Orthodox Sermons & Articles

With God’s help we passed two weeks of Great Lent. Today’s Sunday Gospel reading was about the paralytic who at first could not walk by himself. But with strong faith in Jesus, together with Christ’s love to all His people this miracle happened: the paralytic was raised by the almighty word of the Lord and healed from the disease instantly. This teaches us to have faith in Christ Jesus because through it we can receive help from the Merciful Lord. This reading also encourages us to persevere in our prayers for others, and especially for the sick.

But the reason of Christ’s coming was neither in healing the sick nor in resurrecting the dead; these facts were only the results of His true mission – bringing salvation to all people on earth. What does "salvation" mean? Is it something we can touch, see or feel? This question has raised many discussions in the Christian world over the centuries and still remains very important for our consideration, as our future life depends on it. If we understand salvation correctly in this life and live accordingly, it gives us hope to inherit the Kingdom of God. I said, "Understand correctly" because there are so many different teachings about this matter that one can get easily confused about it. Each of the three major Christian denominations has their own teaching and we need to say that only the Orthodox Church calls the accomplished mission of Jesus Christ "salvation", while Roman Catholics call it "redemption" and Protestants label it "justification". Because this theme is very big and needs much more time to explore, I will focus only on our Orthodox teaching about salvation.

First of all we need to say that salvation is needed where there is some kind of bondage or slavery. In our human case unfortunately, we all are under heavy bondage of sin and in its slavery. Sin drags us away from God (remember Adam and Eve) and as a result of it we all are mortals. So, the mission of Jesus Christ was to reunite us with God and to give us another life by saving us from the bondage of sin.

Another very good explanation of our salvation is that we humans are sick with different passions through our connection to sin. A variety of wrongdoings exist, and although they differ in weight, they cause pain to our soul and we humans are simply unable to heal ourselves on our own. This is why we call Jesus Christ the Physician of souls. He came to heal our wounds caused by numerous sins and to give us a healthy life in an eternal perspective. But the point is we HAVE to seek the healing; it will not come on its own without our visit to the Only Physician. Only the one who seeks a doctor will receive appropriate treatment – we all know this from our daily routine. The one who avoids his doctor will fall yet into deeper illness. So, basically, this is the idea of the Orthodox teaching about salvation.

The finishing touch to this picture of salvation is about our life in God and with God. In order to save our souls we need to live with God on a daily basis, not just from time-to-time or from Sunday-to-Sunday. Salvation is something we need to feel and experience while still living here on earth. We need very good practice in living with God if we are going to live with Him forever. To us our Holy Church proposes this practice of salvation, or life with God, on an every day basis. And because the Church is Christ’s body, life in Church should be our primary consideration. How good we feel when we listen to a nice symphony or when all the parts of our body work well, and how hard it is to listen to unprofessional music or to watch somebody with bodily disorders! Now, put the same pattern onto our Church and you’ll see that the suffering of one member of the Church manifests in all others members in one way or another. So, salvation is also to become accustomed to eternal life with Jesus Christ while on earth.

There is a story that will help us understand this part of the Orthodox teaching about salvation. This story was told by one of the few modern Orthodox theologians during one of his lectures. Here is the story. One ordinary man saved the life of another man who happened to be very rich and wealthy. Not knowing how to repay the poorer man, the rich one decided to make a big reception in the latter’s honor and invited many famous people to attend. When the ordinary man arrived he was treated very well and placed on a seat where all other guests could see him. Many nice words were said in his honor, but he was uncomfortable with this, as it was unusual for him. The situation became even worse when the dinner started: the poor man did not know which glass was proper to drink from and which fork or knife to use. His confusion made him even more uncomfortable and he started to think of a way to go home. He was still the number one person in the palace but not the luckiest one. When the dinner was over he thanked the host of the reception and went home relieved and … hungry. He went home hungry simply because he had not been used to such manners and to so many sets of silver on the table. So, the lesson is that we need to learn about eternity here on earth so that we are comfortable with it after our death. We have to remember that we build our salvation here and now - not after death! We need to keep in mind that we have to live in harmony with the rest of the world! We need to learn that we should not be a pain in the body of Christ but be one of His strong members! And we ought to live in God and with God on a daily basis. Let’s start immediately because every minute of our life is precious in this light!

Dear brothers and sisters, what time can be better for us to start thinking about our salvation then Great Lent. After two weeks of it what did we gain? Did we refuse to follow our temptations? Did we reject at least one of our sinful desires? Did we make peace with our neighbors? Did we try to keep our fast? Did we go to church and pray more frequently? All these and much more are those helpful hints we receive from the Church in order to save our souls. Do we follow these precious guidelines? Let us put our salvation at the top of our to-do list. May our Lord Jesus Christ help us to find Him and follow Him to the end of our lives.

Amen.