ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

God breaks into this world

Sermon preached by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis on Sunday 23 September 2007 at the Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford: Sunday before the Exaltation of the Cross; Afterfeast of the Birth of the Mother of God.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

As the Church’s new year begins we celebrate two great feasts one very soon after the other: the Birth of the Mother of God and the Exaltation of the Cross.  The significance of the nearness of these two feasts very often escapes us. It is obscured because we do not think of this as being the beginning of the year. If we really take the Church’s year seriously, however, we find that they have a very close relationship.

Perhaps we can be helped by the fact that 1 September is now kept by the Orthodox as a feast of God’s creation. We begin the year by celebrating the creation of this world and it is difficult, I think, for us to understand the radical difference between what the Church says, what Christ – and indeed the whole Jewish Tradition – says, and what was said in the ancient world – the Graeco-Roman world. For us this world is a contingent being. It is dependent on God’s will and he creates it. It did not exist for ever, and it will not exist in its present form for ever.

The Birth of the Mother of God, therefore, falls just at this point when we are celebrating the creation of the world. And the Church’s year is actually framed by another great feast in the end of August – the Dormition of the Mother of God. What is quite clear is that Mary encompasses the whole world. This is extremely appropriate in the sense that God has made this world in wisdom: ‘In wisdom hast thou made them all’ (Ps 104 (103): 24). Leaving aside, for the moment, Christ, who is  unique among human beings, we find that Mary appears as the supreme human manifestation of the wisdom of God.

The whole world is by nature filled with God’s wisdom, and it points in its history to Mary and the Incarnation. But against this background, the Resurrection – Holy Week, the Crucifixion, Resurrection – appears as a kind of breaking in of God into the year. Easter is a movable feast. We do not really know, most of us, when it will occur next year. We have to consult a calendar. It moves around. It is unpredictable in some strange way, dependent not upon the sun but upon the moon.

This breaking in is something we also find reflected in the course of the structure of Vespers. Vespers begins with Psalm 104 (103) – the hymn of creation. God has created this world, he has seen it and it is good. Then we move on to the recitation of the Psalter and the Old Testament ideal of the relationship between ourselves and God. Only when we progress to ‘Lord, I have cried unto thee, hear me’, do we begin to talk about the coming of Christ, about the joy of the new life which he brings. Until we recognise not only the goodness of the creation but the reality of the Fall – ‘Lord I have cried unto thee hear me’ – in my distance from thee – do we find salvation breaking into that service.

Where, then, does this second feast fit, that follows so quickly on the Birth of the Mother of God? Immediately we are reminded that our salvation does not take place without pain. This is prophesied by righteous Simeon at the time of Christ’s presentation in the Temple. Speaking to Mary the Mother of God, he says ‘A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also’. But God, in this situation, has broken in to this world – and he breaks in, in order to carry us forward to the end.

In a way this is illustrated even in today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke. We see Jesus walking by the sea. He sees two boats on the shore, chooses one – and it happens to be that of Peter – and asks Peter to pull out so that he can teach the crowds. It will be easier for him to speak and to be heard if he is just slightly out on the water. And then, having finished his teaching, without preparation he says, ‘Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets.’  Simon complains: ‘We have been working here all night and have taken nothing, but nevertheless I will do what you say.’ And their nets are filled with fish to the breaking point. Peter is so struck that he asks Christ to leave him ‘for I am a sinful man’.

What is interesting is that this is enough. The Father’s confirmation of his action in asking Peter to try again, Peter’s awe at what happens and his admission of his own sinfulness enables Christ to say to him in full knowledge, ‘Fear not – from henceforth thou shalt catch men.’ He changes Peter’s life, but that change is marked by these miracles, created, brought about, by God’s witness to his presence among us. In this way God enters Peter’s life, and moves him forward – but he is moved forward to martyrdom and to death.

The point I want to make here is that against the background of creation, against the background of the birth of the Mother of God as the high point of our human existence, against the background of the Fall, God breaks into this world in order to accomplish his purpose. And that purpose is that we all should have eternal life.

That breaking in, however, involves suffering. It involves suffering on the part of Christ. It involves crucifixion. We are not able to predict how or when this will happen, but we are reminded that it will happen by the way Easter breaks into the pattern of the year, by the way that Christ enters the life of St Peter and moves him forward and also by the way that the Feast of the Cross follows so soon after the Birth of the Mother of God.