Ransomed

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

We join together, Sisters, in the quiet of Great Saturday. I suppose the feeling for many is that nothing is happening. All is quiet. Perhaps there are expectations that great things are about to happen. But this is not so.

We may understand death to be quiet, to be silent, to be a cessation of all things. But this is not so. Death is the great revealer. On a practical level, if you have ever had the disagreeable task of cleaning up after someone has unexpectedly died, then you have sorted through and discarded all the artifacts of their secret life. Room by room, drawer by drawer, stack by stack, a whole other person is revealed whom no one had the slightest idea had existed. But the clutter of but one life and one disordered home is only a token, which points to the artifacts of an entire lifetime. For when we die all things are present. Every detail of life is set before us.

You see, we might have thought that we thoroughly cleaned up all the debris of our lives. We thought we had. but this why we talk about an examination of conscience. I have shared with you that I have had the experience of making two general confessions (preparing for ordination as an Anglo-Catholic priest in the Episcopal Church and then later in preparation for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest). A general confession requires months of preparation. I bought a blank book and then filled its pages diligently recording all of the things I needed to own. I organized it according to the years of my life. I organized it according to what are called the Seven Deadly Sins in the West. I organized it according to the Ten Commandments. I put ever grid, we might say, upon my life, every focus, every lens, in order to dig out every act for which any right thinking person might be ashamed. I organized it according to categories of sin, striving to remember every person I had hurt. Oh, you say that they "consented" .... or even initiated these acts? I hurt them nonetheless, mortally wounding them, each one of them.

Death is the great revealer. It is, in that sense, light. Everything is coming to light now. Are we ready for this brilliant light that illuminates every corner of our lives? We might say that this is the essence of the Toll Houses, when all the brightest lights are shining on us.

I will never forget the little miracle, the grace note, that we three experienced yesterday. I had completed hours of readings during the time of meditation we call the Royal Hours. How could I have known that the last line of the final Scripture lesson would,

And then I sat seeing what was plainly before me, about twelve feet away: Sister Mary Ann and Sister Mary Martha sitting opposite the tomb .... which had prepared at the Hermitage. How could I have known?

So many surprises away us. So many revelations. Like the Lord Who emptied Himself, we empty ourselves so that we might be fitting vessels for God's Uncreated Grace awaiting us.

Reading through Vladimer Lossky this morning, I read again what I already knew. We think of love as being a human property. But it is not. It is an Uncreated Energy, a Divine Property. St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote, "a Name of God."

We seek to be filled with Divine Love, so we empty ourselves of everything else. Who needs that everything else when we might be filled with Divine Love, with Grace?

In Matthew 28:3 we read,

As Mary Magdalene stepped into Divine Presence at dawn that Sunday, she learned what she already knew. We might say that the revelation of Jesus' Divine Identity, reserved for the few at the summit of Mount Hermon, was not a revelation but rather a refocusing and a reminding. This is the Divine is knowledge everyone born into the world knows, inscribed on our minds, inscribed on our souls, inscribed on our hearts (Heb 10:6).

as we read over and over in the Eighteenth Kathisma this past week.

Atop Mt. Hermon, three of the Twelve had already seen this Divine Presence, this Identity, this blinding Light, which brought them to their knees:

As St. John the Divine has shared, this will be the Lord's appearance at the end of the age:

All humans know this, for in these glimpses of the Divine, we behold the fullness of ourselves, figured forth in the God-man. Who does not know his or her own image in a mirror — a living and undying union with God (we pray)? Were not these things true all along and eternally? Did not all who encountered Jesus know this? When He raised the son of the widow of Nain from the dead? When He raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead? When He raised Lazarus? Did not everyone already know this? Were His Divine Identity and Power not revealed? Did not the Uncreated Light, which is Life, always already emanate from His person? If you but touched the hem of his garment your incurable illness would be healed, which had drained you for more than decade. Were we not born with this knowledge of God already inscribed upon our souls?

Surely in 2022 we can all agree that life after death is no revelation. In fact, all people in every age in every civilization have known of life after death. The ancient Egyptians made elaborate preparations for the afterlife. The ancient Mesopotamians envisioned a "Great Below." The ancient Romans placed a coin in the mouth of the dead, so they would have the fare to cross the River Styx. The classical world envisioned a Hades having three parts — for the noble and virtuous, for people leading lukewarm lives, and then a deep pit, as far below earth as earth is from Heaven, where people who habituated evil thoughts day after day suffer. Aboriginal peoples all over the world have committed their belief to an afterlife. And why wouldn't they? You see, these people who were all and severally isolated from all civilization committed their belief to an afterlife? And why not? Is it not so?

In our time, life after death has become a matter of scientific fact, even a sub-field of Western medicine. People in all cultures, everywhere, for all time, have had "after death" or "near death" experiences. But in our time CPR has made this commonplace. An estimated nine million people in the U.S. alone have given sound testimony concerning these experiences. What immediately stood out in these reports was that "gold standard" test of forensic science: consistency among witnesse who do not know each other. The reports were consistent: the brilliant light, the feeling of serenity and absolute security. In 1973 I had the privilege of hearing a personal account told me by an uneducated man whom I helped out on Saturday afternoons during my college years in Upstate New York dairy country. He described the room, the window, the door, the corridor, the white light that enveloped him, and the sheer joy he felt. What he told me coincided perfectly with the first published accounts of Near Death Experiences, which were later to appear in our culture .... not that he could read. And he had no television.

Recently reported in the media, a man unexpectedly died during a brain scan revealing what we already knew. For the regions of his brain that suddenly became active called up the scenes of the past. Truly, his entire life passed before his eyes, which is the essence of judgment.

Roughly 17% of those having Near Death Experiences have reported being enveloped by this kindly white light (Holden, Greyson, Jame, eds., The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation, 2009). But this we already knew, for the Lord Jesus has told us that few will advance through the narrow gate. Seventeen percent. 83% have not, for they did not will this to be so. A greatest truth of our faith is that 100% can enter through the narrow gate .... if only they would.

In a remarkable course I took as a student at Yale — "On Death and Dying" (offered by the School of Nursing to all students across the University), I watched people die (by their consent) through a hidden camera and microphone. The students watched and heard a kindly woman being received into Blessedness. We also watched a man being dragged off to Hell .... terrified and screaming.

Later I sought out a doctor at Yale-New Haven Medical Center who helped to develop this course. I asked her whether this man's character and manner of life might explain his particular departure. She signaled to me that, yes, there was a connection. It turned out he was an Evangelical pastor who had committed his entire faith to three words: "Jesus is Lord." I thought to myself, "Who professes that 'Jesus is Lord' more devoutly than the demons depicted in the Gospels?"

Among hospice professionals life-after-death is a primary fact of life. We are taught to "get out of the way" when visitors from the greater life begin to appear in the room of the dying patient. And I did get out of the way watching in silence as people made their departure in the company of those whom they loved and who loved them. Do you know the saying that love is stronger than death?

"But what of pain?" people will ask. C. S. Lewis has written,

.... to rouse the 83%.

Is life after death not a natural expectation to name one aspect of the Divine .... if we would but quiet our fears. For it is only through aiding and abetting the passions, in particular terror, which disfigures our minds, holding us captive in the dark caves of our own fearfulness. Is it not a greatest irony of Christian life that death should be deplored?

Visiting the hospital rooms of the dying, I can hear God saying, "Turn off the television. Stop staring at your phone. Tell your hospital guests that you need time to be alone." And I suppose every hospital chaplain wonders what people could be thinking as they strike up the band and seek to stir up a family=reunion atmosphere in the room of a dying person. How grotesque!

What is worse, though, is the bitterness, disaffection, even rage voiced by loved ones on this most important day, here on the threshold of joy. Worse yet are the dying who ardently petition for chemo-therapy and other extreme measures to scratch out a few more weeks or months. Does not this paradox capture our whole situation in a material world professing Christianity?

If it is judgment we fear, then we must embrace a primary truth here and now. We are the ultimate deciders in our final judgment. For we have decided the manner of our lives and our ultimate destination from the beginning. In his landmark work, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Vladimir Lossky wrote,

Is this not our own experience? As boys and girls did we not go out into the world seeking friendship, loving goodness, and being revulsed at unfairness or anything that was not right? Is not this the spirit of youth? Why would we ever defect from this beautiful world of lightness-of-being and goodness? Why?!

Lossky writes,

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As we observe this most solemn time in our yearly round of prayers and life, we commemorate, not the death of our Lord Jesus Christ nor His resurrection. For those who loved Him knew Him to be One with the Father as He had said. For them the resurrection was organically united to His Divine Identity. Peter and John and James had already seen Him standing among the deathless ones, Elijah and Moses. They had heard the Father's voice, "This is my Son! Hear Him!"

As the Greek Fathers have taught, Jesus did not have to go to the Cross in order to redeem the world. He had done this through His birth and life. And we must never forget that His passion began at His birth, for it was here and for thirty-three more years, He constantly emptied Himself of His Divine glory in order to live as one of us — which the Fathers term κένωσισ / kénosis, or "self-emptying," a word borrowed from St. Paul's letter to the Church at Philippi (Phil 2:5-8). St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote that the entirety of God's economy "consists in the self-emptying and abasement of the Son of God" (PG, t. 75, 1308, 1332, cited from Lossky, 144). The entirely of God's whole household, His Providence, "consists in the self-emptying and abasement of the Son of God." Wow.

Lossky writes that, "The κένωσισ is the mode of existence of the Divine Person who was sent into the world" (145). In St. Maximus' conception (PG t. 91, 1044), "The earthly life of Christ was a continual humiliation" (Lossky, 148). In this, we grasp Jesus' identity with Isaiah's Man of Constant Sorrows.

And perhaps in our egotism and selfishness, we fail to own what we already know to be true: that for God to be always present to us is humiliation to Him.

What exactly is our religious observance during this most holy season? It is to reverence and remember that God came into the world to show us and to teach us this only-true expression of self-giving and love. He emptied Himself to live as one of us and then taught us to follow Him: to empty ourselves (Mk 10:21), to seek to be the servant of all (Mk 9:35), to strive to be, not first, but last. On the night He was betrayed, He went out into the night to offer Himself as a ransom for many (Mk 10:45). For no greater love hath any man than this (Jn 15:13).

The whole ancient world knew of such love. The Roman senator Cicero extolled it in his writings as the highest form of human love (e.g., De amicitita). It was venerated by the Gentiles in the form of a story concerning two young men of Syracuse: Damon and Pythias. Later, St. Luke would comment that the Pauline missions sailed under the banner of those "twins" from Syracuse (Acts 28:11-12) — twins in loyalty and faithfulness to each other.

Yes, Jesus did not need to go to the Cross. His Divine Person touching the Creation at His conception had already redeemed the world to its roots (e.g., St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione). He then poured Himself out reminding us who we are — children of God — reminding us of our true home — the Kingdom of God. He came to gather the lost and then to teach us a vocation of love: love for God and love for each other, which is the royal insignia by which we are known.

If people do not already know that we belong to Him in the manner of lives, there is a precious occasion for examination of conscience.

It is this love which is the crux and burning point of the story of God and His beloved world. For the world, loving creaturely life more than the Creator, became the implacable enemy of God — the domain all who hate Him, coming to full stature in the person of the evil one and all demons, pan-demonium.

The question is put to each of us. Which will we choose: creaturely life or the love of God, which must always be expressed in self-sacrifice and love for one another. For this is the measure of God's own love. Will we set aside our egos, our opinions, our self-love and biases and impulses? Or will we hunker down in our separate little kingdoms, ignoring God's call upon our lives and the hurting world that surrounds us.

This depraved indifference is most vividly displayed in the cities of Cain, where the vast majority suffer horribly as the few go about spending thousands of dollars each night in the living of their "city life."

Jesus did not have to die on a Cross. This is the overaching and most painful fact of Good Friday. And the saying is true: "I crucified Thee." Whereas Pythias was wrongly accused of treachery, the charges against us cannot be denied.

Yet the Lord would offer Himself as a ransom, with the gift of His most pure Life, a Life already self-emptied of its Heavenly glory. He offered Himself for us even as Damon had offered himself for Pythias. He offered Himself for us even as Pythias had offered himself for Damon. But who will step forward to offer themselves in place of Jesus? Peter denied that he ever knew the man. The others Disciples have all fled .... save the women and the Beloved Disciple.

The great irony comes as Pontius Pilate (a proxy for Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse in the Damon and Pythias story) speaks. Pilate speaks: no ransom will be required to save Jesus from execution. No ransom. Will you accept this offer?! His cruel death upon a Cross was not Pilate's sentence upon Him but rather our own. "Do you not want your king?" Pilate asks in astonishment .... only to hear the reply, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" (Lu 23:21).

Oh, yes, the charges of treason and treachery leveled against us are not false accusations. Let us cease debating who killed Jesus as we cast about for a scapegoat! It is the Jews! It is the Romans! .... But it is we who have killed Him. God's people have killed their God. This is the great sorrow of Good Friday: the basest collapse of love in human history set along side the highest triumph of love for all time. Here is your Damon-for-Pythias exchange!

Some theologians will argue that Jesus must die in order for us to have eternal life, for He blazes our path, a human path, through a historically impassable terrain, from death to eternal life. If we accept that, then I reply that the God-man would have died eventually. And His death and resurrection at that time would have revealed His Divine nature to an unbelieving world .... in due time.

Do the Sisters need Jesus to die to know that He is God? I don't think so. Does anyone who loves Jesus require His death to prove His Divine Identity? Is not this meanest example of the demand that He perform a miracle?

St. John the Theologian has taught that Jesus chose this death on a Cross (Jn 3:14) knowing the treachery of our hearts, understanding that no one would raise a hand to help Him (Mk 14:30), even that the crowd would cry out for His crucifixion. The text says everyone (Lu 24:7). And in this magnificent act of self-sacricing love, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah pours Himself out, empties Himself, one last time, as a royal signature of His love written across human history until the end of the age. This is our great privilege each year to venerate this gift.

He will say, surveying the great canvas of His love for the world, like the Artist He is, "It is done. It is finished."

Yet .... one last act remains. One final masterpiece awaits completion, one last strand of God's oeconomia, which must set all in due proportion. He will descend through the foul and benighted mists of the House of Death. For in His great love He has already said, "I have lost not one."

And we see His distant approach, who dwell in the hateful nether regions of the kosmos. He comes. He comes in His Father love. He comes in His Brother love. He comes in His Savior love. None might resist His approach. For His Love is Life Itself — not creature life but Uncreated Life. And death can do no more than participate in the revealing of our Lord God: Jesus Christ.

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