Our Christians faith does not begin in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. It begins beyond the mists of time in a Garden where the God Who Is (Exod 3:13), and Whose nature is Unity, dwelt with the special creatures who bear His likeness, the man and the woman. He communed with them in the cool of the evening (Gen 3:8). Here is the first Church: attuned to the heart of God, living the Two Great Commandments in perfection.

These two people are our first parents. (Did you know that contemporary genetics teaches that all humans on earth descend from one man joined to one woman?) Their history is our history. Their God is our God. Their religion is our religion. From this earliest communion with God to Orthodox Eucharists of today, kinship with God continues to be the foremost, the utmost, human aspiration. Am I suggesting an unbroken link between the People of the Promise and Orthodox Christians today? Yes .... at least this was the teaching of the Son of God:

It is unfortunate that Christians should understand Jesus to be a revolutionary opposed to a religion of laws and rules. Antagonism between Jesus and the Pharisees is real, of course. But the fault line is not between the Son of God and the religion of Israel. It is between the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, on the one hand, and religion practiced in the Zion Temple, on the other. The Son of God was not an apologist for the Zion Temple establishment. Yet, He most certainly upheld the faith of the Holy Forefathers, whose feast we celebrate this week.

Through this corrected focus we begin to understand things that once seemed out-of-focus. Why should Jesus be born in far-off, non-Jewish Galilee? Why should non-Jewish Samaritans be held up for praise sometimes in direct contrast with Judeans? What are we to make of Jesus' bizarre behavior in the Zion Temple beating men with whips? Let's revisit the scene:

Surely we can all agree that this scene is almost surreal. Making a whip of cords, overturning tables, and viciously beating men, driving them down the steps out of the Temple? This is not something done to one side or in passing. It marks some kind of central climax in the Gospel narrative.

Or do you accept the explanation, current among come Biblical commentators, that this high point in the action really is just a "social justice" thing .... you see, the poor were being denied access to worship because they could not afford to buy doves for sacrifice — a point that Judas would have made, not Jesus (Jn 12:4-6).

This scene quite obviously has been designed to command our attention! It is what literary scholars would call a crux. And it is a crux in the pure sense of that word, a Cross, on which enthusiasts for animal sacrifice will offer Jesus:

It is right to see St. Paul, a former Pharisee in revolt against Pharisaism, but not one who has rejected the religion of Israel. If that were so, then what do we make of the Apostle's great devotion to Abraham, whom he names nearly thirty times in his letters?

What is it, then, that St. Paul is revolting against? How many scholars find themselves beset by apparent contradictions in his letters! As a Roman Catholic theologian-professor about to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest, I was asked by one of the seminary professors responsible for my ordination exam what I would like to study. Perhaps one area or another might coincide with my own scholarly research. I said, "Let's go back to the Pauline Correspondence with particular emphasis on the Letter to the Romans." "Please, Father!" he replied. "Who can honestly say that he understands Romans?!" Yet, problems begin to recede when we read Paul's Letters as not so much as rejecting Judaism, as much as emphasizing the old religion of Abraham and of Melchisedec, that mysterious priest who offered bread and wine — an emphasis, not on objective sacrifice, but on subjective transformation of mind and soul. (Aren't these thoughts more in line with the Apostle Paul?)

After all, is not this what actually happened to St. Paul? Was he not thrown to the ground with a burst of light from Heaven, struck blind, and healed? And did not this illuminated man retreat into Arabia and Damascus for three years? St. Paul's was not a salvation effected through the ritual trade of animals but rather a conversion effected by God's grace, yes, but also through the hard-won transfiguration of mind and soul. It was famously a journey — a long, long journey of many labors and many sufferings. "I saw as through a glass darkly," he said, "but then face-to-face" (1 Cor 13:12). In this sense, he followed Father Abraham out of the celebrated city and into the wilderness. For years of prayer, years of introspection, and personal intimacy with God is the path to salvation. As with Abraham departing from Ur or St. Paul departing from Jerusalem, every part of our ego and our animal desires impeding intimacy with God must go!

Perhaps at this point in our meditation, we are ready to ascend to the next level. For here we see a parting of the ways — not between St. Paul and the Pharisees per se (though this is a side-effect) and not between Jesus and the Saduccees, who ruled the Zion Temple establishment (though this is also a side-effect). We see a parting of the ways that has been present in this Gospel world since long before the birth of Jesus: a parting of the ways between the religion of the Holy Forefathers and the religion of Judaism.

To quote the Ukrainian, Yehezkel Kaufmann, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, one of the greatest Biblical scholars and philosophers of the twentieth century,

The events behind this revolution are remarkable. During the mid seventh century B.C., King Amon succeeded his father, King Manasseh, to the throne of Judea. Both father and son had included Baal worship in the kingdom's religious practices. Perhaps they sought to placate their diverse subjects. Perhaps, as my teacher John Fitzgerald (Prof. of Classics at Notre Dame) told me, these Semitic peoples thrived or starved according to the rainfall, and Baal was a weather god. That is, they were hedging their bets, worshipping both the God of Israel and Baal. (I saw this hedging of bets with my own eyes in suffering Haiti, where most people are Roman Catholic but all practice Voudou.)

Amon would be assassinated in the midst of these religious controversies, and his eight-year-old son, Josiah, would ascend to the throne. Josiah had been formed in this hothouse of religious debate and, when he came into majority age, moved boldly to eradicate pagan worship in the kingdom. On a related track, he sought to centralize all power .... which meant religious power during the seventh century B.C. The many altars, pillars, and high places scattered about the kingdom were to be destroyed, all under the banner of suppressing Baal worship.

But wait! Weren't many of these altars built by the Patriarchs? Noah erected an altar (Gen 8:20). Altars erected by Abraham are mentioned seven times in Genesis (Gen 12:7, 12:8, 13:4, 13:18, 22:9, 26:25, 33:20). And there are the altars erected by Isaac (Gen 26:25) and by Jacob, the latter in Bethel (35:3, 35:7). Moses also raised an altar (Exod 17:15). The kings of Judah and Israel were constantly building altars. These, of course, are the altars of the Forefathers mentioned in Genesis. We cannot say how many Patriarchal altars are not mentioned.

Without question, altars raised by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would have been important cultic centers conferring prestige on the priests who presided over them. We get a taste of this when St. Photini, the woman at the well, challenges Jesus by pointing to the prestige of her well:

Even in the Zion Temple, Josiah, probably fearing rivals, emptied the Holy of Holies of certain important furnishings: the oil of chrism, with which kings and high priests were anointed; Aaron's rod of governance; images of the Heavenly Hosts, associated in the old religion with personal transformation; and the Ark of the Covenant with its gold Mercy Seat, which constituted a royal throne, as theosis was seen to be a participation in Divine kingship.

To galvanize this audacious program, Josiah announced that previously lost scrolls of Moses had been found in the Temple. And these scrolls revealed a religion somewhat different than the religion of the Holy Forefathers. "How convenient," my Old Testament professor, John J. Collins, quipped. For by doing this, Josiah did not present himself as the initiator of religious innovations. Rather, he pointed to Moses while assuming the posture of a prostrate and faithful king, with the royal court editing the Scriptures to conform to his political aspiration.

Following these reforms, Josiah was killed in a battle against the Egyptians in 609 B.C. And not very long after that, Jerusalem fell to the Neo-Babylonian Empire with the royal elite being exiled to Babylon. It was there, many respected scholars agree (I might say, all), that the religion of Israel was to be re-engineered into a new religion: Judaism.

Upon return of the exiles, recorded in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, a new Temple would be built, but its Holy of Holies would be devoid of the furnishings that had preceded Josiah down through the many centuries. This Temple would no longer enact a drama of theosis as the First Temple had done. In its place, animal sacrifice would take pride of place. Nonetheless, many children of Abraham beyond the borders of Judah — who were never subject to Josiah's reforms nor were taken to Babylon during the so-called Captivity — continued to practice the faith of the Patriarchs. Why wouldn't they?

Indeed, around the time of the reforms, the Neo-Babylonians, seeing a political opportunity, made alliance with protectors of the old religion, helping to fuel a civil war in Judea. Afterwards, these people would be settled into the Arabian territories to the east of Judah, later to be known as a stronghold of the old religion.

When first-century scrolls were discovered in our own time, during the mid-twentieth century, in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea, a religious group came to the fore that previously had been obscured through the passing of centuries. The first-century historian, Josephus Flavius, had mentioned them, to be sure. In his writings they received the same prominence as the Pharisees and the Saduccees, but as guardians of the old religion, they would be suppressed by the Zion Temple estabishment. This group was called the Essenes. Their religion was one of personal sanctification and transformation. They are the holy link connecting the religion of the Holy Forefathers to St. Paul, to the Gospel writers, and to the Son of God, Whose Advent, no doubt, was importantly connected to the restoration of right religion. After all, were not The Twelve specifically called to sit on the Patriarchal thrones?

What exactly did this old religion look like? What rituals would we see .... if only we could travel back in time? In 2012, the prolific scholar, Margaret Barker, a foremost expert on First Temple spirituality and religion, was asked to speak at St. Vladimir's Seminary, invited by by His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah, First Hierarch of the Orthodox Church in America. Mrs. Barker, a Methodist, had never actually been present at an Orthodox liturgy. When she did have this privilege, she said that, yes, it was a novelty for her .... yet not unfamiliar. For what she beheld, enacted before her very eyes, was approximately what she had envisioned taking place in Solomon's Temple three thousand years earlier.

Orthodoxy's vocation is to guard and preserve right belief and right worship. In that sense, the Orthodox Church is radically conservative — "originalist," a Constitutional scholar might say. It abhors innovation. Following the Lord Jesus and following the Apostle Paul, our Orthodox bishops seek faithfulness to the religion of God, to the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the religion of theosis, and not of quid-pro-quo sacrifice.

Let us conclude with some comments by the Fathers Cyril of Alexandria, Symeon the New Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom, who compiled and composed our primary Eucharistic Liturgy. The following is cited from the magisterial Orthodox Christianity authored by Metropolitan Hilarion Aleyev on the subject of Eucharist (Holy Communion):

Yes, sacrifice, but an acceptable sacrifice unto God, which is our spiritual worship (Rom 12:1).

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.