Dn. Michael Hyatt: We’re doing this series on apologetics, as you well know, but this is one that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and it’s basically 10 things I wish somebody had told be about the Orthodox Church before I visited for the first time. Now, I did visit for the first time about 23 years ago, and it was actually this church, but we weren’t meeting here. I was really drawn to Fr. Gordon; I was really impressed with his personality, and he invited me to come for the first time, and I’d done some reading, but when I showed up, I was kind of taken aback. It was really different from anything I’d experienced before, and I had been to some Episcopal churches; I’d even visited a Roman Catholic church one time, but this was really, really, really different from my Presbyterian church back in Texas, to say the least.

But I kept coming, and after a while it kind of all started making sense, but initially I felt two simultaneous emotions, and maybe some of you can relate. On the one hand, I was really drawn to it, because it was beautiful, I loved the singing, there was something about it that was right; but part of it scandalized me, because it was so unfamiliar. And so I kind of worked through that. It took a while, but I got there.

So what I would like to share is these ten things, and, by the way, Frederica Mathewes-Green, whom you may know—she writes for Christianity Today as a regular contributor there—has a little 12 Things I Wish I Had Known,” and I did mine before looking at hers just so I wouldn’t copy hers, but hers is very good.

Well, here’s the first thing I think you should know before visiting an Orthodox church, and that is that the Orthodox are not similar to Roman Catholics. [Laughter] There’s sort of a superficial similarity, but they’re not the same. If people know anything about Orthodoxy at all, if it’s even in their mind as a possibility, when I tell them I’m Orthodox, they immediately put me into that category of “Roman Catholic.” Right? You get that, too? Or Orthodox Jews! Yeah, which they don’t… When we talk about Jesus, they don’t quite… That really messes with their mind.

But we see ourselves as Orthodox as in the middle between the two. Now, there’s a lot of overlap, no question. We confess John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but should have everlasting life”—we get that; we embrace it. Like the Roman Catholics, we believe in liturgy and the importance of holy Communion and vestments and some of those kinds of things. So there’s a lot of overlap, but there’s also some real differences.

We’ve gone through some of those on the class on the Ecumenical Councils, but let me just say again: We believe… Our perspective is that the Roman Catholics added to that faith which was once for all delivered to the saints, as Jude says in the third verse of his one-chapter epistle, but we believe by the same token that Protestants have subtracted from the faith, so that we see ourselves in a middle position. So it may superficially look like Roman Catholicism, but it’s really not. There’s a lot of differences, and as you probably know, historically the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox split centuries ago, and still have major doctrinal differences to this day. So that’s number one.

Number two is that the worship service in the Orthodox Church is modeled after heavenly worship. We just got done praying the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Well, if we believe that worship is the ultimate priority—and that’s certainly what I believe—we are created in the image of God, to worship him: that is our first and most important priority. Wouldn’t it make sense that we would pattern that after the worship that is in heaven? For example, in the book of Revelation, if you read it, it kind of loosely follows the Orthodox eucharistic liturgy.

I actually did a Bible study on this years ago and traced the parallels with the Orthodox Liturgy, everything from the Liturgy of the Word in Revelation 5 to, in essence, the chalices, which were in the book of Revelation for wrath, not for life, but still, there’s a parallel there. But there are vestments in the New Testament. You look at the way Jesus is clothed with a white robe from head to foot. The 24 elders, same thing. There are liturgical prayers: a lot of prayers in the book of Revelation that are specific written prayers that the entire heavenly host are saying together, including some of them that we will repeat in the eucharistic liturgy later this morning.

About 80% of the liturgical texts that we pray come straight out of the Bible. Our Bible verses—when in doubt, look in the Bible; you’ll usually find it there. But we not only read the Bible, we not only study the Bible, but we pray the Bible. There’s also in the book of revelation all kinds of liturgical furniture: everything from the chairs that the elders sit on to the lampstands that Jesus is in the midst of, which we have a replica of on the altar this morning. There is an altar. Oftentimes in the Protestant churches I grew up in, an altar call was given, but there wasn’t any altar. It’s like: It’s an altar call, but where’s the altar? In our church, there is an altar.

Also, incense! You know, there’s incense in the Old Testament, but there’s also incense in the book of Revelation, and there’s incense in our worship services, too. Fr. Peter Gillquest once said, “You’re kind of bookended by it in the Bible. It’s there at the beginning; it’s there at the end—get used to it. It’s going to be in heaven.” [Laughter]

I think that the thing that was overwhelming to me the first time I visited an Orthodox church was that there was a lot of beauty to it, and I think that we embrace that. Our God is a God of beauty and glory and magnificence, and reflecting him in worship means reflecting that beauty and that glory and that magnificence, to whatever extent that we can. So that’s the second thing.

The third thing—some of you are going to laugh when I say this, but the worship service does have a structure. I think when I first came to the Orthodox Church, it was very confusing. It was like: “Didn’t we just pray that before? Is it like reruns? Why are we praying this again?” [Laughter] But there’s a very definitive structure in the Orthodox Church, and it’s called oftentimes in liturgical theology the Ordo, the Latin for “order.”

There’s a pattern that’s there, and basically it’s this; here’s the big idea: First half of the Divine Liturgy—and that’s what we call it, the “Divine Liturgy” on Sunday morning—first half of the Divine Liturgy is called the synaxis, same word the root from which we get “synagogue,” and it means the gathering. And it could also be thought of as the Liturgy of the Word. So the central focus of that first half, the first act of the Liturgy is the Word. So there’s technically a first part of it that’s called the enarxis, but forget that for a minute, but we have a lot of praise songs that lead up to this, and then we have the reading of the epistle, and then we have the reading of the gospel, which we stand for and bow our heads: we show reverence for it. But that’s really the… And then the homily or the sermon comes after the gospel. But the gospel is really the apex, the high point of the synaxis, or the Liturgy of the Word.

Act two is the Eucharist, which is just a Greek word, eucharisto, which just means “thanksgiving.” And it’s the second half, or the Liturgy of the Table—Liturgy of the Word, Liturgy of the Table—and really the climax of that is holy Communion. Now, the truth is, all liturgical churches follow this basic order, whether you go to a Roman Catholic church or a Lutheran church or an Anglican church or an Orthodox church, it’s going to be basically that same structure. So I would just say: Don’t get lost in the trees and forget the forest. There is an order, so if you find yourself a little disoriented, just remember: Oh, okay, this is leading up to the Word, the proclamation of the gospel; and then we recede from it a little bit, go down a little bit into a valley, and then we take off again for even a greater ascent in the holy Eucharist.

Okay, first the Orthodox are not similar to Roman Catholics; secondly, the worship service is modeled after heavenly worship; third, the worship service has a structure. Fourth, icons are not idols. That was real confusing to me at first. When we prayed this morning and we turned and faced those icons that were on the wall… But they can be confusing, and here’s what I want to give you as a sort of a theological foundation for these icons, which are not, again, idols.

Fundamentally, they’re an affirmation of the doctrine of the Incarnation. The Seventh Ecumenical Council was a council about icons, the restoration of icons in the Church. We know that icons were used in the history of the Church from at least the second century, that they grew in popularity, and then, under the influence of Islam, which had no place for images of any kind—thought it was a violation of the second commandment in the ten commandments; they outlawed them in their religion, and that influenced the Eastern Church, and then arose the iconoclastic controversy. But the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the great theologians of that day, realized that, no, what was at stake was the doctrine of the Incarnation.

And in point of fact the whole history—Church history can be viewed perhaps simplistically as a war against the Incarnation, and more generally a war against matter. Greek philosophy had this idea that, at best, matter was a cheap imitation of what was real. You remember Plato and his story about the cave? And that the things that were real were the things that existed in the realm of ideas, the archetypes, so that this particular chair—remember this from Philosophy 101? Chairness? Yeah, this is a particular chair, but it reflects the idea of chairness—that exists somewhere else.

So the Greeks had a real hard time with physical matter. At best, it was an imitation; at worst, it was evil—matter was evil. And so all the Ecumenical Councils leading up to the Seventh Ecumenical Council was really sort of this war against Greek philosophy which kept seeping into the Church in the forms of heresy, because they couldn’t quite come to terms with the fact that God could take upon himself physical matter. God could become incarnate—because that was “evil”; that was bad. And from the Greek perspective, salvation was deliverance from matter, or more particularly, as it got expressed by Origen and others—who are not considered Fathers of the Church—as a deliverance from the body: you want to be delivered from the body.

Well, the truth is, if you had been there at the Incarnation, at the time when Jesus lived, and if you had a little Sony camera in your back pocket, you could have taken a picture of him. He wasn’t a phantom; he wasn’t a ghost—he was fully human. And in fact the Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council said that he was consubstantial with us insofar as his humanity; consubstantial with the Father as pertains to his divinity, but consubstantial, of the same essence with us, as to his humanity—so that he could, in fact, be depicted in pictures.

Now, a couple of other things about icons—again, physical things are not bad. Icons provide a way to educate the illiterate, so at the very most basic level… We take literacy for granted, but it wasn’t always so in the history of the Church. The great majority of the population was not literate. Icons move us to a memory of the ones depicted, and icons remind us of God’s presence among us. When we enter into the church for the Divine Liturgy, our view as Orthodox is that we are stepping into the kingdom. It may look like it’s this world in some regards, but we’ve just stepped into another world, a world beyond time and space, a world where God exists, and God is not solo. God is a community. His most fundamental nature we confess—all Christians confess—that God is one God in three Persons. God is fundamentally a community.

Here’s the good news of that is the most important fundamental reality of the entire universe is relationship. Relationship is not something that happened when God created man; it was something from eternity: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit lived in perfect harmony, in perfect love, and they have forever. So relationship is core, and we’re never more reflecting God than when we’re living in relationship with one another. But heaven is not this place where God exists all by himself, kind of the Wizard of Oz in this great building where nobody else is, no. We know from Hebrews, for example: the great cloud of witnesses. “For we have this great cloud of witnesses,” of all the saints, all those who have gone before us to their rest, all the angels. All that exists, and when we step into the worship, we are there present, with [them]. It’s not just the memory of that or something that’s happening in the future, but time intersects eternity. Earth intersects heaven, and we are there present, with God and with the saints, with the angels. It’s a full choir of the faithful. So that’s fourth: icons are not idols.

Fifth, veneration is not worship. Now one of the things that you see in the Orthodox Church is that people kiss icons. In fact, we kiss everything. Watch out! [Laughter] The deacons and the altar boys kiss the priest’s hands. In many Orthodox churches, we kiss one another. We like to kiss on each cheek, and if you go to Greece or you go even to Italy or if you go to any place, really, outside of the US and go east, people love to kiss each other. It’s a common greeting. The Russians really go crazy; they kiss each other three times, just to get it nailed.

We do this out of respect, and we call it veneration, to venerate something, but it is not worship. Now again, the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council made this very clear, and they differentiated between two Greek words, one that was translated “worship” and one that was translated “veneration.” Worship belongs to God alone. That’s really, by the way, what the second commandment prohibited. We are not to offer worship to any created thing. There’s a difference between the Creator and the creature. But we respect lots of things; we venerate lots of things.

When I grew up, there was more respect in our culture than there is now; hardly any respect in our culture today. But when I grew up, if a woman came into the room and a bunch of men were seated, we stood up! We did that out of respect. If a pastor came into the room, or even now if our priest comes into the room or a bishop comes into the room, we stand up, out of respect. It’s out of honor. We respect one another. Do you know why? Because we’re made in the image of God. You and I reflect the glory of God, and so that’s why in the service will come out or the deacon will come out, and he’ll often bow to you. It’s a sign of respect, nothing more, nothing less.

Angela?

Angela: I had a bit of a problem with it or any icons when we first were considering becoming Orthodox, and so someone compared it to respecting the flag, that I don’t worship the flag, but I certainly am not going to stomp on the flag, I’m not going to burn the flag: it’s a symbol of my love for country, just like the icon there reflects back the love I have for the saints or for Christ.

Dn. Michael: Right, and oftentimes when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is sung and the flag is front and center, people stand and they put their hand over their heart, and again it’s out of respect. Or, you know, we’ve all heard this story: this comparison of someone who’s been at war for months, and they pull out a picture of their wife, and they venerate it; they kiss it. And they’re not confused that the picture is the person, and neither are we. And St. John of Damascus, when he was writing his book, On the Divine Images, during the controversy of iconoclasm in the eighth century, he said that the veneration offered to the image passes on to the prototype. Did you get that? So the honor that’s offered to the image passes on to the prototype; so the image reflects the prototype.

You and I, by the way, are icons. When the Scripture says that we’re made in the image of God in the New Testament, the word “image” comes from the Greek word “icon.” So we are images; we are worthy of veneration. By the way, this is the whole theological foundation of why we’re pro-life. Those children… That’s why we’re opposed to murder—all these things are an assault on the image of God in man. So veneration is not worship.

To push that a little bit further is point six, [which] is Mary and the saints are venerated but not worshiped. The kingdom of God is a community. That’s what I was trying to say earlier. It’s not just—contrary to our American individualism and the 21st century and part of the last century—it’s not just “Jesus and me.” Jesus is the object of worship, he’s our Savior, he’s our Lord—all of that—but it’s not just Jesus and me. When God saves us, he saves us into a community. He grafts us into a body. We are members of the body of Christ. It’s not just Jesus and me. Jesus had a mom! And she’s very special to us. If my mom was with us today—and she resides in Texas—but if she were with us today and she walked in, I would take great offense if you disrespected her.

Well, Jesus had a mom, too. She’s not God, she’s not the fourth person of the Trinity, but, in the Orthodox Church, she is kind of the prototype of what every believer aspires to be, because she said, when God came to her with a special calling, “Let it be to me according to thy word,” and that for us is a model of Christian discipleship.  And she is really kind of the example, the prototypic example of what it means to be a disciple and follow Christ: the humility, the respect, the obedience to her Son, all of that.

We call her—and you’ll hear this word in the liturgy, which sounds a little foreign, and I was really confused the first time I heard it, but it’s the word “Theotokos.” Theotokos. And we use that when we refer to Mary; not always, but often, and we’ll hear it in the Liturgy today. It literally means from the Greek word, mother of God. Now, when I first heard this, I thought, “Wait a second. How could God have a mother? Was she an antecedent to the holy Trinity? I mean, that’s nuts!” No, here’s what it was. Again, Jesus had a mother. By the time you get to the Third Ecumenical Council, there was a great controversy about whether in fact Jesus was fully human. And so those that opposed that doctrine taught that Mary could be referred to as Christotokos, the mother of Christ, but not Theotokos, the mother of God. In other words: “Yeah, we’re willing to admit that he was human (Christotokos), but not that that Child in her womb was also God.”

So she was the mother of God not with respect to eternity, but the mother of God with respect to time. It really was a Christological issue, that that infant Child, that Fetus in her womb, was fully God and fully man, and therefore she can properly be called Theotokos, the mother of God. It was a way of protecting the divinity of Christ. And, in fact, I was surprised when I began studying this that even Luther affirmed this. He knew what was at stake as a churchman. And most theologians get this, even Protestant theologians. They might not use the term, but they certainly understand the Christological argument.

But I want to say again, we never worship Mary in the sense of that worship which belongs to God alone. We venerate her, we honor her, just as we do all the saints; maybe even more especially, because she has the unique privilege of being the mother of our Lord, but we don’t offer her the worship that belongs to God alone.

So Jesus had a mom. He also had lots of friends. Lots of friends. All the saints, Peter and Paul, John, all the rest—but not only those who were contemporaries of his, but those who, down through history, really reflected the glory of God to their generation in a unique way. And in fact we acknowledge that even in the Bible we’re referred to as saints. We don’t just get off the hook like: “Well, it’s the saints that we revere and respect, but they kind of had something special.” No, all of us are to be in-dwelt with the Holy Spirit. We also are to be saints. “Saint,” by the way, in the Greek, simply means to be set apart; it means holy one. It means someone who has been set apart. I’ve been set apart; so have you. It also means unique. We have a unique calling. We’re not to be like the world; we’re to be different from the world. We are a nation, a kingdom of priests: kings and priests.

Okay, another thing, seventh point: the sign of the cross—and by the way I’ll give you all these at the end in case you want to get them. The sign of the cross is an ancient practice. Wow. I didn’t know you could cross yourself that much when I came into an Orthodox church! [Laughter] I thought maybe a sign of the cross thing could be an occasional thing, but the Orthodox do it at the end of every prayer! What’s up with that? Well, the sign of the cross dates from at least the second century. Tertullian mentions it in the second century. St. Ambrose mentions it in the fourth century. St. John Chrysostom mentions it in the fourth century. And by the way it was originally performed in the East and the West in the identical same way. Did you know that? Yeah. Okay, here’s the deal. We all know this: we put the three fingers together like this, signifying the Holy Trinity. We put these two fingers against the palm of our hand, signifying the Incarnation: two natures, one Person. And we make the sign of the cross from the forehead, down to the chest, to the right shoulder, and to the left, right? Well, the Roman Catholic Church today, and in the Anglican Church, even some Lutheran churches, do it just the opposite. But it was always done, anciently, the way that we do it, from right to left.

Woman: How did it change?

Dn. Michael: Listen to this; this is cool. I just discovered this this morning. As late as the 13th century—now, this is a couple centuries after the split. As late as the 13th century, Pope Innocent III instructed St. Francis of Assisi that the proper way to perform the sign of the cross was to be made with the three fingers pressed together, two fingers held tightly in the palm of the hand, moving from the forehead to the belly and from the right side to the left shoulder. He also acknowledged that some in the far west did the sign with two fingers and from left to right. So anyway, it is a very ancient practice, and if you’re around Orthodox people, you get used to it after a while. They’re not swatting flies; they’re crossing themselves. [Laughter] And again, Orthodox worship is very physical. It’s not just a cerebral exercise. It’s not just like we have our brain sitting on a pew seat and we’re just taking it all in intellectually. It’s more than a cognitive exercise; it involves our entire person. We worship God with our whole being. We are spirit, soul, and body, and all of that gets involved in worship.

Man: I don’t know when it got changed, but before I was chrismated, I asked Fr. Stephen about the symbolism: Did it make any difference? And he had a wonderful explanation, and I can never articulate it the way he did, but it had something to do with the fact that Orthodoxy is so focused on the Incarnation, and the right side has always symbolized God and the left side more… In other words, it’s God coming down to man, versus the Western more focusing more on the ascent of man to God. So he said it better than that, but it was something along those lines.

Dn. Michael: Mark?

Mark: Yeah, I’ve heard a variation of that. In the West: it came down from heaven and was incarnate, and then you touch yourself in the center: for he will come again.

Dn. Michael: Yeah, and some of us do that, too. There are some variations. Robert?

Robert: The Russian Orthodox cross, where there’s that slanted line, it’s higher on the right, symbolizing the thief on the right hand, and goes down on the left.

Dn. Michael: Right, which, by the way, is another thing about Orthodoxy: everything is symbolic. Everything means something, and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what it all means. [Laughter] And sometimes there are different meanings for different things. Sometimes things really don’t have a meaning, but they have taken on a meaning. They had a liturgical or just a practical function, and then people invested them with a meaning. But it’s still kind of cool, and I think it reflects our view, too, that all of life is sacramental. All this has been created by God, and it speaks of him. The creation bears witness to the Creator; it’s just normal.

By the way—this is an important little footnote; this is still under the sign of the cross—we do cross ourselves at every mention of the Trinity, and note that the priest usually does the exclamation at the end of the prayers. So, like the Lord’s Prayer. So you’re kind of in the Orthodox church for the first time and you say the Lord’s Prayer: “Oh! Okay! I know that! I feel comfortable.” But don’t get hung out to dry, because everybody’ll stop before “For thine is the kingdom…” The priest will say that on his own.

Number eight: worship is not a spectator sport. [Laughter] We believe in the priesthood of all believers. No, I mean really! We really believe in that, and what we mean is that it’s not just those guys up front that are doing it; it’s all of us. Here’s the big idea. I think in a lot of churches, what you have is kind of a variation of the Tonight Show, where you have somebody’s kind of the emcee and there’s some really good entertainment, but everybody else just kind of sits as a spectator, as the audience, and they might applaud, they might not, but it’s basically all performed to them. The Orthodox Church: God is the audience. We are performing for an audience of One—actually, an entire host of heavenlies and the saints and all that, but they’re performing with us, but we’re performing for God. He’s the audience.

In our view, the priesthood has four distinctive orders. We’re all priests, every single one of us, and in fact when you’re brought into the Orthodox Church, if you haven’t been baptized, you’re baptized, but then you’re chrismated. And the word “chrism” is from the Greek word that means “oil.” Oil is put on you. It could also mean “gift.” But you’re anointed just like the priests in the Old Testament. The oil is placed upon your forehead and on your eyes and on your ears and on your mouth and on your chest and on your hands and on your feet. That is your anointing in the priesthood. That is your calling into the general priesthood.

But the priesthood has four orders, and let me start at the lowest level, which is all of us as laypeople. And, by the way, in the Orthodox Church, when you’re… if you haven’t been baptized, you get a baptismal gown. And we sing that great hymn: “As many as have been baptized, have been baptized into Christ, or have put on Christ,” which, by the way, is a Scripture verse from the book of Colossians. And we have been vested with his righteousness; we have been clothed with Christ himself. We’ve been joined in union with him. That’s our view of salvation. It’s not just fire insurance! It’s being reunited to Christ himself, which is what the Fall separated.

So, laypeople. First order of the clergy is the diaconate. That’s what I am: a deacon. And we’re kind of like liturgical assistants. Anciently, and in some churches today, the deacons look after the care of the poor, more physical needs of the church. You have to be a deacon before you can be ordained as a presbyter, or a priest, and “priest,” by the way, is just etymologically a derivative of “presbyter.” Also “elder” is how that’s translated usually in our Bibles, but that’s the priest or the pastor; that’s the next order. And to them is given the specific responsibility to preach the word and to administer the sacraments. And then you have the bishop, and we have bishops in the Orthodox Church, and we have a hierarchical form of government. That is there from the first century, and the second century the post-apostolic Fathers, people like Ignatius, talk specifically about these four orders.

We have a role in worship. “Liturgy,” the word “liturgy,” literally means the work of the people, and so liturgy is when we come to do our work. We roll up our sleeves, get ready: we’re here to worship God. It’s not passive; it’s active. And if there’s one thing you’ll notice in the worship service today is that it’s very active. People, we’re constantly singing, crossing ourselves. A lot of stuff going on in the worship service, and that’s because it’s active.

Note also that we stand for almost the entire service. Just a word about that: it’s an ancient practice that dates to at least the First Ecumenical Council, and it was done—it was practiced long before that, but it was recognized in the First Ecumenical Council as respect for the resurrection. Christ rose on the first day of the week, and so we stand out of reverence for the resurrection. Whatever else Sunday means, it is the Sunday of resurrection. Every Sunday is a little Pascha, or Easter. And even when the Great Feasts come on a Sunday, or a season—like we’re in Lent right now, so during the week if we have lenten services, when we have lenten services, we’re wearing purple, because that’s the color of the season—but not on Sunday. We revert to the resurrection.

We’re reminded that even though we’re preparing for Lent and we’re preparing for Holy Week and, yes, there will be suffering and there’ll be the crucifixion and all that stuff that transpired in Holy Week, we do it with the memory that Sunday is coming, that there is a resurrection. So if you get tired, please feel free to sit. Nobody will notice; nobody will care. That’s just normal. We’ll have people sit, and that’s okay. There are some people that are super zealous and they may stand for everything. They’ll eventually get over it. But we stand for most of it, that’s true.

We also sing almost everything. We sing it because we elevate it, because we’re joyous, because it’s a celebration. So virtually everything is sung. There’s a few things that are said, but not much. When in doubt, sing it out.

You’ll also notice among the Orthodox—this was a little disconcerting to me initially—they pray with their eyes open. [Laughter] All the time. Now, I want you to think about this for a second. Think about that Greek philosophy thing that says matter’s at best an illusion, at worst evil, so you’ve got to shut it out, because the real world exists somewhere else. I have not been able to find a single passage of Scripture that exhorts or even describes anybody praying with their eyes closed. Maybe there is one; I haven’t been able to find it. You have Jesus praying and he lifts his hands up to heaven, or they may bow, but no closed eyes. Nothing wrong with the physical world: God made it; this is a reflection of his creation and of his glory. So we pray with our eyes wide open. We want to see what’s going on.

Number nine: there is a difference between the blessed bread and the consecrated bread. So just quickly—I don’t have time to get into all of it—in holy Communion, only the Orthodox may partake of holy Communion, and that is what the priest administers out of the chalice. The bread is actually put in the chalice, which is peculiar to the East, and gives the Communion to the communicants in a spoon—but you have to be Orthodox to partake of Communion. However, the altar boys on each side will be holding blessed bread, which is the bread that wasn’t used to make Communion but was on the prothesis or the preparation table in the back behind the iconostasis. You’re welcome to that, but they’re not the same. It’s really the bread of fellowship. It’s something we distribute to everyone.

The last thing I want to say is that you won’t understand at all after one visit. I’ve been Orthodox, as I’ve said, for 23 years. I learn new things every week. When I was Presbyterian, after I had read Calvin and a number of the more modern Presbyterian theologians, I kind of felt like I’d gotten my mind around it and I had it nailed. Then it kind of got boring. I can assure you, I’ve never been bored as an Orthodox Christian! [Laughter] I’ve been frustrated… [Laughter] I’ve been discouraged, but I’ve never been bored. There’s just too much to learn. You’ve got 2,000 years of Church history to study. This is not a faith you’ll outgrow.

But I try to tell people that come in for the first time: Commit to visiting at least for three weeks. It takes that long to just kind of get over the shock and for it to kind of settle down and for it to be familiar enough that you can kind of make sense of the order of it and see where it’s coming from. Now, admittedly, you may not like it after that either, but unless you give it about three visits, it’s hard to say you’ve really given it a chance. It’s just too confusing. I mean, that’s probably true for any church, but it’s more particularly true for the Orthodox Church.

Any questions? Yes!

Q1: At the beginning of this, you said that our priority is worship. What do we say to our Evangelical friends who say that our priority as Christians is evangelizing?

Dn. Michael: Okay, well, let’s just take it one step further. If you’re evangelizing people, you’re introducing them to relationship with Jesus Christ—what comes next? I mean, is this just a Ponzi scam where we’re bringing them in so that they can go out and do the same thing for others, or are we bringing them into a worshiping relationship with their Creator? St. Paul said that he’s given to us the ministry of reconciliation. That’s really what evangelism is; it has to be understood as the ministry of reconciliation. We’re trying to bring people back to what God originally created them for: it was to be in a vital, vibrant relationship with Christ. That’s what we lost in the Fall; that’s what’s recovered in our salvation. And so part of that is—the thing that makes us different from every other creature is that we are worshiping, that we can acknowledge that God has created us, and we worship him. And that’s our first posture.