New Life in Christ

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

The epistle today from the third chapter of St Paul’s Letter to the Colossians begins by reassuring us that “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” So, this epistle begins with the Second Coming of Christ. The previous verses urge us, and I quote: “Set your mind on the things above, not the things on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God,” concluded St Paul. It is important to understand the sense in which we have “died” while we are still alive on earth. To what have we died?

In this epistle St Paul gives a clear answer as to what should die within us. He writes and I quote: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry,” concluded St Paul. That last death noted by St Paul is especially striking—covetousness—that is, wanting what someone else has, desiring what we see as their success or the way they live. St Paul goes so far as to say that being covetous is idolatry—that is, worshiping an idol instead of the true God. So how do we learn how to worship the true God?

St Augustine offers us a path to worshiping the true God. He preaches and I quote: “What are the lies you are seeking? I will tell you right away. You all want to be happy. But what is it that makes a person’s life happy?... [Only] Truth alone, which gives to everything else its reality, can give happiness…. Truth alone makes people blessed…. [Christ] came down and .. he took your bad things…. He promised us his life, but what …. he did is even more unbelievable; he paid us his death in advance. As though to say, ‘I am inviting you to my life, where nobody dies, where life is truly happy…. There you are, that is where I am inviting you, to the region of the angels, to the friendship of the Father and the Holy Spirit, to the everlasting supper, to be my brothers and sisters, to be, in a word, myself. I am inviting you to my life.’… So now, while we are living in this perishable flesh, by a change of habits let us die with Christ, by a love of being just let us live with Christ. We are only going to receive the happy, blessed life when we come to [Christ] who came to us and when we begin to be with him who died for us,” concluded St Augustine.

There is the key to dying in this world in the words of St Augustine: “By a change of habits let us die with Christ.” As St Augustine points out in a different sermon; and I quote: “Spiritual birth begins with a change from an earthly and worldly life,” urged St Augustine. In other words, we each begin where we are. Life is now; yet we can also see our goal—oneness with Christ on earth and in heaven. St Augustine is following St Paul in Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 22 to 25, urging us, and I quote: “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life … and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, the one created by God in the righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore, shedding the lie, let each one of [us] speak the truth with [their] neighbour for we are members one of another,” concluded St Paul. So, this change of habits—losing our very own bad habits and being renewed in our minds in Christ—is not a lonely search. We are all, in St Paul’s phrase, “members one of another.” In other words, we help and support each other. However, note that this is only possible if we “speak the truth” with each other. It is good to tell our confessor and our closest friends precisely what are our worst habits and how we are trying to change those habits. We can learn to trust and help each other. We can learn to die with Christ and thereby gain new life.

However, the parable in the Gospel today from the 14th chapter of St Luke, verses 14 to 24, gives us a strong warning. We are among the people who have been invited to the great banquet to be “blessed” and to “eat bread in the kingdom of God.” If we come up with excuses, the Lord Jesus Christ will not remove our free will. He will simply say, “I tell you, none of those … who were invited [to my banquet and chose not to come] shall taste my banquet.” In other words, if we do not grow as persons and as Christians, seeking Truth within ourselves and others, we will pay a heavy price in our lives now and in later judgment.

A prayer from a saint, Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich, offers an appropriate conclusion to this sermon. St Nikolai wrote in Prayers by the Lake, and I quote: “I remind myself of all the blessings You have bestowed on me during my lifetime, my unfailing Companion [Lord], and I am offering up to You a gift in return from myself. I am not offering up to You my entire self, for I am not entirely worthy to burn on Your most pure sacrificial altar. I cannot offer as a sacrifice to [You] the Immortal One what is intended for death and corruption. I offer up to You only that which has grown within me under Your light, that which was saved in me by Your Word…. When the choirs of angels begin to sing around Your throne, when the archangels’ trumpets begin to blare, when Your martyrs begin to weep for joy, and Your saints begin to sob their prayers for the salvation of the Church on earth, do not despise the sacrifice of my words, O Lord my God… I pray to You and bow down to You, now and throughout all time, and throughout all eternity. Amen”

Father Emmanuel Kahn