Plato famously wrote,
| No one is more hated than the one who speaks the truth. |
What shall we say then about the One Who is the Truth .... and the Way and the Life? Shall a "triple hatred" be heaped upon His Sacred Head?
Let us listen closely to the words of the Prophet, for he touches an essence of the Incarnate God: ".... spoken against." Leaders among the Jews in Rome informed St. Paul, that the Jesus movement "is spoken against everywhere" (Acts 28:22).
God sent His Son into the world to call men away from ungodly life:
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.... ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God
and our Lord Jesus Christ .... having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh .... dreamers [who] defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of the glorious ones .... ungodly sinners [who] have spoken against Him. (Jude 9:4-14) |
How do you deny God? By "sexual immorality and going after strange flesh." We heard this in our Epistle lesson this past Sunday. How do you deny God? Through fornication, chiefly.
You, my brothers and sisters, also are spoken against. We at the Hermitage are spoken against. People decline our produce, for we are spoken against. To love the Lord Jesus is to be spoken against. He warned us all that this would be so:
|
"If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you ....
they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father .... But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, 'They hated Me without a cause.'" (Jn 15:24-25) |
The world hates God "without a cause" in the sense that a child hates the mother or father who corrects him.
The Lord Jesus set aside His Heavenly glory and entered the horrible confines of our narrow humanity in order to exemplify godly life, for we had defaced the Image in which He made us (wrote the Fathers). But the world, so in love with disfigurement, so enamored of the perverse and the depraved, did not want godly life.
Have you ever tried to lead someone out of the bebasement of alcoholism? All they want is a drink? Have you ever tried to guide someone away from pornography and other forms of sexual addition? All they can think of sex. This is all they want. They will sacrifice anything for it!
They did not want godly life. The angels entered Sodom and Gomorrah to guide people away, but no one wished to go away. Lot's wife looked back .... with longing, we might say. They did not want godly life, and they do not want it today. So God and every one of His friends will be spoken against.
The Evangelion we use at the Hermitage, translated by Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, Colorado), renders the key phrase as "a sign of contradiction." Jesus is the archetypal sign of contradiction. He is the highest expression of all that is good and right and, by that measure, will be the object of the world's greatest contempt and scorn unto the ages of ages.
This is the paradox of conversion. For to see goodness, to gain a glimpse of holiness, we must, at least to some small extent, be good and be holy. To be stirred to inspiration, we must have a basis for goodness and holiness .... which we born with.
Consider the angels sent to guide Lot and his family, in particular, out of Sodom. They are radiant in their holiness. But the men of Sodom can only see fleshly beauty, inspiring no more than a plan to rape them. The angels, too, are a sign of contradiction.
To those with ears to hear, a single word or two is sufficient to convert the waiting heart. Two men, famously men of few words, appeared among us uttering one word: Metanoeite! And the people believed and turned around and washed away the vile lives they had lived and the filthy things they had done. The baptism of John, St. Peter reported, was like a second flood of Noah sweeping over the whole Levant.
Jesus inaugurated His ministry with the same, solitary word: Metanoeite! (Mk 1:15). This word effected not merely a tsunami engulfing the entire eastern Mediterranean shore but a conflagration spreading over the entire globe — purifying, illuminating, burning down whole worlds of deadly error. Purged of desire!
This is what the Holy Spirit does. He will purge you of desire. And the filthy things you had longed for have suddenly become repugnant to you. This is the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Simeon's own words are dense with meaning:
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"Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising
of many .... and for a sign which will be spoken against." (Lu 2:34) |
The Greek word Simeon uttered was αντιλεγόμενον / antilegomenon:
| anti — legomonon |
which means, "against speaking," literally,
| contra — diction |
Nearly all English translations, which render this as "will be spoken against," suggest Jesus becoming a "byword," that people will "speak unkindly" about Him. But the word means primarily flat contradiction. Have you heard the flinty rebuke of Jesus sprinkled throughout the Gospels? Flat contradiction.
As St. John declares in his Prologue, the world has opposed the Advent of God. But to contradict God is to bring upon oneself Divine Judgment, literally the final contradiction: the "last word."
This is the big picture from the sweep of history. But let us return to the Temple where St. Simeon holds the Child Jesus. Beside him sits the prophetess Anna, who looks on in surmise. His Mother and stepfather have brought Jesus to honor an imperative taught by God:
| "Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord." (Lu 2:23) |
Through the faithfulness of His earthly parents, Jesus will enter a covenant with God. This Presentation is not merely to mark Jesus as God's own; it is an everlasting pledge of holiness. He shall "be called holy."
Holiness is a deep word demanding more than speaking in a breathless tone or walking with a certain graceful motion or holding a certain gaze when speaking to others.
In seminary I heard a story about a revered Episcopal priest whose disciples sat around him just to watch him eating peas. This, I was told, was an inspiring moment for the young men. But I thought in my heart, this is not holiness.
Holiness involves the entire heart, soul, mind, and body. We call this blessed harmony among all parts integrity. It means that every part of you fits with every other part. There are no odd pieces. There is one noble whole. We use the phrase "made whole" to signify this, or the single word wholesome. Wholesome is a "Christ word," for in Him is no darkness at all.
The antonyms of integral are fragmented, disjointed, incoherent, unwholesome, contradictory, unholy. To lose integrity is to live a "double life," to harbor a "secret life" .... which, in our brokenness we mistakenly associate with freedom.
Pop Christianity teaches that Jesus has "saved the world," that to participate in this, we need only "believe" and "be saved." But salvation (sotería) means to "remove the debris from our our paths," "to clear out the clutter." The path it templates is the journey to the Kingdom of Heaven. And what is this clutter? St. Jude mentions the cities of Cain. But more common clutter includes complacency, self-indulgence, an inclination grant ourselves secret permissions, and a dismissal (now widely seen) of God's morality as being out-of-date.
Today in the Temple, the Holy One has appeared before two prophets.
They can see and feel, even breathe in, His pure and sacred character.
He is Holiness Itself.
And they know
that for this cause
His every glance, His every gesture, His every word will be a Sign of Contradiction .... to a lost world.
How could it be otherwise?
The world is the implacable enemy of God.
Jesus has said,
| "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword." (Mt 10:34) |
| "I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! .... Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." (Lu 12:49-53) |
As for the ones who are with Him, who wish to follow Him faithfully, they also will be contradicted.
The question Jesus poses to the world is this:
| "Who do you say that I AM?" |
Our answer begins the journey. Are we with Him or not? The matter is cold or hot, black or white. We stand at the decisive crossroads of our lives in answering this question.
So let our words also be few. Let us be circumspect. Jesus would teach us to hold our peace:
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"But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay:
for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." (Mt 5:37) |
Let our reply be brief,
and
our lives be simple.
For in this we shall have less mischief.
Let us say to Him,
"You are the Only-begotten Son of the Living God."
And to all His other teachings,
let our reply be
"Yes."
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.