Come and See: The Triumph of Faith in Christ

In this sermon, Fr. Geoff explores the themes of Christ’s identity, the Triumph of Orthodoxy, and the endurance of faith through the centuries. Reflecting on the call to “Come and see,” the significance of fasting, and the witness of the saints, he challenges us to find our true nourishment in God. Join us in contemplating what it means to live in the presence of Christ—both now and for eternity.

Transcript

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today in the, um, the Gospel, Jesus begins to call people to himself, and in there, there is the, um, the key to evangelism for us. Actually, what was the phrase that Philip used when Nathaniel was wondering about going to see Jesus? "Come and see," he said. That's all we need to say to people, um, who we want to get to church: come and see. And if they respond, then God's working in their lives. If they don't respond, we have to be patient. Today I've got, uh, three points as usual: titles, Triumph of Orthodoxy, and 2,000 years.

So first of all, titles. In this Gospel today, we find two titles. Nathaniel calls Jesus "Son of God." This is the vertical; he's the Son of God. But Jesus very humbly responds that he is the Son of Man, the horizontal. And in Christ, this is all I want to say about this today: in Christ, we find the, the, um, the crossroads where the created and the uncreated meet, where divisions are abolished, and where the entire creation, uh, finds unity. The Son of God, the Son of Man, the Man-God, the God-Man, if you like. That's who Jesus is. This is the one that we serve. So that's the title. That's all I want to say about that.

The second point: Triumph of Orthodoxy. Today is the, uh, first Sunday, the first feast of the Lenten, the first feast of the Lenten season, in which we celebrate the restoration of the icons in the church. I'm not going to go into the details about that because it'll—you listen out for the Synaxarion just before communion; you'll hear everything there. But I hope you've all got these little sheets, which we'll need at the end of the service, um, um, and take it out with you when we go on the procession around the church. But we finish up by saying, "This is the faith of the Apostles. This is the faith of the Fathers. This is the faith of the Orthodox. This is the faith which has established the universe." In some translations, it says, "This is the faith that has conquered the universe."

I wonder whether you're wondering why the church has chosen to have the Triumph of Orthodoxy in the fast. If I'd have been organizing it, I would have organized it maybe for the first Sunday after Pascha when we could have a feast afterwards and eat everything we want, lots of meat and everything else. So why has the church picked the fasting period? Well, God never guides the church to do anything without good reason, so there's a good reason for it. Excuse me.

All right, a priest that I, uh, know of told a story once. Somebody came up to him and said, "Father, I can't believe that you don't eat meat for 40 days. I am a meat and potatoes man. I can't do that sort of thing. My idea of heaven is a room filled with filet mignon." And the priest looked at him and said, "Listen to what you just said. Your idea of heaven is a room filled with filet mignon. Do you think that maybe your idea of heaven needs a bit of improvement? It's too much concerned with the things of this world. If heaven to you is eating steak, then something's very wrong with you and your understanding of the Gospel and what it means to be saved." The person responded by saying, "Well, I didn't really mean it literally." The priest said, "But you use those words to describe heaven. The fact that you choose those words reflects something very deep in your heart. It reflects the fact that you, you have lowered your view of heaven. And when you think about good things, you think about serving your belly. When you think about the best of times, you think about eating and drinking. When you think about heaven, you don't even think about God. What is heaven? Heaven is not sitting down to a full-course meal of filet mignon. According to the Scriptures, heaven is being in the presence of God. We're in heaven now. We're in the presence of God now. When the priest starts the service with 'Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,' heaven comes down, and we are in heaven now for this time that we're in the liturgy, and it's until, uh, the priest closes with 'For you are our sanctification, and to you we ascribe glory,' and so on. So we're in heaven now because God is here with us. In heaven, in heaven, there will be no eating or drinking such as we experience in this life, and there'll be no marrying or giving in marriage. In heaven, there'll be no lights and no sun because, as the Book of Revelation says to us, the Lamb himself will be our food and our drink and our light. In heaven, God will be our source of nourishment, and we will find great joy simply by being in his presence."

Some people say, some people say, "That doesn't sound like heaven to me. It sounds so boring. You mean in heaven it's just going to be one liturgy that never stops? Don't you get to do something fun in heaven?" All of these things show how far we are removed from understanding what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be human, what it means to be created, what we were created to be and to do. We were not created to live off the dead flesh of animals. Adam did not eat meat in the Garden of Eden. God didn't give us permission to eat meat until Genesis chapter 9. He lived in communion with God. He was complete and healthy, and he was filled with joy. But something happened at the Fall. In the Garden of Eden, Adam's spirit was in control of his body. That's the way he was created. His spirit was in control of his body, and his body served his spirit. At the Fall, Adam was reversed, and his body ruled his spirit. The church fathers say that after the Fall, Adam, who was designed to look up and receive from God, lowered his hands and his gaze and looked to the things of this world to satisfy, to be for him what God had once been. The end result of this reversal, and St. Paul talks about this, is slavery. We're still in slavery. If you're like me, you get tired during the first week of Lent because we've cut back on how much we're eating and drinking. We've cut out the meat and the eggs and all those sorts of things, and we feel like we have no energy. We think we're so tough normally, especially when we're young, and we think we're capable of doing anything. But when food and drink are taken away from us for eight or nine hours, we feel useless. We get irritable and impatient. We're enslaved to our passions and the demands of the flesh. Christ has come to set us free from enslavement to our passions and to the things of the world so that we can be like the Apostle Paul, who said in Philippians 4, "I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things, I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

It's not wrong for us to eat meat and dairy products. It's not wrong for us to eat and to be full. What is so tragic is that when a few things are taken away from us, we grumble and we complain and become angry and irritable. We have no patience. We snap at people. We get angry with people. We're bad-tempered. This is the tragedy. Christ has come to be everything for us, whatever we have materially. Christ has come to set us free so that we can be happy and joyful when we have everything and when we have nothing, so that we can rejoice whether we're feasting or fasting. If you read some of the stories of people who were put in prison for their faith and then they're let out, they say they experienced such great joy in prison they wish they were back there sometimes, and they had nothing. This is what St. Paul's talking about. This is what God came to enable us to be able to do. It's very easy to say, uh, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us when our bodies are full, when we have everything. But the truth is revealed when we're hungry, when we lose everything, when we are in pain.

So today we triumph, and we celebrate. We celebrate because we know that the faith has been given to us whole and intact. We celebrate because we know that God became a human being, that God took on the same flesh and blood that you and I have, that God was hungry, thirsty, and in great pain, that on the cross he experienced a terrible agony that you and I cannot understand. In his agony and in his pain and in his thirst and hunger, God showed us the triumph of faith because he hung on the cross. But even as he hung on the cross, he cried out and cried out those words of great agony. He actually said, "I thirst. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He also cried out those words of the deepest love: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And there were also those words of deep concern and compassion where he said, "Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother," when Jesus gave responsibility to the Apostle John to care for his mother after he was gone. In his hour of greatest need and suffering, in his hour of great thirst and hunger, in his hour of utter poverty, when even his clothes had been stripped off him and the soldiers were at the foot of the cross auctioning them off, and all his friends had abandoned him, in that hour in which he had nothing, our Lord stretched out his hands and embraced the whole world with his love and care. That is the triumph. That is our boast, and that is our joy. We can have everything when we have nothing because we have learned that God is all we need, that God is our joy and our life, that Jesus is the very breath we breathe. Jesus is every heartbeat, every heartbeat. Jesus is our drink, and Jesus is our food.

So that's the second of the three points. The first one was, um, titles. The second one, Triumph. The third one, 2,000 years, and this is related to the 40 Holy Martyrs who we, um, are going to hear about in the Synaxarion as well. It's also the feast day for our fellow parish up at Meru North, and I've sent greetings to them today and wish them a very blessed feast day, and they've sent their love back to us from them. Therefore, we read in Hebrews, "Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses," we're surrounded by these saints here. There are witnesses, uh, they are people who've suffered and persevered and endured and gained the crown of eternal life. And today we're going to read about the—we're going to hear about the 40 Holy Martyrs who also gave up their lives rather than gave up their faith, and they experienced great joy at the end of their lives before they faced their deaths.

So what I'm saying here is, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we have the saints, not just Jesus and his example, especially on the cross, but also the saints who are examples to us as we journey through this Great Lent. And these words of St. Paul are very relevant to us: "Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."

So pay attention to the Synaxarion today. Listen out for, uh, the story of the Triumph of Orthodoxy and also for the story of the 40 Holy Martyrs who gave up their lives rather than their faith. And all we've been asked to do is to give up food and drink for a short period of time. May God strengthen us, may he help us, and may he bless us. Now to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise, now and forever, ages of ages. Amen.

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