Reflections in Christ

It is very easy to miss the story of the floating axe-head.  Indeed, a book containing stories in 2 Kings that I found in a theological library which should have included that story in 2 Kings 6:1-7 completely omits it.  The book comments on the story immediately before the story of the floating axe-head, and the story which immediately follows it,…

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”  These words of Christ, spoken to Thomas and recorded in John 20:29, have often been misunderstood.  Some suggest that Christ was offering a blessing to those who believe in Him without any evidence at all, who accept Him on blind faith.  This is not what Christ meant, for Thomas never…

The first thing one must do before reading a book is to recognize from which library shelf it came—that is, its literary genre. For example, if one is reading a satire one will misunderstand its contents if one takes it for history or politics. (Thus Swift’s A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burden to…

The “Hipster Nativity Set” is (sadly) back in the news.  A year or so ago, some enterprising entrepreneurs created this Nativity set, which includes the traditional figures, but all in a distinctly hipster form.  Joseph has a man-bun and is taking a selfie.  Mary is holding a Starbucks latte in one hand, making a peace sign with the other, and is…

Every Sunday we confess in the Creed that the Church is “one” — that is, we confess the unity of the Church of God.  But what does this confession mean?  In what sense is the Church one?  It cannot mean that the one church is made up of all the various different Christian denominations, for when these words of the Creed were written these…

In the “bad ol’ days” when I was still highly resistant to what I now call “Holy Tradition,” I was keen to sniff out the slightest whiff of idolatrous veneration of the Mother of God — including employing the term used by those poor deluded people (the Catholics)—“the Mother of God.”  (I did not really know back then that the Orthodox…

Every Sunday the Creed is said in Church in which Christians say the words, “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”  It many ways it is an odd thing to say.  In the Creed we confess things that are matters of faith, things contestable, maybe even controversial.  Thus we confess that God the Father Almighty made the heaven and…

“We’re all dying, aren’t we?”  These words could have come from the lips of any thoughtful philosopher from the days of Marcus Aurelius on.  In fact they came from the lips of Marilyn Monroe in the last complete film she ever made, “The Misfits”, finished in November 1961.  There is a certain poignant irony to this, given that one of the…

The importance of John the Baptizer may be gauged by the amount of paint and ink the Church spends on him.  His portrait is painted and is found on every single icon-screen in all the churches, regardless of whether or not he is that church’s patron saint.  And many hymns have been written to celebrate his life.  Much ink is required for these…

Thomas had a heart that had taken one too many beatings.  Despite his often being stigmatized by later generations as “Doubting Thomas,” there is nothing in his past record to indicate such a defect of character.  In John’s account of Christ’s raising of Lazarus, when the Lord said that Lazarus had died and that He was going to enter the…

In the service of Sunday Matins (in Greek Orthros) of the Orthodox Church we find a series of eleven hymns called “the Songs of Light” (Greek exaposteilaria or photagogika), short verses which summarize and describe the content of the Gospel chanted earlier during the service.  Each one of these eleven Gospel readings offers a description of the…

I cannot be the only Orthodox pastor to have been asked occasionally by my people about the meaning of the Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephraim the Syrian. In its (OCA) translation, it reads, “O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience,…

In the old television show “Dragnet,” the announcer began by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.”  I would like to share some of my pastoral experience and begin by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to hear is true.  The names have…

In the opening verses of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah we find the following words:  “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken:  ‘Sons have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against Me.  The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know; My people does not…

Many denominations have no real “minor orders”—i.e. clergy set apart to perform tasks other than ruling the flock and presiding at the celebration of the sacraments.  In these communities, ecclesiastical status is starkly binary—one is either a layman or “the Minister.”  If you are the latter, your function is to perform the entirety of…

When Mary of Nazareth first emerged from her mother as a newborn infant and uttered her first newborn cries, few then present could have had any inkling what that child would mean to human history.  After an extended period of infertility and difficulty in conceiving, of course her parents were delighted—even if the child was a girl and not a…

Try to imagine what the Great Entrance looked like during the time of Chrysostom and of Maximus the Confessor a couple of centuries later.  In that time, while the catechumens were being prayed for and dismissed, and then as the prayers of intercession were offered, deacons exited the church through the north door to enter the little building…

If one read the four Gospels as if they were four separate biographies of Jesus, one might be forgiven for thinking that the Ascension narrated the end of the story.  We have read narratives of Christ’s birth, His baptism, His temptation in the wilderness, His ministry, His crucifixion, His resurrection, and now at the last we come the narrative…

At every Divine Liturgy, after the initial doxology in which the celebrant blesses the Kingdom of God and blesses with the sign of the Cross the altar table and its antimension before using it, the assembled Church prays the Great Litany.  This represents the intercessory prayers of the royal priesthood, wherein the Church prays for the whole world…

Come away with me; let us leave our world and travel back together to the first Palm Sunday in the first century.  Stepping out of our time machine, we see the bright sunshine beating down on us, the dusty road, the jostling, joyful, shouting crowds.  And there, coming down the road from Bethany, with the Mount of Olives towering above on His right,…