20th Sunday after Pentecost; Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

I think everyone understands that we've moved the sermon to the end of the Liturgy in order to accommodate Church school. And so here we are. Today I would like to, I think, share some personal experience and some of my heartfelt convictions about our Holy Church. And actually what I'm going to do is I am going to describe our church. And we all worship in it—it's an amazing thing—but, you know, it's amazing how you can be very familiar with something but not really understand what it means. And I think I'll read a quick passage from the Gospel of St. John because this gospel permeates, empowers, and fills all of what we do and say. And it is from John 1:1.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. That was the true light, which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

By the Holy Spirit of God. And just for example, the shape of our church—it's really quite interesting because in the Old Testament there was what they call the holy place, the portico, the holy place, and the Holy of Holies. And people would be in the portico, and then others would be in the holy place, those who were part of the rabbinic tradition. And then the Holy of Holies is where the Ark of the Covenant was—the law, the Law of Moses, and the eternal flame. And so our church has the holy place and the Holy of Holies. And it's very important, I think, to understand that because our faith, our Christianity, is not a break with the past. It's not a break with the past of the Old Testament. It's a fulfillment of the Old Testament, and it's a fulfillment of all of the things that went before.

So we have the shape of the temple, and as you notice, there's a table in the center, and this is what we call the holy altar, and that would replicate the altar that was in the Old Testament temple. And we have little fans with cherubim on it behind it, which is a remembrance of the Old Testament also. And but what happens is through the prayers of the faithful and the prayers that are said by the holy priesthood, the bread and wine become consecrated and transformed. And this goes back, of course, to the teachings of our Savior who says, "Take, eat, this is My body," and "This is My blood," and He gives them bread and wine to receive. And so He instituted this sacrifice. And what's amazing about it is this: that we as a congregation gathered in this place are standing, particularly during the Divine Service, in the presence of God, truly in the presence of God. And He is here to sanctify us. So in that case, everything that we do is sanctified. When we read the Psalms, it's sanctified. When we read the Epistle, it's filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit. When we read the Gospel, it's again filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit, and it's incredibly powerful, and it has the power to transform our hearts and our minds, and to sanctify us, to make us new people.

And many years ago, Matushka and I had the joy to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. And it was really amazing because you're at the place first where Christ was crucified, where He was anointed, and where He was buried. And what happened is St. Helena, the mother of St. Constantine the Great, went to Jerusalem and she was able to find the places where the crucifixion had happened and the anointing stone, and also found the True Cross by the great grace of God. And so this church was eventually built. At different times it was built and then destroyed and then restored. And when you go in the doors, which is just like us coming in the doors here, we enter the church. And the first thing you come to is the anointing stone. And if you'll notice here, we have a table. That's what we'll call it—a table. And above the table is the cross. And so when I came to this realization that here you are in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—actually, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—this was just so wonderful because we already had this. We used to put our Plashchanitsa, which is the body of Christ, which we use during the burial service—we had this table here with the Plashchanitsa on it during Holy Week. And so I thought, "Well, this is so amazing, because here we are in our church. You come in the doors and cross over, and there is the anointing stone." And so I had a piece of marble cut for it and put there. And the marble is the same color as the color of the anointing stone. It has the same texture to it.

And then of course what happens—if you're at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, after you go to the anointing stone, there's a sort of semi-spiral staircase that goes up about probably one floor, you know. And there you come to where Christ was crucified. And remarkably, we always had a cross in this bay here. So we had another beautiful icon replica done. And so there we have the crucifixion of Christ. And so we have this—and then you come from the crucifixion, you come to the tomb. And what happened in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the whole area was rock. And so what they did is they excavated around these holy places and they built essentially an altar screen around the place of Christ from whence He was resurrected and where the Resurrection happened. And so if you look at this, you say, "This is very interesting." We have this structure in our own church, and it's in a sense not by accident. It's by the grace of the Holy Spirit. And if you look—if you go to particularly Russian churches, I'm not as familiar with the way the Greeks lay out their church, but in Russian churches they always have a table where they do panikhidas, and above it is the cross. And the Russians were for hundreds of years the most frequent pilgrims to the Holy Land. And I am certain that what they call the memorial table—they call it a panikhida table for services for the dead—and that replicated the place, really, of the crucifixion of Christ. So we offer our prayers, particularly for the departed, in front of the cross, in the place of the crucifixion. And so we have this going on—a path. I think I've spelled it out a little bit.

Another thing that's really remarkable about the church is that our churches should do everything they can to embody the holiness and the beauty. This beauty—beauty in God—is a profound thing. I mean, we're talking, you know, profound beauty. And one other thing that's fascinating is that we are blessed to have these arches. And they're not accidental. They're here because when we were building the facility—this was a completely empty place when we started putting it together—you know, we went out and we looked at ancient churches, first in books, and then actually I had the grace of God to go and see churches in Greece and so on. And arches are a very important part of the architecture. Architecture and arch are of course related to one another. So, but you already knew that. So anyway, but the thing is, what is it with an arch? I mean, why is the arch so important? And first of all, in terms of the natural order of, say, construction, the arch where they stack stones and they have a keystone at the center, and then it always goes down to the ground—at the end, if you have a row, there's always a buttress at the end. It is the strongest natural construction that you can have without, let's say, steel. In the days before steel, you know, they have huge buildings, but in ancient times, the arch was the strongest structure that you could have, depending upon the stone you use too. Obviously, you needed to use very hard stone and so on.

And then, you know, you see the sunrise in the morning, which we've had the opportunity to do a lot here in Ipswich and other places that we love. And you have the horizon, and you know, if you get out there early enough, first you see what Homer called the rosy dawn, you know, the fingers of the rosy dawn coming, and then you begin to see this arch, right? And then it rises up, and then you see the fullness of the light. And what I'm saying is circularity and arches are fundamental in the structure of everything that's created. And so—and who created it? That's the point. Who created this? And of course, our Lord did. And so we have these things, these nice things. And as you notice, behind the altar screen here—or let's talk about the altar screen. So one of the things of traveling a little bit, and if you are—if you've already been interested in geometry and you've done a little bit of studying of how church architecture happens in the Orthodox Church—you notice that geometry is also in turn used in design, very much so. I mean, it's not just, you know, like a child making scratches and so on and so forth. There's a geometry to it.

And so what happens is we have this icon screen which is a replica, a hand-carved replica of a screen that was done in the twelfth century at a monastery called Hosios Loukas. And I had the blessing to go there by the grace of God at the end of a pilgrimage that Matushka and I took. And when I saw it, I thought, "My word, these geometrics express our God—the power and strength and holiness." And so we—miraculously, it's absolutely miraculous that we ended up having this carved. And I will tell you that story quickly because it shows you how miraculous things do happen. So the idea for the iconostasis existed. I photographed it extensively. I spent two hours—I photographed every detail. And the thing is, how do you get from, you know, the photograph to the iconostasis? And I don't know, maybe six months or maybe even three months after we came home and I had this, you know, sort of vision of what it would have looked like to have the iconostasis in this design, I got a phone call from a fellow in Nyack, New York, who was somewhat displaced and wanted to come to Ipswich to join our community. And so we helped him come and helped him get an apartment, and after he settled in, he revealed to me that he was a woodcarver. This is serious. I can tell you many stories like this. And so, "Oh, he's a woodcarver." Well, he said, "I've never done anything like that. You know, I've done things like this." And he showed me something. Well, you know, if you can do it that big, you can do two of them next to one another, right? So then you can call it two in one and you can do longer things. So anyway, Father Thomas now carved our wood screen.

And you look above the altar, and what do you see? You see obviously—you see Christ first, right? But above the Christ you see these three windows. Of course they symbolize the Holy Trinity, and the light shines through the windows. And there's another interesting phenomenon that we have in our church is that in terms of where the sun is, during our feast day, okay, in June, the sun shines down and fills the gates during the Divine Liturgy. And it moves into the position for a week or so before and a week or so after the feast day, but it sheds its light upon us. And what does that mean to us? Well, all of us, when we see the beauty of nature, really what we should do is see the image of God, right? Because where did beauty come from? It came from God. And what I think is fascinating is to understand this and to be able to look beyond the physicality—obviously the physical reality is powerful—but you look upon the physicality, and in this part of your brain which the ancients called the nous, which is not the rational mind, it's much higher than the rational mind—with your nous you behold the light, the physical light, which is in itself a window to the light of Christ.

And we have this beautiful icon of the Pantocrator, which the type for it was on a balcony in the Hagia Sophia, the great temple in Constantinople. I know I'm getting old, you know. Not everything comes as quickly. So anyway, and so the type for that was there, and I had pictures of that too, and we had two iconographers come and labor and paint this wonderful image of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. And then later on we had the icon of the Most Holy Mother of God holding our Savior, which brings the whole question of iconography up. Iconography is very much a part of the Orthodox Church's understanding of things. And I came from a Protestant background, and I had to do some adjusting because a lot of people from the Protestant—at that time, you know, they kind of—you had decided, "Well, aren't icons okay?" Because we have this, you know, "not to make images" from Moses. And what happens is, actually, if you read what Moses said, he did say not to make images, and I think we understand by that what pagan images are. But in fact, he also said to make out of hammered gold cherubim and seraphim to put around the Ark. So obviously there was a distinction between one kind of image and another kind of image. That helped a lot.

So the next thing that helped tremendously is to realize that we do not worship icons. We do not worship icons. What happens is the icon is a window. And there's a distinction, for example, in the Latin tradition. You'll see lots of statuary, and the Orthodox did not accept statuary because it makes—what it is—the image that you're trying to portray becomes a physical reality, you know, dimensionally, and you know, you could put your arms around the statue, and it really has an—it has an incorrect response to the holy images. What we have really is windows. The icons are windows into the life of the Holy Spirit. So we peer through, and what happens—and it's—here I go with my stories from childhood, but I like to repeat them. It always gives me pleasure. You know, I lived on a farm for some years in New Hampshire, and there was absolutely no light anywhere except for the moon and the sun. And we would go sledding in the wintertime down this road, and when we got away from the house—I mean, when I say it was dark, it was dark. I mean, really dark. And we'd come back, and of course when you saw the light shining from the windows, you know, cold winter, and, you know, we'd go tap on the window and then go around the door to go in, you know.

But anyway, it's a great image because light shines from the icons. And as you get to know and as you begin to—as a person begins to accept the presence of icons and gets to be comfortable with them—everyone, it seems to me, at some point has a sense of the presence of the person who is depicted in the icon. We have this wonderful icon of Archbishop John of Shanghai and San Francisco, which is a fairly new icon. And you know, when you go up and stand in front of that icon, I'm convinced that, you know, you feel his presence. You know, you look at him and you know that—his presence. And if they're in the kingdom of heaven, they can shine into the natural world and affect us. And what I think is very good about the icons is these aren't just any images. They're done in a very particular style and with a discipline that tries to suppress any carnal nature to them, so that what we see is pure, and that our response to the images is not a carnal response or a physical response. It's a spiritual response. And what happens to everyone, I think, that enters into the life of the Orthodox Church is that at some point, as you go, you start to realize that the presence of the saints is with us.

And in our church we've been very blessed. We have about 50 antique icons. One of them is from the fifteenth century, and this Mother of God here is a sixteenth-century icon, the big Mother of God. And so we have these icons. And what's fascinating because, you know, God came to sanctify. There's another approach to the question. He came to sanctify. The bread and wine become His Body and Blood. This is not just a symbol. This is a reality. And for those who pass through Baptism and enter into the fullness of the Church and you start to receive Holy Communion, you realize that you are receiving something that is profoundly sacred. And it changes your disposition and your attitude and how you see the world, and you realize—but actually we started with bread and wine, which the Holy Spirit comes down and makes the Body and Blood. And this is—when this comes, of course, when our Savior took bread and wine and told them to take and eat, partake, knowing that this would be part of the Church's discipline. And it's quite interesting because if you follow from the Gospels and you go through the Epistles, you'll see that actually there was a development of that understanding.

One of the instances in the Acts of the Apostles where they would obviously have this sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, but they also ate a common meal at the same time, and it became problematic. And what they did is they then separated by the guidance of the Holy Spirit the participation in the Body and Blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. And so this whole—though it took time for the faithful to come to understand the fullness of these things. And it takes time for us, as we come into our Holy Orthodox faith, for those who are new to Orthodoxy—it takes time for us to come into the fullness of the Church's life and the glory of our worship.

I think I'm sort of—I think that's it for today. I hope this helps you understand a little bit. And when you come in, go and reverence this icon, by the way, of our Savior on the anointing stone, right on—it's an old icon right on that table there. And you come and see that you go to the cross, and then you come to the center of the church and see the holy altar, which table in a sense represents the tomb from which Christ rose. And but anyway, I think that's it for today. May God bless you through our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ in the flesh, through His holy mysteries.