Today both the Gospel and the Epistle, or as we Orthodox call that reading, ‘the Apostle,’ are about authority—the spiritual authority that comes with believing in Jesus Christ and the authority that comes to each of us from the gifts that Jesus Christ gives to each of us. Children, “authority” is about the power to make something happen. So how is Jesus Christ in authority over our lives? Because He can forgive our sins, and He can guide us, and He can heal us. All three kinds of authority are important—Christ’s ability to forgive us, to guide us and to heal us.

In the ninth chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew, Jesus Christ heals someone who has been brought to him who is paralysed, because He sees the faith of the friends of the paralysed man. Having healed him, Jesus Christ says to the Jewish scribes and to the crowd that He is “the Son of man” who “has authority on earth to forgive sins;” and then the crowd “glorified God, who had given such authority” to this man Jesus. The words that Jesus Christ is using to describe Himself, “Son of Man,” show that Christ is fully human. The phrase “Son of Man” also reminds the Jews and us of the words of Daniel, in the book of Daniel, chapter 7, verses 12 and 13, in which Daniel sees “with the clouds of heaven … one like a son of man…. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve Him.” In that opening of the ninth chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew one paralysed man is healed. However, that healing is a sign that Christ has authority to heal and guide “all peoples,” whatever their nation or language. Therefore, the people see that we “should serve [Jesus Christ].”

The reading from the apostle, the book of Romans, chapter 12, begins with verse 6 that tells us that each person, in the first century through until the twenty-first, has “gifts that differ according to the grace given to us” and urges, “let us use [these gifts] … in proportion to our faith.” In other words, we each receive different gifts from the love of God, from the grace of God. None of us know how much grace from God another person will receive. We don’t even know how much grace we will receive. However, all of us receive enough grace to do the work that God wishes us to do.

Writing about grace, in Father John Anthony McGuckin’s The Concise Encyclopedia of Orthodox Christianity, Stephen Thomas points out, and I quote, that “even in heaven, the blessed never know the divine essence…. What we have … in heaven is the uninterrupted experience of the energies which were experienced only occasionally and for a time in the earthly life: in heaven, grace is complete, the divine light shining uninterruptedly” [end of quote]. I find that approach to grace immensely encouraging: we each receive here on earth enough grace—enough love from God—to complete the tasks that the Lord wishes us to achieve. When we die with faith in Jesus Christ, as we reach heaven, “grace is complete.” We become one with the Lord, even though we do not at this time understand precisely the nature of that oneness with the Lord. It is enough to know that life on earth with our bodies and life in heaven without our bodies is a unity, as we experience coming closer and closer to the Lord.

In preparing this sermon, I looked at many Church Fathers and theologians trying to understand the meaning of grace in our lives. The advice that I found most helpful was a prayer of a single sentence from St Leo the Great in the fifth century: “May God grant us His grace through our prayers to carry out our promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” Now, the first part of that prayer is quite clear—“May God grant us His grace through our prayers.” That is precisely what Stephen Thomas means when he urges that salvation “comes through synergy,”—that is the combined action of two things, in this case “the union of divine grace and human will.” We are each free—we are each free human beings. We choose to pray; and God chooses whether our requests are our true needs. We can speculate that our needs might be met even if we don’t pray, but I wouldn’t try it.

I read last week about a quite holy person who prayed and prayed that the Lord would do something for him. It was clearly private; and he did not say more about his request. Finally, the Lord did meet his request, but there was so much trouble that he learned it was better to let the Lord decide what needed to be done in his life. When we pray, a good addition to our prayers is always: “Your will be done.”

What is fascinating and a bit unclear to me is the end of St Leo the Great’s prayer—the hope that “our promises” will be achieved through God’s love for us, through the grace He gives to each of us. What I wonder are “our promises”? Are these the promises the Lord makes to love us? Perhaps. But more probably, these might be the promises that we make within and to ourselves and to God to follow our consciences about what is holy and right for how we should live our lives, how we should serve others and believe in and serve the Holy Trinity. But we can be confident that Jesus Christ will forgive us and guide us and heal us.

And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.