Sermons from June 16 - July 14, 2024

Sermon July 14
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today the church celebrates All Saints of Rus.  This is another opportunity to look at the saints.  Who are they?  After the Lord Jesus Christ had recapitulated (as St Irenaeus says) the human race with himself as the head, as the new Adam, he then sent from the Father the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit enables the unity of the church around Christ.  But there is something else that the Holy Spirit gives:  the gift of true hypostatic personhood in the likeness of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  The term hypostatic is a spiritual term which can be explained like this: the member of Christ’s kingdom acquires and grows in unique personhood instead of being an individual part, an atom of human nature fragmented by sin. The saints are such persons.  
We only know a few thousand by name, but they are just the visible part of the iceberg. Saints enable us to see in their lives the quality of human nature healed by Christ. These are the qualities of virtue mentioned by St Paul in Galatians which he calls the fruits of the spirit; love, joy, peace, long-suffering (which means patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The saints are those people who are Christ’s, and as the great Paul continues, they have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Each saint is a gem, polished by voluntary and involuntary suffering. How this happens depends on the unique person in question and the collective personhood of each national spiritual culture. A good example is in St Nectarios, who was the subject of a film which our youth watched last Friday night, called “The Man of God”.  It was a well-attended, successful night and the film was powerful.  St Nectarios at the deepest level of course is Christ-like, so in spirit he is neither Jew not Greek, as the apostle writes, but in his culture he is Greek.  He is also a unique person through whom we learn about Christ our image.  In each life of a saint, we see the light of Christ that shines in a unique way through the prism of that gem
Recently I have come across words of the British writer, Robert Louis Stevenson who, after working his way through Dostoevsky’s first Christian novel, “Crime and Punishment”, said, I didn’t finish the book, but it almost finished me! I thought that was quite a cute turn of phrase!  The culture of Rus is resignation to the impermanence of civilisation. The experience of Rus was living in the steppes constantly attacked by waves of nomads, thus the acceptance of suffering. In that sense I think that the Nobel prize physicist Andrei Sacharov’s wife, Elena Bonner, said correctly that there are similarities in the histories of Israel – she was Jewish herself – and the Eastern Slavs, Rus.  Nevertheless saints – the Jew, the Greek, the Syrian, the Egyptian, the Persian, the Celt, the Germanic, Anglo-Germanic, the Southern Slavs and finally the Eastern Slavs of today’s celebration teach us about Christ as the perfect image.  The image is in flesh and blood, it is concrete in the uniqueness of person and culture.  The saints, through us, are the builders of Orthodox Christianity here in the new world. 
 
Sermon July 12, St Peter and Paul
By Fr Peter Sheko
Today the holy church celebrates the memory of the holy great apostles Peter and Paul. On this day I usually speak about one or the other of them; this year my focus is on St Paul.  Before I read an excerpt from his epistles to the Romans, I would like to remind you of something that Christ said in his Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7: 1-2:  Judge not that ye be not judged, for with what judgement ye judge ye shall be judged.  And with what measure ye mete it will be measured to you again. 
St Paul continues this theme in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans.  You therefore have no excuse.  You who pass judgement on someone else for at whatever point you judge another you are condemning yourself because you who pass judgement do the same things. Now we know about God’s judgement against those who do such things is based on truth.  In judging others, we take upon the sins of the other person that we judge them for.   We are adding to our own sinful burden.  We have enough already that we are carrying without taking on other people’s sins by judging them! Judgement is so detrimental to our salvation because when we judge we are not capable of seeing ourselves.  We want to shift the focus onto someone else without the need to do any work on ourselves.  In Great Lent we hear the beautiful words of St Ephraim the Syrian: Grant me to see my own transgressions and not judge my brother. How powerful are these words!  God is the only judge, but we are trying to take his place.  
Let us not finish on such a difficult aspect. I would like to bring something more positive from St Paul, Ephesians 4: 32:  Be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other just as Christ God forgave you.  And Romans 12:18:  If it is possible as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everybody. We can only be at peace with everyone else if we are not judging.  Judging puts up a barrier that separates us from God and from the people around us. Let us take counsel from something that Abba Dorotheos in his chapter on not judging others:  God, through the prayers of the person I’m judging, help me not to judge.  This is a very powerful prayer.  Whenever we feel that judgement is getting the better of us, let us try and remember this, that we are asking for God’s help and considering the prayer of the person we are judging to be more worthy than our own.  It has a double supportive effect for us.  Let us turn to the holy apostles Peter and Paul and ask for their help in our struggles with judgement so that we can be living in peace with one another. 
Sermon July 7
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
It is a well-known saying of the Holy Fathers that obedience is above prayer and fasting. The first Gospel reading today was about the calling of the first apostles, the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James, and John who left everything, simply dropped their nets, and followed Jesus Christ.  Christ told them he would make them fishers of men. And today we celebrate the nativity of St John the Baptist. He was born to accept an extraordinary obedience from God, to prepare all of Israel for the coming of the Christ. He becomes the greatest of the prophets.  Prophets spoke and acted in the name of God, in total obedience to God. St John becomes the forerunner of the One Who took upon Himself the greatest obedience from the Father, before the creation of the world.
What is obedience? The modern world no longer understands that word.  Firstly, it is not like in the army or in bootcamp where a soldier receives a command, and he does it mechanically out of fear of punishment if he disobeys.  In the church however, obedience is an expression of the spiritual culture.  It is an expression of love. There is always someone who is the initiator of an obedience and one who accepts the obedience.  If it is a proper and loving understanding of what obedience is, the one who is given the obedience must have the ability to be able to carry it and to not be destroyed spiritually. I remember back in the early 90s when Metropolitan Vitaly came to Australia, he had a great meeting with the youth. He told them, you are going to grow up and have children yourselves.  Know this, that all obedience comes from above, from God.  If you are obedient now to your parents, your children will be obedient to you.  But if you are not, your children will not be obedient to you!
Obedience in the church family and in the family at home is an expression of what theologians call Trinitarian life. There is total equality but at the same time there is initiative that comes from the Father though the Son to the Holy Spirit. When you read the writings of the holy fathers you become aware that they were intensely conscious that sin was and always is caused by disobedience. The podvig, or ascetic effort, of prayer and fasting is meaningless without obedience. It becomes individualism, self-delusion or prelest’ in Slavonic. In the secular world there is plenty of individualism which is even encouraged.  At the same time there is always authoritarianism in the secular world.  While individualism is encouraged, it is always suppressed by someone powerful.  The world is crazy! You are encouraged to be “free” but at the same time there is huge coercion to do what someone wants you to do.  
We Christians should be aware that in the church there is also Catholicity – sobornost’ – which is a mode of life where there are relationships of love in a horizontal manner, adult to adult, but also vertical -parent to child. And it works! It works in the church, but it cannot work in the world. It works because the motivation is different. In the world there are two motives: fear and profit, or reward. Negative and positive reinforcement are the terms that psychologists use.  We must grow sufficiently to understand that while we do need those two motivations, they are temporary. Ultimately, we are called to live the life of love which is mutual obedience, both horizontal and vertical, and which comes from God. 
 
Sermon 30 June 2024
Father Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Last Sunday at the great feast of Pentecost the church completed the first part of the liturgical year in which we learn about what God did for us. We learn about God’s plan of salvation for us. We went through a whole series of feasts and fasts which begin with the preparation for the feast of Christmas, the Advent and then the whole series of other feasts, after Christmas, including the baptism of Christ, the Theophany, the Meeting of the Lord, Annunciation; then Great Lent begins; Palm Sunday, Easter itself; the paschal period and then the Ascension and finally Pentecost which we had last Sunday. This is a massive picture of God’s plan of salvation. Each of these feasts, and the learning period during Lent, speak to us about this. 
Today the Church celebrates the memory of all saints. All saints are humanity’s response to God’s calling to accept His plan for our salvation. Each one of us when we enter the life of the Kingdom, the life of the Church, receives a heavenly friend and a protector, a Saint. We become temples of the holy spirit as we hear in the New Testament. Our temple is dedicated to a saint. Think of it this way, he or she is not only our helper, protector and intercessor but also should be an inspiration for our Christian life.  
In services for the saints, we often hear the phrase ‘your life was according to your name’. Names have a meaning, they are not just nice sounds, so that’s at the level of the saints. For us these names of the saints are filled with much more meaning because each is filled with the wonderful life of that saint. The content of their prayer and ascetic efforts here on earth. Today is a joyous day when we all, as it were, celebrate our names days together. This is an occasion for the contemplation of the phenomenon of the church. 
The bible begins with the words, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’. Today heaven and earth come together, in this joy to praise God. To praise God who is wonderful in his Saints as we hear in the psalms. The saints, our heavenly brothers and sisters, have completed their earthly course, their education, their struggle. We are on our journey to join them. One of the causes of our earthly neuroses is people’s constant vacillation between different goals in life. People do not know what they want. They are not sure what to dedicate their energies to. ‘What should I do tomorrow?’ that is the question that makes people very nervous. The saints through their lives on earth and in heaven radiate peace. The peace that is the opposite of that neurosis, and that peace only Christ can give. As He told his disciples at the mystical super, ‘My peace I give unto you’. That peace comes from aligning our life with Christ’s words, when He says, in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness’. When we make that our goal, everything else will fall into place.  Life will become peaceful, harmonious and without that neurosis about tomorrow. 
Let us maintain that connection with the saints, they are our brothers and sisters, and they are the spiritual nobility of the King of kings. Our connection with them is maintained through private prayer and effort, but especially through the mystical supper. There the holy spirit calls us, as we heard last Sunday, into a unity with Christ. Heaven and earth come together in the kingdom of God, the mystical life of the Church.
Sermon June 23 Pentecost
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
John the Baptist, Forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ, said to the hundreds of people who came to listen to him, I baptize you with water but One Who is mightier than I is coming. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire.  Today at Pentecost Christ sends the Holy Spirit from the Father in tongues of fire. God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Elijah brough the same fire down from heaven to burn his sacrifice. Now it is given to the church, to the people of God, forever. It is mostly invisible, but if you want to see it, go to Jerusalem on Great Saturday in any year and you will see it. God’s uncreated energies can be seen as fire and light.  They make a huge difference to human life, as we hear in the festal troparion, Blessed are thou, O Christ our God, Who has shown the fisherman as supremely wise by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit… Who are these fishermen?  Simple, naïve people.  We read in the Book of Acts that the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews, having brought Peter and John to their tribunal quickly realised that these people were uneducated and yet they spoke with such clarity and force.  This obviously came from the Holy Spirit. The apostles and their words could not be resisted. 
All saints, whom the church celebrates next Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, understood empirically, experientially, the difference between life in the Holy Spirit and life without Him.  The saints put all their efforts into acquiring the Holy Spirit, that fire of God, and then keeping the Holy Spirit.  They were human beings with limitations and had to struggle to keep their focus on acquiring this fire. 
The kontakion of the feast juxtaposes the building of the Tower of Babel with Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit calling all to unity in God. To build a tower of Babel has been a dream of humanistic civilizations or empires since those ancient times in Genesis. Look at the name of the most famous skyscraper in New York City – Empire State Building! We are living in times where many people are confidently working towards the new tower of Babel. There are now tools that earlier generations could not even dream of to help in building this.  At the same time, there are greater and greater problems appearing in the fabric of world politics, economics, physical and mental health, just to name the obvious areas.  More and more people are beginning to understand that humanity cannot solve its problems without God.  Life without the Spirit is a sleepwalk of zombies. There is no meaning, no direction. Those questions are not asked and are not encouraged. But Pentecost to us is a reminder of eternity and purposeful life in the world. Acquire the peaceful spirit and thousands around you shall be saved.  These words of St Seraphim refer to the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost. He lives in the Church; He lives with the people of God. 
 
Sermon June 16 
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The gospel passage that we just heard begins with the ‘Golden Rule’ except the Lord Jesus Christ turns it around. The Golden Rule says ‘do not do unto others as you would not have do unto you’ but Christ says ‘Do those things’, He puts it in the positive, he says it’s not about not about doing bad things but about doing good things; about being an initiator of goodness and love in the world. And this is the beginning of this passage; the key to today’s reading because it is the key to all real Christianity. We should remind ourselves of these words, as often as possible. 
Now, take for instance the life of St Paul, the great Apostle. He was stoned and left for dead. He received 39 lashes 5 times. Can you even imagine what that would be like? Jim Caviezel who during the filming of the ‘Passion of the Christ’, was accidently hit once and he lost consciousness. 
St Paul was shipwrecked and yet his letters are full of joy because a real Christian gives, a real Christian is a shining star that gives with joy from the heart. A real Christian doesn’t moan and groan and whine and whinge and a real Christian begins prayer with praise to the Lord, praising God, thanking God and then, only then, thinking about and asking forgiveness for our sins and then last of all asking for things from God.
Now we often work the other way. When we think of prayer, we think prayer is about asking for things, but a Christian is not a black hole that sucks everything in. A Christian is not a consumer of everything. A Christian is not an emotional vampire, but we often behave like that. Now we want to suck blood out of our neighbours. Christians are children of God; this is what this passage is saying to us. He is our Father and so shouldn’t children behave like the father does. So, this is what the Lord is trying to teach us to give and not to expect anything in return because God gives - He gives to the good, to the bad and to the ugly. 
 The Eucharist teaches us this attitude to life. Think about what this word means: thanksgiving. We’ve come to thank God. This is what we come for but more than that it’s not just about learning. That’s the first part of the liturgy which is coming to an end now with the sermon. The second part of the liturgy/the Eucharist is about receiving the energy from God to be like him. The grace of God so that we give, and we don’t even notice that we give. This is the response of those, the righteous, the sheep in Christ’s picture of the last judgement. They are terribly surprised when he tells them that you’ve done this and done that, ‘What have we done ‘we’ve done nothing, we’ve just been behaving normally’. So that’s Eucharistic life, this is what we absorb here in this holy temple of God, His grace, to become transformed so that we can go out into the world, into our families and not to behave like the people who don’t know Christ.
Brothers and sisters, as St Paul says to Thessalonians ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing and in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Jesus Christ for you’.