is the earliest faith we know. The "idea of the God-man" is not strange or scandalous, because it first swam in milk and butter on the top of our oatmeal decades ago. At that age, many things were strange, though most were more immediately palpable. A God-filled baby in a pile of straw was a pleasant image, but somewhat theoretical compared with the heartstopping exhilaration of a visit from Santa Claus. The way a thunderstorm ripped the night sky, the hurtling power of the automobile Daddy drove so bravely, the rapture of ice cream–how could the distant Incarnation compete with those?

      We grew up with the Jesus story, until we outgrew it. The last day we walked out of Sunday School may be the last day we seriously engaged this faith. Thus the average person's conception of the Christian faith is a child's conception, still hobbled by a child's perspective and presumptions. We were fed the oatmeal version of Christianity, boiled down to what a child could comprehend, and to many it never occurs that there might be something more to know. The other great faiths of the world we encounter as adults, and can perceive their depth and complexity. We cease thinking about Christianity when we are children, and so fail to glimpse the power and passion that has inspired poets and martyrs and theologians for millennia. There is ample material here to ponder for a lifetime. The problem is, we think we already know it all.

      Eastern Orthodoxy gives us a chance to see it new again, because the form is unfamiliar, while the Lord at its heart is the same. Many people don't even realize that there is an eastern Christian Church; check the bookstores where shelves are tidily labeled "Eastern Religions" and "Western Religions." But Christianity began in the middle east, and spread in both directions at once; it is not an exclusively western possession. Christian faith begins, not with a teaching or insight, but with a geographically-rooted event: a crucifixion on a hill outside Jerusalem. From there one branch of the faith moved westward, to Rome and through Europe, while another reached south into Egypt and Ethiopia, north and east to Greece, Finland, Persia, India, and Russia. Soon five main cities emerged as centers of the faith: Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, Constantinople, and Alexandria in Egypt.

      This united faith endured a division roughly every five hundred years. In the fifth and sixth century some of the churches of the south and east separated over issues of the divinity of Christ. These churches, for example, the Armenian Orthodox and the Egyptian Copts share with Eastern Orthodoxy a great many elements of faith and practice, such as icons, incense, and chant. Full communion, however, has not been restored.

      More significant in western history was the Great Schism between what would become Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, usually dated to 1054 AD. For some time tempers had been flaring over the role of the pope: was he the supreme head of all Christians, empowered to rule over local churches everywhere? Or was his role mostly honorary, that of "first among [self-governing] equals"? Could he hand down doctrine single-handedly, or were points of faith to be determined by consensus, as leaders deliberated in council and the laity either received or rejected their conclusions? In one of those pinpoints of history, this conflict between top-down and bottom-up church leadership came to a head over the pope's authority to add a single word to the Nicene Creed. Rome went one way and the four other cities, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem went the other. Those four have continued united to this day, sharing a faith indistinguishable from that of the first century. In the west, however, another split took place five hundred years after the break between east and west, and the Protestant Reformation began peeling new denominations off of Rome.

      Though westerners tend to think of Protestant and Roman Catholic as the two opposite poles of Christian faith, in eastern eyes this quarreling mother and daughter bear a strong family resemblance. The two circle around questions of common obsession, questions which often do not arise in the east: works versus faith, scripture versus tradition, papacy versus individualism. This very context of habitual argument creates a climate of nitpicking, and every theological topic that can be defined, and some which are beyond definition, gets scrutinized in turn. As a result, the east sees in the west an unhelpful tendency to plow up the roots of mystery.

      While the initial schism between east and west led to further divisions in the west, as new Protestant denominations continue to emerge, the Orthodox Church remained intact. The Church is kept from significant change by its characteristic governing principle: conciliarity. Unlike religious bodies where a single powerful leader dispenses the faith, in Orthodoxy it is believed that the Holy Spirit guides the whole community of believers into the truth (as Jesus promised in John 16:13). Faith is a treasure jointly possessed by all believers, not one guarded by a powerful few; it accumulates over the centuries, never contradicting what has been previously held. Thus there is continuity from first century Jerusalem, to fourth century Egypt, to seventh century Constantinople, to eleventh century Russia, to nineteenth century Alaska. What diverges from this shared faith would automatically disprove itself, even if it was urged by high ecclesiastical authority. No authority is greater than the common faith.

      Since there is no locus of power where the faith may be tailored to fit current fashion, it doesn't change in any significant way–not over long centuries nor across great geographical distances. The faith of the first century is the faith of Orthodox today. When we meet in this little stone church outside Baltimore, we celebrate a liturgy that is for the most part over fifteen hundred years old. We join in prayers that are being said in dozens of languages by Orthodox all over the world, prayers unchanged for dozens of generations.

      I'm a recent convert, so I have to check a tendency to gush. The history of this Church is not spotless. When people criticize Christianity they usually point to two incidents in western history, the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades. While Orthodoxy is not implicated in either of these–Greek Orthodox were among the victims of the Crusades–Orthodox must confess their own sins. The pogroms that occurred against the Jews of Russia, for example, were executed by mobs which included Orthodox believers. Sadly, many clergy were less than vehement in condemning these persecutions, though some clergy risked their lives to defend their Jewish neighbors. There has been a general tendency of the Orthodox Church to reflexively support the state rather than criticize it; Serbian Patriarch Pavle's brave denunciations of Slobodan Milosevic stand as a welcome exception.

      Of course, when I became Orthodox I didn't become Russian, Finnish, or Serbian. I'm here for the faith, not the pierogis; I don't know how to do Greek dancing or paint Ukrainian eggs. My ethnic background remains that of the quirky Southern tribe known as "Charlestonian." I am not responsible for the sins of Orthodox of other lands through the ages, but I more than make up for that with sins of my own.

      Yet Orthodox sing on Sunday, "We have seen the true light! We have found the true faith!" It's the faith that's true, not us; even the most beloved saints of history weren't perfect. The problem is that this radiant faith is handled by sinful people, who are only partially transformed by it during our earthly lives. The faith is like a hospital, and we come to it sick with sin. The more we receive it, the more we are changed; not ever to be perfect on this earth, but to be, at least, better than we otherwise would have been. Examples of the flaws of the earthly institution of Orthodoxy are easy to find, and, sad to say, there is no guarantee that all such failings are in the past. Not everyone in the hospital takes his medicine.

      Though I've been a Christian for twenty-five years, I came to this hospital only a few years ago. Soon after my conversion in the Dublin church my husband made his own journey from atheism to faith, and when he went to seminary I attended as well. He was ordained, and we served in a mainline Protestant denomination for fifteen years. I counseled and taught at the church, had a daughter and two sons, taught natural childbirth classes, and helped out at some home births. More recently I started doing some writing, and, because I've been on both sides of the abortion issue, got involved with "common ground" dialogues between representatives of the opposing sides. Our national group ranges from abortion clinic owners to sidewalk protest leaders, and it has been a fruitful environment to see "love your enemies" (Luke 6:27) put healingly into practice.

      In the midst of this busy time my husband began to develop a hunger for more ancient Christian roots. Gary wanted to be part of a church that was immersed in the unchanging faith of the ages, rather than one which had an active history of only a few hundred years, or which was eagerly jettisoning its history in favor of transitory relevance. Neither of us had heard much about Orthodoxy, but as soon as he discovered it, he loved it.

      I didn't. Orthodoxy initially struck me as strange and off-putting: beautiful but rigorous, and focused much more on God than on me. Western Christianity of many stripes has tended in recent decades to become somewhat soft and emotional–in a sense, consumer-focused. Orthodoxy has missed that bandwagon, and still stubbornly addresses its energy toward worshipping God; every believer's primary need, Orthodox would say, is to come further into union with God, and the whole work of the faith is to enable this.

      It didn't take long for me to be won over, as I found this God-focus was what I'd hungered for all along. My husband was ordained and we founded a small parish outside Baltimore, which has grown to number about a hundred. There were many strange new things to learn about this unfamiliar Church, but learning them was a delight. Immersed in a continuous, centuries-old faith, at last we feel at home.

      This continuity has become the hidden thread that runs through my life. I live at the corner of East and Now. The blaring immediate Real Life we all share chugs from one vivid episode to another, events which are overstuffed but mostly inexplicable, like a chain of sausages. I drive carpool, write e-mail, read the paper, go to the mall, pop a tape in the VCR. None of this matters; all of it could blow away overnight. What matters is this slim golden thread: the liturgy that begins each Sunday morning in a little stone church and reaches its fulfillment in the moment I receive communion. Prayer spills backward and forward from that moment, wrapping me into union with God. It's the work of a lifetime that stretches on beyond my earthly life. This perspective is backwards from the usual. What happens in the meek stone church is the most important thing; what happens in the rest of my life is transient and contingent. The liturgy is whole and beautiful; the rest of my life seems random and bumpy. In this book I alternate between chapters describing times of worship and chapters describing points of encounter with ordinary life. Ones that trace the liturgy on a typical Sunday morning roll smoothly from one to the next; ones displaying how that ancient faith might be lived in slice-of-life moments are as oddly matched as shoes on a thrift shop shelf.

      The point of this book, however, is not Orthodoxy, because Orthodoxy is not about itself but about Jesus. Everything I say here must be under that steady gaze, because he is the beginning and the end, and the foundation of my life. Those whose Christian education halted at the elementary-school level should be warned that there is more to Jesus than the consoling Good Shepherd they tell children about. His words are frequently challenging and sometimes disturbing.

      For example, Jesus warned that following him would be difficult, and that his disciples would be hated: "The hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God" (John 16:2). He called his followers to standards of behavior even higher than those of the era's religious professionals: "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 5:20). Now, not only deeds but even thoughts would be examined: "You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

      Finally, Jesus expected that most people would not accept this challenge: "Enter by the narrow gate: for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:13-14).

      Unlike faiths that teach one has only to go within to find truth, Christianity presumes that each human is a mixed bag, with some impulses pulling us toward selfishness and egocentricity, while others yearn toward oneness with God, and resulting self-sacrificial love for others. It's not a matter of bad people versus good people, but of a tumultuous blend within each human heart. The person who resolves to pursue the hard path toward reconciliation with God must treat his inner impulses with careful discernment, and resolve to put aside anything that hinders.

      Thus, this is not a faith of broad self-affirmation, but one which explicitly calls for self-denial. "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). The life we clutch greedily close will rot in our arms, and only transformed life in Christ can save us: "Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it" (Luke 9:24).

      Reading over such a series of statements by Jesus feels something like being repeatedly punched in the nose. Good Lord, who would want to do such a thing? Why sign on for such a grueling experience?

      I look into his thin face, that strong and battered face, in enamel on the side of the chalice. My heart feels like a rock falling down a well. It is for love of him. Not mere admiration for his teachings–to think of him as a mere "good teacher" at such a moment is preposterous. He is Lord, the Christ, the Son of God–like he said. If he is a teacher, he taught disturbing things about himself. And those are the teachings that sting; those are the teachings that were so scandalous they eventually got him killed. When a woman poured out on his feet a jar of fragrant ointment worth a year's wages, it was Judas who protested (reasonably, it would seem) that the money should have been given instead to the poor. It was Jesus who accepted the extravagant honor as his due: "The poor you have with you always, but you do not always have me" (John 12:8). A mere "good teacher" doesn't make such audacious claims. Either this man is a monstrous egoist and a charlatan, or he is telling the truth. Who is this strange and compelling man? He turned the question on his apostles: "But who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16:15). Peter had the lucky bell-ringing right answer, the answer that got him crucified as well, a weary old man in a strange city, hanging upside-down like mutton from a spike through his feet. Only powerful love can enable such sacrifice, love greater than death. And that may be the most scandalous assertion of all: that Jesus proved who he is by destroying death, that Jesus is still alive.

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Penguin Putnam

ISBN 0-87477-987-1

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

At the Corner of East and Now:

A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy

Chapter 9

10:12 AM: Prayer for the Catechumens Not Seeker-Friendly

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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      At the end of the homily we get to our feet again, and Father Gregory peers around the church. "Is Emelia here? Where's Emelia?" he asks. Behind me a woman holds up a hand, then begins to walk toward the icon of Christ on the iconostasis. Emelia is a catechumen, one who is studying to join the Church. She wears her brown hair in a round Clara Bow cut, and is usually dressed in black--sweater, skirt, stockings--right down to bright orange leather thong sandals.

      She stands next to my husband and together they face the icon. It is a rather severe one, showing a frowning Jesus holding a large book with a gold cover in his left arm, while his right hand is held up in blessing. We bought this icon, and the matching one of the Theotokos, when we first started the church; I remember the day the UPS man carted the huge, flat boxes up to our front door, and we took them into the dining room to unpack and lay on the table. From the first time I saw this Jesus' stern expression I felt awkward, as if facing someone who understood something about me that I didn't, someone who understood why I have a murky bag of disconnected guilt rambling about under the surface all the time. I know that I ping back and forth between this guilt, and oh-yeah? behaviors like overeating or showing off or gossiping or thinking luxuriously about how spiritual I am. I don't know this landscape fully, I've only jolted over it in a sprung-seated carriage in the dark, and it's a little scary to me. When I look into the eyes of this icon, I think he knows, and it makes him very serious.

      I had looked at this icon, somewhat shrinkingly, for several years before I realized that his right hand is held up in blessing. That is his will for me; he wants to bless me. He loves me. It's serious, my condition; it's going to require major surgery. But it is his love for me that drives all of this forward, his uncompromising will to bless me.

      A prayer of St. John of Damascus, the eighth-century champion of icons, acknowledges this vacillating self. "I know indeed, O Lord, that I am not worthy of thy love...But, O Lord, whether I wish it or not, do thou save me. For if thou savest the just, it is nothing great; and if thou hast mercy upon the pure, it is nothing marvelous; for they are worthy of thy mercy. But upon me, a sinner show the wonder of thy mercy; in this manifest thy love toward all." That "whether I wish it or not" interests me. I know there are times that I cannot yet pray, "Yes, Lord, I am willing." I have to start further back: "Please help me be willing to be willing."

      Father Gregory and Emelia stand facing this icon, and he chants, "Pray to the Lord, you catechumen." He speaks several prayers of intercession over her, while we all respond, "Lord, have mercy." At last he sings, "Bow your head unto the Lord, you catechumen," and Emelia bows her head. He prays, "O Lord, our God, who dwellest on high and regardest the humble of heart, who hast sent forth as the salvation of the race of men Thine only-begotten Son and God, our Lord Jesus Christ: Look down upon Thy servant the catechumen who has bowed her neck before Thee; make her worthy in due time of the laver of regeneration, the remission of sins, and the robe of incorruption. Unite her to Thy Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and number her with Thy chosen flock. That with us she may glorify Thine all-honorable and majestic name: of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages."

      The entry of new members into Orthodoxy is cautious, and always has been. Traditionally, inquirers were introduced to a small portion of the Church's mysteries at a time. The fourth-century nun, Egeria, wrote back to her Spanish convent what she encountered during her travels in the Holy Land, including a bishop's words to catechumens. At the end of their years of instruction, which culminated with a Lent of three hours' instruction a day, the bishop said, "During the past seven weeks you have been given instruction in the whole of scripture. You have been taught about the Christian faith and the resurrection of the body, and you have also learned as much as catechumens are allowed to know of the meaning of the Creed. But the teaching on baptism itself is much deeper, and as long as you remain catechumens you have no right to hear it. However, do not think it will never be explained to you. You will be told everything after you have been baptized. But catechumens cannot be told about God's secret mysteries."

      This seems strange in our era, for a couple of reasons. In the first place, American churches tend to display everything they have vigorously, rushing toward any vaguely-curious inquirer with the entire boatload of services the church can provide. There's nothing that a seeker isn't yet entitled to know. In the second place, it's generally assumed that there are no mysteries, anyway. The faith is made as open and cheerful and accessible as possible. People who want mystery don't go to church; they watch "The X-Files" or phone the Psychic Network. They know in their bones that there is mystery out there somewhere, and if the church won't provide it they look elsewhere. A line often attributed to G. K. Chesterton goes, "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing, he'll believe in anything." In the early church the burden was on seekers, to listen and learn. They knew that the gathered community, the Church, had knowledge they didn't: it knew how to draw closer to God. They committed themselves to be instructed, and expected that with time they would be initiated further. Catechumens understood that they were receiving a great gift--one worth waiting for--and that only those who had made a commitment to the community could enter its mysteries.

      It's my unprovable hunch that this is the better course. People newly coming to church should have an unfamiliar experience. It should be apparent to them that they are encountering something very different from the mundane. It should be discontinuous with their everyday experience, because God is discontinuous. God is holy, other, incomprehensible, strange, and if we go expecting an affable market-tested nice guy, we won't be getting the whole picture. We'll be getting the short God in a straw hat, not the big one beyond all thought.

      Coming into the community of believers at worship should be disconcerting. It should leave the visitor with several impressions: whatever this is, these people take it very seriously; I don't understand it; if I join I might have to change.

      The well-intentioned idea of presenting the appealing, useful side of faith fails, I think, because it doesn't question deeply enough the basic consumer ethos. The transaction that takes place between a shopper-seeker and the goods acquired (groceries, furniture, the key to the meaning of life) is one that leaves the seeker in control, in a position of judging, evaluating, and rejecting the parts he doesn't like. But entering faith is more like making a promise or beginning a marriage. It involves being grafted into a community, and requires a willingness to grow and change. If it didn't, if it merely confirmed us in our comfortable places, how could it free us to be more than we are?

      Emelia kisses the cross my husband holds out toward her, and returns to her place with a shy smile. On her chrismation day he will anoint her forehead, eyes, nose, lips, ears, chest, hands, feet, and between her shoulders with blessed oil, announcing each time, "The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit." All of us in the congregation will shout back each time, "Seal!" Over the course of many months Emelia is being initiated into ancient mysteries, and I appreciate her patience.

      Not long ago I spoke at the Sunday morning service of a large church outside Pittsburgh. It was an evangelical mainline service, heartfelt, friendly, but not overly casual. We marched into the century-old stone church to the tune of a century-old hymn, preceded by a pretty young crucifer and a vested choir. I took my seat all by myself, up front, in a chair of dark carved wood next to the pulpit.

      After an antiphonal reading of a psalm, the overhead projector was snapped on and lyrics were displayed for a couple of "praise choruses." These are exceedingly simple hymns, with minimal words conveying the barest ideas. The point is not the words, it's the music, which leans toward hand-clapping, high-spirited celebration. In fact the first song began with just that idea: "Celebrate Jesus! Celebrate!" we sang repeatedly. In the third row I could see the nice gray-haired lady I was talking with before the service, joining in enthusiastically. I couldn't see much of her, but I could see the top of her hair and the tips of her fingers swaying back and forth through the air like a metronome.

      Much of the congregation, like her, was smiling, clapping, and singing. It reminded me of a comment a friend made at a similar gathering: "For a minute there, we almost didn't act like white people." White people never do this sort of thing with the focus and discipline--a funny word, but I think it's the right one--of a black congregation. We look sheepish but happy, like a dog in a floppy hat.

      I didn't clap. I stood on the rise behind the pulpit, on display, and clasped my hands and sang politely like Alice reciting "You are Old, Father William." I was wondering what my church was doing that morning. At home that day it was the yearly observance of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. This was the council which settled the matter of Arius, the council at which St. Nicholas lost his temper. It took place in Nicea in 325 A.D., and resulted in a statement of belief now known as the Nicene Creed. On this Sunday my church family at home was celebrating the triumph of the council of Nicea, and gloating over the downfall of Arius as if the news had just hit the headlines.

      Arius, as we've noted before, taught that Jesus was created by God, and is not eternally one with the Godhead. Thus, he said, Jesus was not really "the Son of God," and his mother could not be called God-Bearer (Theotokos). These teachings enjoyed widespread popularity, and even after their rejection by the Council Arius did his best to be reinstated. On the eve of his triumphant return to the Church, he died in an outhouse in a manner, his opponent St. Athanasius says, similar to the death of Judas. Scripture describes Judas' end this way: "This man bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out." (Acts 1:18)

      At home my son, Stephen, was chanting:

"Of the Father before the morning star thou wast begotten from the belly without mother before all ages, even though Arius did believe thee to be created, not God, classing thee in ignorance and impudence with creatures...When thou wast asked, O Saviour, Who rent thy garment? Thou didst reply that it was Arius, who divided the headship of the Trinity, united with honor, into parts...He it was who taught the transgressing Nestorius not to say that the Virgin is Theotokos...

      "Pretending blindness that he might not see the light, Arius toppled into the pit of sin, and his bowels were torn by a divine hook that he might give up his whole substance. In a repulsive manner his soul came out, and he became another Judas by his own purpose and character, but the Nicene Council proclaimed openly that thou are Son of God, equal in the throne to the Father, and to the Spirit also."

      There is a lot of complicated theology packed into these lines, though phrased poetically. It's not the sort of thing western Christians sing. While Stephen was chanting that, our group in Pittsburgh had moved on to "Mighty is our God! Mighty is our King!"

      Orthodoxy is strongly concerned with enunciating and preserving the elements of right belief, down to reviewing the foolishness of Arius once a year. It's called "Orthodoxy" for a reason. But this is not done merely as a study drill of dry theology. For Orthodox, theological truths convey the beauty of God. While a theologian in the west is one who has acquired intellectual understanding of religious theory, in the east a theologian is one who has approached union with God and been flooded with light. A theologian is not one who grasps the truth, but who has been grasped by the truth and transformed. This doesn't make the specifics of faith any less precise, but it makes doing theology an entirely different sort of enterprise: not cogitating, but entering into illuminating union with God. While in the west an artificial division between head and heart resulted in a separation of theology from personal transformation, in Orthodoxy they remain united. The purpose of doing theology is to come into union with God.

      One of the several saints named Symeon is called "the New Theologian" because he is relatively recent; he died in 1022. He is a theologian because he saw the uncreated light of God, an event more significant, and ultimately more beneficial to his readers, than the mere ability to rearrange theological principles. St. Symeon wrote in his Hymns of Divine Love:

I partake of light; I participate also in glory,

And my face shines, as does also His for whom I long;

And all my members become bearers of light.

I then become the most beautiful of beautiful things.

      This is what it means to be a theologian. As Evagrius of Pontus, another of Arius's fourth-century adversaries, said, "A theologian is one whose prayer is true." Theology is, at root, prayer--specifically, adoration. This is why our worship is the center of all we do. There is not an Orthodox tradition of removed, deductive theological reasoning; one searches in vain for a Summa Theologica, or even a complete systematic theology. Yet there are whole libraries of books on prayer.

      Further, our prayer is not merely "Celebrate Jesus! Celebrate!" It's about the glory of Christ, threatened by that weasel Arius, rescued by God-illuminated theologians after pitched battle, vindicated in the graphic judgment of God. Recounting this story is worship, because theology is prayer, adoration is being filled with the light of capital-T Truth. A popular informal hymn in evangelical circles is based on Psalm 42: "As the deer panteth for the water so my soul longeth after thee; you alone are my heart's desire and I long to worship thee." The melody is lovely and haunting, somewhat like Greensleeves. It speaks of yearning, even if the lyrics can't decide if they're addressing "you" or "thee."

      Once my husband commented on this song, "Back when we were Protestants we were always singing songs like this, about how we longed to worship. The truth was that we didn't know how to worship; we just glimpsed it from time to time. As best as we could tell, it was about emotion."

      I remembered that, that intense hunger for God and the frustrating sense that it would never be satisfied. Since we became Orthodox, I realized, that hunger has diminished. Not because our worship is particularly emotional; sometimes emotion appears, but when it doesn't the dignity and authority of the ancient prayers are sufficient to bear you beyond yourself. In fact, when worship is emotion-powered it's like a funpark ride, and you're being carried around as a treat. It's only when those emotions fade and you get down to the business of doing the work, following the way, saying the prayers even when you don't feel like it, that your stony heart begins to budge. It's only the offerings done from deliberate will that bend the will and shape it to fit the will of God. Giddy emotions feel good, and all of us might need a bowl of ice cream from time to time, but they don't produce spiritual growth. Orthodox worship doesn't engender that kind of emotion, I find. I'm less likely to face the twins I knew so well before: flushed sentimental weepiness, or vexed, restless yearning when that treat was absent, the yearning I believed this song was about. Instead, the spiritual emotions I find prompted by walking the path that Orthodoxy teaches are complex and hard to describe: the overwhelming, deliciously terrifying riptide of God's love; the rapturous joy of weeping over my sins; the sweet stinging desire to bring others to see the beautiful face of Jesus.

      I don't have to "long to worship thee" anymore; I do worship him. The longing is satisfied, not by emotional thrills, but by something that just feels right, like a key in a lock, like "food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food" (I Cor. 6:13). I was made for this. Orthodoxy means "right teaching." It also means "right praise."

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Penguin Putnam

ISBN 0-87477-987-1

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

Other articles:

"The Meaning of His Suffering"

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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Most movies wait till after they’re released to stir up controversy, but Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ" has been preceded by nearly a year of fisticuffs. It provided an unusually rich opportunity for people who don’t know what they’re talking about to do just that. I’ll continue that tradition by admitting that, as I write this, I still have not seen the film. I expect it will be good movie-making, a powerful example of the artistic possibilities of film. I hope it will stir up old faith in Christians, and break forth new faith in unbelievers.

But as I read interviews with Gibson before the release one theme caught my attention. Listen to this quote, for example. In the September 15, 2003 "New Yorker" magazine, Gibson told Peter J. Boyer, "I wanted to bring you there. I wanted to be true to the Gospels. That has never been done before."

That goal meant showing us what real scourging and crucifixion would look like. "I didn’t want to see Jesus looking really pretty," Gibson went on. "I wanted to mess up one of his eyes, destroy it."

Now, if you’re like me, you registered a double-take. Surely, the Crucifixion and its preceding torture were brutal events. But there’s nothing in the Gospels specifically about Jesus’ eye being destroyed. Didn’t Gibson say he wanted to make this movie absolutely true to the Gospels, as "has never been done before"?

So I tried to picture a movie that reflected only what the Gospels tell us, and realized that there’s not much there about the gore. A lot of each Gospel concerns the Passion, of course; nineteenth century theologian Martin Kahler said that the Gospels are "passion narratives with extended introductions." Yet those narratives mostly record the swirl of events around Jesus in his last days, what people said and did. The description of his physical sufferings is as minimal as writers can make it.

"Having scourged Jesus, Pilate delivered him to be crucified," the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) agree. "When they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him." Little more than a dozen verses later he is dead.

I’m not questioning whether the Passion actually was brutal. And I’m not questioning whether an artist is free to depict it however he likes. The thing I’m curious about is: why did Christians in the first millennium choose to depict it differently?

Did they avoid the bloody details because they were just squeamish? Not St. Luke, who, though one of the most elegant New Testament writers, describes Judas’ death in more graphic detail than we asked for: "Falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out" (Acts 1:18).

Were they ashamed of the Cross, an emblem of criminal execution? Not St. Paul, who states: "Far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Galatians 6:14).

Were the brutal elements of a crucifixion so familiar that they needed no elaboration? Yet the pain that Christ endured was exactly what later Christians cherished; if the early church had felt the same way, mere familiarity would not have quenched devotion. A lover does not grow weary of contemplating his beloved’s face. But rather than poring over the details of Christ’s suffering, earlier Christians averted their eyes.

Graphic meditation on Christ’s suffering doesn’t appear before the medieval era, approximately the 14th century. Before that the presentation is more in accord with the way Christ appears in the Gospel of John. In iconography, He reigns serene from the Cross, a victorious conqueror who has rescued us from Death.

In fact, the concept of "rescue" is the key. The wounds that Christ sustained are like those of a hero. Imagine that a young policeman has rescued some hostages at great physical cost, including his own capture and torture. It would be unseemly, even insulting, to continually ask him, "How did it feel when they tortured you? What did it look like? Where did you bleed?" The officer would understandably wish you’d focus not on his humiliation but on his victory.

That’s the attitude we see in these ancient hymns from Holy Week: "The sun was darkened, for it could not bear to see such outrage done to God, before whom all things tremble…When Thou was crucified, O Christ, all the creation saw and trembled. The foundations of the earth quaked in fear of thy power. The lights of heaven hid themselves…The hosts of angels were amazed." A hymn from the 4th century Liturgy of St. Basil is familiar even to some Protestants: "Let all earthly flesh keep silent, and with fear and trembling stand."

Devotion didn’t simply change with the times; the same awe-filled reticence continues unchanged in Eastern Orthodox devotion today. Something else happened to cause this change in European Christianity, and move the focus from Christ’s victory to his sufferings as the means of salvation.

Western theologians usually say that the greatest event in the development of salvation theology was the publication of the treatise "Why did God become Man?" by Anselm, the 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury. Picture the landscape when Anselm tackled his work. Scriptures talk about Christ’ death being a ransom or redemption, and up till then this had been chiefly understood as a ransom from the Devil. "The wages of sin is Death," and due to our sins we were enslaved by death, poisoned and helpless to resist sin. Christ comes on a rescue mission, and in the process he suffers very like that policeman rescuing the hostages. As a human, he dies and gains entrance to Hades; once there he blasts it open, as God, and sets the captives free.

Some early writers elaborated on the question "Who received this ransom?," unwisely it would seem. Today their analogies seem crude, for example, that God lured the Devil by hiding Christ’s divinity inside his humanity, and the Devil responded like a fish grabbing a baited hook (Gregory of Nyssa) or like a mouse going into a trap (Augustine).

But when we speak of Christ paying with his blood, we don’t necessarily have to imagine a two-sided transaction. The brave policeman, above, "paid with his blood" to free the hostages, but that doesn’t mean the kidnappers were left gloating over a vial of blood. When the Lord ransomed his people out of Egypt, Pharaoh did not accept a fat bag of gold in exchange. "Redeem" can just mean "doing what is necessary to set free."

Further, the young officer might have said "I offer this mission to the honor of my chief, who has always been like a dad to me. I love him and want to do his will, and I am making this sacrifice in his name." The chief didn’t receive the young man’s blood either—a bizarre thought—nor did he require that blood before the hostages were freed; he was not their captor, but an ally in the rescue. So take a grammatically giant step back and see these terms in a looser sense. Sometimes we use images like "paid" to mean a simple act of giving, without envisioning a two-sided transaction that includes a receiving on the other end.

Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century) protested that the question of "Who received the payment?" should not be pressed hard. No matter what debt the Devil was owed it could not possibly have included God himself. On the other hand, the Father could not have been the recipient of the ransom, since he was not the one holding us captive. And if the blood of Isaac had not pleased him, why would he desire the blood of his beloved son?

Nazianzus sums up: the Father accepts Christ’s sacrifice without having demanded it; the Son offers it to honor him; and the result is the defeat of the Evil One. "This is as much as we shall say of Christ; the greater portion shall be reverenced with silence."

Anselm took aim at the exaggerated versions of the ransom theory, but didn’t agree to leave the greater portion to silence. He theorized that the payment was made to God the Father. In Anselm’s formulation, our sins were like an offense against the honor of a mighty ruler. The ruler is not free to simply forgive the transgression; restitution must be made. (This is a crucial new element in the story; earlier Christians believed that God the Father did, in fact, freely forgive us, like the father of the Prodigal Son.) No human would be adequate to pay this debt, so God the Son volunteers to do so. "If the Son chose to make over the claim He had on God to man, could the Father justly forbid Him doing so, or refuse to man what the Son willed to give him?" Christ satisfies our debt in this, the "Satisfaction Theory."

"And that has made all the difference," as a tousled Yankee poet liked to say. Western Christian theology marched on from that point, encountering controversies and developments and revisions, but locked on the idea that Christ’s death was directed toward the Father. When Western theologians look back at the centuries before Anselm they can’t find his theory anywhere (well, there are some premonitions in Tertullian and Cyprian, but it wasn’t the mainstream.). You can read St. Paul to support the "satisfaction" view, so Anselm is hailed as the first theologian to understand St. Paul.

That’s a stretch, though. Would Christians really have misunderstood their salvation for a thousand years? Did the people Paul wrote his letters to have no idea what he was talking about? Did the early martyrs die without understanding the Cross that saved them? Why would the Holy Spirit permit such a thing, if He was sent to lead them into all truth? Is the "plain meaning of Scripture" is so obscure that it couldn’t be discerned for a thousand years, and then only by someone from a culture utterly different from its authors?

Western theologians search the pre-Anselmian millennium and can’t find the theory they’re after, but fail to see the theory that permeates there. Before Anselm, the problem salvation addresses is seen as located within us. We are infected by Death as a result of Adam’s fall. This infection will cause us be to spiritually sick and to commit sin, both voluntarily and as a result of the Devil’s deceptions. Christ offers to rescue us in accord with the Father’s will, like the young police officer above. In this action, God the Father and the Son are united: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself."

That’s the "before" snapshot. With Anselm, the problem salvation addresses is between us and God (we have a debt we can’t pay). After Anselm it is even sometimes formulated as within God (His wrath that won’t be quenched until the debt is paid). This theory loses the unity of will between the Father and Son; it can appear that the Son has to overcome the Father’s resistance. It loses the idea that the sickness is within us, and we need to be healed; it can appear that a legal acquittal is sufficient and a transformed life a nice afterthought at most.

Some rebelled against this formulation and claimed that it was too legalistic, too ethically superficial, too "Old Testament." They proposed instead that Christ’s sufferings are just meant to move us by example, so that we will turn and be reconciled with God. (In response to a similar proposition many centuries earlier Augustine had harrumphed that, if an example is all we needed, we didn’t need Christ; the human condition would have been cleared up with Abel.)

In all these varied "after" snapshots, however, the wounds and suffering are the major point. It is the pain of the Passion that saves us, whether objectively (by paying a debt) or subjectively (by moving our hearts). From Julian of Norwich’s meditations on the Crown of Thorns, to "O Sacred Head Sore Wounded," to Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ" is a single devotional thread.

This is a strand that has produced powerfully affecting works of art, and moved and inspired Christians for centuries. The Crucifixion was, in fact, bloody and brutal—Gibson is on good historical ground in wishing to depict them this way—and when he prayerfully reads the Gospels, no doubt these are the pictures that appear in his mind.

But they are not, actually, there. The writers of the Gospels chose to describe Jesus’ Passion a different way. Instead of evoking empathy they invite us to grateful, respectful awe, because they had a different understanding of the meaning of his suffering.

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This article first appeared in Books & Culture, March 2004.

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

Sin: Infraction or Infection?

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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       Often in conversations with Christians of other traditions I find myself explaining the Orthodox view of sin. For most Western Christians, sin is a matter of doing bad things, which create a debt to God, and which somebody has to pay off. They believe that Jesus paid the debt for our sins on the Cross-paid the Father, that is, so we would not longer bear the penalty. The central argument between Protestants and Catholics has to do with whether “Jesus paid it all” (as Protestants would say) or whether, even though the Cross is sufficient, humans are still obligated (as Catholics would say) to add their own sacrifices as well.

       Orthodox, of course, have a completely different understanding of Christ's saving work. We hold to the view of the early church, that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” Our sins made us captives of Death, and God in Christ went into Hades to set us free. The penalty of sin is not a debt we owe the Father; it is the soul-death that is the immediate and inevitable consequence of sin. We need healing and rescue, not someone to step in and square the bill. The early Christians always saw the Father pursuing and loving every sinner, doing everything to bring us back, not waiting with arms folded for a debt to be paid. When the Prodigal Son came home, the Father didn't say, “I'd love to take you back, but who's going to pay this Visa bill?”

       This was the common view for the first thousand years of Christianity, until Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the Great Schism, offered an alternative view. Anselm believed that God could not merely forgive us, because our sins constituted an objective wrong in the universe. It could not be made right without payment. No human could pay such a huge debt, but Jesus' blood was more than sufficient to pay it, which gave Jesus a “claim” on God the Father. “If the Son chose to make over the claim He had on God to man, could the Father justly forbid Him doing so, or refuse to man what the Son willed to give him?”

       We would say that Western Christians, Protestant and Catholic, have mixed up two Scriptural concepts: “sacrifice/offering” and “ransom/payment.” Jesus couldn't have paid the “ransom” for our sins to the Father; you pay a ransom to a kidnapper, and the Father wasn't holding us hostage. No, it was the Evil One who had captured us, due to our voluntary involvement in sin. It cost Jesus his blood to enter Hades and set us free. That's the payment, or ransom, but it obviously isn't paid to the Father. Yet it is a sacrifice or offering to the Father, as a brave soldier might offer a dangerous act of courage to his beloved General.

       If I haven't lost you yet, I'd like to take this one step further. As I said, I often have this conversation with other Christians, and make the point that sin is not infraction, but infection; sin makes us sick. The Christian life is one of healing and restoration; its not merely about paying a debt.

       It recently occurred to me that this difference between Western and Eastern Christianity explains something else I hadn't noticed till now: that Orthodoxy doesn't spend a lot of time worrying about the problem of evil. The question of why bad things happen is a major one in the West; it seems to refute the assertion that God is good and loves us. If he's all powerful and loves us completely, why does he let bad things happen? I expect that this lingering image of a God who is reluctant to forgive, waiting to be paid, feeds a suspicion that maybe he doesn't really love us.

       I think the Orthodox view of sin as illness, rather than rule-breaking, answers this. There is evil in the world because of the pollution of our sins. Our selfishness and cruelty don't merely hurt those around us, but contribute to setting the world off-balance, out of tune. It has a corporate nature. Anyone can observe that life isn't fair; bad things happen to “good” people. But even good people contribute some sin to the mix, and we all suffer the consequences of the world's mutual sin.

       The radio humorist Garrison Keillor used an image for this that has always remained in my mind. He told a story about a man considering adultery, who contemplated how one act of betrayal can unbalance an entire community: “I saw that we all depend on each other. I saw that although I thought my sins could be secret, that they would be no more secret than an earthquake. All these houses and all these families, my infidelity will somehow shake them. It will pollute the drinking water. It will make noxious gases come out of the ventilators in the elementary school. When we scream in senseless anger, blocks away a little girl we do not know spills a bowl of gravy all over a white tablecloth.”

       What we Orthodox keep in mind, and Western Christians often forget, is the presence of the Evil One. In Anselm's theory of the Atonement, there's no Devil. The whole transaction is between us, the Father, and Jesus (and when the Devil is ignored, he has a field day). But Orthodox know who our true enemy is, and we cling to the Lord Jesus as our deliverer. When we see evil in the world, we know immediately that “an enemy has done this” (Matthew 13:28). We're not surprised that life is unfair and that “good” people suffer; when we see innocent suffering, we know that our own sins helped cause it, by helping to unbalance the world and make a climate of injustice possible. The Evil One loves to see the innocent suffer, and the fact that such events grieve and trouble us delights him all the more. This is in fact one of the ways we bear the burden of our sins: that we must feel the wrenching pain of seeing innocence suffer, and know that we helped make it happen. Western Christians, on the other hand, who see sin as a private debt between an individual and God, and who forget the presence of the Evil One, can't figure out how God could let an innocent person suffer, and are left with the chilly thought of questioning the goodness of God.

       “Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25). We do not trust in our own strength to get out of this mess, but rely entirely on the power of Jesus Christ, who has “trampled down death by death.” Day by day growing in grace, we can contribute to the world's healing, by forgiving our enemies, loving those who hate us, and overcoming evil with good. The first place it needs to be overcome, we know, is in our hearts.

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First published in Again Magazine, August 2003

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

Whatever Happened to Repentance?

We've come to think our faith is about comfort. It's not.

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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       Forget what the Billboard charts say-to judge from church ads in the Yellow Pages, America's favorite song is "I'm Mr. Lonely." Churches are quick to spot that need and promise eagerly that they will be friendly, or be family, or just care. Apparently this is the church's principal product. When people need tires, they look up a tire store; when they start having those bad-sad-mad feelings, they shop for a church.

       Here, for once, denominational and political divisions vanish. Churches across the spectrum compete to display their capacity for caring, though each has its own way of making the pitch. The Tabernacle, a "spirit-filled, multi-cultured church," pleads, "Come let us love you," while the Bible Way Temple is more formal, if not downright odd: "A church where no stranger need feel strangely." (The only response that comes to mind is "Thank thee.") One church sign in South Carolina announced, "Where Jesus is Lord and everybody is special," which made it sound like second prize. And one Methodist congregation tries to get it all in: "A Christ-centered church where you can make new friends and form lasting relationships with people who care about you."

       But when Jesus preached, he did not spend a lot of time on "caring." The first time we see him, in the first Gospel, the first instruction he gives is "Repent" (Mark 1:15). From then on, it's his most consistent message. Yes, he spoke words of comfort like "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden" (Matt. 11:28). But much more frequently he challenged his hearers, urging them to turn to God in humility and admit their sins. Even when told of a tragedy that caused many deaths, he repeated this difficult theme: "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:1-5).

       We love one of these sayings of Jesus. We repeat it often, paste it onto felt banners, and print it on refrigerator magnets. We mostly ignore those on repentance. This says more about us than it does about Jesus.

       One thing it says is that we live in a time when it's hard to talk about Christian faith at all, much less awkward topics like repentance. (No era finds repentance easy, but many have found it easier to talk about.) Paradoxically, we live in a very easy time. We are the wealthiest, healthiest, most comfortable generation in history. With less to struggle for, we become increasingly oriented toward pleasure. This all-too-natural inclination is what most unites us. America is a place of wild diversity, but we all meet at the shopping mall.

Whining Spiritual Babies

       We're confirmed in this quest for comfort by a ceaseless stream of advertising messages. These tell us who we are: special, precious people with no faults, who deserve to feel better than we do. Ads tell us, "Your wife (boss, teenager, classmate) doesn't understand you, but we do. Here, buy this, and you'll feel better." Advertising invites us to be big babies-an invitation that fallen human nature has always found hard to resist.

       Try telling a person who's been discipled by advertising that he's a sinner. A hundred years ago, a preacher would have seen heads nod in recognition at that familiar concept. But today's consumer is likely to be shocked-and baffled. How could he be a sinner? All he knows is that he's unhappy because he does not have his fair share of stuff, and he isn't appreciated enough by those around him. Original sin? He will readily agree that everyone else keeps letting him down. That he's estranged from the one, holy God and needs to be reconciled? He's likely to respond, "So who's this God who thinks he's better than us?" Bring up Judgment Day, and you'll get to see someone genuinely appalled; the very idea just sounds so *judgmental*.

       In trying to reach this seeker, the church has been given a severely reduced pack of options. Since he is aware only of seeking comfort, it looks like that's what we have to headline in any message we send. Neither this need, nor our response, is untrue. A profound sense of unease and dislocation is indeed part of the human condition, because sin has estranged us from God. "I'm Mr. Lonely" is the theme song of everyone on Earth. The church has the only authentic solution to this problem, because we bear the Good News of reconciliation through Jesus Christ.

       The problem comes when we never get around to talking about the hard part of the Good News. The problem can even be that we start forgetting it ourselves, and start believing that consolation is the main reason Jesus came. But what's wrong with us required much more than a hug; it required the Cross. It doesn't seem this way; we too, have been catechized by the world and reflexively think of ourselves as needy, wronged children. We'd rather feel as if we're victims of a cruel world than admit we are contributors to the world's cruelty, lost sinners who perversely love our lostness, clinging to our treasured sins like a drowning man to an anvil.

       How bizarre such language seems today. We look around our neighborhood and our congregation and everyone seems so *nice*. We know what really wicked people are like-we see them in the papers every day-and we're not like that. God must find us, in comparison, quite endearing. And of course he knows the hurts we bear deep inside, and anyone who's been hurt can't be bad (I call this the "victims are sinless" fallacy). With these and a thousand other sweet murmurs we shield ourselves from our real condition and remain Christian babies all our lives: pampered, ineffective, whiney, and numb.

Repentance Is Joy

       Jesus didn't come just to save us from the *penalty* for our sins; he came to save us from our *sins*-now, today, if we will only respond to the challenge and let him. A nation of grownup Christians, courageous, confident, humble, and holy, would be more compelling than any smiley-face ad campaign. The Lord does not love us for our good parts and pass over the rest. He died for the bad parts and will not rest until they are put right. We must stop thinking of God as infinitely indulgent. We must begin to grapple with the scary and exhilarating truth that he is infinitely holy, and that he wants the same for us.

       I propose that we recover the ideas of sin and repentance, and reinstate them at the heart of all we do. Such words make us uncomfortable, and raise images that come more from old movies than Scripture. "Repent!" is what's on the soundtrack when a sweating, shouting preacher in a string tie starts slamming his Bible around and making everybody cower. But the meaning of repentance in Scripture and the early church was very different. It was part of the good news, so any bad-news associations we find lying around are just plain wrong.

       A good place to start is with the word repentance, or the Greek metanoia, meaning a change of mind. (The Hebrew word is shub, which means to change from the wrong to the right path.) Metanoia is a compound word; "meta" is a versatile preposition that here denotes transformation. Metamorphosis is change of shape; metanoia is a change of the "nous," or the innermost consciousness, a region that lies below both rational thought and emotion. "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind [nous]," Paul wrote, and the devotional classic "The Shepherd" (A.D. 140) says, "Repentance is great understanding." Repentance is not blubbering and self-loathing. It is insight.

       The insight is about our true condition. We begin to see our fallen inclinations the way God does, and realize how deep-rooted is the rottenness in our hearts. This awareness grows slowly, over many years, because he mercifully shows us only a little at a time. But he sees it all. His is like the eye of a surgeon, which sees through to the sickness deepest within. There is no other way for us to be healed. It's when the surgeon says, "All we can do is keep him comfortable," that you're really in trouble.

       Some will object, "But I don't think I'm a fine person. I hate myself. I feel ashamed and like a failure all the time." That miserable feeling can be pride with a twist: we have an inflated idea of how wonderful we can be, and find the inevitable failures crushing. God's assessment of our abilities is more accurate to begin with, so he doesn't share our surprised dismay. Repentance, "great understanding," replaces our distorted self-image with God's perspective.

       Other times the wash of self-hatred is due to feelings of hopelessness. We have all committed a millions wrongs, large and small. We can get stuck there, aware that God forgives us but unable to apply that fact, and feeling bound to continue to fail. It seems like there's no solution, so we sit in the garbage pile feeling miserable.

       This is not repentance; this is despair. The early church differentiated between the two, perceiving that healthy repentance is vigorous and clear-minded, while despair is debilitating, and in fact sinful. Isaiah, a fifth-century Egyptian monk, warned against the kind of sadness that "sets off numerous diabolical mechanisms until your strength is sapped. The sadness according to God, on the other hand, is joy . . . It says to the soul, 'Do not be afraid! Up! Return!' God knows that man is weak, and strengthens him."

       "Sadness according to God," repentance, is joy. Initially we fear looking squarely at our sins, lest we get overwhelmed. But the reverse turns out to be true. The more we see the depth of our sin, the more we realize the height of God's love. The constant companion of repentance is gratitude. Like the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears, we are forgiven much and discover endless love. Seeing our sin becomes, paradoxically, an opportunity for joy.

       Then we are free indeed: free from any need to hide, to conceal or impress, to make excuses for ourselves, to demand our fair share. Free to love God with abandon, free to love others without bargaining and conditions. Free to love even those who hurt us because, ultimately, nothing can hurt us. Knowing our own sin, we pray for all other sinners, asking God to show them the mercy he has given so abundantly to us.

       A gospel of comfort, on the other hand, is a gospel of minimal expectations. Christianity is one of the great world religions, and the greatest spiritual power in history. But we don't act like it. We act like once people are in the door and make a statement of faith, the whole thing is over. Paul envisioned something more like a transformation, Christ living in us and we in him.

       A story is told about a desert monk of the early church, Abba Joseph. A young monk came to him and said, "As far as I can I say my prayers, I fast a little, try to live in peace and keep my thoughts pure. What else can I do?"

       Abba Joseph stood up and spread out his hands toward heaven, and each of his fingertips was lit with flame. He said to the young monk, "If you want to, you can be totally fire." The challenge is ours as well: What, really, do we want?

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A Daily Repentance Workout

       As we gradually gain more insight into ourselves, we are able, with God's grace, to find ways to resist habitual sin and grow in self-control. We gain strength bit by bit, like an athlete striving for the prize, as Paul said. Gradually we reclaim more and more of ourselves and offer it to God's transforming light. Thus the Holy Spirit works within us, sanctifying us from the inside out.

       From the earliest centuries, Christians have identified certain practices that have been helpful to the "athlete in training." Here are some of them:

• Fasting. People are beset by all different temptations, but everybody eats. Restricting foods-not necessarily a total fast, but simply declining favorites for a time-can be a way of strengthening the "willpower muscle" to be ready when needed to handle a bigger temptation. An athlete doesn't lift weights just so he can lift more weights. Those healthy muscles are ready for any situation he meets. Turn down a doughnut today, and tomorrow you might be able to resist calling the driver in front of you an idiot.

• Bite your tongue. Yes, not calling someone an idiot is a frequent theme in Scripture and early Christian writings. Both place great emphasis on controlling anger, perhaps as much as on sexual continence. Jesus said the penalty for calling your brother a fool was "the hell of fire." "Your brother" includes people who can't hear you, like politicians on TV. It's not the harm to them that's at stake so much as the surging, disorienting pride in your own heart.

• Mind your thoughts. Jesus said that to commit adultery in the imagination is the equivalent of committing it in fact. Nearly all sins begin with thinking about sin. Control the thoughts and you have a good head start on behavior. You may not be able to keep thoughts from appearing, but you can decline to entertain them; birds fly overhead, but you don't have to let them nest in your hair. Paul counsels that we think about things that are true, lovely, gracious, excellent, and praiseworthy, so you might want to read some Dickens tonight instead of watching that sleazy sitcom.

• Practice humility. Humility is not the same as resisting the urge to show off (which is modesty) or denying that you have gifts and talents (which is lying). Humility is remembering that you have a beam in your eye. In every situation remember what God knows about you, and how much you have been forgiven. You might think you can fool people, but no matter how charming you appear, spiritually you have spinach in your teeth. Account yourself the "chief of sinners" and be gracious toward the failings of others. Overlook insults and be kind to those who misuse you. Be swift to admit when you're wrong. Ask others to forgive you, and forgive them without asking if you want God to forgive you.

• Pray constantly. Try always to recall that God is with you, dwelling in you. (This helps a great deal in controlling thoughts.) For more than 1,500 years, some Christians have tried to do this by forming the habit of praying, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me" all the time, a kind of background music to other thoughts. It not only helps one resist more turbulent thoughts and deeds, but also creates a kind of mental foyer in which thoughts and impulses can be examined before they're allowed inside.

• Ask God to help you repent. We really don't want to do this, and we find a million excuses to change the subject. Read stories about repentant sinners, like John Newton, the slave dealer who wrote "Amazing Grace," or the once promiscuous Mary of Egypt. Those are reasonable models for you, not an ivory-tower saint. Keep thinking of yourself as the Prodigal Son. Think over your deeds and conversations each evening and look for areas to improve. Read Psalm 51 before bed every night. Someday you may actually believe it.

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This article first appeared on , Sept 16, 2001.

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

"God isn't dead–I talked with Him this morning."

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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       There's a sweet naivete in this bumper sticker from a few decades ago, as it blithely eludes the complexities of the old "God is Dead" debate. Though philosophers wrestle with Resurrection texts and idiosyncracies, these believers find such angst irrelevant. They know God personally, and hand-wringing about whether he's there or not is a waste of time.

       Did Jesus rise from the dead? Hey, I'm talkin' with him. Dead guys don't do that. He's back, all right.

       People who don't have similar breakfast-table chats find this response understandably frustrating. It's hard to even make sense of the words. "I talked with Him–what could that possibly mean? They see the believer at worship singing old favorites like "I Heard the Lord Call My Name," "I Saw the Light," "He Touched Me." It sounds like the believer encounters the risen Jesus in a way that impinges on the five senses, and that would imply some objective provability.

       But when the skeptic asks the believer, Do you mean you heard him with your ears? the believer looks confused. No, of course, that isn't what he means. He grapples for better words; it's hard to explain. After a few attempts he may wind up with, "It's one of those things. If you don't know, I can't tell you."

       The believer concludes that the skeptic hasn't seen the light yet, so to speak, but hopes someday he will. The skeptic concludes that the believer is a dolt. He hasn't seen any light at all; he's operating under an emotion-fueled delusion.

       If the skeptic bears the Christian label, this kind of faith is an embarrassment. The prevalence of goofy and groundless emotionalism, he fears, makes Christianity a laughingstock among enlightened folk. Surely it would be a service to develop a Christian faith that could meet the intellectual demands of modern, rational people, minus absurd Resurrection claims and supernatural mumbo-jumbo.

       There are two flaws in this noble-sounding project. The first is that it is no longer necessary to concoct a Jesus who will be palatable to the Enlightenment. That Age of Enlightenment is over, and has been replaced by the new Age of the Enlightenment-Seeker. Supernaturalism is no longer a stumbling block; rather, people crave the mystical. A short cruise around Beliefnet demonstrates that. Modernist, rational people, preponderantly gray-haired, are on the escalator out of the building, and results will be both good and ill. Those who remain are fascinated, not repelled, by claims of miracles, visions, and Resurrection.

       So it's not necessary to keep trying different hairstyles on Jesus, hoping to find one that will make him appealing to Voltaire. That age has passed, and Voltaire has had all his questions answered by now.

       The second flaw is, well, I spoke with Him this morning. I can't explain this to those who haven't, but I can spot those who have, no matter what their brand of Christian faith or when they lived in history. Skip over the centuries and around the globe: St. Nina Equal-to-the-Apostles, St. Moses the Ethiopian, St. Nicholas of Japan, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, my buddy Rod in Brooklyn. When I look at their words and witness, a common thread glows bright. They saw what I see; they saw him too.

       There's a problem of course, with saying we "see" it, as that suggests a grandiose vision of pinwheeling seraphim and a voice that shakes the ground. For most of us it's a great deal more subtle than that. It's more like we find something coalescing within us, establishing itself, gradually becoming the foundation and authority for all the rest of life. It may begin with a jolt, as in my case, or be the harvest of many quiet years. It is emphatically hard to describe.

       What is it like? More than anything else, it's like the presence of another person.

       That person, of course, is Jesus Christ. We don't doubt the Resurrection because it continues today. We aren't troubled by variations in Scriptural accounts, because even today our experiences vary. People have different experiences with my dentist, but he remains the same guy.

       This can make the skeptic more frustrated, not less. You can see a dentist, for goodness' sake. What do you mean, you sense another person inside you?

       There are good arguments for leaving the inexplicable unexplained, and just saying, "Come see for yourself." But in the Christian east a formulation developed that might be helpful. Our five senses are the means by which we engage life; before we reflect intellectually or react emotionally, we have immediate sensory experience. There is a pool of awareness at the union of our five senses, called the "nous." Here God is able to communicate with us, but like a badly-tuned radio we can be too distracted or confused to tune in. Spiritual exercises, like fasting and attentive prayer, can help us focus on his voice (there's that sense language again).

       While emotions or intellectual insights may follow on any interpersonal encounter, whether with God or a dentist, these are secondary reactions. The pure experience of contact comes first, and tears, joy, and the Summa Theologica are just outwardly observable responses.

       Practice prepares, grace provides, and the nous can eventually descend into the heart where Christ abides, the "Kingdom of God within you." Diligent attention can make this state habitual. "Continue constantly in the name of the Lord Jesus, that the heart may swallow the Lord and the Lord the heart," says the 4th century preacher St. John Chrysostom.

       Not that our average bumper-sticker toting friend would use these terms, or need them. Yet the fact that he cannot describe his interior experience should not be taken as evidence that it doesn't exist. The skeptic enjoys the illusion that his relentlessness is frightening to believers, but actually he's just annoying them. They try to be polite about it but, bottom line, he's spouting off about something he hasn't experienced yet.

       What about that "yet"? Is this encounter for everyone? Is it ever too late? How would someone begin?

       Jesus advised that we should ask for what we want to receive, so that's a good place to start. But first we must "become as little children," open, guileless, and humble. That kind of person won't be too proud to admit that he needs a Savior, and to talk with Him simply in his heart, over a cup of morning coffee.

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This article first appeared in Beliefnet, March 27, 2001

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

To Hell on a Cream Puff

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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It's hard to know just how to take an invitation to write about gluttony. "We thought you would be the perfect person," the editor's letter read. Gee, is it that obvious? I thought, alarmed. "No, no," I wanted to protest, "that's not really me. It just these horizontal stripes." But, if I'm honest, I have to admit that it is me. It's most of us. Food is an intoxicating pleasure, and it appears superficially like an innocuous one; it's not one of the bad sins, like adultery or stealing. We wouldn't do that; gluttony is different. All it does is make you soft and huggable. It's the cute sin.

But gluttony is not about pleasing plumpness; our inclination to associate it with external effects alone shows how reluctant we are to confront the sin-in-the-heart. The impulse to gluttony is a sign of being out of harmony with God's provision and creation, and can disrupt the spiritual lives of people of every size. External dimensions are no predictor of internal rebellion.

Previous generations of Christians knew this. Overindulgence in food didn't just lead to thickened waistlines and arteries; it led to spiritual disaster. These words from a nineteenth-century Russian monk, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, build to an alarming crescendo:

"Wise temperance of the stomach is a door to all the virtues. Restrain the stomach, and you will enter Paradise. But if you please and pamper your stomach, you will hurl yourself over the precipice of bodily impurity, into the fire of wrath and fury, you will coarsen and darken your mind, and in this way you will ruin your powers of attention and self-control, your sobriety and vigilance." (The Arena, Holy Trinity Monastery Press, 1991)

If that doesn't make you take a second look at your second helpings, nothing will.

The key word in the passage above is "self-control." Gluttony is not wrong because it makes you fat; it's wrong because it is the fruit of self-indulgence. Gluttony says "Gimme;" Jesus says "Come to me." When we come to him we give up all claims to be coddled; we come to shoulder our own rough cross. The path to the buffet table and the path to sanctification lie in opposite directions.

Anyone who has tried to diet knows that the will to eat indulgently is surprisingly strong and unruly. Plans to eat reasonably and with an eye to good health may look very attractive on Sunday night, when sketched out on a full stomach. (Oh yes, and we'll get up early every day to jog, too.) About 3:00 Monday afternoon, however, it's a different story. The stomach that was placid and amiable has become a bucking, rebellious pony, with a defiance that was never evident until it was made to wear a bridle. Dieters are often shocked at how deep-seated and ungovernable is their compulsion to eat unrestrained; facets of unconverted willfulness never suspected, are being brought to light. What makes gluttony such a hard sin to break?

Of course, food is pleasurable; that alone can make a sin enticing. But while some pleasures can be relinquished with a melancholy pang, the attempt to discipline food sins prompts a ferocious, angry resistance. Something more is going on here. The urge to overindulge in food is powerful because it is linked to a desire for power. A complex net of submerged assumptions teaches us that food grants some limited, but tangible, control over the exterior world. We bite the Apple (or the doughnut) because we have heard a whisper, "You shall be as gods." This plays out in various ways:

1. Emperor Baby. Eating is the first pleasure. Researchers have found that, if amniotic fluid is sweetened, unborn babies will gulp it more greedily. For a newborn, many sensations are unpleasant or frightening, but food, glorious food, is a constant and dependable comfort. Controlling access to food, crying to be fed and winning the reward of sweet warm milk, is the first task of newborn life. No wonder we retain to adulthood a zeal to gather as much good, sweet food as we can grab; it was the first job we ever had, and it felt like an urgent one indeed.

"I don't think it's fair that they changed the rules," my husband said one day, looking forlornly at the ends of his belt; they would no longer quite meet in front. "I can remember a time in my life--in fact, it lasted quite a long time--when people were constantly saying, 'Look how big you're getting to be!' and 'My, you're becoming such a big boy!'" He tried once more to make the belt ends meet. "Now that I've gotten really good at it, suddenly they changed the rules. Suddenly it's not such a good thing."

His whimsical protest conceals a grain of truth. The baby that focuses all its attention on getting food soon grows to be a child that is praised for eating, indulged with treats, and admired for getting bigger. Not only is getting food our first job, not only is it intrinsically pleasurable, but it's a talent for which most of us are praised throughout our childhoods. When did they change the rules?

2. I have the power. A related aspect of the desire to overeat is that it is a straightforward way to demonstrate power. Life is complicated and fraught with compromises, unmet desires, and nettling disappointments. We can't make other people do right. Friends, neighbors, spouse, children all may resist our will, but, darn it, that chocolate cream pie is going to know who's boss. Overeating can become a secret, habitual way to reassure yourself that you are not powerless, that you can subdue and conquer as much food as you choose. Viewed in this light, anorexia has the same root as gluttony: a desire to demonstrate control. Women starve themselves to prove that they are the Empresses of Ice Cream, wieldinga scepter of iron rejection where a plumper sister might choose the tactic of conquering by consuming.

3. Squirrel away. A related impulse is the need to hoard. Perhaps a cream pie this perfect will never cross my path again; it's only wisdom to tuck away as much as possible before the waiter clears the plates and we must part forever. Hoarding food discloses our need to establish ourselves as independent resources, free from dependence on God. There is an intrinsic mistrust of his ability to provide, though he owns the cream pies on a thousand hills.

4. Boredom. A constant stream of pleasant sensations coming in helps keep more troubling self-confrontation at bay. The continuing work of repentance is life-long, and comparatively less jolly than a bag of gumdrops; those gumdrops may be just enough to keep us distracted one more day. Bishop Brianchaninov, cited above, insisted that an evil of gluttony was its ability to dull the mind. The Rev. Pat Reardon, a Pennsylvania pastor, says, "When people ask me why God seems so distant, I ask them: How much TV have you been watching? What thoughts are you allowing into your mind?" We could add: and how much idle junk food do you allow in your pantry?

5. Big. The title is clumsy and forbidding, but Fat is a Feminist Issue delivers a startling insight. Author Susie Orbach writes that many dieters self-sabotage because they fail to realize that "Compulsive eating is linked to a desire to get fat...Many women are positively afraid of being thin." This strikes as howlingly counter-intutitive, but Orbach's research is intriguing. She has women imagine themselves in a social situation; they are to envision every detail of dress, posture, whom they talk with, how others react to them. Orbach has them imagine themselves in the same situation, but immensely fat; then she has them repeat the exercise, but imagine themselves of ideal slimness.

In a culture where slimness equals beauty, women have powerful reasons to want to be thin; but, surprisingly, when they imagined it they found they didn't enjoy it. Slimness was associated with being "cold and ungiving," "self-involved," burdened with others' expectations, the object of unwanted desire from men and uncomfortable jealousy from women. The fat self, on the other hand, was relaxed, free from unwanted sexual attention and the need to compete, and able to talk comfortably with others.

But, most importantly, the fat self was bigger. This goes without saying, so it's easy to miss what saying it implies. One woman put it this way: "The fat in the situation [was] making me feel like a sergeant major--big and authoritative. When I go through the fantasy seeing myself thin, what immediately strikes me is just how fragile and little I feel, almost as though I might disappear or be blown away."

Men have as many reasons as women do--maybe more--to want to be bigger. Our attempts at self-control in eating fail, in part, because part of us really doesn't want to risk shrinking. We want to be big.

A "Bizarro" cartoon by Dan Piraro ran in our local newspaper. Piraro showed an enormously fat man looking into a refrigerator, while a smaller man stood nearby, holding up a finger of admonition. "You are what you eat," the scolder said. The fat man replied, "Good. That makes me omnipotent."

One of the crueler tricks of temptation is that it exacts painful dues while failing to deliver the promised pleasure. A really clever temptation can impose the very opposite of what was promised. This is the case with gluttony. If overeating is about gaining power, the stomach may indeed feel a gratifying, temporary dominance--but the overeater is more likely to feel ashamed and out of control. Overeating may be an assertion of power, but the classic confession is: "I have no will-power." Far from establishing the glutton as a master, it exposes him as a slave.

This is not a slavery merely to self; it is worse than that. St. Paul speaks of those "whose god is the belly" (Phil. 3:19), and St. John Climacus, seventh-century abbot of the monastery on Mt. Sinai, writes of "that clamorous mistress, the stomach." Those who succumb to gluttony experience themselves, not as rulers, but as helpless prey. Prey, indeed, we are; this is not just a matter of deficient self-control, but of slipping under another's control, into another's trap. "Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (I Peter 5:8). It is in the nature of evil to consume, and those who feast wantonly become themselves morsels.

C.S. Lewis, in his beloved The Screwtape Letters, has the senior devil write to his nephew: "To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy [God the Father] demands of men is quite a different thing...We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over."

When Screwtape's nephew finally fails in his mission, the senior devil gloats in a fashion that any glutton would find chilling: "I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you. Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on." This last letter is signed, "Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle, Screwtape."

"He is full and flows over," Lewis's devil wrote. The flowing over by which God would fill us extends from Genesis to Revelation. He does not merely decline to devour us, he feeds us. Eden was planted with "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food" (Genesis 2:9); in the New Jerusalem there is "the tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month" (Revelation 22:2). In the Song of Solomon we sing "He brought me to the banqueting house" (Song of Solomon 2:4) and at the end we hear "Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Revelation 19:9). We are invited to ask, "Give us this day our daily bread." He feeds us; safe in his pasture, we will not become food. The task is learning to eat the food he gives, in the measure he gives it, for our whole lives consist in learning what he meant: "I have food to eat of which you do not know" (John 4:38).

Satan came to Adam in Paradise; he came to Christ in the desert. He came to two hungry men and said: eat, for your hunger is proof that you depend entirely on food, that your life is in food. And Adam believed and ate; but Christ rejected that temptation and said: man shall not live by bread alone but by God. By doing this, Christ restored that relationship between food, life, and God which Adam broke, and which we still break every day. (Fr. Alexander Schmemann, "On Fasting at Great Lent," St. Vladimir's Seminary, 1969)

"Which we still break every day." How to restore that relationship? Mastering gluttony is a tricky task, because you can never be sure you have arrived. With the broader sins, you can swear off the behavior and know with certainty at the end of the day that you either kept your promise or did not. The thief does not wonder whether or not he stole. The person struggling with homosexual longing either went out and picked up a date, or spent the evening in beseeching prayer. With some sins, there's not much gray area.

With gluttony it's almost all gray. You can't simply swear off eating, and learning to eat aright seems such a slippery, indefinable goal. The standards we concoct for ourselves seem to mock us. Sallie Tisdale wrote of dieting: "Eating became cheating. One pretzel was cheating. Two apples instead of one was cheating--a large potato instead of a small, carrots instead of broccoli...Diets have failure built in, failure is the definition. Every substitution--even carrots for broccoli--was a triumph of desire over will...I saw that the real point of dieting is dieting--to not be done with it, ever" (Harper's Magazine, March 1993).

Yet overcoming gluttony must mean getting a handle on our intake of food, and Christians through the ages have discovered various helps. For example, St. John Climacus, the seventh-century abbot mentioned above, gave his monks specific, concrete advice (though he admitted that "As we are about to speak concerning the stomach, as in everything else, we propose to philosophize against ourselves. For I wonder if anyone has been liberated from this mistress before settling in the grave.")

"He who fondles a lion tames it, but he who coddles the body makes it still wilder," St. John warned. But he cautioned against excessive discipline, criticizing one who advised taking only bread and water, "To prescribe this is like saying to a child: 'Go up the whole ladder in one stride.'" St. John recommended, rather, varying one's discipline: "Let us for awhile only deny ourselves fattening foods, then heated foods, and only then what makes our food pleasant. If possible, give your stomach satisfying and digestible food, so as to satisfy its insatiable hunger by sufficiency, and so that we may be delivered from excessive desire."

Learning to eat rightly usually means, in our modern age, dieting. But dieting can merely be a substitute of one of the Seven Deadly Sins for another: forsaking Gluttony, we fall into Vanity. Christians have, from the earliest times, wrestled with the temptation to misuse food, but the weapon they used wasn't dieting. It was fasting.

Many Western Christians, particularly Protestants, think of fasting (if they do at all) as a tool for intensifying prayer; Richard J. Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline, says that "The central idea in fasting is the voluntary denial of an otherwise normal function for the sake of intense spiritual activity." Narrow-focus fasting like this can powerfully enhance intercession, repentance, and other spiritual undertakings.

There is a broader use of the discipline in the history of the church, however: regular, corporate, extended fasting, as a means of broader spiritual growth. The earliest existing Christian document outside Scripture is the Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (dates vary; perhaps as early as 70 AD). The Didache reminds believers that the Jews fast on Tuesday and Thursday--remember the Publican in the temple: "I fast twice a week" (Luke 18:12). But it doesn't say, "So avoid that foolishness, because we don't need it." No, this earliest of church-discipline texts instructs that Christians should fast as well, but on Wednesdays (the day of Judas's betrayal) and Fridays (the day of the Crucifixion).

Doesn't this veer uncomfortably close to salvation by works? Southern Baptist minister Dallas Willard writes in The Spirit of the Disciplines, "We have simply let our thinking fall into the grip of a false opposition of grace to 'works' that was caused by a mistaken association of works with 'merit.'" This confusion means that we don't know how to live spiritually pure, healthy lives; we don't know how to harness the power that made Christians of other ages spiritual giants. "Faith today is treated as something that only should make us different, not that actually does or can make us different. In reality we vainly struggle against the evils of this world, waiting to die and go to heaven."

Willard proposes that we take seriously the disciplines of the spiritual life: "Disciplines of Abstinence" (including solitude, silence, fasting, chastity, and sacrifice) and "Disciplines of Engagement" (like study, worship, service, prayer, and confession). If we want truly changed and empowered lives, we must be as self-disciplined, and as constant in our disciplines, as an athlete. Willard says that it's not enough to be like the boy who, admiring his baseball hero, imitates the way he holds his bat. The athlete did not win success by holding the bat a distinctive way, but by living a fully disciplined life.

Willard is not the first to use this analogy, of course; St. Paul wrote, "Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air, but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified" (I Corinthians 9:24-27).

Fasting is a key, not only to overcoming gluttony, but to other self-discipline as well. Willard writes: "Since food has the pervasive place it does in our lives, the effects of fasting will be diffused throughout our personality. In the midst of all our needs and wants, we experience the contentment of the child that has been weaned from its mother's breast (Psalm 131:2)."

This psalm had always puzzled me; it was only in researching this article that it came clear. I had seen the contentment of a nursing child, and wondered why the psalmist didn't use that image. I believe the point is this: the weaned child has learned to be satisfied with another food. We do not live by bread alone.

While the discipline of fasting has gone through seasons of use and disuse in the West, Eastern Christians have maintained it consistently. In fact, from the date of the Didache to this, Eastern Orthodox Christians still abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays. In the weeks before Easter, Orthodox heighten their fasting; for those seven weeks they eat no meat, fish, or dairy products. It is a rigorous discipline, one eased by the knowledge that millions of other Orthodox around the world are fasting at the same time. It is not seen as a way of earning salvation or anything else; the recurrent metaphors are of "exercise" or "medicine" for the soul.

In the midst of Lent, I spoke with several Orthodox Christians about the experience of that discipline. Because several had previously been members of other churches, they were able to contrast this extended, corporate discipline with individual, one-day fasting. Among the comments:

"There's definitely strength in numbers."

"Because it's not just intensely focused on one day or one prayer need, it can spread through all your life and change you."

"We all fast together, just like we all feast together. It wouldn't be fun to feast by yourself."

"The first year I did this, it was like 'Let's hurry up and get through this and get to Pascha [Easter], get back to regular eating.' Now its more like a chance to get back on track, to try to bring the rest of the year up to this mark of discipline."

One woman had been Orthodox for all her 86 years. She said, "My mother taught us as little kids to thank the dear Lord for the opportunity to have this fasting. I feel like it cleanses my body. I look forward to it every year." In fact, many Orthodox I talked with agreed: somewhat to their surprise, every year they look forward to the Lenten fast. An athlete, on arising in the morning, may look forward to going for a jog.

Is regular, corporate fasting for only one unfamiliar corner of Christendom? The benefits have been described and valued by brothers and sisters in the faith for two thousand years. There's nothing to prevent a congregation, or a Bible Study group, or even a circle of prayer partners, from attempting such a project. The discipline could be tailored to particular tastes, or could merge with the ongoing fast of those around the world who follow the ancient custom of giving up meat on Wednesday and Fridays. Only by testing can believers discover whether it bears fruit for them. Taking on fasting means pursuing self-discipline through some irksome trials, an ability many modern-day Christians can well afford to learn. But heed St. John's advice: don't attempt too discouragingly much at once; don't try to go up the whole ladder in a single step.

The law of the jungle is "Eat or be eaten." Indulging in gluttony seems like a private vice, a "cute sin," a matter between only the tempted diner and the eclair. But undisciplined indulgence in the pleasure of food costs us more than we dream: coarsens and darkens our minds, ruins our powers of attention and self-control, of sobriety and vigilance. It hobbles and confuses us. It makes us prey for another Eater.

The one who bids us to His marriage supper will not devour us, in fact he promises to feed us. But there is more; he does not feed us only with the good things he has made, or even the goodness of supernatural food like manna. He feeds us his very self. It is this other bread we must learn to eat, not "bread alone" but the Word of God himself. At the Communion table this becomes, not just theory, but a true encounter--a feast that binds hungry sinners together, and links us to the One who alone can feed our souls.

"Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will life forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh...Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:48-51, 53).

"Lord, give us this bread always!"

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This article first published in Christianity Today, Nov 13, 1995

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

Gagging on Shiny, Happy People

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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      I flipped back the corners of the rugs, one after another. It was a clammy, rainy day, and these hand-knotted wool specimens from Iran, Pakistan, India, and China were giving off a fresh-from-the-sheep smell. I didn't know what I was doing; I'd never shopped for a rug before. But the one thing that struck me as I gazed at one gorgeous carpet after another was that they looked too perfect.

      Then I peeled back one more layer and saw a rug that won my heart. It had humility, I thought. The red color was warmer, less chemically uniform. Though tightly knotted, the pattern was less rigid than that of the other rugs. They were all handmade, but this one looked it.

      There was a time when "looks handmade" meant "looks shabby." The best craftsmen took pride in creating goods that were to all appearances perfect. The advent of machine manufacture raised the ante; now products could be strictly uniform, more so than the most skilled hands could make them. They are cheaper, too. Today anyone could own dishes, clothing, furniture, and rugs of a perfection previously available only to kings. But when I went looking for a rug, I didn't want perfect.

      I'm not alone in this quest. Hangtags from clothes reassure us that the "the subtle slubs and flaws in this garment are a mark of its uniqueness." Mass-produced furniture is pre-dented and painted with "wormholes" to give the illusion of individual history. In a world where the seamlessness and predictability of machine manufacture makes us feel small and lost, we search for traces of the immediate and the real. We want to make sure we're really here. Handling a discount store basket of rough-woven vines reassures our souls.

      Demographer Paul Ray caused a stir not long ago with his research on an emerging segment of American society, the "Cultural Creatives." In contrast toTraditionalists and Modernists, Ray says, Cultural Creatives are interested in feminism, the environment, and a complex package of "altruism, self-actualization, and spirituality."

      They also are hungry for the real; as Ray puts it, they make "an angry demand for authenticity." Cultural Creatives, he claims, lead the widespread consumer rebellion against anything imitation or fake. It's a sensibility that is growing in influence; it obviously influenced me. We have "reality hunger."

       What if it's not rugs or clothes or yogurt people are shopping for? When they head to Ye Olde Spiritualitie Shoppe to pick out a faith, how does Christianity stack up against the other brands? Not so well, if you ask the Cultural Creatives. Churchy types, they say, present the Christian experience as blandly perfect. It doesn't appear to have those subtle slubs and flaws that assuage reality hunger.

      This complaint would be easily answered by actually spending time inside a Christian community, where the failures and sorrows of the faithful are all too obvious. But when a customer is looking at the outside of the package it can appear to be (as in the R.E.M. song lyric) "shiny happy people holding hands."

      We're in a bind here, because Christians do claim to have discovered something we are sure of, and it does bring us joy. But we may sometimes be at fault in reinforcing a phony image, presenting the Christian faith as something that will make the buyer happy-all-the-time. It's as if the faith is being marketed for an earlier era, one that still sought the whitest whites and brightest brights, one that still wanted machine-like perfection.

      The movie, "The Truman Story," presented this kind of world in its portrayal of Seahaven Island, that biodome of artificial bliss. The developer of Seaside, Florida, the real town used in the film, reports that the movie's designers cut down real trees and put up plastic ones in order to enhance the location's feeling of impossible perfection. Seahaven might have charmed an earlier generation, but it makes modern viewers uneasy and wary. When we suggest that becoming a Christian will be the equivalent of living in Seahaven, customers stay away in droves.

      How do we get real? A reflexive reaction is to do the opposite and showcase angst. I was once on a retreat for clergy families, led by the pastor of a large metropolitan church, who would regularly announce he was "putting his guts out on the table" and confess to low self-esteem and generalized "brokeness."

      He never looked more cocky or confident than at those moments; those bursts of confession were, he knew, when his wide-eyed audience was in the palm of his hand. During the breaks he flirted boldly with any available wives and reveled in his celebrity. He didn't look all that darn broken; in fact, he looked in dangerously good repair and set to hit overdrive. "You know how novelty shops sell fake rubber accidents' to fool your friends'?" I complained to my husband. "That guy's got a set of rubber guts."

      The "real" in Christianity doesn't have to do with our emotional burdens, but with the raw fact of our sin. The good news is not that God makes us feel better, but that he is King and Lord. Our pain, our "realness," makes sense only in that context. It is the tension between his majesty and our failure that has resulted in the best Christian art; as Flannery O'Connor put it, all her stories are about the action of grace upon a person who is not very well able to bear it.

      We won't win reality-hungry converts by being shiny-happy, or by displaying rubber guts. It's a third approach that most directly speaks forth our imperfections, in the context of a perfect and forgiving light. In receiving mail and e-mail from Christians of the Eastern hemisphere, I've encountered a way they have of bringing this truth to constant remembrance: they sign themselves "the unworthy Catherine" or "the sinful Andrew," and they often close with the request, "Please pray for me, a sinner." Those who constantly recall that they have been forgiven much love much and fear little. That's the kind of reality the world is hungry for.

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This article first appeared in Christianity Today, September 7, 1998.

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

How Can God Permit Suffering?

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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       When it hits home, we reel back. Thoughts explode in confusion: I trusted God, where is he? If he's all-powerful, why didn't he stop it? Maybe he doesn't love us. Maybe he is punishing us. Maybe he is weak. Are we really so alone and endangered? Can we not trust him? Are we so terrifyingly alone?

       Suffering on this scale is new to us. But it is not new to the weary human race, and countless men and women before us have tried to understand God's presence in times of horror. Awhile back my son Stephen was assigned to read Psalm 38 in church. For some reason I really heard the words that morning, instead of just watching them go by in churchy routine. I heard the fresh teenaged voice of my dear son reciting words of abject pain: "My wounds stink and are corrupt...There is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken...My heart panteth, my strength faileth me."

       Oh, not my son, Lord, please, let it never be my son, I prayed. But it was somebody's child who wrote this. It has to be somebody it happens to.

       "As for the light of mine eyes, it is also gone from me. My lovers and friends stand aloof from my sore...I am ready to halt, and my sorrow is continually before me." Oh Lord, not my son, please. This is the pain of loving someone, knowing that your child, parent, or mate could be hurt someday, crying out words like these, and you would not be able to fix it.

       It's the big stupid, stupid prize question of all spiritual life, how can bad things happen to good people, and no matter how many words are poured over it the problem remains, mocking us: good people still get clobbered by bad things. This, finally, is the problem. We don't want so much to know *why* it happens as to know how to stop it from happening, as if understanding what triggers such catastrophe might help us avoid it. Our quest is for prevention, yet the cruel centuries keep rolling and no one's yet found a way to prevent it.

       The term for this, the "problem of evil," is "theodicy" and the alternatives have been cleverly summarized: "Either God is God and he is not good, or God is good and he is not God." That is, either God is not all-loving in the way we think, and tolerates our pain because his goals don't require our happiness--or God suffers with us helplessly but is unable to stop our suffering, is not all-powerful. Neither alternative works. A God who is not good would violate the definition, and violate what we know of his overwhelming goodness running through most of our lives. A God who is not all-powerful would likewise void the meaning of the word. The retired Episcopal bishop of South Carolina, Fitzsimmons Allison, explained that accepting this confounding mystery is the only way to resolve it: "I've got the I don't know' theodicy. God is God, and God is good, and I don't know."

       Many attempts have been made through the ages to hammer out the dilemma. Maybe it is the devil wreaking his anger on the faithful. Maybe it is random effects from the initial fall of Adam and Eve, which sent a wave of disorder rolling obliviously forward through time. Maybe God won't stop bad people from hurting others, because then he'd have to stop everyone from doing even small bad things, and human history would become mere puppetry.

       A world of free creatures requires the possibility that they will freely choose evil. Since the flood of Noah, God has declined to fix things by wiping out all the troublemakers. The only solution that remains is for each of us to realize that we are ourselves junior troublemakers to one extent or another, and do our part to clean up our own corners.

       This is why Jesus was always telling people to repent. He gave no other explanation of suffering. When an atrocity was reported to him--worshippers murdered in the Temple itself--he rejected the idea that they suffered this because they were worse sinners than anyone else. Yet he concluded, "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." This is a hard word, one that doesn't get preached on very often, nor written up in curly script on Bible refrigerator magnets.

       We keep asking why, but we don't need to know why something happened; we can't use that knowledge to go back in time and stop it. And the terrifying truth is that we can't gather enough clues to know how to prevent it happening next time. That's our real reason for so desperately asking why; we hope to gather enough clues to be able to protect ourselves from suffering again. But God does not give us such power. He reserves it to himself and challenges us to trust in him. At times like this, that trust is very hard.

       Theodicy nettles us, but the bottom line is that it's irrelevant. The only useful question in such a time is not, "Why?" but "What next?" What should I do next? What should be my response to this ugly event? How can I bring the best out of it? How can God bring Resurrection out of it?

       That is, of course, what he did when his own Son was bleeding and crying out to him. He did not prevent the suffering and did not cut it short, but he completed it with Resurrection.

       If this is true, it changes everything; if it is not true, Christians are pathetic fools, because it is on this that we have staked all our hopes. "If Christ is not raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins... If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" (I Corinthians 15:17, 19).

       So, there you are. All we can do is persevere and trust, that if Jesus was raised we too will be raised, and all our suffering will be made right. All we can do is cast ourselves more completely into the arms of God. Stephen concludes the psalm, repeating three times a cry of trust that I hope he would make at such an awful time: "Forsake me not, O Lord: O my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord of my salvation."

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This article first appeared on , Sept 16, 2001.

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

First Visit to an Orthodox Church--Twelve Things I Wish I'd Known

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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Orthodox worship is different! Some of these differences are apparent, if perplexing, from the first moment you walk in a church. Others become noticeable only over time. Here is some information that may help you feel more at home in Orthodox worship--twelve things I wish I'd known before my first visit to an Orthodox church.

1. What's all this commotion?

During the early part of the service the church may seem to be in a hubbub, with people walking up to the front of the church, praying in front of the iconostasis (the standing icons in front of the altar), kissing things and lighting candles, even though the service is already going on. In fact, when you came in the service was already going on, although the sign outside clearly said "Divine Liturgy, 9:30." You felt embarrassed to apparently be late, but these people are even later, and they're walking all around inside the church. What's going on here?

In an Orthodox church there is only one Eucharistic service (Divine Liturgy) per Sunday, and it is preceded by an hour-long service of Matins (or Orthros) and several short preparatory services before that. There is no break between these services--one begins as soon as the previous ends, and posted starting times are just educated guesses. Altogether, the priest will be at the altar on Sunday morning for over three hours, "standing in the flame," as one Orthodox priest put it.

As a result of this state of continuosflow, there is no point at which everyone is sitting quietly in a pew waiting for the entrance hymn to start, glancing at their watches approaching 9:30. Orthodox worshippers arrive at any point from the beginning of Matins through the early part of the Liturgy, a span of well over an hour. No matter when they arrive, something is sure to be already going on, so Orthodox don't let this hamper them from going through the private prayers appropriate to just entering a church. This is distracting to newcomers, and may even seem disrespectful, but soon you begin to recognize it as an expression of a faith that is not merely formal but very personal. Of course, there is still no good excuse for showing up after 9:30, but punctuality is unfortunately one of the few virtues many Orthodox lack.

2. Stand up, stand up for Jesus.

In the Orthodox tradition, the faithful stand up for nearly the entire service. Really. In some Orthodox churches, there won't even be any chairs, except a few scattered at the edges of the room for those who need them. Expect variation in practice: some churches, especially those that bought already-existing church buildings, will have well-used pews. In any case, if you find the amount of standing too challenging you're welcome to take a seat. No one minds or probably even notices. Long-term standing gets easier with practice.

3. In this sign.

To say that we make the sign of the cross frequently would be an understatement. We sign ourselves whenever the Trinity is invoked, whenever we venerate the cross or an icon, and on many other occasions in the course of the Liturgy. But people aren't expected to do everything the same way. Some people cross themselves three times in a row, and some finish by sweeping their right hand to the floor. On first entering a church people may come up to an icon, make a "metania"--crossing themselves and bowing with right hand to the floor--twice, then kiss the icon, then make one more metania. This becomes familiar with time, but at first it can seem like secret-handshake stuff that you are sure to get wrong. Don't worry, you don't have to follow suit.

We cross with our right hands from right to left (push, not pull), the opposite of Roman Catholics and high-church Protestants. We hold our hands in a prescribed way: thumb and first two fingertips pressed together, last two fingers pressed down to the palm. Here as elsewhere, the Orthodox impulse is to make everything we do reinforce the Faith. Can you figure out the symbolism? (Three fingers together for the Trinity; two fingers brought down to the palm for the two natures of Christ, and his coming down to earth.) This, too, takes practice. A beginner's imprecise arrangement of fingers won't get you denounced as a heretic.

4. What, no kneelers?

Generally, we don't kneel. We do sometimes prostrate. This is not like prostration in the Roman Catholic tradition, lying out flat on the floor. To make a prostration we kneel, place our hands on the floor and touch our foreheads down between our hands. It's just like those photos of middle-eastern worship, which look to Westerners like a sea of behinds. At first prostration feels embarrassing, but no one else is embarrassed, so after awhile it feels OK. Ladies will learn that full skirts are best for prostrations, as flat shoes are best for standing.

Sometimes we do this and get right back up again, as during the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, which is used frequently during Lent. Other times we get down and stay there awhile, as some congregations do during part of the Eucharistic prayer.

Not everyone prostrates. Some kneel, some stand with head bowed; in a pew they might slide forward and sit crouched over. Standing there feeling awkward is all right too. No one will notice if you don't prostrate. In Orthodoxy there is a wider acceptance of individualized expressions of piety, rather than a sense that people are watching you and getting offended if you do it wrong.

One former Episcopal priest said that seeing people prostrate themselves was one of the things that made him most eager to become Orthodox. He thought, "That's how we should be before God."

5. With Love and Kisses

We kiss stuff. When we first come into the church, we kiss the icons (Jesus on the feet and other saints on the hands, ideally). You'll also notice that some kiss the chalice, some kiss the edge of the priest's vestment as he passes by, the acolytes kiss his hand when they give him the censer, and we all line up to kiss the cross at the end of the service. When we talk about "venerating" something we usually mean crossing ourselves and kissing it.

We kiss each other before we take communion ("Greet one another with a kiss of love," 1 Peter 5:14). When Roman Catholics or high-church Protestants "pass the peace," they give a hug, handshake, or peck on the cheek; that's how Westerners greet each other. In Orthodoxy different cultures are at play: Greeks and Arabs kiss on two cheeks, and Slavs come back again for a third. Follow the lead of those around you and try not to bump your nose.

The usual greeting is "Christ is in our midst" and response, "He is and shall be." Don't worry if you forget what to say. The greeting is not the one familiar to Episcopalians, "The peace of the Lord be with you." Nor is it "Hi, nice church you have here." Exchanging the kiss of peace is a liturgical act, a sign of mystical unity. Chatting and fellowship is for later.

6. Blessed bread and consecrated bread.

Only Orthodox may take communion, but anyone may have some of the blessed bread. Here's how it works: the round communion loaf, baked by a parishioner, is imprinted with a seal. In the preparation service before the Liturgy, the priest cuts out a section of the seal and sets it aside; it is called the "Lamb". The rest of the bread is cut up and placed in a large basket, and blessed by the priest.

During the eucharistic prayer, the Lamb is consecrated to be the Body of Christ, and the chalice of wine is consecrated as His Blood. Here's the surprising part: the priest places the "Lamb" in the chalice with the wine. When we receive communion, we file up to the priest, standing and opening our mouths wide while he gives us a fragment of the wine-soaked bread from a golden spoon. He also prays over us, calling us by our first name or the saint-name which we chose when we were baptized or chrismated (received into the church by anointing with blessed oil).

As we file past the priest, we come to an altar boy holding the basket of blessed bread. People will take portions for themselves and for visitors and non-Orthodox friends around them. If someone hands you a piece of blessed bread, do not panic; it is not the eucharistic Body. It is a sign of fellowship.

Visitors are sometimes offended that they are not allowed to receive communion. Orthodox believe that receiving communion is broader than me-and-Jesus; it acknowledgesfaith in historic Orthodox doctrine, obedience to a particular Orthodox bishop, and a commitment to a particular Orthodox worshipping community. There's nothing exclusive about this; everyone is invited to make this commitment to the Orthodox Church. But the Eucharist is the Church's treasure, and it is reserved for those who have united themselves with the Church. An analogy could be to reserving marital relations until after the wedding.

We also handle the Eucharist with more gravity than many denominations do, further explaining why we guard it from common access. We believe it is truly the Body and Blood of Christ. We ourselves do not receive communion unless we are making regular confession of our sins to a priest and are at peace with other communicants. We fast from all food and drink--yes, even a morning cup of coffee--from midnight the night before communion.

This leads to the general topic of fasting. When newcomers learn of the Orthodox practice, their usual reaction is, "You must be kidding." We fast from meat, fish, dairy products, wine and olive oil nearly every Wednesday and Friday, and during four other periods during the year, the longest being Great Lent before Pascha (Easter). Altogether this adds up to nearly half the year. Here, as elsewhere, expect great variation. With the counsel of their priest, people decide to what extent they can keep these fasts, both physically and spiritually--attempting too much rigor too soon breeds frustration and defeat. Nobody's fast is anyone else's business. As St. John Chrysostom says in his beloved Paschal sermon, everyone is welcomed to the feast whether they fasted or not: "You sober and you heedless, honor the day...Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast."

The important point is that the fast is not rigid rules that you break at grave risk, nor is it a punishment for sin. Fasting is exercise to stretch and strengthen us, medicine for our souls' health. In consultation with your priest as your spiritual doctor, you can arrive at a fasting schedule that will stretch but not break you. Next year you may be ready for more. In fact, as time goes by, and as they experience the camaraderieof fasting together with a loving community, most people discover they start relishing the challenge.

7. Where's the General Confession?

In our experience, we don't have any general sins; they're all quite specific. There is no complete confession-prayer in the Liturgy. Orthodox are expected to be making regular, private confession to their priest.

The role of the pastor is much more that of a spiritual father than it is in other denominations. He is not called by his first name alone, but referred to as "Father Firstname." His wife also holds a special role as parish mother, and she gets a title too, though it varies from one culture to another: either "Khouria" (Arabic), or "Presbytera" (Greek), both of which mean "priest's wife;" or "Matushka" (Russian), which means "Mama."

Another difference you may notice is in the Nicene Creed, which may be said or sung, depending on the parish. If we are saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and you from force of habit add, "and the Son," you will be alone. The "filioque" was added to the Creed some six hundred years after it was written, and we adhere to the original. High-church visitors will also notice that we don't bow or genuflect during the "and was incarnate." Nor do we restrict our use of "Alleluia" during Lent (when the sisters at one Episcopal convent are referring to it as "the 'A' word"); in fact, during Matins in Lent, the Alleluias are more plentiful than ever.

8. Music, music, music.

About seventy-five percent of the service is congregational singing. Traditionally, Orthodox use no instruments, although some churches will have organs. Usually a small choir leads the people in a capella harmony, with the level of congregational response varying from parish to parish. The style of music varies as well, from very Oriental-sounding solo chant in an Arabic church to more Western-sounding four-part harmony in a Russian church, with lots of variation in between.

This constant singing is a little overwhelming at first; it feels like getting on the first step of an escalator and being carried along in a rush until you step off ninety minutes later. It has been fairly said that the liturgy is one continuous song.

What keeps this from being exhausting is that it's pretty much the *same* song every week. Relatively little changes from Sunday to Sunday; the same prayers and hymns appear in the same places, and before long you know it by heart. Then you fall into the presence of God in a way you never can when flipping from prayer book to bulletin to hymnal.

9. Making editors squirm.

Is there a concise way to say something? Can extra adjectives be deleted? Can the briskest, most pointed prose be boiled down one more time to a more refined level? Then it's not Orthodox worship. If there's a longer way to say something, the Orthodox will find it. In Orthodox worship, more is always more, in every area including prayer. When the priest or deacon intones, "Let us complete our prayer to the Lord," expect to still be standing there fifteen minutes later.

The original liturgy lasted something over five hours; those people must have been on fire for God. The Liturgy of St. Basil edited this down to about two and a half, and later (around 400 A.D.) the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom further reduced it to about one and a half. Most Sundays we use the St. John Chrysostom liturgy, although for some services (e.g., Sundays in Lent, Christmas Eve) we use the longer Liturgy of St. Basil.

10. Our Champion Leader

A constant feature of Orthodox worship is veneration of the Virgin Mary, the "champion leader" of all Christians. We often address her as "Theotokos," which means "Mother of God." In providing the physical means for God to become man, she made possible our salvation.

But though we honor her, as Scripture foretold ("All generations will call me blessed," Luke 1:48), this doesn't mean that we think she or any of the other saints have magical powers or are demi-gods. When we sing "Holy Theotokos, save us," we don't mean that she grants us eternal salvation, but that we seek her prayers for our protection and growth in faith. Just as we ask for each other's prayers, we ask for the prayers of Mary and other saints as well. They're not dead, after all, just departed to the other side. Icons surround us to remind us of all the saints who are joining us invisibly in worship.

11. The three doors.

Every Orthodox church will have an iconostasis before its altar. "Iconostasis" means "icon-stand", and it can be as simple as a large image of Christ on the right and a corresponding image of the Virgin and Child on the left. In a more established church, the iconostasis may be a literal wall, adorned with icons. Some versions shield the altar from view, except when the central doors stand open.

The basic set-up of two large icons creates, if you use your imagination, three doors. The central one, in front of the altar itself, is called the "Holy Doors" or "Royal Doors," because there the King of Glory comes out to the congregation in the Eucharist. Only the priest and deacons, who bear the Eucharist, use the Holy Doors.

The openings on the other sides of the icons, if there is a complete iconostasis, have doors with icons of angels; they are termed the "Deacon's Doors." Altar boys and others with business behind the altar use these, although no one is to go through any of the doors without an appropriate reason. Altar service--priests, deacons, altar boys--is restricted to males. Females are invited to participate in every other area of church life. Their contribution has been honored equally with men's since the days of the martyrs; you can't look at an Orthodox altar without seeing Mary and other holy women. In most Orthodox churches, women do everything else men do: lead congregational singing, paint icons, teach classes, read the epistle, and serve on the parish council.

12. Where does an American fit in?

Flipping through the Yellow Pages in a large city you might see a multiplicity of Orthodox churches: Greek, Romanian, Carpatho-Russian, Antiochian, Serbian, and on and on. Is Orthodoxy really so tribal? Do these divisions represent theological squabbles and schisms?

Not at all. All these Orthodox churches are one church. The ethnic designation refers to what is called the parish's "jurisdiction" and identifies which bishops hold authority there. There are about 6 million Orthodox in North America and 250 million in the world, making Orthodoxy the second-largest Christian communion.

The astonishing thing about this ethnic multiplicity is its theological and moral unity. Orthodox throughout the world hold unanimously to the fundamental Christian doctrines taught by the Apostles and handed down by their successors, the bishops, throughout the centuries. One could attribute this unity to historical accident. We would attribute it to the Holy Spirit.

Why then the multiplicity of ethnic churches? These national designations obviously represent geographic realities. Since North America is also a geographic unity, one day we will likewise have a unified national church--an American Orthodox Church. This was the original plan, but due to a number of complicated historical factors, it didn't happen that way. Instead, each ethnic group of Orthodox immigrating to this country developed its own church structure. This multiplication of Orthodox jurisdictions is a temporary aberration and much prayer and planning is going into breaking through those unnecessary walls.

Currently the largest American jurisdictions are the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, The Orthodox Church in America (Russian roots), and the Antiochian Archdiocese (Arabic roots). The liturgy is substantially the same in all, though there may be variation in language used and type of music.

I wish it could be said that every local parish eagerly welcomes newcomers, but some are still so close to their immigrant experience that they are mystified as to why outsiders would be interested. Visiting several Orthodox parishes will help you learn where you're most comfortable. You will probably be looking for one that uses plenty of English in its services. Many parishes with high proportions of converts will have services entirely in English.

Orthodoxy seems startlingly different at first, but as the weeks go by it gets to be less so. It will begin to feel more and more like home, and will gradually draw you into your true home, the Kingdom of God. I hope that your first visit to an Orthodox church will be enjoyable, and that it won't be your last.

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An edited version of the following is available as a brochure

from Conciliar Press (800) 967-7377

© Frederica Mathewes-Green

The Kissing Part

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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       When my friend Marvin came for a visit, I thought it would be safe to invite him to vespers. Martin belongs to the Presbyterian Church in America; I've been Eastern Orthodox for a year. In a 20-year voyage from atheist to charismatic to evangelical to "there-must-be-something-deeper," my husband and I finally pulled ashore at the Orthodox Church.

       "Come with us to vespers," I urged Marvin, but he hesitated. I recalled the evangelical anxiety about highly liturgical churches: once in the slippery world of symbolism, you can find yourself participating in theologically questionable proceedings. On the level plane of words--Bible memory verses, three-point sermons, alliterative poems--you know where you stand. But when someone puts on golden robes and swings incense around, things become murky. Still, for Marvin, vespers would be the least-threatening Orthodox service--just 35 minutes of standing and singing prayers and scripture in a capella harmony. Since Marvin was my guest I prevailed and even prodded him to stand near the front with me. I refrained from crossing myself any of the dozens of times allowed, and the service was sweet reasonability--that is, until the kissing part.

       After the reading of the Gospel the priest held up the book for the people to venerate, and they lined up. I whispered to Marvin that people could go up and kiss the Gospel book if they want to. On this Saturday everybody in the church wanted to, except us. Minutes later the service was concluding, and Father Gregory stood before the altar holding an icon. With a sinking feeling, I realized that people were getting in line again. Again I whispered to Marvin that people may kiss the icon if they want to. We stood silently and watched 22 people come up and plant kisses on the elevation of the cross. As far as I can tell, Presbyterians never kiss, at least not in church. Orthodox eagerness to kiss probably looks obsessive--even like idolatry. I must admit we kiss a lot. We kiss icons, crosses and Gospel books. We kiss the edge of the priest's garment, his hand, the chalice and each other. (Only practical concerns, I'm sure, deter us from kissing the censer.)

       St. John Chrysostom makes the charming assertion that because we receive the holy Eucharist through our lips, our lips are most blessed, and we honor them by giving kisses. I first encountered this form of devotion a few years back at the Walters Museum in Baltimore. A selection of ancient Greek icons was on display, well mounted and covered with protective glass. Looking closer I saw that the glass sheets over the icons were covered with overlapping marks of kisses and lipstick.

       By Western standards of painterly excellence, the icons were crude. Some of them were nearly a millennium old, the paint scarred, the wood battered and gouged. There was an image of the Virgin Mary, silent pain radiating from her eyes; a view of the crumpled Jesus, head sunk on chest, entitled "The King of Glory"; another dark regnant Christ, magnificent and severe.

       Viewing these icons is not like admiring a delicate Renaissance Madonna. Something in their dignity and startling immediacy demands a more personal response. The Orthodox refer to icons as "windows into heaven." Kissing would probably be a Western Christian's last response to these icons. But for the Orthodox it is the obvious response, the only response that conveys the tenderness, gratitude and humility that these mysteries demand.

       The Walters must not have entirely approved of these intimate devotions. When they mounted an exhibition of Russian religious art a few years later, the icons were uncovered but safely back against the wall, where barriers and electronic alarms kept anyone from coming within two feet. Patrons behaved themselves accordingly, but I'm sure that many an Orthodox was leaning forlornly against the barriers.

       How can we honor wood and paint this way? My Mennonite friend Nancy scoffs, "If Jesus is right there with you in worship, why do you need icons to remind you?" My husband laughs, "Because we need icons to remind us!" We are like the lover in the old hit song who complains that his girl went "leaving just your picture behind/and I've kissed it a thousand times." It's not the paper photo that he's in love with, but the person it represents. Because it represents his love, he cherishes the photo and wears it out with kisses.

       The holy invisible Lord surrounds us and we grasp for his elusive presence, kneeling down awestruck with our foreheads to the floor, tasting heaven on the eucharistic spoon, laying kisses on his image and each other. An outsider might expect Eastern Orthodoxy to be stuffy, esoteric and rigidly ritualistic. But it is not superstition that requires us to give formal, ritual kisses: we feel such gratitude to God for saving us, such awe at his majesty and joy in the fellowship of the saints that we respond from the heart.

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© The Christian Century v111 Ap 13 '94

Embarrassment's Perpetual Blush

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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       As I saw my children swept up into the night sky I knew I had made a terrible mistake. I held the baby in my arms, but the two older ones--Megan, seven, and David, four--were locked behind the bar of a Ferris wheel in a shopping-center carnival. They had begged and clamored until I agreed to let them board the contraption, but now, as they rose into the night, they panicked and began to scream. David's little legs were kicking as he skidded sideways on the slick metal seat. I saw how easily he could slip beneath the narrow bar and fall to the asphalt below.

       That was more than a dozen years ago. One revolution of the Ferris wheel was more than enough for my kids, thank you, and within 30 seconds they were safely on the ground beside me again, breathing hard and shaking. I think this was the most terrifying moment in my life as a parent. Nothing else even comes close. Yet looking back now, I can remember it without feeling frightened at all.

       It's a funny thing about past emotions. I can remember a time in my life when I was burdened by depression, but I can view it now without feeling sad. I can remember being furious with someone, yet without once again growing angry. I can even remember having a crush on Ringo, and I have no idea what that was about. But when it comes to embarrassment, I can't remember the incident without wanting to crawl under my desk. Embarrassment bursts forth anew at the moment the memory appears, bursts like lemon meringue pie in the face. It's a nearly intolerable feeling, a cousin to outright pain.

       I think the reason embarrassment is ever fresh is that it jars our self-image in a way other flaws do not. Embarrassment is the flag flown from the ramparts of pride. For quite a while I didn't get this. I thought embarrassment was the opposite, an emblem of humility, perhaps even evidence of repentance. The sequence seemed to be I remember doing something stupid, and I'm agonizingly sorry I did it. But the sorrow is not actually that of remorse. It is rather the phenomenon we spot so easily in others: sorry about being caught, sorry about being revealed as thoughtless, lazy, greedy, or rude.

       Yes, above all, sorry about having flaws revealed. "Oh, no," Embarrassment whispers. "People will think ..." People are going to think I'm such a fool. Well, the truth is I am a fool. I just did the stupid thing in question, didn't I? What do I need, a certificate? And the fact that I'm a fool is not exactly classified information. God certainly knows it, and the Devil does too (and relies on it). It's a pretty good bet that everyone who knows me knows it as well. Apparently the only person left out of this information loop is me.

       I don't find the word embarrassment in my Bible concordance. (Shame is there, but shame has a slightly different meaning, associated with dishonor and military loss.) There are certainly biblical instances of it, though, one of the most familiar being the fear of embarrassment that caused Herod to execute John the Baptist. He had made a heedless, drunken promise to his stepdaughter, but "because of his oaths and his guests" he followed through.

       One of my favorite stories from the early church describes a positive use of embarrassment. When the father of Origen, a third-century theologian, was arrested for being a Christian, the son--then only 17--was aflame with the desire to follow him and share in glorious martyrdom. His mother pleaded with him not to go, but the headstrong boy did not want to listen to reason. His quick-thinking mother did what she could. She hid his clothes. Though Origen stormed and protested, she wouldn't reveal where they were hidden. He couldn't leave the house, and so he was unable to volunteer for martyrdom.

       What strikes me about this story is that Origen was brave enough to be martyred, but not brave enough to go outside naked. Stepping outside sans clothing would have sped up his arrest and imprisonment, but it was a step he was unwilling to take.

       The embarrassing moments in our lives, and the still-painful memories of those moments, give us a bracing opportunity to "see ourselves as others see us." They knock down walls of pride like a bulldozer. I wonder if in heaven there will be a "Funniest Home Videos" night, where we get to see ourselves at our most absurd. Then, with all the books opened and every secret known, there will be no more reason to cling to scraps of false dignity. The truth is out: we're fallen like clowns in mud, and we're beloved and saved by Christ's glory. Watching those moments again in the company of all who love us, we will hear a rising chuckle of mirth. We won't want to cringe under a twist of pain anymore; instead, we'll lead them all in a big belly laugh.

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© Christianity Today v41 p37 Jl 14 '97

Sex and Saints

by Frederica Mathewes-Green

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    WHAT DO YOU THINK about homosexuality? Why do you think it? In his new book, What Christians Think About Homosexuality: Six Representative Viewpoints, Larry Holben presents different ways Christians look at homosexuality and critiques each from the other five views. It's hard to imagine a book more useful for adult study.

    You have met Holben's work before; he was the screenwriter for The Hiding Place, the very intelligent 1979 film about the Holocaust and Corrie Ten Boom. This book shows similar intelligence. The six positions are given labels their adherents might apply: Condemnation, A Promise of Healing, A Call to Costly Discipleship, Pastoral Accommodation, Affirmation, and Liberation. Each position then addresses the same twelve questions, including "What is the God-given intent or design for human sexuality?" and "Is there a homosexual condition (orientation) and, if so, what is its cause or origin?" Throughout, Holben tactfully withholds his own opinion: "Why should my judgment carry more weight than that of the many advocates of the various viewpoints I have quoted?"

    The foundational question (and Holben's first) is, "What is the ultimate authority upon which any moral judgment regarding homosexuals and/or homosexual acts is to be based?" Who says what's right? If we say "the Bible," how do we handle scholarship offering new interpretations of texts? If it's "by their lives you shall know them," is homosexuality vindicated by adherents who show kindness, gentleness, and charity? Does God's call for justice include homosexuals, overruling sexual laws?

    Who decides? Holben's answer: we do. Christians should "accept responsibility for thinking theologically about the major issues....[W]e cannot leave serious moral reflection to the clergy or professional scholars." Though not endorsing "well-meaning assertive ignorance," Holben would encourage informed laity to wrestle through to their own conclusions.

    I'll disagree. "Think for yourself" is a delusion. Everyone lives in a specific age and it seeps into consciousness, affecting nearly every thought. We assume we're thinking for ourselves when we agree with whatever Oprah and The New York Times already said. Alternatively, we can revolt against prevailing opinion, then find ourselves trapped in mere reaction. The terms, style, and even topics of debate have been preset.

    When it comes to moral issues, our age provides no categories of discussion except rights and justice, oppression- and victim-speak. Sexual issues are illuminated only by the bare-bulb glare of banal, compulsory, politicized sexual practice. These issues are seen in genitally reductionist and strangely solitary terms, as if sexual identity is something achieved by a talented soloist, rather than requiring intimate union as a basic condition. It's futile to defend historic morality in these flat, politicized categories. Many Christians long to celebrate purity rather than nag about code infractions, but lack a public vocabulary to do so. We ourselves barely understand what purity is and what it meant to Christians before us.

    A few years back I read a lengthy collection of lives of the saints and gradually realized that they all, from the first century till midway through the twentieth, shared a common view of the body. It was, distressingly, a view I could barely grasp.

    It was as if they could see a distant mountain peak that was to me just a blur. Elements I could discern included joy and serenity, and the invigorating challenge of self-control.

    They saw homosexuality as a matter-of-fact impediment, one example among many, and not an object of special loathing. Rather, chastity was a shining object of joy. I could hear themes of the walled garden and of keeping oneself pure, even at the cost of death.

    But my own garden I have not kept. Living in an oversexualized culture, I can barely comprehend purity. It is as if the borders of my garden are trampled and destroyed, and I can only walk the edges and imagine what God meant to be there, and what older brothers and sisters in the faith so readily saw and loved.

    A narrow-focus fight against homosexuality, couched in Bible proof-texts, misses the point. We need to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the beauty of chastity, and we can begin by admitting that it is something we only dimly understand. Rather than trying to think for ourselves, we should listen to the community of faith before us, around the world and through time. They knew something we didn't know.

    We live in a reckless age that is amnesic and self-fascinated. Welding together fresh opinions in the basement will not solve this problem. We need to take the time to listen to the wisdom of our forebears in faith--and, harder still, to find the courage to put it into practice. If they are right, in practicing chastity we will begin to experience healing joy. Then, perhaps, we'll find the words for it.

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© Christianity Today 44 no4 88 Ap 3 2000

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