Imagine that you are having a wedding, a traditional wedding with true feasting to follow. You have invited all your good friends and relatives, who have indicated that they would be delighted to attend. You have planned accordingly to feed this chosen number sumptuously, hiring fine cooks to prepare tasty dishes (no run-of-the-mill caterers for you!) purchasing fine wines, sparing no expense to permit all you guests to enter into the joy of the occasion.

Then imagine, two days before the wedding, you start getting a flood of notes, emails, and phone calls from these friends and relatives saying that they won’t be attending. You call them to urge them to come, reminding them of your friendship and enticing them with details of your preparations for them. In response, they give you their excuses for not coming in a tone of voice that indicates that they think their decision makes all the sense in the world. But hear their excuses from your own perspective: “I just bought a new car and want to take a drive” or, “I want to stay home with my wife—we haven’t seen much of each other lately” or, “My refrigerator is empty, so I have to go shopping” or, “Someone just gave me tickets to the big football game, I can’t come” or “I just got a new plasma television and have to set it up to make sure it works.”

What do you think of these excuses? Do they make any sense? What would be your response? How would this make you feel, your ‘good friends’ choosing commonplace activities over you on your special day. Do you need friends like these?

Consider our Lord’s parable about the supper in todays Gospel (Luke 14:16-24). It has meaning on several levels for us, putting God in the position of the Host and us in the position of the invited guests.

First, Jesus spoke it to the Jews, God’s chosen people, to whom He had promised to send the Messiah. But as they had better things to do than to recognize Him when He came, so they spurned Him. Thus His servants were sent out to the spiritually and morally “poor, maimed, halt, and blind” of the world—the Gentiles.

Second, there is another level of meaning that affects still more directly. God is preparing a wedding feast for His Son, the Lamb, and His Son’s Bride, the Church. Through Christ’s first appearing on earth as man, the invitation has been issued. Many have responded that they would like to attend that feast. But when the time for the feast comes, strangely, many will beg off offering the worst of excuses.

Look at the excuses our Lord reports from them in His parable! One guest needs to see land he has bought, as if he hadn’t seen it before he bought it. Another wants to try out his new oxen. Surely that could wait? Another has been recently married. Why should that keep him from coming? These excuses are lame, or as a good ole’ boy in our part of the world would say, “Them dogs won’t hunt.” Clearly the lord giving the feast was unimpressed by such excuses; in fact, they were so poor that He was angered by them.

We may wonder how someone could turn God down by offering such lame excuses. But before we shake our heads in wonder at the foolishness of others and turn back to our own concerns, each of us needs to ask himself whether there is any chance we might be in the number of those offering lame excuses to God to avoid attending the feast He is preparing for His invited guests?

We have been invited to the wedding banquet in the Kingdom of God at the consummation of the ages through our Lord Jesus Christ, His Apostles, and the Church. Surely no one in his right mind would turn down such an invitation. But, in fact, we do, and more frequently than we might realize.

To invite you, Christ has humbled himself to be born into your world. He has lived life as you have. He humbled himself further to die unjustly to prove to you that God loves you and is serious about this invitation. He has made it abundantly clear that He wants you there as a guest. You have responded to that invitation. You accepted it by your profession of faith and your baptism. But now comes the test: did you really mean it, are you serious about attending that feast, or not? Because of the greatness of the feast and the glory of the Host, attending it requires some preparation—in fact, a lifetime’s worth of preparation. And how we respond to the means of preparation given us in this life is actually our response to God’s invitation to the ultimate feast.

For Christ has not only invited us to the ultimate banquet, he also invites us to a banquet set out for us at least once a week, a banquet that offers us a foretaste of what that ultimate banquet will be. The weekly banquet refines our palates so that we develop a taste for the fine food of the Kingdom. There is no junk food in the Kingdom, so if you can’t eat the normal fine fare, you’ll go hungry. The weekly banquet instructs us in the etiquette of the Kingdom. How do we act towards the King and His Son and their servants, the holy Angels? How do we treat our fellow guests? The standard of behavior is high, and we need to be ready and up to the task. The weekly banquet helps keep our white wedding garment given us at Baptism clean and us attired in it. No one is permitted at the ultimate feast without a clean wedding garment! By diligent participation in  the preparation offered by the weekly banquet, we shall not disgrace ourselves and our host by inability to eat the food, indecorous behavior, poor table manners, or unsuitable dress when the great banquet finally arrives.

I speak, of course, about the weekly Eucharist. Here, every week, we are offered the medicine of immortality, the body and blood of our Lord, a foretaste of the what will be offered at the marriage feast of the Lamb. Here we get training in the etiquette and behavior suitable for the kingdom of God.

Christ has commanded us to “do this in remembrance of Me,” and in obedience, His Church celebrates the Eucharist weekly at least and expects every baptized Christian to be present unless necessarily absent “for a cause worthy to inherit a heavenly blessing.” Such causes would include being sick in bed, helping someone in distress, taking care of a family crisis.

But how do we respond to Christ’s invitation and command? Some of us don’t attend for the lamest of excuses. “I was too tired.” But you chose to stay up too late doing other things, revealing your true priorities of the day.  “I had too much work to do.” Before we use this one, we’d better be sure it is true: did we use the time available during the week to do the required work, or did we indulge ourselves at times with entertainment, relaxation, sloth, or procrastination so that our work did not get done in the time allotted for it? By what right do we steal the time we owe to God to do ‘work’ that should have been done during the six days allotted for it? If we want God’s blessing on our work and lives, we had best be certain to bring Him the first part of our time on the Lord’s day, not our leftovers. Even if it is true that we have “too much work to do”, we need to determine which is more important—the work of this world, or the ‘work of the people’, the Liturgy, by which we are prepared for the world to come. Better to leave the lesser undone and attend to the greater than to neglect the greater for the of the lesser and do ourselves eternal harm.  And if we should have to work on Sundays, we can either work to change our schedule, make compromises with our employer to get some Sundays off, or make use of weekday services (and if your parish doesn’t have weekday services, ask your priest to provide them). Making the effort before God to put first things first invites His blessing and may well give us favor with employers and others making excessive demands on us that we may be able to worship on Sundays.

Sometimes the excuses seem more plausible. “My parents invited me over for Sunday morning brunch.” Certainly spending time honoring earthly parents is a worthy task, but not if it requires turning our backs to our Heavenly Father. As Christians, we have an appointment with God each Sunday morning. We schedule our lives around that appointment, for it is the most important appointment we have. How many invitations that would conflict with our appointment with God could be deflected just be saying, “I have a prior engagement at that time. How about we meet Saturday morning, or Sunday afternoon?” The same approach holds true for those Saturday evening conflicts that keep us from Vespers or Vigil, which is part of our preparation for the Divine Liturgy? (But that is another sermon!)

For some of us, it is not a matter of refusing to come to church for lame reasons. We come, but we do not come on time to hear “Blessed is the kingdom…” each week. All of us have done this at least once, some of us have done it more frequently, and some of us to our shame do it regularly. Now let us consider for a moment. Imagine that you have planned a fancy four-course dinner party and invited special friends to come at the appointed time for an evening together. Now, let us imagine that they arrive as typical Orthodox church-goers. A small percentage of your guests arrive at the appointed hour for cocktails. A few more are present for the appetizers. You already feel disappointed and annoyed that so many haven’t bothered to come on time. You wanted to bring these people together for their benefit and yours, but, because so many of the needed ingredients are still absent, the many useful connections you had envisioned being made among guests cannot be made and much stimulating conversation cannot occur.

Now it is time for the first course, and more than half are present. People keep straggling in as though tardiness were normal and it were their right to come straight in from the street to sit down at a meal already in progress. Some in their brashness don’t even offer an apology to the host for their tardiness while others in their self-absorption don’t seem to realize that they should. And now the main course has come, and a yet a few more come in to eat at the last moment. And some of these don’t even bother to stay for dessert!

How would you feel if your guests treated your dinner party in this fashion? 

The Divine Liturgy may be likened to a four-course, full service, formal sit-down feast—only we don’t sit down. It should never be treated as a spiritual drive-through or filling station. Cocktails and appetizers are found at the Hours or Orthros where are hearts are warmed up and the appetite stimulated for what is to come. The first course is the antiphons—two full psalms and the beatitudes—which speak of the goodness and mercy of God to the nourishment of our souls and the strengthening of our faith to receive what is yet to come. (Some Orthodox have basically cut this course out of the Liturgy by way of extreme abbreviation.) The second course is the Scripture readings and the homilies, where still more substantial nourishment is received. The main course, is, of course, the Eucharist. Everything leads up to it, everything prepares us for it, everything has been chosen to prepare us to receive Christ with faith and love to the benefit of our souls. Dessert is the fellowship that takes place after the Liturgy at Coffee Hour and in the parking lot.

Does it make any sense to come to this feast late? Does it in any way show respect to our Host or fellow guests to arrive after the appointed hour? Does coming late show us to be aware of the depth of our own spiritual need? Does it reveal us as spiritual slackers, unwilling to carry our weight in doing ‘the work of the people’? 

A communicant should be present in his place in church to hear “Blessed is the kingdom…” and should not leave the church until the dismissal. If, in unusual circumstances largely beyond one’s control, not due to sloth or carelessness, one is not able to arrive on time but is otherwise ready to partake, the economia has been offered that one may partake if one arrives in time to hear the Gospel reading. But this is the exceptional case, not the norm, and should be no one’s regular practice.

Let us hear no more lame excuses about coming late to the Liturgy. Let us hear no more of ‘Greek time’, ‘Russian time’, or ‘Orthodox time.’ Our time is God’s time, and on His time we had best be on time. You can get to work on time. You can get your children to school on time. You can get to the airport on time. You can get to your doctor on time. You dare tell me that you can’t make it on time for One far greater than any of these? Let us hear no more lame excuses. There is no such thing as being fashionably late to the Liturgy. It is rather an extreme spiritual faux pas and the height of presumption.

If you treat the Lord’s Table, the holy Eucharist with cavalier disdain by coming late or absenting yourself for no good reason, you need to think again. The Eucharist is offered in the Church each week to prepare you for the ultimate wedding feast of the Lamb and His Bride. No athlete makes it to the Olympic Games without many hours in lesser competitions. No beauty queen makes it to an international pageant without having won many lesser pageants. Our high calling requires training and preparation in this world including regular participation in the Lord’s training table that we may acquire a taste for true divine food in place of the world’s junk food, that we may learn the table etiquette and manners of the heavenly Kingdom in place of our crude earthly habits, and that we may remain clothed in our baptismal garment and keep it clean for the banquet to come. If we neglect this preparation for lame reasons, we may be surprised on the day of the Lord to discover that we have turned down our Lord’s invitation to His feast, or that we have arrived late and the door is shut, or that we have to be escorted out of the feast because we are not wearing a wedding garment, or our garment is dirty. May none of us be found among those who have turned down our Lord’s invitation to the wedding feast in His eternal kingdom by neglecting for lame reasons the necessary preparation for that feast at the weekly Divine Liturgy.  To Christ our God who has invited us to His wedding banquet through His Incarnation, death, and Resurrection be all glory, honor and worship, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Preached 16 December 2007 Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, edited for publication 

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At this time of the year, we often hear about the need to “put Christ back into Christmas.” This means remembering “the reason for the season”—why there is Christmas at all. The feeling behind is that that Santa, toys, gifts, goodies, snow, sleigh bells, and TV specials—not to mention stress— have pushed the thought of Christ out of the celebration of His birthday, in Bethlehem so long ago.

Of course, Christ never left Christmas. His name is enshrined in the very word. And that is why the word “Christmas” has been dropped in public discourse and replaced with “holiday” or “season”, supposedly to avoid offending those of don’t care for Christ. It is worth fighting against this anti-Christian bigotry and exposing the rampant hypocrisy of those who speak of tolerance but have none for Christians and their Christ. But is it enough to restore the common use of the word “Christmas” in this overwhelmingly Christian country? Is it enough to be able to have manger scenes in public places and Christmas carols in schools?

There can be no one question on one level that we are an “overwhelmingly Christian nation.” Clearly the large majority of the citizens of our land identify themselves as Christians. But on another level, with a land full of divorce, abortion, murder, abuse, pornography, unfaithfulness, lies, manipulations, excessive consumption, greed, gluttony, drunkenness, drugs, blasphemy, a multitude of addictions and dysfunctions and much more, we can well question whether we are Christian at all, even were we all to speak of “Christmas vacation” and we could see public manger scenes in every town. How much really does our way of life have in common with Christ and the way of His Gospel commandments?

A manger scene once was a common decoration of Christmas both in the home and in public, a display which bears witness to the meaning of the holiday. It includes a collection of animals, sheep, cows, a donkey, a camel, maybe goats or a dog; it includes a couple shepherds, three wise men, a star, perhaps an angel; and of course, it has Mary, Joseph, and a manger, and a little baby in the manger. When I was young, we had one that was set up like this, and we kept the manger empty all through the advent season; when we woke up Christmas morning, that manger was no longer empty.

Christmas is about the babe in the manger, whom his mother Mary named Jesus. But who is this baby Jesus? Why do we still celebrate His birth 2000 years later?

The only proper reason to celebrate Christ’s birth “away in the manger” is because of who He is. If this were just another human birth, we’d not get so excited about it, put so much effort into it, or care. . . But He is different. He is more.

Here is who we hold Him to be, why we celebrate Him. He is the “one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father; by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man. And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures…”

He is God made man, the God-man, Emmanuel, “God with us.”

Why do we believe this? There are many reasons. But we’ll give one simple reason: the empty tomb. Jesus died publicly before all; his death was certified by a Roman soldier who knew death when he saw it to the governor. He was buried in a sealed tomb, guarded by Roman soldiers. Yet on the third day, that tomb was empty. Where was the body? Then the reports of seeing Him began to come in. . . Because of His resurrection and empty tomb, we know Him to be no mere man. In the light of the Resurrection, we understand the rest of the Scriptures about Him and His life: and hereby we know him as the God-man.

This is why we fast before Christmas. We put aside sinful behavior, and we cut out or back on things that tend to stir up sinful behavior. This clears our spiritual sight that we may see Christ for who He truly is, not a cute baby in a manger surrounded by animals, a warm traditional part of our Christmas. No, we see here the eternal Son of God who put on our nature for us. This is what we usually don’t see, really see, even if we believe it. We take it for granted, pay lip service to it, and go about life as though it made little difference.

But world is still at war with Christ. It doesn’t want God interfering in its affairs. God entering human time and space as man is a dreadful intolerable interference. It changes everything. Emmanuel, “God with us”, means it can’t be simply ‘business as usual’. God with us demands a response. And for many today, the response, which they are free to make, is to turn their backs, or even to rage against the babe born in Bethlehem and blaspheme Him.

So we can now see the real matter before us in the question of putting Christ back into Christmas. It is not that we need to put Christ back into Christmas. He never left it. We need Christmas to put Christ back into us. We need to contemplate that babe in the manger, see Him for who He is, and begin to realize the implications of God becoming man. That God has become one of us and dwelt among us changes everything. It means that God has drawn near to us, is accessible, and waits for us to turn our hearts and faces to Him. It means we have no more excuses for not acknowledging and knowing God and offering Him thanks. It means that we have hope for enduring joy, for peace among men, for eternal glory in an eternal kingdom. It means that in Him man overcomes death. It means that human nature is forever joined to the life of the Holy Trinity, to the Divine Nature and has been seated at the right hand of the Power on high. It means that through the One born in Bethlehem, we can become partakers of that Divine Nature. This good news truly understood can only result in joy to the world and the beginning of peace among men.

Christ is forever in Christmas whether we want Him there or not. We need not worry much about making efforts to “put Christ back into Christmas.” But we desperately need Christmas to put Christ—the Light, the Truth, the Way, the Life—into us. This is the point of Christmas, and this is where our efforts to reclaim the season from its commercialized corruptions need to be focused—in how to get more of Christ into the inn of our hearts where too often there is too little room for Him to lay His head.Homily preached 17 Dec 2006Edited 8 Dec 2007 for posting

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