A homily from St. John’s Church for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (7533/2025) by Priest Paul Siewers.
The Apostle Paul told the Athenians that God “made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:26-28) Our Lord Jesus Christ earlier told His disciples, in the Gospel for today, “All power is given unto Me in Heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’” Both scripture texts refer to nations, like America or like Russia, as communities for saving souls by turning their peoples to God.
Today we commemorate in the Orthodox Church two related themes We commemorate the first Six Ecumenical Councils, in which Orthodox Christians from around the known Christian world came together from many nations in the first centuries of the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit and confirmed and articulated the tradition of the Church, most famously in the Nicene Creed, but in many other canons and teachings. The Church was thus itself a nation or a race as the Church fathers called her.
The other is the anniversary of the baptism of Kievan Rus’, the origin of Russian Orthodox Christianity, in 988 AD, and the birth of a local nation as Orthodox Christian. That was more than a thousand years ago. By contrast, the U.S. next year will celebrate its 250th anniversary, but with great divisions over what that means, and not a clear sense of Christian faith. In the 1,000-year-plus history of Christianity in the Russian Orthodox Church there is no doubt. The birth of that Christian nation, of Orthodox Russia, came from the Holy Land with the Apostles, then spread and bloomed forth in the Christian Roman Empire of the East. Then in reached the lands of what would become Russia, originally by the missionary work of the Apostle Andrew, and then by St. Vladimir the Great, the prince of Kievan Rus’, baptizing his people. It survived the worst persecution of Christians known to the world to date, to transmit those lessons and the intercessions of the new martyrs to our mission work here in America.
All this gives us in the Russian Orthodox tradition a remarkable living tradition going back more than a thousand years and then centuries before that directly to the Apostles. There are no interruptions in our tradition, no lost or invisible Church to be listed as if a missing person. Our Lord never lost His Church. It is with us, visible, historical, and her mysteries and teachings and practices link us directly through her to Pentecost and to our Lord and His apostles. The Pentecostal link is seen in the traditional onion dome outside our temple, ready to be installed hopefully next month. It symbolizes the uncreated light of the Holy Spirit in our Lord’s Church.
When nearly two years ago our Bishop Luke laid His hands on me to make me a priest, unworthily for me a sinner, the uncreated grace of that mystery of the Church went through him all the way back to Metropolitan Anthony the bishop who led ROCOR into exile from the Communists in 1920, and through him and that original exile Synod, back to 998, and back further through Byzantium to the Holy Land and to the Twelve Apostles commissioned by Jesus Christ. Glory to God! It did the same when Reader Luke was ordained here a few weeks ago.
The baptism of ‘Rus is a reminder to us that the full realization of Israel in the New Testament is not a particular modern state or government. Israel is fully realized in the Orthodox Church, the Body of Christ, ministering to all nations. When a local nation is baptized in the Lord, in her the promised land emerges spiritually through the portal of the local Church, through these very royal doors a gateway to Paradise and beyond, through the Eucharist that is the Body and Blood of Christ, and through all the saving grace of the illumined saints of God throughout the ages, and with God’s help our own illumination and aspiration to theosis. With us here today invisibly are hosts of angels, and the cloud of witnesses of the saints across centuries, in Russia, in America, and throughout the world. We in the Russian Church abroad especially remember the multitude of martyrs to Communism who met their fate for their faith witnessing to our God. They pray for us in heaven.
May they pray for us in our mission work in America, that America too may be baptized and that here ever more hearts and Orthodox Churches be opened as portals, living links, to the promised land. For the land of Israel is in our hearts in the Church, the Kingdom of Heaven where Christ dwells with us. The baptism of Russia reminds of our living connection to the age-old tradition of our Lord’s Church, and the possibility for a nation that embraces the Church.
The last elder of the famed Optina Monastery in Russia, Elder Nektary bore the Cross of seeing it shut down by the Communists, many imprisoned and tortured and killed, and driven homeless into exile into the countryside. This was the famed monastery where cultural luminaries such as Dostoevsky had come for spiritual counsel, where Tolstoy was headed for spiritual help when he died, where everyone from peasants to royalty sought wisdom and prayers. Yet Elder Nektary, now in hiding, kept the faith of the Church alive, as did others in the so-called Catacomb Church. Our exile synod was secretly in touch with those underground Christians in the Soviet years to help support the living faith of the baptism of Rus’ there and abroad.
Elder Nektary expressed the spirit of Holy Rus’ to a visitor. When asked about the value of clergy being well-educated, Elder Nektary said. “Haven’t you heard about how a certain village priest, who hadn’t studied in any academy, transfixed the Tsar himself with his sermon? And which Tsar? The savior of all Europe—Alexander the Blessed… This was during one of the Tsar’s trips across Russia, not long before he went from Petersburg to Taganrog.” There he supposedly died but according to many disappeared into a life as a wandering holy man.
Elder Nektary explained to his visitor that the Tsar was traveling through a poor small village, with no stop planned. The parish priest called his parishioners together at their rural church, not unlike ours. Everyone gathered on the road nearby along which the Tsar was traveling. They wore festive attire. When the royal carriage came into view, the priest dressed in bright vestments lifted the Cross high over his head and began to make the sign of the Cross. The Tsar saw and ordered his procession to stop, got out of the carriage, and headed to the priest. The priest gave him the Cross to venerate, sprinkled him with holy water, made the sign of the Cross over him, and gave a very brief sermon. The priest told the Tsar: “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Earthly king! Enter the house of the Heavenly King, for thine is the Kingdom, and HIS is the power and the glory, now and ever and to the ages of ages. Amen.”
As the Elder recalled, this little inspired sermon in that modest scene pierced the heart of the emperor, although he was the leader of a superpower of his day who had won an early version of a world war against Napoleon. It was a heartfelt reminder that God’s is the power and the glory. The ruler asked that the short sermon to be said again by the country priest. Clearly moved, he gave the humble little Church 50 rubles, a princely sum in that day. Not long after, according to tradition, Tsar Alexander disappeared, feigning his death in a very remote area of Russia. You see, while Alexander I had led the victory over Napoleon, he was repentant both for earlier un-Orthodox liberalism as a ruler, and for his help to the assassination of his brother, Tsar Paul I, to take the throne. He was said to have taken the name Feodor Kuzmich, a simple wandering rural elder in Siberia, who became well-known for his holiness while people observed evidences of his very educated background and bearing of a leader. This mysterious country elder died humbly in 1864, long suspected of being the missing Tsar, coyly not answering questions about this. Perhaps the simple roadside sermon that pierced his heart played a role. The whole account is so typically Russian Orthodox, my brothers and sisters: The heartfelt working of the Spirit pervades these incidents with the still-working baptism of Rus’.
Elder Nektary told his visitor one more example of a brief sermon like that given to the Tsar, one that also pierced a heart, but this time Elder Nektary’s own heart as a younger man. A Bishop spoke it to him when ordaining him a priest-monk. The bishop told him simply: “Repeat only one thing to yourself—O God save, spare, and have mercy on Thy slave, hieromonk Nektary.”
Dear brothers and sisters, just a few years ago, in American Appalachia, I was made a priest in the tradition of our Russian Church in exile, as a sinner the most unworthy in all of the remnants of Christendom. But Bishop Luke whispered to me at the altar while laying hands on me: “Keep your zeal in the Spirit and your humility not to succumb to pride.”
All three of those short sermons were from the heart and flowed from the best of the tradition of the font of baptized Rus’. So the Baptism of a nation in 988, which also marked the birth of a nation in terms of her Orthodox identity, remains a living influence that we commemorate today half a world away. Brothers and sisters, let us pray and work with such humble yet Spirit-infused hearts, that we may live to see the Baptism of America. Glory to God for all things!