Fr. Nicolaos Tzetzis:  We’re getting older. It is what it is.

Fr. Panagiotis Boznos:  I know.

Mr. Steve Christoforou: I’m the oldest one at the table.

Fr. Panagiotis: By a long shot.

Mr. Christoforou: By a long shot!

Fr. Niko: Almost a decade.

Fr. Panagiotis: No.

Mr. Christoforou: Ehh… Depends on how aggressively you round. [Laughter] Fr. Niko, are you going to do your NPR intro?

Fr. Niko: This is Fr. Niko Tzetzis, subbing in for Nick Lionas. Was that 2:00 a.m. NPR?

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah, that was more like the ladies’ man than it was NPR. [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: It’s 3:00 a.m., and you’re listening to… [Laughter] I was going for Delilah here, you know? Y94 FM, Syracuse, New York?

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah, no. You did not have enough, like, sappy emotion if you’re going to be Delilah. The only time she’s ever on the radio out here is during the Christmas season, when the stations are playing all Christmas music all the time, and then just like the dedications and everything; it’s too much.

Fr. Niko: It’s way too much, yes. That was hometown, too.

Fr. Panagiotis: We were hoping for more of a Terry Gross approach, no?

Fr. Niko: I haven’t gotten that impression down yet.

Fr. Panagiotis: Okay. You have the same haircut, though, as Terry Gross. Sorry. Not to you; to her. [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: [Inaudible] I don’t know if I know what Terry Gross looks like now!

Fr. Panagiotis: You’re going to have to Google it.

Fr. Niko: It’s about the same. I just need, like you said, more emotion. Just go a little straighter up with it?

Mr. Christoforou: Oh! I like that.

Fr. Niko: Oh, there it is. There it is!

Fr. Panagiotis: See? I told you.

Fr. Niko: It’s the frosted tips of my grays here. [Laughter]

Fr. Panagiotis: She has glasses, too. I think we’re talking about a great Halloween costume for you next year. No one would get it.

Fr. Niko: It’s even the ones with the clear underneath, like the same thing here, clear underneath.

Mr. Christoforou: I would love that explanation. “Who are you?”

Fr. Panagiotis: “And who are you supposed to be?” “I’m Terry Gross from NPR.” Metropolitan Savas would get it. [Laughter] He’s always reposting her interviews and stuff.

Fr. Niko: It’d be a joke just for one.

Fr. Panagiotis: Mm-hm. Those are my favorite kinds of jokes! [Laughter]

Mr. Christoforou: Exactly!

Fr. Panagiotis: It’s like the wonderful Andy Kaufman joke.

Mr. Christoforou: Ah, the inside joke. I’d love to be a part of one, one day. [Laughter]

Fr. Panagiotis: So for those who have watched us before, Nick Lionas is not with us, and Fr. Niko Tzetzis is joining is from the Metropolis of Detroit. We traded one Nicholas from Detroit for another Nicolaos from Detroit. The only difference between the two of them is the grace of ordination. Beyond that, they are the exact same person in every way.

Fr. Niko: Yep.

Mr. Christoforou: Fungible. Totally fungible.

Fr. Niko: That’s right.

Fr. Panagiotis: If I didn’t even bring it up, you wouldn’t know.

Fr. Niko: No. I’m basically Nick Lionas.

Fr. Panagiotis: Let’s see if we can differentiate the two of you in my mind by the end of this session.

Fr. Niko: That’s right.

Mr. Christoforou: No chalkboard! No chalkboard.

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah, there is no chalkboard, just an icon. Well, not “just” an icon…

Fr. Niko: I think the wall is dry-erase. I could dry erase right here on the wall. Wouldn’t erase… But I could draw on it.

Fr. Panagiotis: I wouldn’t recommend it.

Mr. Christoforou: Hey, look, making sacrifice for the podcast. I appreciate it.

Fr. Niko: Hey, look… [Inaudible] “Go, Spartans!” Let’s see. He doesn’t really care about the Lions or Tigers; he likes those.

Fr. Panagiotis: Milk and cookies.

Mr. Christoforou: Can you do a Walken impersonation?

Fr. Niko: [Laughter] That’s right! Yeah, no, but I hear Fr. Boznos does a fantastic one…

Fr. Panagiotis: I don’t. [Laughter] Nice try, though.

Fr. Niko: Just passing things your way. That’s what I’m doing all day. Here we go, just putting them down there.

Fr. Panagiotis: All right, so we are here today to discuss the gospel reading for the Twelfth Sunday of Luke. We’re out of the Theophany cycle, the Christmas and Theophany cycle, actually, and so now we are returning to those weekly readings from the Gospel of Luke, and we begin with the Twelfth Sunday. This is from the Gospel according to Luke 17:12-19. Before I do that, we will bow our heads in prayer.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Mr. Christoforou: Amen.

Fr. Panagiotis: Shine within our hearts, loving Master, the pure light of your divine knowledge, and open our eyes to understand the teaching of your Gospel. Instill in us also reverence for your blessed commandments so that, having conquered sinful desires, we may pursue a spiritual way of life, both thinking and doing those things that are pleasing to you. For you, Christ our God, are the light of our souls and bodies, and to you we ascribe glory, together with your beginningless Father and your all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages.

Mr. Christoforou and Fr. Niko: Amen.

Fr. Panagiotis: So our reading begins:

At that time, as Jesus entered a village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” and they went, and they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then, said Jesus, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well.”

Mr. Christoforou: Amen!

Fr. Panagiotis: So I think the first thing that we should focus one is provide a little bit, just one additional verse of context. I don’t even need to read the verse; I just need to provide a little bit of context for what happened right before this, because it says, “At that time, Jesus entered a village,” but where is he? What village? We need to kind of put this in context simply because—where am I? 17?—it will help us understand what’s happening later on in the pericope. Verse 11 of chapter 17 says, “Now it happened, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee,” and then he entered a certain village and it continues.

This is the end of Christ’s public ministry, and it’s the beginning of his journey to Jerusalem where he will suffer the passion, his crucifixion, and resurrection. So this is the journey towards Palm Sunday and everything that’s happening in Holy Week, and we’ll see along the way his different interactions. He eventually gets to Jericho and St. Zacchaeus, and then we’ll get to Jerusalem for Palm Sunday. But the point is, he’s not in Jerusalem right now, and he’s a pretty good distance away from Jerusalem. He’s up away north, and he’s traveling south in order to get there. That’s where Christ is, and that will come into play later as he sends these lepers away.

Mr. Christoforou: To the Temple, which is in Jerusalem.

Fr. Panagiotis: Exactly. So he sends them to the priests, and he says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” The priests only exist in the Temple. They are not additional places of sacrifice and worship. There might be synagogues, but we shouldn’t confuse a synagogue with the Temple, and we shouldn’t confuse a synagogue with what we would know as a church. The place… You would go to the synagogue to study, you would go to the synagogue to hear the Scriptures read and taught, but the synagogue really fulfilled the purpose of a religious school for religious study and prayerful study, but in terms of the sacramental life of these Second Temple Period Jews, the people that Christ is interacting with, the one and only place where you can offer any type of liturgical sacrifice, the only place where priests are even appropriate is at the Temple in Jerusalem.

So when he says, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” the point is belaboring the fact that he’s not in Jerusalem means that these lepers have to go from wherever they are, however far away they are from Jerusalem, all the way into Jerusalem in order to show themselves to the priests.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, and that should make sense for people from other contexts in the Scripture. We think, too, when Jesus was 12, and he and his family made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. That, I think, should be in our heads to think about this. This is the liturgical spot. You don’t have to go to wherever your local bishop’s cathedral is, like we have our local parish, and there’s the altar there, and it’s the same altar there, but, again, different contexts. And this central location, like Fr. Panagiotis was saying: long ways away, which is important context.

Fr. Panagiotis: Yes. Why is it important? Let’s just jump there, while we’re on it.

Mr. Christoforou: Sure. So because we read here, which is really interesting, we have this group of ten people who suffer with leprosy. Maybe, I don’t know, leprosy is something that we’re all familiar with if we’ve heard the Scripture before. There are certainly modern-day saints—St. Nikiforos the Leper—people who have worked with that in modern times, but it was this… We don’t have to get too deep into the medical, what it is exactly, but it was like a kind of condition that resulted in people being outsiders from their community: very contagious condition that pushed people to the margins. You do not want to come down with leprosy, because, again, it was so contagious that people would be pushed away. They’d go to leper colonies; we might have heard of that before.

So here’s this group of ten people. They come to the Lord. They ask to be healed. And it’s very interesting: he doesn’t say, “Yes, I’m going to do it.” He kind of responds by saying, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” He doesn’t do it then and there on the spot, the way the Lord might have dealt with this in other contexts. But even this connects to some of the Old Testament processes, procedures for dealing with leprosy, because it comes up in the Old Testament, and for a person to be pronounced clean was again something that would happen by the priests back at the Temple, according to a process. It wasn’t just this sort of thing that somebody scribbles on a prescription pad that you’re good to go. It’s a little bit more involved than that.

Fr. Niko: And why return? This is the question I started with before, if it’s that long of a journey. And maybe this is where, this is the long arc, the long arc of this conversation. But my real question now that we’ve established it’s a long journey, we’ve established that it’s a difficult journey: why go back? You’re given this clean bill; the priest has called you clean. Why do you go back to the healer instead of going out forward, out into creation, to sanctify it, to bring with you that health, to go and do something else? Why back to Christ? And that’s not—I don’t think we jump right to it. Because he’s God, that’s good.

Mr. Christoforou: Oh, you’re asking the response back to Jesus! Again, in this pericope, ten are sent, they make the journey back to the Temple to get their clean bill of health, but only one comes back.

Fr. Niko: Right. That’s the thing. We have to remember that it’s a lot of journeying.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, which I think is important context, and I think it’s helpful for me, because I think if you gloss over this really quickly it almost… One possible read is this kind of—I don’t know—somebody realizes he’s well, he kind of turns around and tips his hat to Jesus like: “Hey, thanks! That’s great!’’ and then kind of goes on his way, as opposed to… This is a multi-—can we confidently say?—a multi-day journey to go to the Temple. Then there’s the actual process of being declared clean at the Temple. And then one of these guys makes this other multi-day journey back to Jesus, with no guarantee that he’s still there. I mean, this is not like you send an SMS message and find out where your buddy is. There’s a level of risk.

Fr. Niko: For those who don’t know, “SMS” means “short-messaging service,” what we call “text messages.”

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah, what human beings call text messages. [Laughter]

Mr. Christoforou: It’s my years on the show, that’s all.

Fr. Niko: You’re such a geek.

Mr. Christoforou: But he goes back, right? So he’s going back to a place where Jesus isn’t necessarily still there: there’s an element of risk to it. And there’s also certainly an element of… I haven’t left my house today. This guy who’s trudging through the countryside because he feels so compelled to be able to express this gratitude for what happened. I mean, he could have faded into oblivion like… How many of us have gone on a multi-day journey?

Fr. Panagiotis: ...like the other nine did.

Mr. Christoforou: Like the other nine, yeah.

Fr. Panagiotis: I think that’s interesting from the perspective of… His thanksgiving, obviously, is what we focus on, the fact that he returns and offers praise. Christ says, “Was no one else found to return and give praise to God?” Oftentimes God pours blessings upon us, and we consume them and then we take them, and then we don’t respond. We don’t respond appropriately. It makes me think of the Sermon on the Mount, where he sends the rain upon the just and the wicked. These other nine—I’m not going to completely throw them aside, but they got what they wanted from him, and then they continued. I’m not saying that they’re not thankful. I’m not saying that they’re not grateful for their health. I don’t want to go that far, but they haven’t been moved enough beyond receiving what they want to granting thanksgiving for the gift.

Mr. Christoforou: But that’s a helpful, I think, way to parse it, because I think there’s a difference between the feeling of gratitude—I’m sure they were ecstatic that they were freed from this sin—but I think there’s there’s a difference between sort of the ephemeral feeling of gratitude, like: “Hey, that was great. I’d much rather not have leprosy than have leprosy,” versus the posture of gratitude, the offering of thanksgiving.

Fr. Panagiotis: I get people a lot of times who are like: “Oh, you know,” always around the feastday of St. Phanourios, “I owe him a phanouropita.” For those of you who don’t know, if you lose something, you ask for the intercessions of St. Phanourios, he helps you find it, and then afterwards you bake a cake and offer prayers. There’s a liturgical act associated with the thanksgiving for that saint’s intercessions. My church is full of the little silver tama, which are the little things: they’re offerings from people who come back to the church after they’ve been healed or after their prayers have been answered, and they make an offering to God. They make a physical sacrifice of either time, their money to buy or to make whatever they’re offering. But that’s a really strong tradition.

But there are equally, and probably—maybe I’m being cynical—more who have asked and then when they get what they have been asking for, either don’t think about how to properly give thanks or, like, Steve, you were saying, have that feeling of gratitude, but don’t necessarily act with it. I always get people: “Oh, I’m supposed to. I owe St. Phanourios, like, two or three phanouropites at this point,” but I never actually get them to bless. They’re conscious of the fact that they should be doing something to express thanksgiving, but they haven’t gotten to the point of actually acting upon that.

It’s not to be hypercritical; it’s just to point out that there is this next step in thanksgiving. It’s one thing to be internally thankful, and it’s another thing to act in thanksgiving.

Fr. Niko: And Scripture definitely gives us that he returns to thank Christ. I just can’t help but wonder if isn’t a recognition of more—more that is necessary, recognition that standing in front of him is God. This actual recognition, this salvific recognition, that this is the One who provides more than just the healing of leprosy. The healing of leprosy is almost nothing compared to what this One he has met has to offer.

Fr. Panagiotis: And I think, Father, that’s a great… That ties in very, very well with what Christ says at the end, because we mentioned this before: the very last thing that Christ says to this man after he’s down on his knees thanking Christ, he says to him, “Rise and go on your way. Your faith has made you well.” That’s the English translation that we all use, but if you take a step back, just based on what that says—the other nine have been made well, and they haven’t expressed their faith either. So what’s the distinction between this man’s faith making him… The wellness that this man receives versus the wellness that these others received, because they were all equally healed, but only one returned and only one is told, “Your faith has made you well.”

So to kind of get at that, you have to go back to the original, and you have to go back to the Greek where Christ actually says to him, “Sesoken se.” From… sesoken means you have been—in this translation they use “have been made well,” but it’s from the word sozein, which means to save. So what Christ is saying is, “Your faith has saved you.” It is often used in terms of healing, but its very basic definition is saving, is salvation. So there’s this distinction between this one and the other nine, because they’re all made well, physically—we can’t lose sight of that: they’re all made well—but only one is saved.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, because only one…

Fr. Panagiotis: And to Father’s point, he came back not because he was made well physically, but, because he was made well physically, he recognized that the One he stands in front of is God, and as a result he returns to offer thanks to God—not because he was made well, but because he was standing in front of God. And as a result he receives salvation, while the others simply receive wellness.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, that’s the part that I wanted to jump in and highlight. Jesus even says, “Only one was found to return and give praise to God.” There’s actually a kind of a liturgical dimension to what happens, right? The way Jesus is framing it, it’s not just that he came back and gave thanks to me, like Jesus is even sort of making a statement about who he is, I think also making a statement about who this foreigner, this Samaritan, is seeing Jesus to be, which is this extra dimension. Something has changed within him: he has been saved, which motivates this journey, and he comes back a different person, not just to say thank you, but to give praise to God, not just the prophet or whoever else Jesus might be in his imagination.

Fr. Niko: Right, and I think the reason I’m kind of stuck on this and I keep going at this is that it’s something that I see in our culture, of… I mean, we’re in a very transactional culture. America has a very specific kind of feeling to it, where we live in this consumerist world. We’re also a country that gives at a greater rate than more other cultures have in the past, like philanthropy. All the different studies around philanthropy have shown that we’re a more giving people. But even then, it ends up… We still have a very transactional, consumerist, materialistic approach to it, and that’s why I bring this up, because… I don’t… It’s easy to say in our context, well, if Jesus gives you something, thank him for it. You’ve gotten the thing; thank the God and you’ll get more things, and you thank God more… Those transactions will continue.

Mr. Christoforou: Lather, rinse, repeat. Yeah.

Fr. Niko: [Laughter] Right.

Fr. Panagiotis: As needed.

Fr. Niko: What’s that?

Fr. Panagiotis: As needed. [Laughter] And then when you don’t need any more…

Fr. Niko: Don’t over-shampoo, people. Come on. To get this sculpture…

Fr. Panagiotis: I’m not… I don’t have… [Laughter] This part, though… [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: I’ve heard so many sermons on this portion that kind of reduce Christ to the giver of good things to the people who say thank you.

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah. So I just wrote my article for our monthly bulletin that we send out for February, and it was highlighting the Feast of the Presentation, and this was the exact thing that I focused on. I know we’ve got time before we get to that, but, Father, to your point, this process that we see at the Feast of the Presentation is the same process that we see here, which is indicative of the liturgical life of the Church and just our spiritual life in general. And that process is receiving something from God, returning back to him and giving thanks for what we’ve received, and then him blessing, again, and then us returning back to the world.

It’s this ever-repeating process that I think is most accentuated in the Feast of the Presentation because of Christ’s 40-day blessing. It’s my favorite feast, and it’s very clear there, but what is happening is exactly what’s happening here. Christ passes these men, they reach out to him, and he blesses them with healing. They return with thanksgiving, and it’s not a perfunctory thanksgiving; it’s a thanksgiving that requires effort. It’s not just a thankful heart; he has to do a couple days’ journey. This is not a simple thing, but he returns and he makes this effort to return and stand in front of God and thank him for the blessings he’s received, while adding his own efforts to that. The blessing that he receives is then compounded, because he participates in that by returning, and then when he returns, God blesses him again, and then he goes back out into the world, transformed and changed, in this entire cyclical experience.

And as this applies to our spiritual life, this is just on repeat, and this is our basic… Fr. Alexander Schmemann would essentially say: This is our basic relationship with God at all times. We are always coming forward to him to give thanks for what we have received and to receive more blessings in that process, and then to go back out into the world, having been transformed and changed by the act of being blessed in our thanksgiving.

Mr. Christoforou: The infinite cycle of lathering, rinsing, and repeating.

Fr. Panagiotis: You never stop. It’s like those videos where the guy is trying to wash his hair, and his friend’s squeezing more shampoo on. [Laughter]

Mr. Christoforou: Less rage!

Fr. Panagiotis: Much less rage. I think that was, what, the high school kids? That’s so mean. [Laughter]

Mr. Christoforou: Suds running down the beard, the beard of Aaron… [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: So many epitrahelia…

Mr. Christoforou: And to even connect it, it’s a very eucharistic mode of life, right?

Fr. Panagiotis: That’s the point.

Mr. Christoforou: It’s the constant sort of cycle of giving and receiving, giving and receiving. I think that really becomes this linchpin between the sort of ephemeral feeling of gratitude versus this actual eucharistic living. It’s the posture and this constant cycle of giving-receiving, giving-receiving, and this compounding of blessings. It’s a thing we do, just as it’s a thing God does, not just a thing we feel.

Fr. Panagiotis: Right, and that’s where, when Christ tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, that’s where that is very, very clear, because when he tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, earlier in the Gospel of Luke, he heals another leper and says the same thing, but he gives more context. He actually gives less context the second time around, because you kind of know what’s happening. Where is that?

Mr. Christoforou: It’s Luke 5, right? 5:12.

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah. So this is an example of another—it’s an individual, single leper cleansed. I’m going to read it, but it’ll provide some more context.

And it happened that he was in a certain city. Behold, a man who was full of leprosy saw Jesus, and he fell on his face and implored him, saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Then he put out his hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing. Be cleansed.” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he charged him to tell no one, “But go” (and this is Christ now speaking) “Go and show yourself to the priest” (which is what we have) “and make an offering of your cleansing as a testimony to them, just as Moses commanded.”

Mr. Christoforou: That was [Luke] 5:12-14, just to give verses.

Fr. Panagiotis: So Christ is again healing somebody and telling them to go and show themselves to the priests. The assumption is that when he’s saying, “Go and show yourself to the priests,” at this point in time, he’s making the same point, and: “Make an offering of your cleansing.” He’s not telling them, “Go and show the priests what I did,” and make the priests understand what’s going on. That’s not the point. He’s saying, “Go and show yourselves to the priests, so that they can offer the sacrifices that are appropriate for the cleansing of leprosy, as prescribed by Moses in the book of Leviticus.” We can get into all of that stuff; it’s chapter 14 of Leviticus. There’s a whole eight-day process of what you have to do—birds and lambs and all these other things that have to be sacrificed in recognition for your thanksgiving.

But the point is, he’s telling them to go do this sacramental, liturgical act to show their thanksgiving. He’s not telling them to go and have a spirit of thanksgiving and a spirit of generosity and a feeling of thanksgiving; he’s telling them: Go and do the things. Go do the things that display thanksgiving. What happens is, they all go and do it, presumably, and they all go to the Temple to offer thanks to God, but only one of them is cognizant enough to understand that what he’s doing in the Temple, the liturgical acts in the Temple, are being offered to the same Person that he met on the road. And that’s why he goes back, I think.

It’s because—again, I’m not going to totally throw the other nine under the bus as if they’re completely ingrates, but they don’t… They go to the Temple, theoretically, presumably, and do the sacrifices. They do the liturgical thing, but the action of it doesn’t trigger that next step in that realization that it is Christ the One who healed them on the road whom they are offering sacrifices to in the Temple, so returning to him is a continuation of that. You’re actually not done thanking God until you go back… You might be done with the prescribed rites; you might be done with the rituals, but the thanksgiving is not done, because you’re offering these rituals at the Temple to the One that you met on the road.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, which becomes this model for what it is to live in Christ. I think part of it is this connection of: He’s the only one who truly gets it; he’s the only one who truly… which I think is a nice gloss. The other ones might have been grateful; the other ones might have actually expressed gratitude, but it’s the Samaritan who’s the only one who actually sees Jesus for who he is. It’s interesting seeing this model for what life is. Life… We go to the altar, we do the sort of liturgical things that we do, and yet there is this sending out into the world to find Christ on the road, like you said, and to do kind of liturgy, to express gratitude on the road, not just here in Jerusalem, but to the ends of the earth.

Fr. Panagiotis: Right, and it’s that last step of the process that he participates in and the rest of them don’t. They all go, and they all offer the “thanksgiving,” but they don’t leave the Temple transformed by the interaction. They leave the Temple being made well, but they don’t leave the Temple being—

Mr. Christoforou: Saved.

Fr. Panagiotis: —being transformed by… Saved, right. And this is the only one who does there. Fr. Niko, I cut you off.

Fr. Niko: Well, no, I was going to say: Are we comfortable saying that the other nine likely…? I mean, we don’t know, but are we comfortable kind of saying that the other nine maybe satisfied the Mosaic law? They went back, they went to the priests, they offered sacrifice as prescribed. They kind of did the bare minimum. They were able to stand and say, “I’ve lived a righteous life.” They are like so many others offered to us in Scripture.

Fr. Panagiotis: “I fast two times a week, and I tithe mint and dill,” right?

Fr. Niko: So what else do I need to do?

Fr. Panagiotis: Right. No, I think you’re on the exact right point. It’s taken us this amount of time to really dig into it, to see that maybe they’re not “ungrateful,” but that they’re adhering to the letter of the Law but not the spirit of the Law, which is something that Christ criticizes many times over. Performing the rites of the Church or performing the rites of their faith, going to the Temple and offering sacrifices does not change the way in which they lived their life after doing that, but they feel as if they have done their duty.

We are the orthodox members of the Orthodox Church. I remember one of my professors in undergrad talking about oftentimes—he was my religious history of Judaism [professor], and he was a practicing Orthodox Jew, but he made the point that for many people Judaism is about orthopraxy as opposed to orthodoxy. It’s about doing the things that God tells you to do, not necessarily believing. This is a large generalization; I don’t mean to paint with such a broad brush, but I only bring it up to say I would be comfortable saying that these other nine are practitioners of orthopraxy, not orthodoxy, orthodoxy meaning practice. They’re doing the right thing, but they don’t necessarily believe, or they’re not moved yet, to a full understanding or a full belief like this man’s faith. His faith saves him.

Fr. Niko: And it’s unnecessary. It’s not on point anyway with how modern Judaism is focused on orthopraxy, orthodoxy—where are we focused? We’re here in this middle period, after Theophany. For those of us who love Ypapanti, who love the Presentation, we have this massive feast coming up that we’re really excited about.

Fr. Panagiotis: No one else cares.

Fr. Niko: Right. [Laughter]

Fr. Panagiotis: No one else cares. I literally wrote in my article. I was like: You guys don’t know how important this one is, but…

Fr. Niko: And as someone who loves to chant, oh! Come on. Oh, it’s so pretty. Just please! You’re missing out, people. But what’s the next big thing to your typical Orthodox Christian. The next thing is Great Lent. We’re going to get back into Lent for you. This year it’s even later than usual, but typically we’d be approaching those preceding Sundays, and we’d be approaching Meatfare and Cheesefare, etc., and this reading is not necessarily associated with those, but it does remind us that orthopraxy is our…

Fr. Panagiotis: Sometimes it’s our bread and butter.

Fr. Niko: Oh my gosh, is it ever! And I honestly think… I know it exists in Judaism where there are entire groups of modern Jewish people who have basically rebuilt the faith without God but with the practice, and that’s not to say, “Oh, that’s ridiculous; we’d never do something like that.” There are a lot of Orthodox Christians, I think, that struggle to live in that world where they’ve rebuilt the ritual, but they’re absent the God. That’s what I see in this gospel, I think, for the first time, really as clearly. It’s not just about “thank you,” it’s not just about “go tell the person who healed you: thank you”; it’s: You went and you did what you had to, but God is standing in front of you. You’re called to go out and do this extra step.

Fr. Panagiotis: It’s not really an extra step!

Fr. Niko: It’s not really an extra step; it’s not an extra step.

Fr. Panagiotis: It’s the fulfillment of the… it’s what gives the praxis its meaning.

Fr. Niko: Yes.

Fr. Panagiotis: It’s not… We shouldn’t look at this one guy as the guy who did extra; we should look at this guy who understood the meaning behind the first part and completed it, whereas the other nine did the actions but didn’t understand the purpose and so didn’t complete it or didn’t provide the proper context.

Mr. Christoforou: Which, to look at this from a different angle, I think this gives a little bit of context on Psalm 50, where the Lord tells us: I don’t delight in your sacrifices, in your burnt offerings. Because when these things are sort of empty, when it’s just sort of things that are set on fire, when you’re just sort of going through the motions, when the point isn’t establishing a posture of repentance before God or actually drawing closer to him, then he doesn’t delight in it, and he tells us that. I mean, these forms are support to draw us into communion, and this guy actually goes face to face to the One he’s being drawn into communion with. That’s the whole point. It’s not just an abstract philosophical exercise—he confesses Jesus is Lord but it does nothing—it’s not just an abstract exercise in teleturgics. It brings him face to face with the Lord, and it changes his life.

Fr. Panagiotis: A side note: in Psalm 50, where David says, “Sprinkle me with hyssop,” that might actually be an allusion to the cleansing rituals performed by the priests during the cleansing of a leper.

Mr. Christoforou: Oh! Ah!

Fr. Niko: That makes sense.

Fr. Panagiotis: So, part of it…

Fr. Niko: Good job, Steve.

Fr. Panagiotis: I’m just going to read from… The whole chapter 14 is prescriptions about how to cleanse, how to spiritually cleanse somebody who’s been healed…

Mr. Christoforou: Leviticus.

Fr. Panagiotis: Right, Leviticus. Sorry. How to spiritually cleanse somebody who’s been physically healed of their physical leprosy. The person needs to bring a couple of birds.

Then the priest must give orders that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop, and dip the living bird in the blood of the bird killed over the running water. Then he shall sprinkle the water seven times on the one cleansed from his leprosy, and he shall be clean.

There’s a whole lot more. But it’s interesting: when David said, “Sprinkle me with hyssop,” it’s probably a reference to this mixture that is then sprinkled upon the person who is then cleansed of their sins, because the healing of leprosy was seen as not just a physical healing but as a spiritual healing. Leprosy was the result of a sin, and so the offerings and the sacrifices and everything else is related to the cleansing of that sin as well as the thanksgiving for the healing. So that connection between “Sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be cleansed,” as if my sin… “Sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be cleansed; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” It’s taking away the sin, just like we’re taking away the sin that’s associated with leprosy. Just a little… There you go.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, beautiful connection between the…

Fr. Panagiotis: By the way, how much…? The two birds… I would rather… I would feel really bad. I mean, you can’t cook a calf in its mother’s milk, but you can kill one bird and dip another one in its blood… [Laughter]

Mr. Christoforou: But cheeseburgers are right out! Sorry.

Fr. Panagiotis: I had a question about this, completely unrelated. It’ll throw us off, and I’m just going to put it out there; then we can leave. Is chicken salad the poultry equivalent of cooking a calf in its mother’s milk, because you’re using mayonnaise and chicken…?

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, it’s mostly eggs.

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah, mostly eggs, right? So it’s chicken and eggs mixed together in one dish. Is that the poultry equivalent of…? and dairy.

Fr. Niko: Now, now, you have to use lots of yolks, right, because the yolk would be the nutritious element of the egg for the growing… The yolk is the milk, right? I’m good with that.

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah, I think chicken salad is the poultry equivalent, although deemed kosher, I’m assuming, but if I were writing—which I’m not.

Mr. Christoforou: Super delicious. I’m glad I can eat chicken salad, which is all I care about.

Fr. Panagiotis: I mean, you can eat a bacon cheeseburger anyway, and you’re fine.

Mr. Christoforou: [Laughter] Also true!

Fr. Panagiotis: I’ve seen you do it.

Mr. Christoforou: Multiple times at one sitting!

Fr. Niko: Oh my gosh.

Fr. Panagiotis: Sorry about that. Anyway.

Mr. Christoforou: No, that’s good.

Fr. Niko: Sorry. Looking up recipes for kosher chicken salad. [Laughter] We are gone.

Fr. Panagiotis: So I do want to bring up, just to further drive home this point about the connection between the thanksgiving that’s offered and then the return, and the return being an acknowledgment about who Christ is: it says, “He returned praising God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet giving thanks to him.” There is another point in 2 Kings (4 Kingdoms) where Elisha the Prophet heals a foreigner—again, not an Israelite: in this case it’s a Samaritan being healed; in 4 Kingdoms it is a Syrian general commander Naaman, who is… Siri just turned on when I said, “Syria!” I wonder if that’s a problem in their country. [Laughter]

Anyway, Naaman comes to Elisha to be healed of his leprosy. He is healed, and then it says afterwards, after he is healed:

Then he with his aides returned to Elisha and came and stood before him and said, “Indeed, now I have come to know that in all the earth there is no God except the God of Israel.”

So this pagan foreigner comes to Israel in order to be cleansed. He gets a little salty about how he’s going to be cleansed, but he follows along with what he’s told, and then his return is for the sole purpose of telling Elisha, “I now know that there is no God but the God of Israel.” So his healing made it clear to him that the one true God is the God of Israel. And he comes back for the sole purpose of proclaiming that out loud, much like this Samaritan foreigner who goes and performs the deeds and the acts just like everybody else, but he’s the only one who goes and makes the recognition by returning to the one true God, that “you are the one true God” in the same way that Naaman made that proclamation to Elisha; now that Samaritan is making that proclamation to the one true God himself.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah. What a beautiful connection.

Fr. Niko: And similarly the other nine, again, caught in their orthopraxy, as it were, not recognizing, not going back to declare that the God of Israel is the one true God. They are facing the God of Israel. They are. They’re facing their God and they’re not able to see it.

Mr. Christoforou: And this is a theme that we get a lot. You’re seeing now a connection. It’s the outsider even in this passage from the Old Testament. We see it a lot in Luke in particular; we’ve covered it over the last couple of weeks, where the Samaritan, the outsider, is the one who kind of sees this thing. There’s a couple of layers to this, obviously: that the Lord is here; he is the God of all. The God of Israel is really the God of everyone, the Creator of everybody. But this interesting tension, that sometimes to be on the inside and be comfortable with one’s insideness can actually be this thing that blinds us, that we can kind of miss the forest for the trees sometimes. And the nine—who were there, who have the Scriptures, who have all these things that are pointing forward to Jesus—don’t see sometimes what the outsider is more able to see, which becomes kind of, I think, an indictment and a warning for us. Are there things that we miss sometimes? Are we actually seeing God or are we getting caught up in whatever other things of our imaginations or pretending? You don’t get to rest in that insiderness.

Fr. Panagiotis:  Right. Yeah, it’s an indictment, and it’s an indictment that Christ makes time and time and time again. I’ve always said—Father, I’m cutting you off…

Fr. Niko: You’re good, you’re good! I’m getting used to this whole Zoom thing. It’s new to me.

Fr. Panagiotis: It’s new to you? What? Where have you been for the last ten months?

Mr. Christoforou: Where have you been? [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: Under a rock.

Fr. Panagiotis: [Laughter] Now I’ve totally lost my train of thought.

Fr. Niko: Sorry. Derailed it.

Mr. Christoforou: Insiderness.

Fr. Panagiotis: No, it’s okay. He did it on purpose so that he could have the floor now.

Fr. Niko: [Laughter] Insiders. We were talking insiders.

Fr. Panagiotis: Insider… Oh, I’ve said it a lot here. I’ve said it once; I’ll say it again. If you are reading the Scriptures and you are identifying the bad example—the people who don’t understand, who don’t follow—if you’re identifying those as anyone other than yourself, you’re missing the point. Especially as Orthodox Christians, when we hear about the criticism of the Pharisees—my mind always goes to Holy Week: “Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees: hypocrites!”—it’s not to absolve those individuals and the Pharisees of that time of their responsibility, but it does me no good spiritually to point my finger at somebody else and be like: “You scribe, Pharisee, hypocrite! Look at all the things you’re doing wrong!” and not understand that, especially as a clergyman, first and foremost, I am… I’m an insider’s insider, and that… All of these criticisms are not of others; they’re of me.

Fr. Niko: Right, and that’s what I… I should have actually continued with that derailing your train of thought and said it myself, because I would have gotten the points. You got all the God-points for saying it. I didn’t get any. I’m in trouble now.

My thought there—and this is something that specifically comes up, that’s come up in conversations before—Scripture is so hard on the Jews. That’s something people will say: “Scripture is so hard on the Jews.” And our hymnology…

Fr. Panagiotis: Tell them to read some hymns!

Fr. Niko: Seriously! [Laughter]

Fr. Panagiotis: Tell them to crack open the Holy Wednesday evening service.

Fr. Niko: Right, yet at the same time… Yes, it is. Yes, Scripture and the hymns are hard on the Jews—but, but, but… That’s me. That’s my inheritance. That’s the brokenness that I decide to carry with me, and it’s not about absolving… Like you said, it’s not about absolving the historical individuals, but it does me no good to condemn them either. Your point is entirely made there that the word of caution here, to not be one of the nine, is to us, those of us who feel content in our “Well, I’m Orthodox, and I do the things that the Orthodox Church requires, and I’m okay. I’ll be fine, right?”

Fr. Panagiotis: Yeah, we are never that one who returns. I don’t know. This is just my… I’m a very strong critic. But we are never the person in the right. We are always the person who can learn.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, you’re never Jesus in the story. You’re never the good guy.

Fr. Panagiotis: You’re never the hero, no. And I’m going to pull up my… I just stumbled across this as we were doing this today. A verse just stuck with me. Where is it? Seventeen… Again, just before this section. Christ is speaking to his disciples, and he’s talking about servants who serve the Lord and the way that you treat servants and whatnot. This is Christ speaking in 17:9.

“Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So, likewise, when you have done all those things which you have been commanded, you say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what is our duty to you.”

You don’t get points for doing what you were supposed to do.

Mr. Christoforou: As Chris Rock once joked, “Do you want a cookie for doing the thing you were supposed to do?”

Fr. Panagiotis: And that—I mean, it’s harsh, but that’s ultimately what we’re talking about here with the nine. They did what they were supposed to do. But we’re going to praise you for doing what you were supposed to do? No, you’re going to be recognized as actually fulfilling what you were supposed to do when you move beyond the action of it to the spirit and the intention behind it, which is to return and praise God. You’re supposed to go to the Temple; you’re supposed to offer these sacrifices. You don’t get any credit for offering the sacrifices in the Temple. The credit, if we could even say that, comes by fulfilling the action with its true intended purpose, which is to proclaim God.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, and draw closer to him.

Fr. Niko: Right. I was going to say: Aren’t you still in need?

Fr. Panagiotis: I’m always in need.

Fr. Niko: Humility… I try to reframe humility. So often we think of it as a disposition, just kind of almost a self-deprecating disposition.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, a lie.

Fr. Niko: The reality is it’s a reliance on God. I’m utterly reliant on God’s love and mercy. I’m utterly… I’m constantly turning to God because otherwise I am constantly failing, and I return… The only chance we have to be the one is recognizing that we are the nine, and I’ve got to go back to him again because I’m one of the nine and I need his help again because I’m a leper again.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah. So in the same way as earlier, we had this eucharistic cycle of offering, which is this thing that sort of never ends, the sort of infinite “lather, rinse, repeat,” at the same time, there’s this infinite cycle of repentance, right? The thing to be mindful of… I have an icon of St. Sisoes the Great by my desk here, this ascetic Father. His monks were around him at the very end of his life, and they ask him for a word, and he’s like, as his face is literally glowing with the uncreated light, “Oh, I wish I had started repenting sooner. I have not yet begun to repent.” I mean, these are these two things that kind of happened at the same time: This increasing realization that I am one of the nine, I have to work on this, I have to work on this, here’s my brokenness, here’s my brokenness. And at the same time, it’s eucharistic: here’s what I have; thank you, Lord; thank you, Lord; glory to you; glory to you. These two shampoo cycles kind of work together. I’ve got to get off the shampoo, but you know what I mean. [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: That’s how you’ve got that hair, though. Come on.

Fr. Panagiotis: Is the… I’m not going to make this work. I was going to try and save you, but… [Laughter] [Inaudible] Is conditioner the next step?

Mr. Christoforou: And then the post-conditioner? Is there a kind of hot oil treatment, perhaps?

Fr. Niko: I’m just saying, a good matte wax… I’m just saying. [Laughter]

Fr. Panagiotis: This is definitely off the rails. [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: Though, Steve, I think you just illustrated how recognizing that we are one of the nine and basically: “I’ve got to go back now in repentance,” all of a sudden, we become the one. We’re constantly going back to Christ, and it’s through this: “Shoot. I didn’t do it. I’ve got to back to him and ask him.” And all of a sudden, we’re the one going back to Christ. We’re the one recognizing he’s there. And doxology maybe flows from that humility? It’s hard. Doxology… When we offer glory to God, we can’t ever offer it from a place of being satisfied, because we’re always yearning for him to come into us more completely. Doxology comes with humility? I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going there.

Mr. Christoforou: Because you’re glorifying upwards, right?

Fr. Niko: Right. Right, but you become… You recognize that you’re in need of God. You go back to God not only to offer thanks as an end to itself, like “You’ve fixed the thing; I’m good now.” You go back because you’re still in need. I know I said that earlier, but that’s what keeps coming up in my mind. We’re still in need of his healing, even though…

Fr. Panagiotis: ...even though he’s physically well of his leprosy, he’s still in need of the grace of Christ. He still needs to stand in God’s presence. He still needs the life that Christ… Which is why… And, again, this is one specific, acute interaction—but that’s why when he goes back he receives the salvation, the sesoken se, “You have been saved.” So he goes back not only in thanksgiving for what… but also to fulfill those additional needs, to your point, Fr. Niko. He goes back to fulfill what he did in doxology and praise, but in humility; he’s also still in need of salvation that the one true God can offer him, and so he receives an additional blessing. Going back as the one, he receives additional on top of that, which is another cause. Eternal wellness, salvation, is another cause of thanksgiving, which would again bring him back in front of God to offer thanks. That’s what we’re talking about, again, this continual…

Fr. Niko: Right. A connection I just kind of made here: the archon, the rich young ruler, the one we talk about in the Scripture here, who’s told to sell all he had and follow…

Fr. Panagiotis: I thought you meant of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: Oh, no, no. Not that one!

Fr. Panagiotis: Rich old rulers. [Laughter]

Fr. Niko: The rich young ruler, right? If he sold all he had, he would be almost precisely where the healed leper, the healed Samaritan leper is: with nothing, and following, then, Christ, seeking everything. And I’m not sure exactly where my mind’s going with that connection, but when I hear the temptation for the nine is to be caught up in the lives they live, is to be distracted: “I’ve made my offering to Moses. Now I’m going to get back to whatever else it is.”

Fr. Panagiotis: Thank you, and I’m so glad you said that. I think this is something that we really need to… I’m going to drive this home right now, and I think that is a perfect way to conclude. Because what you just said is what everyone is waiting for with COVID. They are waiting to get back to normal. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said it. We’re waiting to be healed and get back to what we were doing before, and this one is the one who comes back.

I had another sermon planned for Sunday, but this might throw it all off! Thank you for that.

Mr. Christoforou: Spoiler alert!

Fr. Panagiotis: Well, it’s on St. Anthony, so I’d have to totally shift gears. But the point being: what you just said totally opened this up for me, because of the situation we’re in right now, because, theoretically, if we can project, these nine did what they were supposed to do, and now they’re going back to their lives. They’re not going back to Christ; they’re going back to their lives. And this desire for the world to be healed and get “back to normal” or to regain certain things… Man, we just need to make sure that when healing comes that it comes not just with wellness, that the result in the world is not just wellness, but that the result is salvation for us. That we’re not just going to back to the way things were, that we’re actually going to go back beyond what they were. Yes, healed—we’re not denying that—but we cannot just return to the way things were like the nine did, because that’s really what, if we’re following these projections and extrapolations, that’s a big part of what they did, and that is the spirit I really see. We talk from time to time about we don’t want to lose the lessons of COVID and everything else, but, man, it needs to be such a larger… The conversation needs to be not “let’s get back to normal,” but “let’s go back, give praise to God, and be made well, be saved.” Let’s move beyond just what we were before into something greater and better.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah.

Fr. Niko: Right. That’s exactly it. You wrap it up. I just closed my Bible. [Thump] That’s how wrapped up it is. [Laughter]

Fr. Panagiotis: Done.

Mr. Christoforou: Yeah, we nailed it. We solved COVID. But it’s important. I think that’s a good last word for us. I think that’s really good.

Fr. Panagiotis: Well, Fr. Niko, thank you for joining us today. I’ll ask you to go ahead and close us in prayer.

Fr. Niko: Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen. Keeping it simple. These new priests, they don’t know very many prayers. [Laughter]

Mr. Christoforou: Bye, everybody. God bless!