November 2024 sermons

Sunday November 3
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
In today’s parable we hear of the rich man and Lazarus which teaches us that material wealth and strength are often a hindrance to spiritual life. If I have limitless opportunities to express my proud and sinful will, then I will not leave much space inside my heart and my life for God. Lazarus, the sufferer, on the contrary shows an image of patience, humility, and growth in love for God that leads him to the bosom of Abraham.
 
Before the gospel today we heard from St Pauls’ second letter to the Corinthians. There he talks about the most amazing revelations that he had had including being transported to the third heaven; whether it was in the body or whether it was an out of body experience, he wasn’t sure. Yet God guarded the spiritual sobriety of His chosen man, His apostle. We have so many stories in the lives of the saints how not a few of them were tempted terribly. It would have been so easy for them to be filled with a false perception of themselves. When we receive God’s gifts, and blessings it is easy to forget where they had come from and instead, we begin to contribute these achievements, facilitated by God’s grace, to ourselves.
 
Moreover, we can forget that we Christians are followers of Christ, and that His method is different to the methods of the world of fallen man. He works through the cross. He is not the God of power, as I have said on countless occasions, not the God of might who will do anything to achieve His ends. He does not work in this way.  The great Paul, as we heard in today’s reading, had to endure a steep learning curve. He had to understand that God does not want to overwhelm or subdue anyone by force. He does it through love, through the cross. His cross and our cross. St Paul was given a cross of which he speaks as a ‘thorn in the flesh’, a messenger of Satan. There are different opinions of what this ‘thorn in the flesh’ was. Some people think it could have been some chronic illness that hindered his work. Others think that he might be referring in a hidden way (so as not to offend people), that he was hindered by people in the church and people outside of the church who were preventing him from projecting the energies of God to spread the word of God triumphantly. It took Paul a lot of blood, sweat and tears, it did not come easy. Paul says that he prayed three times to be relieved of this ‘thorn in the flesh’ and then God told him, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, my strength is made perfect in weakness’.
 
We need to understand these words, they are so important. We need to understand that Christian spirit is not about force. Brothers and Sisters, let us be patient with God and with each other, even though it is so hard. Permanent results can only be achieved if we humble ourselves and give space to God. We can have short term results through the fist, through force but it is not permanent. Let us enable God to enable us. We often want quick results that are supposed to come from these coercive methods, we should not forget the principle expressed in a wonderful book which used to be given as an “ABC to spiritual life” to every novice – “Abba Dorotheus of Gaza”. He expresses a rule, that in every endeavour, to achieve the intended result, is worth 1/8ths of the whole, but to retain peace is (and that means love) the remaining 7/8ths.  We cannot just ignore that; it is a fact of spiritual life. We often throw out the 7/8ths and we want that 1/8th at any cost that the end will justify the means.  No, it does not, not in Christian life. The end does not justify the means. The means are love and the cross. 

---

​November 10
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The level of possession that we see in the Gospel story about the Gadarene demoniac is extreme. This is an illustration of the destructive power of the unseen spirits - the fallen angels. It is an important warning for us. This type of possession, (which did not only happen in the past), shows the real face of the demon. However, the devil does not like showing his real face. His favourite trick is to hide and to promote the idea that he does not exist at all. As a corollary to this, who else doesn’t exist? God of course doesn’t exist! How convenient for those people who want to be atheists. 
For the people who cannot live without the faith, however, he promotes another idea. He appears as “an angel of light” according to St Paul in second Corinthians. He attempts to delude and to trick those people who think they are serving God but in fact  are full of themselves. 
The letter to the Galatians (a passage of which we heard before the Gospel), was written as St Paul’s defence for his validity as an apostle of Christ and the validity of those things he had taught the people before. In his absence a group of Christian zealots of the Old Testament law came and began to undermine St Paul’s authority and his teaching. In addition to the apologetic side to this letter (epistle), St Paul adds instructions about Christian life. A truly magnificent passage from Galatians can be found after the passage that we heard before the Gospel and it is read for the ascetics. We celebrate a great ascetic today, a missionary - St Job of Pochaev. 
Here is this passage: ‘… fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering (i.e., patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you be tempted also. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ’. (Gal.5:22-6:2)
What beautiful words, how much instruction is there for our life! Any person who seriously takes heed of these instructions will not be overwhelmed by the fake ‘angels of light’. These ‘angels’ seek to enslave us individually and collectively by brining chaos into our family life, into our church life and into our community (secular) life. Take especially the last instruction. If we see that someone is misbehaving, we are taught to correct such a person in the spirit of gentleness. We should watch ourselves, as the apostle says. Any one of us can be tempted, there is no guarantee that we will not be tempted. Temptations affect everyone, and if we yield to temptation, we will bring demonic chaos and tensions into our relationships with other people.
Let us indeed make a start by fighting our conceited vainglorious thoughts. Oh, if we could only see how full of ourselves we are! Then we would be more successful in not provoking one another and envying one another as the Apostle writes. Then we would understand that the peace of Christ that comes from that is heaven, while tension and drama is the waiting room of hell. 

---

​Sunday November 17                                                  
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today’s Sunday gospel (Luke 8:41-56) has two miracles. Christ proceeds through a slow-moving crowd, a throng of people pressing him from all sides, and he is heading towards the house of Jairus, the chief of the synagogue, where Jairus’ daughter is on the verge of death. The progress towards the home of Jairus is delayed by an incident with the woman who had the issue of blood for twelve years. Interestingly, the dying girl was twelve years old as well. Twelve is a significant age; remember the story about Christ teaching in the temple at the age of twelve? Twelve is the age when Jewish boys and girls become a member of the law - bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah. The woman and the girl became daughters of the law of the Spirit on that day.
 
In the old ancient church, an Old Testament passage was first read, followed by the gospel and then the epistle. The epistle reading today, Galatians 2:16-20, complements the gospel story.  St Paul writes I have been crucified with Christ it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. The twelve-year-old girl and her parents, went through a crucifixion with Christ, in a manner of speaking.  She was sick and physically died. The parents went through a kind of death themselves, losing their young child. When she was raised, we can only assume that she and her parents lived on with Christ, in Christ.  The woman who was healed shows boldness of faith that transcends the legalism of the pharisees and rabbis. She is ritually unclean and yet she dares to touch Jesus, the Christ, the son of God. The miracle could have happened silently, but the Lord wants people to know what has happened, He asks, ‘Who touched me?’, and He does not give up until she admits it was her.  She is trembling because she is ritually polluted, in the eyes of the law.  Her bold faith is an example of St Paul’s words in the Galatians passage: We are not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. 
 
 
Brother and sisters, if our righteousness does not excel the level of righteousness of the pharisees and it stays at that level, we are in trouble. As Christ says at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter 5, the pharisaic spirit constantly creates idols out of the things of God. For them the sabbath and the law became idols. This is awful! Christ performed so many miracles on the sabbath intentionally to teach against superficial religion which is so full of idols. Many things in the church can be turned into an idol - the music and drama of our service, the beauty of our temples and the rules of the church. We can even turn private prayers and fasting into idols and yet all these things that I just mentioned are beautiful and necessary to help us reach the greater beauty and truth of Christ’s salvation.
 
Today we were given two very important notes from the melody of heaven. Firstly, the image of boldness of faith that is not afraid of ridicule and censure by people, as given in example by the woman with an issue of blood. And secondly, the image of dying and rising with Christ like the young girl, of dying to sin and coming alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

---

​Sunday November 24
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The lawyer in today’s gospel story (Luke 10:25-37) asks a very important question: Teacher, what must I do to have eternal life? In response, The Lord Jesus Christ asks him: What does the law say?  This pharisee had heard Christ’s teaching before.  He knew the importance in Christ’s teaching of love for God and for our neighbour and answers Christ correctly.  But the lawyer then asks:  who is my neighbour? That is a great question, Brothers and Sisters! What the lawyer is really asking is how is it possible to love someone dispassionately, possessively and without expecting anything in return?  The Lord answers him with the moving parable of the Good Samaritan.  The parable answers this question in two ways.  Firstly, by answering “no”, because the law and justice cannot enable us to have compassionate love.  The priest and the Levite, who represent the law, pass by on the other side from the injured and dying man because the law is helpless and can do nothing.  The second answer is “yes”, the Good Samaritan, who is Christ Himself, gives an example to us of what we should do. But we can only do it when we ourselves are healed.  The Good Samaritan takes the wounded man to the inn, which represents the church.  The church is a hospital for all of us.  The wounded man represents all of humanity beaten up by the demonic powers when humanity departs from God in sin.  After the Lord finished the parable, he told the lawyer to go and do likewise, do what the good Samaritan did. 
 
Today’s epistle in Galatians, chapter 6, fortifies the message of the gospel.  St Paul speaks of the impotence of those who think that externals of the law can save us. They cannot. St Paul writes:  But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of the Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.  What does that mean? It means that when we truly accept the cross, as a gradual dying to this sinful person within us, we will rise with Christ to a life when it does become possible to love people dispassionately, unpossessively and in a non-mercantile way, expecting nothing in return. The life in Christ is a challenge, Brothers and Sisters! It is a challenge to defeat the demons of animosity and hatred that beat all of us up through other people, just as we beat up other people when we are energised by these destructive passions.  We hear St Paul say today in Galatians:  I bear in my body the marks of Lord Jesus.  I remind you that St Paul was stoned and left for dead, and five times he received 39 lashes.  As I have previously mentioned, in filming The Passion of the Christ, Jim Caviezel accidentally received just one lash, and he lost consciousness.  For St Paul to receive 39 lashes five times is beyond belief! St Paul saw so much animosity and hatred towards himself, but he won with love, with Christ’s love.  He was healed body and soul by Christ to carry on with his amazing work. Should we not also look towards the saints to learn to have some patience with God and with our neighbour, with each other?