Fr. Timothy Barkley
St. James Orthodox Church
(7/14) Wolves are savaging the flock! The sheep are torn and bleeding. Some might not survive!
Over there! Who’s that? He looks like a shepherd, but he’s taking the sheep too close to the cliffs! Some have already fallen to their death!
"Wolves in sheep’s clothing" was how Jesus himself described false pastors who prey on the faithful of Christ’s holy Church. St. Paul warned the elders of the Church of Ephesus that "savage wolves" would rend and tear the faithful.
The Church commemorates today the Fathers of the Church who defended her from the depredations of such savage "wolves in sheep’s clothing." Today’s commemoration focuses on the Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, but the Church’s hymnody for today spans the entirety of the early Church’s struggle for the Truth.
The Fathers labored (and, in some cases, died) to protect their flock against the heretical Arius, who taught that Jesus was not God; Macedonius, who taught that the Holy Spirit was not God; Nestorius, who tried to cleave the one person of Jesus into two separate and disconnected persons; and others who fell into the chasms of heresy by preferring
their own wisdom to the wisdom of God.
But why do we care? After all, if these folks were sincere, if they really believed that they were teaching correct doctrine, what does it matter? We all know that "doctrine divides"!
The reason this is important is that if Jesus is not properly presented to the people, they will not believe in him, and if they do not believe in him, they will not be saved.
What is salvation? Is it the "golden ticket" that gets us into the divine Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory in heaven? Or a "get out of jail free" card in our Monopoly game of Life? Or is it more?
The Church teaches that salvation is Christ being formed in us, it is partaking of the divine nature, becoming by grace what Christ is by nature. It is deification by grace. The New Age didn’t invent the divinization of humanity; it just twisted it. Proponents of the New Age, like the ancient Gnostics, teach the lie that humans are divine by nature;
the Church as always taught that humans can become divine by the grace of God.
Christ possessed by nature, from his generation from the Father, a divine nature; and he received from his mother Mary a human nature. He was by nature both divine and human – the only person in the universe who as ever been by his own nature both divine and human.
We humans have by nature a human nature, from our generation or birth. We can receive by grace the indwelling of the divine nature by the Holy Spirit, evermore formed in us by that outpouring to us of the energy of God called "grace." We can become by grace what Christ is by nature – a single person, both divine and human.
Both natures resided in him by nature; they can both reside in us by grace.
How are we saved? How do we attain to the divine? And what does this have to do with ancient church history? Why should we care?
We attain to the divine by becoming part of the Body of Christ, for there is no life of Christ outside his body; by allowing God to graft us into the vine that is Christ, into the olive tree, and receiving from him the everflowing life of the Holy Trinity.
We continue and develop in the divine life by becoming more and more intimately connected to Christ, drawing life from him in passionate personal pursuit and the sacramental life of the Church.
The calling of the Church, the Body of Christ, is to draw people to Jesus by proclaiming this Good News of the Gospel, of the person of Jesus and his teachings, of the hope of the divine life. We present Jesus to the world, and introduce others to him.
What would happen if the Church proclaimed a lie as the Good News? What would happen if the Church did not proclaim the truth about the Jesus to whom we are grafted, and from whom we receive that divine life? What if the Church taught that Jesus was not actually God, or did not have a human nature, or that his human nature was so sundered from his
divine nature that he did not redeem it?
If the Church taught that deviant doctrine, those who followed her teachings would not – could not – be saved. For if we do not join ourselves to the Godman Christ, we cannot receive the life of the Trinity. We cannot be saved if we seek to join ourselves to a false savior.
If the Church does not safeguard and correctly present the deposit of faith, if it proclaims as truth that which is false, then those who follow its teachings will not gain a saving faith in Jesus Christ and join themselves to him who is the way to salvation and the life of God incarnate, and thus they will not be saved.
Thus it is imperative that the Church be vigilant in guarding the deposit of faith, and allow no error to creep in, for if we believe and teach a lie and live according to that lie, we cannot receive the life of the Godman who is the truth (and the way, and the life) and attain our destiny of deification. If the Christ we worship is a false Christ, our
worship does not save us.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus told his disciples that whoever relaxes "one of the least of these commandments" and teaches others to do so "shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven." Endless debate has ensued – what commandments must we follow? The kosher laws? The ceremonial laws? Just the 10 commandments? Jesus said that if our righteousness
does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
But the scribes and Pharisees kept every "jot and tittle" of the law. How are we to exceed their "righteousness"?
The Church Fathers relieve us of our anxiety. This passage is immediately followed by "the law of the Gospel" – it’s not just about what we do, but about what’s in our hearts. So, "Moses told you not to murder, but I say (taught Jesus) that if you are angry with your brother, you have committed murder in your heart." Moses said "do not commit
adultery," but Jesus said "if you look on someone with lust, you have committed adultery in your heart." That which must be practiced and preached faithfully is not the Mosaic law, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Righteousness is not just right behavior. Righteousness is right relation to God, through his son Jesus, by the Holy Spirit. So our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees if we seek our salvation not through our external actions, but by bringing our whole selves to God and seeking union with him through Christ.
Those who deviated from the liberating truths of the Gospel and taught others likewise were to be "least in the kingdom of heaven." According to the Spirit-inspired Fathers of the Church, this wasn’t just to be relegated to a tin shack in the "back forty" with no indoor plumbing and dial-up Internet. If you were "least," you didn’t get in at all.
When Jesus sorts the sheep and goats, those who deviate from the Gospel and teach others to do so will hear those terrifying words, "depart from me; I never knew you," having starved those seeking spiritual nourishment and abandoned those seeking spiritual shelter and comfort.
St. Paul told the church in Corinth that those who did not love Christ were "anathema." He told the church in Galatia that if anyone preached a gospel other than the Gospel he taught, "Let him he anathema." Anathema, in the time of St. Paul, was something dedicated to evil, a holocaust on a demon’s altar. That was St. Paul’s judgment of those who teach
a lie in the guise of the truth. Those who taught lies about Jesus obviously didn’t love him, and love is the summation of the Gospel.
In today’s reading from the Letter of St. Paul to Titus, he directs us not to quibble about fruitless inanity. But he goes further – "As for a man who is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned." Ouch! That’s not very loving!
But the shepherds of the Church are entrusted with the welfare of the whole flock. If wolves dress up like sheep, or like shepherds, and deceive and mislead the sheep, it is the calling of the shepherd to expel the wolves from the flock, by force if necessary, if they will not cease their depredations.
As terrible as it is, this is actually the most loving thing for the heretic – to confront them, fully and finally, with the awful consequences of their actions, to remove the comfort of the Church that might lull them into complacency, to give them the last possible opportunity to repent.
We all actually believe this. If a child abuser or molester wanted to babysit your children, you might ponder how to apply the Gospel imperative of love, but you certainly wouldn’t open the door. If someone who irrationally hated you wanted to tutor your children, you might pause before entrusting them to someone who would poison their love for you.
The Fathers of the Church acted out of the same love.
Jesus himself gave us the "formula" for redemptively handling heresy, like any other offense. First, confront privately; then take witnesses; then bring it to the Church and, if the malefactor does not repent, "he is self-condemned." He is no longer part of the Church.
We might be reassured to know that the Fathers of the Church gave heretics every opportunity to repent, to eschew their false teachings and to return to the flock of the faithful. History is replete with those who propounded heresy but, being confronted with the truth, repented. History is also full of those who, when teaching deviant doctrine, refused
to humble themselves, and were accorded the consequences of their actions. May God have mercy on them, and on all of us.
Read other homilies by Father Barkley
About St. James the Apostle Orthodox Church of Taneytown
The Holy Orthodox Church is the Church founded by Jesus Christ and described throughout the New Testament. All other Christian Churches and sects can be traced back historically to it. The word Orthodox literally means "straight teaching" or "straight worship," being derived from two Greek words: orthos, "straight," and doxa, "teaching" or "worship."
As the encroachments of false teaching and division multiplied in early Christian times, threatening to obscure the identity and purity of the Church, the term "Orthodox" quite logically came to be applied to it. The Orthodox Church carefully guards the truth against all error and schism, both to protect its flock and to glorify Christ, whose Body the Church is.
St. James the Apostle Orthodox Church of Taneytown is a congregation of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. We are the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Christian Church whose roots trace directly back to first century Antioch, the city in which the disciples of Jesus Christ were first called "Christians" (Acts 11:26). The
Orthodox Church is the oldest and second largest Christian group in the world. We are called by God our creator to worship and follow Him, and to proclaim to the world His message of love, peace, and salvation.
God loves all mankind and desires that all human beings should believe in Him, know Him, abide in Him, and receive eternal life from Him. To accomplish this, God Himself came into the world as a man, Jesus Christ, becoming man that we might become like God.
The Antiochian Archdiocese, under the leadership of His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph, sees itself on a mission to bring America to the ancient Orthodox Christian Faith. We join our brothers and sisters in the various Orthodox Christian jurisdictions — Greek, Orthodox Church in America, Romanian, Ukrainian, and more — in this endeavor. In less than 20
years the Archdiocese has doubled in size to well over 200 churches and missions throughout the United States and Canada.
