PUT OFF THE OLD MAN
A SERMON FOR THE 19TH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
INTRODUCTION
Welcome, brothers and sisters, to Sts. Mitrophan and Alopen Church here in the Missionary Diocese of East and Southeast Asia. We rejoice in the love that we have for one another, the unity of our Archdiocese, the leadership of our Presiding Metropolitan, and the humble obedience of so many beloved fathers in the faith, our priests who offer up the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist and their own lives in God’s service.
THE LIFE OF ST. JAMES OF JERUSALEM
This last week we commemorated St. James the Just, called “the Brother of the Lord” (Galatians 1:19), and first Bishop of Jerusalem. Distinguished from St. James the Greater, the son of Zebedee and brother of St. John the Theologian, this James was the son of Cleopas and Mary, kinsfolk of the Blessed Virgin, and was therefore known as “the Lord’s brother” according to the Hebrew idiom for near relation.
St. James the Just was not one of the Twelve Apostles originally called from Galilee, but he was a faithful disciple from the earliest days of Christ’s ministry and became the visible head of the Jerusalem Church after the Resurrection. St. Paul calls him a “pillar” of the Church (Galatians 2:9), and it was he who presided at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), where the Apostles determined that Gentile converts need not bear the yoke of the Mosaic Law. His decision there preserved the unity of the early Church and established the pattern of conciliar authority that would shape Orthodoxy for all time.
A man of deep asceticism and prayer, St. James was famed among the Jews and Christians alike for his holiness. Tradition records that he entered the Temple daily to intercede for the people, and that his knees were hardened like a camel’s from continual prayer. He was called “the Just” for his righteousness, chastity, and lifelong devotion to fasting and intercession.
The Divine Liturgy of St. James, our beloved Church’s patrimonial liturgy, the most ancient Eucharistic rite in continual use, bears his name. This venerable liturgy reflects the primitive worship of the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem and forms the common source from which later Eastern and Western rites descended. Its solemnity, poetic depth, and priestly dignity preserve the spirit of the first Christian generation and the living continuity of the faith once delivered to the saints. The only other liturgy that is equally as ancient is the ancient Mesopotamian Divine Liturgy of Sts. Mari and Addai.
St. James’ legacy lived on through his kinsmen and successors in the East. His line of bishops and presbyters, sons, grandsons and great-grandson, extended through Edessa, Nisibis, and Ctesiphon, linking the Jerusalem Church to the Chaldean and Syriac traditions. When the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was convened in AD 410, the Eastern bishops invoked their continuity from St. James the Just, affirming their full and equal apostolic standing within the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Finally, St. James sealed his testimony with blood. He was cast down from the pinnacle of the Temple by order of the high priest, and as he lay dying, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Thus he became both the first Bishop and one of the first Martyrs of the Church of Jerusalem.
With this great Apostle and Father in our hearts and minds, let us now turn to the Holy Scriptures from this evening’s readings.
SCRIPTURE
THE OLD TESTAMENT LESSON: NUMBERS 16:41-50
41 But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord.
42 And it came to pass, when the congregation was gathered against Moses and against Aaron, that they looked toward the tabernacle of the congregation: and, behold, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord appeared.
43 And Moses and Aaron came before the tabernacle of the congregation.
44 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
45 Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment. And they fell upon their faces.
46 And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the Lord; the plague is begun.
47 And Aaron took as Moses commanded, and ran into the midst of the congregation; and, behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on incense, and made an atonement for the people.
48 And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed.
49 Now they that died in the plague were fourteen thousand and seven hundred, beside them that died about the matter of Korah.
50 And Aaron returned unto Moses unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and the plague was stayed.
THE EPISTLE: EPHESIANS 4:17-32
17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
20 But ye have not so learned Christ;
21 If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:
22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.
26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
27 Neither give place to the devil.
28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
30 And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
THE HOLY GOSPEL: MATTHEW 9:1-8
1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
3 And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.
4 And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?
5 For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?
6 But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.
7 And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitude saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.
SERMON
I will say these things to you now in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
+++
Beloved in Christ, not many days past, I stood once again upon the harbor of Hong Kong, where the mountains meet the sea, and the ancient trade winds carry the ghosts of empires and missionaries long gone. I came there not as a tourist, nor as a diplomat, but as a son of the Ancient and Apostolic Church: bearing within my frail vessel the prayers of you, our people, the long inheritance of our saints, and the longing of a broken world for something unchanging, steadfast, and holy.
There, in short personal conversation with His Holiness +++Mar Awa III, Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, the first Patriarch of the Church of the East to return to China, and it was a great comfort to me. We spoke not of politics nor power, but of faith: the ancient faith of the Apostles, the faith that outlived empires and crossed deserts, the faith of those who refused to bow to innovation or to the flattering seductions of novelty. I shared with him the situation here in East Asia, and the report that we had written on the struggles of Third-World Christianity, on Africa’s rising destiny, on the destructive fragility of Western civilizational Christianity, and on the peril that comes when those calling themselves the Church exchanges her inheritance for modern approval.
As we spoke about the great Schism in the Anglican world, I thought of Ephesus:
“That ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.”
For the Church today stands again before a choice. We may walk in the mind of Christ, or in the vanity of the age; to renew the spirit of her mind, or to decay beneath the deceitful lusts of a world that has forgotten its Creator. As Dean Inge of Sion College said back in 1911 - "If you marry the Spirit of your own generation you will be a widow in the next." We are "called out" as the Church, and "called in" to the service of the Lord. We are "in the world and not of it" (John 17:16).
THE BATTLE OF AARON
In our Old Testament lesson, St. Aaron stood between the dead and the living, censer in hand, and the plague was stayed. The incense rose like prayer over the dying, and was a figure of Christ Himself, who intercedes for a world half-dead in sin. St. Aaron’s courage, his readiness to stand “between the dead and the living,” is the image of the true bishop and priest in our holy patrimony - the one who dares to place himself in the breach when the people murmur against God.
This, my brethren, is the work of the Church today: to stand between the dying world and the living God, with intercession and atonement, with the censer of prayer and the fire of sacrifice. When false teachers promise prosperity, when the ancient moral order collapses, when modern heresies infiltrate the altars: then the true priest must take up Aaron’s censer, not with anger, but with tears, saying, “Lord, stay Thy plague upon Thy people.”
THE FORGIVENESS OF THE PARALYTIC
And in the Gospel, our Lord turns to the man sick of the palsy and says, “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” This word pierces deeper than healing. Before He restores the man’s body, He redeems his soul. Before He commands him to walk, He forgives him.
So too the Church must speak forgiveness before she speaks progress. She must preach repentance before she preaches reform. The Kingdom of God does not come by innovation, but by renewal; by putting off the old man and putting on the new, “which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
HONG KONG AND THE FUTURE OF THE FAITH
As I walked through the narrow streets of Hong Kong, past the teeming markets, the scent of incense and diesel, the neon glow of a world that no longer remembers Christ, and I felt both sorrow and hope. Sorrow, for the old faith has grown faint in many hearts; hope, because the Spirit of God has not ceased to hover over the waters all call new life into existence. God can give life on old bones. God can raise up sons and daughters of Sts. Abraham, Isaac and Israel from these stones. The whitened sepulchers can spring forth with life on the Last Day!
The future of Christianity will not be written in the boardrooms of Europe, nor in the committees of the West, but in the humble churches of Lagos and Kampala, in our thatched chapels in the Philippines, in the hidden monasteries of Iran, Iraq and India. In the secrecy of the Far East. The light will not die… it will move on. The faith once delivered unto the saints will rise again from the dust of forgotten lands.
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW
And yet, Saint Paul’s word is not for nations only: it is for individual souls. “Put off the old man.” We must each examine what in us still clings to corruption: the bitterness, the wrath, the anger, the clamor, the pride. To be an Ancient Orthodox Christian, in truth is not to win arguments, but to let Christ recreate us from within - to be “renewed in the spirit of your mind.”
The greatest heresy is not outside the Church but within our own hearts: the temptation to live without conversion, to pray without repentance, to love without obedience, and to think that we are good and fine because we are a part of something old and venerable, now beyond question and imparting holiness outside of life in Christ! Therefore, our life must be continual repentance, continual renewal, and a putting off of the world, a putting on of Christ. As St. Isaac the Assyrian so famously said, “Life is given for repentance: do not waste it upon any other thing.”
THE TESTIMONY OF ST. HILARION AND THE DESERT HEART
This Sunday we commemorate also St. Hilarion the Great, who fled the world not out of contempt but to rediscover its true beauty in God. Alone in the desert, he fought demons and conquered his own passions. He shows us that holiness is not withdrawal, but transformation; not escape, but engagement with eternity.
In my own heart, far from home and burdened with the weight of ecclesial labor and my own losses, I remembered St. Hilarion. To him the desert was not empty… it was full of angels. He knew he was never alone. And so, the deserts of our own time, which are the spiritual wastelands of modernity, in the storms of distraction and dissolution that are social medias, we may yet blossom if we hold fast to prayer, humility, and love.
THE OLD INCENSE RISING
I remember standing in the old St. Isaac’s monastery in Modesto, California, now long gone, as the censer swung, the smoke rising toward the ceiling like Aaron’s prayer of atonement. I remembered that this is the same fire that burned in Jerusalem, in Edessa, in Rome, in Canterbury, in Nineveh. It has never gone out. It only needs tending. That fire continues in us. Back in 2013, I wrote this poem when standing through the Holy Mystery, the “Raza Qaddishta”, of the Church of the East:
THE SOUND OF THE CENSER
The censer swings
Like the Cosmos rings
Moving before the Face of God
So the censer sings
Burning with a Holy Fire
From outside its compass
Lit by the fire that the Father brings
Glowing red with life in His Breath
And as He moves and swings
It sends up incense in a rich haze
Reflecting His Own glorious blaze
Like the Seraph's wings
Like the Cloud Pillaring
Like the Darkness that hid the Face of Grace
The censer swings
Pointing beyond these fallen things
Marking the Cosmos as the altar for the Lamb
Revealing the Infinite Glory of "I AM THAT I AM"
Let us pray…
COLLECT
O Eternal Father, Lord of all truth and fountain of mercy, who didst send Thy Son to heal both body and soul, and Thy Holy Spirit to renew the face of the earth: Grant us grace, we beseech Thee, to put off the old man with his deceitful lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of our minds; that, like Thy servant Hilarion, we may overcome the passions of the flesh, and like Aaron, stand between the dead and the living; that, being forgiven through the power of Thy Son, we may arise and walk in newness of life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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