No Greater Treasure than the Soul

Sermon Sunday March 12, 2023
Mark 2: 1 – 12.
Sins are forgiven: A Paralytic
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
You have heard that sin is humanity’s disconnect from God. In ancient Greece, the philosophers saw God as a distant “prime mover” who winds up His created “toy” to set the cosmos operating autonomously. Medieval Latin theology internalised this view, while superficially keeping the Bible narrative, and eventually it passed it on to the emerging European scientific thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. St Gregory Palamas, whom we celebrate today, objected to this separation between us and God. The faith and life of the church has always been about a unified heaven and earth, soul, and body. This connection is facilitated by the energies of God, according to St Gregory. The coming of God in the flesh, in Christ, is the beginning not only of the restoration of the beauty that was there before, but a beginning of God’s transformation of the universe. A preview of this transformation was shown to the three apostles on Mt Tabor – the Holy Transfiguration.
 
Today’s Gospel story about the healing of the paralytic shows that forgiveness of sin is not something that happens in isolation and invisibly in the soul. Forgiveness like that would be shallow, legalistic, and moralistic, something like a parking ticket being torn up. It would not mean much. But sin is a disconnect from the source of life and that affects the whole person, soul, and body. This is the meaning of today’s Gospel story about the paralysed man. Christ’s forgiveness opens the soul to God’s life-giving energies. These energies then flood the body through the soul. The body is restored, the body is raised from its paralysis. Sinful humanity, and that often means us Christians as well, does not want God to be close by. It is more comfortable with a distant or even a non-existing divinity. A dead God! But Church life is about Christ in our midst. Every Liturgy there is a kiss of peace. In the earlier centuries this was practised in the body of the church itself but now it is only retained in the sanctuary among the clergy when they come up to each other and say, Christ is in our midst. He is and shall be, is the response.
 
We want Christ to be in our midst, so let us taste and see that the Lord is good, as King David writes in Psalm 33. Then we will not want to avoid Him or keep Him at a comfortable distance where He will not interfere with our much more enjoyable earthly delights! Then we will know from experience that there is no greater joy than that which is given by the light of Christ that enlightens us all.
 
 
Sermon Sunday March 19Mark 8: 34 – 9:1
The Holy Cross
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Why does the Church bring out the Holy Cross on this third Sunday of Lent? It is because Orthodoxy is dead serious about Christ’s words when He states that the soul is worth more than the whole world. There is no greater treasure than the soul. What is the point of gaining the whole world if you are going to lose your soul? For that reason, we must be dead serious about the Lord’s words, and about the level of commitment that is needed to save the soul by following Christ.
 
I will give you some names: Bernard Arnaud, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet. You have heard some of these names and others like them. They have gained the whole world. You know what, we need to learn from them! They can teach us about commitment and energy! A Christian with real commitment to Christ can have a greater influence on the world than any of those men because their achievements are just human achievements. St Paul says, I can do anything with Christ. A dozen fisherman were able to conquer the whole world.  The apostles’ achievement is greater than that of all the rich and powerful of history because they did it through Christ.
 
What does it mean when Christ says that we have to deny ourselves. What is this self? Let me give you an image. The self is a tenacious octopus of passions that clings with its suckers and squeezes our body, soul, and spirit. This is the self that we need to deny. Why do I come up with this image of octopus? An octopus has eight tentacles. Do you know what these tentacles are? Gluttony, fornication, acquisitiveness, anger, sinful sorrow, despondency, vainglory, and pride, as the Holy Fathers list them. Eight of them. Without Christ’s cross, we cannot beat the giant octopus that uses our name. To carry our cross is to take life seriously, to take responsibility for life. It is not to think that Christ has done everything, that there is nothing more we need to do except to accept His achievements on a silver platter. It is to agree to become a warrior of Christ against our own octopus, the octopuses of the world, and their chief who of course is the prince of this world, Satan. Today the Cross is a reminder and an encouragement to us that we can do it with Christ. And we can do more than the world can because Christ said that He has defeated the world. And so, as He said, we should be cheerful because of that, even though the path of the Cross is not without its pain. Yet we can still stay cheerful and rejoice always, as the holy apostle Paul says.
 
Sermon Sunday March 26, 2023
Mark 9:17-31
St John of the Ladder
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today the Lord tells His apostles - and us - that human beings can only be freed from demonic influence through and prayer and fasting. The Church each year, on this fourth Sunday of Lent, remembers St John of the Ladder, who was the abbot of Sinai. He was a great teacher of prayer and fasting in all their many aspects. His book, The Ladder, is an indication of the way to freedom, spiritual freedom; to the Kingdom of God within us. The Desert Fathers’ tradition begins two or three centuries before the time of St John who lived in the second half of the sixth century and his writings reflect much of that spiritual culture. In his book, St John also talks about a phenomenon which was only given a name in later centuries; hesychia. This term speaks about the inner stillness of the soul.
 
While total demonic possession is very rare, the demons are great masters of temptation and provocation. They activate the tentacles of this octopus that I was talking about last Sunday - the eight passions, represented by the eight tentacles. This image describes an individual, but a collective model of these passions is an image of the sea. Patristic writers teach that our spiritual life is the sea of life which is within us and within other people. This sea can be either calm or it can be rough because of the passions. The turbulence of the passions energises the waves of the sea of life. Picture to yourself Peter drowning in the waves. It is a very good example.
 
The Ladder of St John and many other patristic texts, teach us how to not only survive these storms, but to subdue them within us. Collectively the Church can calm the destructive waves in the world around us. I would like to give some Lenten suggestions of what we can do to obtain a measure of peace and stillness within ourselves. These include minimising exposure to the news. Everybody wants to watch the news religiously. What for? You will find out the important things anyway. Why bring this chaotic energy into your soul during Lent? Another suggestion is to minimise excursions of curiosity online. That brings a lot of chaos into the soul. Minimise chaotic energies of worldly passion reaching us through things like loud music, loud and boisterous conversations, even with friends. Also, excessive laughter brought about by food, drink, and chaotic company, which is inappropriate during Lent. There is, after all, such a thing as sensory overload. Psychologists will tell you this. When people come from places without any civilisation and get thrown into somewhere like Manhattan with all the bright lights, they can go mad, literally, because of so much of these chaotic energies. We are also not unaffected. We think we are used to it, but we are not. It still affects us. Sensory overload causes anxiety and depression. You can test it for yourself.
 
On a collective level, here is something for the benefit not just of our inner spiritual life, but for the world. Something to bring peace and calm to the world, especially considering what is happening now in Ukraine with so much bloodshed, cruelty, suffering and destruction. I would like to suggest we set up a system where we will collectively read the Psalter every hour of every day until Easter. If you are interested to take on the commitment of reading one kathisma at a certain time each day let me know.
 
God bless you all, and let us continue Lent creatively, understanding what spiritual life is.
 
Kathisma reading for peace in Ukraine.We are collectively reading the Psalter each day until Holy Wednesday (April 12), to pray for peace in Ukraine. Individuals and families have nominated the hour they will read a kathisma (one portion of the psalter) which takes about fifteen minutes, so that there is continual reading of the psalter over the twenty-four-hour period. Are you interested in participating?
Text Fr Nicholas on 0418 546 911 and nominate a time you can commit to for reading a kathisma each day.