A Tested and Emergent Faith

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

This sermon has three parts—first on the Epistle, then the Gospel, and finally, on the Afterfeast of the Dormition. In the epistle today from the 4th chapter of First Corinthians, St Paul is writing to the comfortable new Christians of Corinth. He is seeking to communicate to them that his own experience of the Christian life is that it is a challenge. When he urges the Corinthians to imitate him, he is warning them that they should expect to be challenged. St Paul is living out the words of Psalm 2, verse 11: “Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice in Him with trembling.” He hopes very much that the Christians in the community in Corinth will do the same. However, St Paul knows that it is not easy to fear God and to rejoice in Him at the same time. To do that, one has to trust God and rely on Him.

It is clear that St Paul is upset by how some of the Christians in Corinth have been behaving. Perhaps that is why, as a note in The Orthodox Study Bible explains, St Paul is quite sarcastic. He does not really think that these new Christians are wise or strong or distinguished as suggested in verse 10. On the contrary, St Paul sets out his own sufferings for Christ and urges the Christians in Corinth to imitate him—to join him in being prepared to suffer for Christ in order to proclaim the gospel.

Later in this 4th chapter of First Corinthians, St Paul asks the community a blunt question in this letter that is read to them: “What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod,” he asks, “or in love and a spirit of gentleness?” St John Chrysostom posed this same challenge to everyone, including us, when he preached, and I quote: God “does not allow the good to become bad… He threatens [before] he punishes…This then is a mark of God’s great care… Because the Ninevites repented, they caused the threat to stop at words only. Do you wish [God’s warning] to be a threat only? You have the disposal of that matter. Become a better person, and it stops only at the threat. But if, which be far from you, you [ignore] the threat, you will come to the experience of it… May the merciful God grant that we henceforth, having been brought to sound mind, may obtain those unspeakable blessings,” concluded St John Chrysostom.

As in the first century with St Paul in Corinth, and in the fourth century with St John Chrysostom in Constantinople, so it is with us today. We are all sinners. There will be times in our lives when God warns us to change our behaviour, and we then choose whether to act on the warning or to accept the punishment. We may well not know precisely what the punishment for ignoring God might be, but we do know that St John Chrysostom is right that the choice is ours.

The Gospel today from the 17th chapter of St Matthew is very much in unity with the Epistle, as both stress the importance of trusting God. Here the father of an epileptic son comes to Jesus Christ and pleads for mercy and healing. Jesus heals the young man, when the disciples were not able to do so and are puzzled by their failure. Christ explains to them that their faith was not strong enough. In the parallel passage in the Gospel of St Mark, chapter 9, the father of the boy admits that his faith is also limited. The father cries out, “I believe; help my unbelief.” St Augustine points out that “we find here an emerging faith, that is not yet full faith,” concluded St Augustine. It is important to see that this “emerging faith” was sufficient that Jesus Christ was then prepared to heal the young man. Throughout each of our lives, our own faith in God can grow stronger. St Augustine reflects that in our relationship to God, and I quote: “the first stage of understanding is to recognize that you are a sinner. The second stage of understanding is that when, having received the gift of faith you begin to do good by choosing to love, you attribute this not to your own powers but to the grace of God,” concluded St Augustine. Each of us can follow that path—moving from an awareness we are sinners, to choose to love God and others, while seeing that this power to love God and others is not because of our own strength, but because of the grace of God.

This path of growing faith and love was certainly followed by the Theotokos throughout her life on earth. As Father Gregory preached yesterday, the Dormition is not only about Our Lady’s Ascension, Glorification and Crowning in heaven, but a model for us to guide us in following her example of obedience to Christ. We too can each decide to follow Christ and the Theotokos wherever they might lead us in prayer during these eight days of the octave of this beautiful feast.

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.              Father Emmanuel Kahn