Sunday of the Forefathers 2022

Peter H. Davids

Byzantine Catholic Homilies • Sermon • Submitted a year ago

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Paul teaches that our identity is in Christ and deification is our goal, but as in the story of the banquet people find their identities in nation or class or economic well being or sexuality, etc. And accept community destroying values. This makes "Christian" just another addition to our identity. we, rather, are called to resist the world's identities and calling out "Lord have mercy" be changed into Christ who is our life, so we end up at the banquet rather than among those who never get a taste.

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Ambon Prayer 49

Our Venerable Father Daniel the Stylite

Title

Christ who is our life

Outline

We like to use Christian commitment as one more characteristic

So one might say, I am an American, middle-class, who believes in free enterprise. And I am a Byzantine Catholic Christian. Another may be another class or type of American or perhaps want to hyphen the American with Afro-American or Native-American. The point is that we tend to find our identity in country, culture, sexuality, profession or economic status. We tend to make our commitment to Christ just one more or even a supporting characteristic.

In other words, we are like those Jesus described as invited to a banquet

They felt that their citizenship (we might say, baptism, for them circumcision and pedigree) and status entitled them to a place at a banquet - if they found it convenient. But their real values were commercial (field and oxen) or social-sexual (wife). They could ignore or insult their host as if he were an equal by preferring their business and values to his.

Jesus, of course, points out that the tables would be filled, but with those with no social standing or rights or even citizenship (those in the highways and hedges, interpreted as gentiles).

This is worked out theologically by Paul

When we commit to Christ and are baptized we receive a new identity: that of “Christ who is our life” or to put it another way “Christ is all, and in all.” Another way to put it is that we are “in Christ” or “adopted” or “born again” (but that is 1 Peter) or “divinization”/ “partakers in the divine nature.” That is our true identity.

Thus, while we live in a culture and should surely love all in that culture as God loves all, we should not share their identities or foci: “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness.” All that is past, and that sort of thing will bring divine destruction on our culture.

That means that community destructive values, which are incompatible with the divine family must be rejected: “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his practices.”

Instead, we seek to learn about our Creator and become like him: “put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator.” There is divinization as a process.

Friends, let us realize that this is a process

We are fasting and waiting for the Nativity of Jesus, which also points to his consummation of the process.

The whole world around us wants to make itself ultimate (whether America as God’s country or a Christian nation or Holy Mother Russia); it wants to tell us that our identity lies, not in becoming like Jesus, but in our economic status, in pleasure, in our sexuality, in our power, in our honor status or in simply having more.

It is a deep repentance and even then a struggle to keep focused on our “renewal in knowledge after the image of our Creator.” The demons actively discourage it and try to get us to justify “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk” among other things that are incompatible with our true identity. That is why we call on God as often as we do with “Lord, have mercy.”

So let us fix our eyes on the right model, that of “Christ who is our life,” be determined to pay the this-age cost of being transformed into his likeness, and daily call on him for the mercy needed to do so.

We want to take our places at the table in the kingdom, rather than end up among those who seemed to have had it made but who will “never taste of [his] banquet.”

Readings

Byzantine Lectionary (Revised Julian) 12-11-2022: Sunday of the Forefathers or Twenty-Eight Sunday after Pentecost

EPISTLE

Colossians 3:4–11

4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you once walked, when you lived in them. 8 But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his practices 10 and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator. 11 Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.

Byzantine Lectionary (Revised Julian) 12-11-2022: Sunday of the Forefathers or Twenty-Eight Sunday after Pentecost

GOSPEL

Luke 14:16–24

16 But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet, and invited many; 17 and at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for all is now ready.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it; please, have me excused.’ 19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them; please, have me excused.’ 20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the servant came and reported this to his master. Then the householder in anger said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges, and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’ ”

Notes

Byzantine Lectionary (Revised Julian) 12-11-2022: Sunday of the Forefathers or Twenty-Eight Sunday after Pentecost

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2022 | NATIVITY OF OUR LORD

Byzantine Lectionary (Revised Julian) 12-11-2022: Sunday of the Forefathers or Twenty-Eight Sunday after Pentecost

SUNDAY OF THE FOREFATHERS OR TWENTY-EIGHT SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Dark Vestments

Matins Gospel Luke 24:1–12 (26th Sunday)

Epistle Colossians 3:4–11

Gospel Luke 14:16–24

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