"There is the Church"

And He went up on the mountain and called to Him
those He Himself wanted. And they came to Him.   (Mt 3:13)

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

To these Twelve men He would reveal the "Kingdom of Heaven" religion — not a faith under the yoke of central control in Jerusalem, where animals were slaughtered to placate an aloof deity, but rather life with God and His angels to be found everywhere under Heaven.

This conception would be opposed by Temple authorities. The ruling Sadducees forbade even mention of angels, much less a Divine world. Meantime, the ancient Kingdom of Heaven religion had been lived by the Patriarchs — Abraham and Sarah, ensconced not by the oppressive slaughterhouse of a Temple but rather worshipping midst a sacred grove of oaks where they received none less than the Holy Trinity. It had been lived by Jacob who saw angels ascending and descending and who wrestled with a Divine figure until dawn, saying

Here was the Kingdom of Heaven religion ..... lived and venerated for many centuries by the those who were not exiled to Babylon, nor return speaking Babylonian language (Aramaic) and practicing strange customs. Theirs was the religion begun in Eden, where man knew God personally and individually and spoke with Him in the cool of the day. This was the spiritual path taught by God Himself, which would be overturned by the powerful Babylonian and Persian Empires imposing their pagan rites upon the client state, Judah.

Hebrews fled Judah to the Hebrew colony of Elephantine abhorring this desecration of holy ground. The built their own Temple, but they could not elude Persian King Cyrus, who demanded that they offer blood sacrifice or be destroyed. Of equal importance to Judah's imperial masters was a civil religion regulating every aspect of public life, where the control would be held in one, central locale. Only in Jerusalem could people approach this god .... and be taxed.

Two utterly different religions living side by side in the Levant — the religion of Judah, called Judah-ism, concentrated in the south and the religion of the Patriarchs anciently present throughout the Hebrew lifeworld.

These two would be contrasted in our longest section of the Book of Acts as St. Stephen preached to the Temple authorities:

He described Father Abraham being called away from precisely the Mesopotamian religion which they now practiced. He would be martyred on account of these words.

What was the charge leveled against him?

And which customs were those? Blood sacrifices appeasing a deity not very different from Marduk.

Jesus and His followers deplored this choke-hold upon the people, this desecration of holy ground. Like the Essenes, a people as numerous as the Pharisees living throughout the Levant, Jesus' followers understood holy sacrifices to have nothing to do with terrorized, bellowing animals, but rather a contrite heart and a humble spirit (Ps 34:18, Ps 51:17, Isa 66:2), a transformation of mind after the pattern of God's own mind and will.

Following the dismemberment of their culture and religion, the tribes of the House of Israel were profoundly scattered and lost, indoctrinated in these so-called customs of Moses, grafted on to the Hebrew Scriptures in Babylon and then later by Ezra in Judah.

They were the lost sheep of Israel sorely in need of a Divine shepherd (Mt 10:6). Nothing less would do. Only the original and ancient would do: the personal and intimate Love of God in their midst. As Isaiah had prophesied, God with us (Isa 7:14).

He would indeed be with us. And before long the good news of a Kingdom of God would be preached. The Church would be founded. The holy sacraments would be given. The near presence of angels would again be seen. The intimacy of God's company, even the touch of God's Own Hand, would be known. And the path of union with God, the consummation of life on earth, theosis, would be renewed.

Which stone blocks and Roman mortar would establish this renewal? After all, synagogues were being built all over the Roman Empire. Would Solomon's Temple be re-constructed enshrining a cult to David and the Patriarchs before him? No, for God had ordained that the Temple, which had been desecrated by idolatry and the forbidden spilling of blood (Gen 9:8-17), would be razed to the ground, never again to be seen.

The Temple that the Lord God ordained would be very different:

This Temple would be built from the holiest blocks and stones God had made, "precious," St. Peter says: God's human creatures, bearing His Image, permanent, imperishable, and growing into the full stature of Christ (Eph 4:13) through personal transformation (Rom 12:2). Yes, the cornerstone of this spiritual House would be God's Own Son, but its pillars would consist of the Twelve men, whom Jesus had called from a mountain top.

Jesus had envisioned a re-gathering of the lost tribes. He anticipated a general acclamation with which God would be received by His people — a glimpse of which we see as He rode triumphantly into David's City. After all, under God's Hand the lame would be healed; good news would be preached to the poor and afflicted; even the dead would be raised. Surely, falling into the hands of the Living God is a fearful thing. And, certainly, God's dwelling among His people as He had in Eden, the revealing of His Divinity on a Mount of Transfiguration, His mighty acts among them .... all would combine to produce a cosmic shock so great as to transform the human lifeworld (Athanasius, De Incarnatione).

In a mystery, God's foreknowledge is perfect, yet He is bound by a restriction He imposes on Himself: the gift of human freedom, of free will, to decide whatever we choose, even the murder of God and the rejection of His Kingdom.

Yes, His own vision was splendid the Twelve Disciples seated upon Twelve Thrones as servant-kings presiding with Divine wisdom over the Twelve Tribes of the house of Israel. Without question, the throne of Judah was anticipated for the the Judean disciple, Judas. But this was not be, refused by the benighted freedom of man.

In response, He would raise up pillars for His spiritual house, the Twelve. And He would do this by endowing them with spiritual nerves and sinews of of His own Body, the Church:

He invests them with the very stuff of our daily life in the Church, which are the sacraments. What then must we say is the chief sacrament as we behold this founding of the Church? It is the indispensable sacrament and the basis for our transformation. It had been foreshadowed by His Forerunner crying Metanoeite! in the wilderness. It had been prophesied by the Psalmist, "'A contrite heart I will not despise!' saith the Lord." It had been disclosed in the most holy oracles of Isaiah. It would be the very first word of His ministry on earth. The chief sacrament would be the indispensable rebirth which alone can be effected through Confession and Absolution. For how else could anyone participate in the heart and purpose of life, which is theosis?

Yes, all of the sacraments would be invested in the living stones of His Apostles. They would be in their own persons the Presence of God among us, even the Church itself. And their children, their successors, as the Apostolic Father St. Ignatius of Antioch would write, would mysteriously continue this Apostolic presence among us:

I say as an aside to my brothers and sisters in the Orthodox Church, this Apostolic Father does not utter this most holy phrase, the Catholic Church, anticipating a schismatic jurisdiction that would not appear for nearly a thousand years. This luminous phrase, which we reverence in sincerity and humility, is none other than Holy Orthodoxy, our own beloved Church.

If the bishop is, in his own person, the embodiment of the Church, then what shall we say about the priest? Actually, there is no distinct order of ministry to be found in the New Testament, no "holy orders" that might be discerned, to account for priests. Bishops? Most certainly! Their ordained helpers, the Deacons? Without a doubt! As for priests, however, no such royal lineage can be found. The priesthood developed as a matter of practicality.

In the early Church, it was only through the hands of Bishop that Christ became present to the people. So each morning at dawn, the Bishop would celebrate the Holy Eucharist, and then He would place particles of the Consecrated Host, called the Fermentum, into the hands of trusted men who then rode off to communities of gathered Christians to receive Christ into their midst. In this, God-with-us was renewed again and again.

So the priest is a particle of the Bishop among God's people. And, in his magnificence, he permits that the priest to receive some share of Apostolic descent etched indelibly on to His character.

It follows that no priest could ever claim to be the medium through which Christ appears to the people. Where the Bishop is there is the Church. We say, "the Church," meaning that so-called vagante, maverick bishops can never be received a being valid. For the Bishop is the acceptable vessel through which the spiritual force and power of God flows out on to the people. For example, the bishop cannot ordain in and of himself. The Church ordains through him.

Our God is a long-suffering God. His almighty Love flows out of Him ceaselessly. As we considered a few days ago,

Here is the poignant Image of our own time. We behold an age that has proposed its own gods and code of life set before our God Whose Love is constant and unsurpassed .... yet rarely requited. Here we also see depicted the Bishop, whose love is also long-suffering and never-failing and who says to his priests,

Among those who have encountered this Truth and this Love, let us give thanks to the Apostles Peter and Paul. For this reason they gave their lives. If you have not awakened to God's Love, then know this: you are awaited and will be welcomed, and you are loved nonetheless. As God has said through His oracle:

The bishop with his priests and deacons stand ready to extend their hand all day long. For their vocation is to receive you into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, whose boundaries on earth describe the Kingdom of Heaven and our only salvation.

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