Hebrews 11:33-42

 

This is the 41st sermon in a series of homilies on the Sunday epistle readings.

 

This passage includes one of the most powerful phrases in the New Testament.

 

After going through a long litany of old testament saints and a description of how many of them suffered for their faith he describes them in this way,

 

 “of whom the world was not worthy.”

 

It is often said that the mission of the church is to produce saints.

 

It is my mission as your pastor to help you become saints so that through your prayers even a poor sinner like me might be saved.

 

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly hostile to the Christian faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us to be in the world but not of the world. How do we do this?

 

Clearly we do not want to be in the world and also of the world. Sadly this has been the situation in our country for at least the last 60 years. Christendom has become very worldly and secular in our country. Even within orthodox circles there has been a tendency to accommodate the world at the expense of godliness.

 

There may have been a time in our culture because of its basic Christian roots that being American and being Orthodox were compatible and both taking us in the right direction.

 

Imagine a large boat going down a wide river surrounded by beautiful scenery,  hills and meadows and farm fields. This is our country moving through history and our church on the boat moving with it. 

 

But now the scenery is less pleasing and the boat is moving faster, we see things breaking down and things on fire. On down the river we hear the roar and see the spray of a waterfall. What do we do?

 

Many see two options:

 

1)We can stay on the boat meekly obeying the commands of the captain and moving on towards the waterfall. In a certain sense that is what the American church has been doing for quite some time with very little resistance.

 

We have let others steer the ship while we have lived our quiet lives going to work every day going to church on Sunday and trying our best to be good Christians.

 

2) We can get off the ship. This is the Benedict option which many of us have studied and explored. The basic idea is to accept that the culture cannot be reclaimed, abandon it, and create our own culture by focusing on building true community centered around our Orthodox faith.

 

I would like to suggest a third option.

 

Imagine that in this river there is a fork. One way leads to the waterfall that we hear roaring and we see spraying down ahead of us. The other way continues on to a more peaceful and wholesome surrounding, more like the course we were on before approaching the waterfall. This brings us to the third option.

 

3) Use every means possible to direct the ship towards safety.

 

How on earth do we do this?

 

Let’s look to the mission statement of our church to find the answer:

 

Holy transfiguration orthodox church

 

Our mission is to experience and share the love of Jesus Christ in a traditional orthodox Christian community growing in godliness.

 

I see in this statement the combination of the Benedict option and the third option that I proposed.

 

In the Benedict option we are called to experience the love of Jesus Christ and to grow in godliness in a traditional orthodox Christian community.

 

But we also say that our mission is to share the love of Jesus Christ. This means we need to offer the same experience to the suffering world around us, and especially our beloved America.

 

I propose that we stay on the ship, build our own community in the midst of it, and with everything that we have determine to steer the ship to safety.

 

How can we do this right here in Hibernia, in Yountsville,  in our small orthodox mission parish?

 

First of all, we need to be keenly serious about being a traditional orthodox Christian community growing in godliness. This is how saints are produced. A majority of the Saints are martyrs. While it is true that many of them are saints because the o