2 Timothy 3:10-15
Troparion
Luke 18:10-14

The Road Not Taken

Last week we pictured a young man, Zacchaeus, standing at the great crossroads of future and vocation. "Shall I uphold the traditions of my fathers and follow the ways of the Halachah, or shall I embrace the cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and lucrative future of Graeco-Roman culture?

After all, first-century Judea was Graeco-Roman culture with its classical white temples, its colonnades, and colosseums. Its boys attended classical gymnasiums and participated in Graeco-Roman sports. A young man aspiring to influence, not to say affluence, in Roman society would not be held back on account of his Jewish parentage. Like Zacchaeus, he might enter the societas publicanorum, becoming a so-called publican, and entering the Patrician class of Roman society, an Equestrian, just below the Senatorial level. Such men managed public works projects, supplied the Roman Legions with needed goods and materiale, ensured that the regular census was taken, and administered the tightly regulated 1% flat tax. His would have been a place of respect and honor in secular society.

We might say that last week, we considered the "before" — picturing young men standing at the crossroads. And this week, we consider the "after" — with two men having now advanced down the road of life, having arrived to their destinations. One aspired to wealth and prestige becoming a publican. The other chose religious life becoming a Pharisee. On a day they both come to the Temple to pray.

[I admit that, being a religious, I am much more drawn to the Pharisee story. I know (and resonate with) that story much better than I know the publican story.]

On the face of it, we might expect such a parable to be cast as a simple tale ending with a moral: yes, you might follow the path leading to material riches, but that path also leads to spiritual destruction. But the path to religious life, that is the path to eternal life and peace unto your very soul. But that is not the direction the Lord Jesus takes. By contrast, He sets out a a subtle study of two psychologies. The Pharisee stands seeking the place of ascendancy. We recall Jesus' words in Gospel of St. Matthew, himself a former publican (speaking of Pharisees):

By contrast, the publican, who enjoys wealth and prestige in the eyes of the world, humbles himself. He does not focus on others, but only on his own shortcomings. He does not criticize the hypocrisy of Pharisees but sees clearly how far he has fallen short of the glory of God:

Two young men stood at the a crossroads with the glittering and sophisticated Graeco-Roman culture all around them. One chose the traditions of the fathers and a life of religious devotion. Yet, both, at last, could not resist the inexorable power of the culture and the cult of self-absorption, the mania for me. Two men stood at a crossroads, and in the end arrived to the same destination as slaves.

Only one could look into his heart and could see the dark state of his soul. In a sense, because he frankly took the wordly path, he was well aware that he was worldly, a mercy in the end. His eyes were not fixed outward upon others but rather only fixed upon himself and his God ... which was his salvation.

What shall we say about our own willful attachment to culture? Our televisions, the movies we watch, the smart phones that have made us slaves to culture ... we stare at them in a slavish obedience that cannot be turned aside. We are bound in chains that cannot be heard. They do not shake, for they cannot be moved. I recall as a teenager walking down the sidewalks of my hometown at night and passing house after house whose windows radiated an eerie blue light. And a horrible vision took hold of me. I realized that nearly everyone I knew dutifully left the dinner table every single night, perhaps did the dishes, and then bathed themselves before a strange blue light that ... changed them. For the opinions of the culture inevitably became their opinions. The morals of the culture became their morals. And the ideals, aspirations, and role models of the culture became their way of life.

I thought about past generations who sat at night reading books. Every home had a Bible, the bestseller for centuries. Nearly every family prayed after dinner. Yes, reading by candlelight in days gone by might reduce your eyes to blindness. But as your body is diminished, the soul is magnified in like measure. Day by day, night by night, the inner person lived into relationship with the only opinions and morals and aspirations worthy of the name: the ways of God. And being alone with God every day, examining our consciences before turning in each night, we will find that He does not forget us but rather cherishes our loving thoughts of Him. And if He should waken us in the night, in that very special solitude and intimacy with Him, we say the prayer of the publican, "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner." We say it over and over and over ... until we settle down again in peace.

Where do we turn in this toxic culture? I am embarrassed to say .... I don't know what to say, when I realize that the word American has become synonymous all over the world with promiscuity, pornography, and homosexuality. Where does a young man find a nice girl or a young lady find a young gentleman whose hallmark is decency, restraint, and goodness? Only yesterday a man approached me (he was in his twenties) asked me, "What do you do when the party life of drugs, drinking, and sex is celebrated as an ideal?!" It is the one "value" our diverse society shares, where (I am told) our Super Bowl "Halftime Show" is little more than soft pornography.

In previous generations, we would advise young people to join the church and meet others who were seeking God's way of life. After all, if your future husband or wife does not love God, how can he or she love the values that are necessary for a wholesome family? But to find such a church, you would need a time machine.

I was born into a multi-generational Anglo-Catholic family. And through this tradition, I learned devout life. I was formed in beautiful prayer and sacred music of great depth and beauty. I heard homilies that brought tears to my eyes and trained my soul in profound truths. I have no doubt that this formation was decisive leading me one day down a path of ancient languages and a love of the Greek Fathers, a PhD in Medieval and Renaissance culture and literatures, and finally to the sacred priesthood. Shall I commend this church to young people seeking wisdom and God? Shall I send families there to form their children? Alas, on a day, the youngest priest I knew and one of the oldest called me on the phone and asked me the same question: "How can I with a clean conscience baptize anyone into this Church?" As these men did not know each other, I took it to be a sign, for both spoke my own heart. I resigned my position as an Episcopal priest, leaving a three-story rectory on the Maine seacoast and a beautiful, stone "temple of God."

I decided I would serve the Roman Church, for I saw so many sheep without a shepherd. But soon I was immersed in a vast clerical culture of sexual perversion. One respected book by a Roman Catholic seminary rector estimated that 60% of the Roman priesthood in the U.S. participated in the "cruising homosexual lifestyle." Estimates of male religious, on the informal report of monastery superiors, were in the 90% range. A well-researched book on Vatican life reported that 80% of prelates serving in Rome frequented the "homosexual bathhouse culture" with indiscriminate sex with strangers. And EWTN's National Catholic Register reported a drug-fueled orgy in apartments owned by the Congregation for the Doctrines of the Faith (the Holy Office!), the highest office in the Roman Church. I it went on for days being broken up by the Swiss Guard. More recently, Pope Francis has advised the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to be open to homosexual marriage unions.

I offered myself to the Roman Church because I saw that they needed pastors. But one does not enter a culture without becoming part of that culture. You cannot just stand to one side. And as I refused to participate in this culture, I resigned my position as a theology professor, foregoing priestly life. In the end I went to serve the Catholic Apostolate in Haiti. I gave up my worldly prerogatives believing that I would spend the rest of my life there.

But the American culture followed me there too. A beautiful ministry built up for decades by a Franciscan religious order, by virtuous people, was taken over by a new secular administrator. She demanded that our chapel be suppressed, that our religious artifacts, crucifixes, be removed, and then appointed a Planned Parenthood founder-director to become our chief operating officer. I resigned immediately.

A young man stood at a crossroads. He chose religious life and ended up in the world. Is this not the story of the entire Anglican Communion? The story of the Roman Communion? The story of the Protestant churches? In the U.S. today I know of only one religious Communion who insists on real religious life. I share below a teaching published on the website of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia located in Washington, D.C.: