An homily for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost at St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.
Often for events with students at the university I’m asked whether “business casual” or some other clothes are required. But clearly according to our Gospel reading today there is an appropriate attire for our lives, spiritually speaking. This is because for us as Orthodox Christians, we are heading for a celebration of the marriage of the Bride and the Lamb, and the Bride is the Church, in which we hopefully are participating with all our heart. Indeed, in every Liturgy, the Eucharist is a fulfillment of Orthodox weddings, the ultimate wedding, of Christ and His Church. And how we bear ourselves to weddings is important. It bespeaks the need for proper attire of our lives as surely as the wedding banquet in the parable.
We prepare for communion through fasting, confession, prayers, and humble decorum and attire in Church. This is especially emphasized in Russian Orthodox and Greek Athonite monastic traditions, though not exclusively. The govenie of this preparation throughout the week involves accountability and ascetic struggle, and seeking through God’s grace humble obedience to Him.
But the parable by Jesus we hear in the Gospel also offers a type or shadow of things to come in our lives, the particular judgment we will face after death, also known as the tollhouses metaphorically, as well as the Final Judgement. Proper attire there is everything too in a spiritual sense, and includes for our salvation receiving the Eucharist regularly with all the framework for our lives that involves.
For in the Final Judgment our wedding in the Church to the Lamb, Christ, will be either spiritually consummated or called off abruptly, depending on how we have learned to love and live while here on earth, and the prayers of those helping us, with God’s grace. Our Most Holy Theotokos did not have to go through this and thus she intercedes for us, as we know from Dormition season just passed.
In the book of Revelation the garments of the faithful praising the Lamb at the end times are white from virgin purity, and this purity of attire symbolizes the deepest and broadest sense of emptying one’s life in Christ in our marriage to Him, instead of asserting ourselves. The clothing or attire symbolizes something more, a willingness to empty ourselves in Him, to lose ourselves in Him, and to find ourselves in Him.
A wise elder priest told me that when we are drowning and thrown a rope, maybe we will still be thinking of our to-do list: I have this project or that email to deal with, or I really need to be at work, et cetera. But really we are in a storming flood and a rope has been thrown to us to save us. Do we reject the rope because we are busy and can handle things ourselves by dogpaddling, or do we focus on grasping the rope and climbing up to help those who are trying to pull us up? This is a parable too of God’s grace and help for us, and our own resistance. This is like our death, when the lid on the coffin is lowered. We’ll want and need that rope, that grace from God.
Meanwhile the people in the parable invited to the wedding, as if to the Eucharist, did not see it for their salvation. As the old Americna hymn puts it, they said, “I cannot come to the wedding, don’t bother me now, I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow, I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty a sum, don’t bother me now I cannot come.” How familiar this is for all of us, about why we can’t come to worship services, to major feasts of the Church calendar, or even to find premium time or any time to pray in home either individually or as families.
But the devil makes it seem silly when it is all very serious, insidious, because at the end of our lives all that neglect, apathy, and distraction, screen time instead of prayer time, delusional pleasures instead of real love for others, all comes from a bad place, either of our own fallenness or the demonic. It will work against us as we face the demons of the tollhouses in the 40 days after death, and presumably also the final judgement, in the tradition of the Church. What will save us through God’s grace will be our attentiveness, what Jesus calls our watching, our getting our mind into our heart, to experience His love. How do we do this? Through the Jesus prayer, the praying without ceasing, and the worship services of the Church, and our own prayer and fasting in our daily lives at home and at work and in the community. Let us help the poor, the sick, the shut-in, the prisoners, and let us save souls for Christ, if we wish to enjoy the wedding banquet with our King. We do this not just for a crown, because the crown also on earth is a crown of martyrdom, but because this is the Way through Christ of a meaningful life, a life in which we find our self in Him, and help ourselves and others to find the Kingdom of God.
For that of course is the true meaning of marriage in the Church, helping each other find salvation. How important is that symbolism of marriage. Soon comes the last highlighted feast of the old Church year, the Beheading of John the Baptist: which was about a marriage. The book of the Bible called the Song of Songs is about the marriage of God and His Church. It’s how things end in the Book of Revelation, with a wedding. And we step up as to be wed to the Eucharist in Church today as well, just as we will participate in our prayers and love at the Dance of Isaiah in the wedding of Nicholas and Sofia coming up in two weeks here.
St. John Chrysostom in his commentary on this parable pointed out the destruction historically that came to the Jews who rejected our Lord, who would not come to the wedding in effect. St. John wrote, “not straightway after Christ was slain did the capture take place, but after forty years, that He might show His long suffering, when they had slain Stephen, when they had put James to death, when they had spitefully entreated the apostles. Do you see the truth of the event, and its quickness? For while John was yet living, and many other of them that were with Christ, these things came to pass, and they that had heard these words were witnesses of the events.
The Chrysostom continues, “And wherefore is it called a marriage? One may say. That you might learn God’s tender care, His yearning towards us, the cheerfulness of the state of things, that there is nothing sorrowful there, nor sad, but all things are full of spiritual joy. Therefore also John calls Him a bridegroom, therefore Paul again says, For I have espoused you to one husband; 2 Corinthians 11:2 and, This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Ephesians 5:32.”
The Jews who rejected Jesus were those first invited to the wedding who rejected it and end in spiritual ruin and in the devastation of Jerusalem in AD 70, scattered in diaspora, many of them continuing their hostility against the rising movement of Christians. In Jesus’ day the Pharisees were richly attired, but what Jesus spoke of in the parable is attire of the heart really.
Matthew 25 calls on us to help the poor who may be in tattered clothes, because by helping them we are helping in effect Christ, in Whom we all are made. A priest in another jurisdiction who liked to wear Roman collars and black sport coasts in Catholic style, 20 years ago commented to me that he really disliked seeing Russian Orthodox priests around because of their long beards and long hair and wearing robe-y riassas and sandals. Well, we’re still here, and it’s the authenticity of the attire from the heart that counts, however sinful I/we may be indeed. In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us to take no thought for what we will wear. As another old American hymn puts it, “Consider the lilies how fair they grow, clad in a glory that kings never know.” We saw that at the flower feast of the Dormition recently, that expression of natural beauty that is supernatural in the falling-asleep and resurrection of our Lady and intercessor in heaven the Theotokos.
It is true there is appropriate and respectful attire for a family wedding, and in Church Tradition for worship, and for clergy, as well. But dressing rightly for Church should come without self-righteousness. For us priests that means wearing our black robes all the time as a sign of humility and not bending in accord with fashion, not trying to look like so-called normal Americans as my other priest friend apparently wanted, and wearing a reminder that we should behave. What is the difference between legalism and righteousness or justice in Orthodox practices such as clothing? Remember that logos has principle or rule as a synonym but also harmony. So to be in accord with God’s law is to be in accord with the harmony of God’s love.
That is the wedding of Christ, the banquet to which we are invited at the Eucharist. If we would dress appropriately for the White House or Buckingham Palace or dinner with a billionaire wanting to hire us, let’s dress humbly for Church and cover ourselves modestly. What can be a cause of pride should be a cause of right behavior and modesty. For a priest in Russian Orthodoxy we are required to wear a Cross on our chest always, and it is a sign in time of emergency of how we are here to help, but also in times of persecution, it is to focus it on ourselves and not others. Lord have mercy on me a sinner!
Dear brothers and sisters, let us as we are called to the wedding celebration, in the Eucharist today of our wedding as a Church with our Lord Jesus Christ, of Nick and Sofia in a couple weeks that will highlight in that mystery of the Church the commitment of husband and wife to both Christ and one another, and to the great wedding banquet to which we are called at the end of time, let us be appropriately attired in our hearts and in our expression before one another of humility and obedience to the Bridegroom, the Lamb of God, realizing that Christianity is always a team sport, whether we are a monastic hermit in the desert with angels or in the world with our parish family or at a Church wedding. May the Lord bless our union with Him and one another in the Body of Christ, and may we be watchful in tending our hearts to be ready for the true moveable feast, the great wedding feast, that is Orthodox Christianity. Glory to God for all things!