On Matthew 9:1-8 

Aslan always calls us humans “sons of Adam” and “daughters of Eve.” This is true. That is, Adam is a type of the humans we are. I am Adam. When the Lord walks in the garden in the cool of the day and calls out, “Adam, where are you?” it’s you and me that he is looking for (Gen 3:8-9).

As such Adamic humans, we are subject to all manner of affliction. Because, through our father Adam, “sin came into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (Rom 5:12). Affected and weakened by our mortality, we have all fallen into sin and short of the glory of God. We all stand in need of forgiveness. And we are all witness to suffering and death.

Today, one of our fellow suffering sons of Adam – a paralytic – is carried by his faithful friends to Jesus. And Jesus calls this suffering son of Adam, “my son.” So, the son of Adam becomes the son of Christ, who is the new Adam. Jesus says to him, “Take heart, my son” or, “Be of good cheer, my son,” or, “Have courage, my son. Your sins are forgiven.”

Through his father Adam, mortality and paralysis came to the man and in his weakness, he sinned. Through his father Christ, his sins are forgiven, his paralysis healed, and his life promised.

Jesus calls the paralytic man his son, his child, his τέκνον. This word is a term of endearment, an expression of loving fatherly regard. Sometimes there is a whole sermon in one word of the gospel. This word τέκνον is the gospel. When the Son of God calls the son of Adam, “my son,” that’s the gospel. That is God tenderly reaching out to humanity as to his own children and inviting us to reach out to God as to our own father. Jesus is inviting us to a relationship more intimate than that of master and slave, or of teacher and disciple. He lovingly relates to us as a father to his children.

Jesus does not frequently call us his children. Today’s gospel offers us a rare instance of that. Other friendly and familial images prevail. Jesus says that whoever does the will of his Father in heaven is his brother and sister and mother (Matt 12:50). So, we understand ourselves as brothers and sisters of Christ, our fellow human, our fellow son of Adam. He is the Son of God who became the son of Adam, the Son of Man. He is the God who became like one of us, our brother.

We do call him teacher and Lord, and fittingly enough, for that is what he his (John 13:13). He is our brother, but we are not his equals. He is our elder brother, the first born, “born of the Father before all ages,” and the first born of those who have died (Col 1:18). He is above us, of course, and so he is also like a father to us. In fact, his work is the work of the Father (cf. John 5:17). He is about his Father’s business (Luke 2:49). And those who see him, see the Father. He is the image of the Father for us.

Elsewhere, Jesus gives us another parental image of himself, comparing himself to a mother hen. He laments to Jerusalem, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Mat 23:37). With words and images like these, Jesus invites us into a familial relationship.

St. Makarios the Great says, “He who wishes to be a friend of God, and a brother and son of Christ, must do something more than other men, that is, to consecrate heart and mind themselves, and to stretch up his thoughts towards God…. When a man gives God his secret things, that is, his mind and thoughts, not occupying himself elsewhere, nor wandering away, but putting constraint upon himself, then the Lord deems him worthy of mysteries… and gives him heavenly food and spiritual drink.”

Unfortunately, contrary to St. Makarios, we often get caught up in a minimalistic approach to life in Christ. We ask, “What must I do to be saved?” And we mean, what’s the least I can do and still make it to heaven? What kind of restrictions is Christianity going to place on me? What are the minimum requirements of the job of being a Christian? What rules do I have to follow if I am to be a follower of Christ?

Do I have to go to the liturgy every Sunday, or is it alright if I make it just once or twice a month, so long as I don’t miss three Sundays in a row? The Council of Trullo says that’s enough to keep from getting excommunicated, so that’s enough, right? What about feast days? Do I have to go to church on feast days, too? Which ones? Do I have to go on all the great feasts? Or just on those days that Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh has designated as holy days of obligation? What about fasting? Do I have to fast, too? Do I have to keep the full monastic fasting tradition as described in the Typikon or is it enough to just eat fish on Fridays? What about tithing? Do I have to offer a full ten percent, or can I figure the ten percent after the taxes have been taken out, giving the government the first fruits rather than the Church? Or, what if I just put in a five spot? That’s good enough, right?

My brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s not about being good enough. We get caught up sometimes in this. Rules are good and they have their place. They are there for us when we need to fall back on them. But Jesus is inviting us to more than this. Not to less, but to more. He’s calling us to be his children, his brethren, his friends. He loves us as more than slaves, followers, servants, disciples, or students. We are these things, or should be, but he freely and gratuitously loves us more than that. He loves us as his brothers and sisters and mothers, and as his friends. He says to his true disciples, “I no longer call you servants, but friends” (Jn 15.15). And he loves us as his children, saying to those who are faithful, “take heart, my children, your sins are forgiven.”

So let’s not seek what is the least we can do for Christ who has done everything for us – who lives and dies for us. Rather, let’s seek to do the most we can do. Let’s seek to make everything we do to be for Christ.

In terms of our worship, let us everywhere worship God who is everywhere. Let us come often to the church for worship, but let us also worship God everywhere. Pray unceasingly. Make everything we do prayerful. Worship Christ, who is present in the least of his brethren, by serving them wherever they are in the world.

In terms of giving, let’s give all that we can to the parish, yes, but also recognize that all that we have is really the Lord’s – not ten percent, but one hundred percent. Even the money we pay toward our mortgages is for the Lord’s work, if we are living in Christ. Our houses are to be for the building up of the domestic Church. The Church includes and needs the parish, but it is not limited to parish buildings, programs, and operations. It is everywhere. It is where we live and work and play.

What I’m saying is that life in Christ is not to be merely a part of our life, but our whole life. Jesus does not want to walk into our lives like a boss walks into an office and around whom everyone feels the need to look busy. When Jesus comes into our lives, let’s invite him to make himself at home. He gives us the unbearably profound opportunity to be on intimate, friendly, and familial terms with God. So let us practice constantly an awareness of God’s presence in every moment of our lives, in everything that we do, everywhere that we go. Because, Christ wants to be more to us than our master. Not less than our master, but more. He wants to be our friend, our brother, and our father.

Archimandrite Irenei says, “Christianity proclaims, into our broken and disfigured world, promises that defy our expectation – that sin can be forgiven, that the broken can be restored, that the sick can be healed, that the dead can arise. And yet in the midst of so many great and wonderful promises, there is perhaps none greater and none more profound than the promise that the human person, for all his frailty, weakness, rebellion, and apostasy, this human creature may become the friend of the Creator of all; that he may become brother and son to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Sermon on Matt 8:28-9:1 

Two demons meet Jesus and cry out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God?” (Matt 8:29) Now, a demon is an angel that strives to separate itself and others totally from the light, utterly devoid of kindness, grace, truth, and love. In other words, they seek to have nothing whatsoever to do with God or God’s son. And this is the basis of their question. Their malice and the grace of God have nothing in common (Remig.). As Paul observes, there can be no fellowship of light with darkness (2 Cor 6:14).

John teaches us that “God is light and that in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Whereas the sole project of these demonic creatures is to snuff out all the light, if such were possible.

Now, this relationship between the darkness and the light, between good and evil, between presence and absence, between life and death is not a balanced or symmetrical relationship. You can find that idea in other religions, but not in Christianity.

You have probably at some point seen a yin yang. This is a Taoist symbol. A circle divided by an S-shaped line, half black and half white, with a small circle of black in the white and the small circle of white in the black. I’m oversimplifying, but this is meant to show that everything is in balance and that seemingly opposing forces – like darkness and light, life and death, and so on – are actually dependent on each other. This is not the Christian perspective.

Remember, “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” There is no dark circle in the light of God. If we were to draw a similar symbol as Christians, we would put no dark circle in the light segment. However, the opposite is not true. There is indeed a bright circle in the dark segment. That is to say, there is goodness and light in everything that exist. But there is not evil and darkness in everything. There is no evil or darkness in God. Our perspective is asymmetrical. We recognize a dualism between good and evil, but ours is a modified, imbalanced dualism, with the scale tipping very much in favor of the good.

According to Abbot Tryphon, some Gnostics taught “that the entirety of being is made up of two realms which have forever existed together: the kingdom of light, and the kingdom of darkness.” Now someone might say, “Oh, that sounds like heaven and hell.” But this is to misunderstand that relationship totally. We reject this teaching and any notion of equivalence between light and darkness, between life and death, or between God and the evil one.

We do believe there is a devil and that he is indeed a powerful creature. The gospel today tells us of demons and of some of the destructive power that they can wield over human lives. But notice that I call them “creatures.” They are created. They are not uncreated like God. They are not his equals. They are dependent upon him for everything, even for their being, for their very existence. Just as you are and just as I am. We are creatures too.

It is plain in today’s gospel that, although the demons have destructive power, and although they want to have nothing to do with the Son of God, they remain entirely under his authority. They can sense that he is going cast him out and that they therefore will be cast out, and so they beg for permission to enter the swine. They and we can do nothing without the permission of our creator.

He tells them to go into the swine and they do go, driving the whole herd to its death in the waters. They take any opportunity for death and destruction they can get, no matter how petty.

Before I said that there is goodness in everything that exists, and I mean that. But, what about these demons? you may ask. Is there is goodness in them? Well, do they exist?

Let me back up. Evil does not exist in and of itself. It has no essence of its own and it was not created by God. We reject the Gnostic notion of uncreated and eternal evil existing alongside the uncreated good God. Darkness is not a thing that exists, but is only the absence of light. Likewise, cold is the only absence of warmth. And death is only the absence of life. And evil is only the absence of good.

But the opposites are not true. Good is not merely the absence of evil. Evil is a privation, but good is what really is.

For example, you are not your sin. Who you are is good. You are a good image of God. That’s what makes your sin a sin – it goes against who you really are.

An evil cannot exist without a good to deprive, but good has always existed for all eternity before creation and for all eternity yet to come, and it has existed without any evil in it at all. God, who alone is both uncreated and everlasting, is entirely good and in him there is no evil at all.

God created angels, just as he created every creature that exists, and his creation is good. Those angels who choose to use their God-given power destructively, rebelliously, and pridefully we call demons. But inasmuch as the demons continue to exist, there remains some good in them. If there did not, they would cease to exist. The paradox is that without that good of existence, they could do no evil.

It remains an unplumbable mystery as to why God allows evil to exist. There is no answer to that question. But today Jesus gives us the clear example of how to deal with it. Tell it to go.

Let’s do the good we can do. Bring comfort to the afflicted, as Jesus does today to the two men possessed by demons, even at the expense of a herd of pigs. Two human beings are worth more than many pigs, and you are worth more than many sparrows (Matt 10:31). See the value in one another and go to whatever lengths and expense necessary to love another, comfort one another, support one another. This will go a long way in driving out the evil influences in our lives.

And for some additional ammo against the evil ones, remember what Saint Anthony of Egypt said: “The devil is afraid of us when we pray and make sacrifices. He is also afraid when we are humble and good. He is especially afraid when we love Jesus very much. He runs away when we make the Sign of the Cross.”