Homily

There is a book club that I belong to and the book we are reading now is one I read more than 30 years ago, but now I read it with older eyes. It's called For the Life of the World, a book about the sacraments by one of the most famous American Orthodox theologians, Fr. Alexander Schmemann.

One of the points Fr. Alexander makes is about two extremes in speaking of the Christian life. On the one hand you have the people who speak of religious life or "spiritual" in the sense that it is a life that is supposed to exist above, beyond or apart from the normal course of regular life in the world. The other extreme is the idea that Christian life is all about action IN the world where prayer or silence or worship can get in the way of making this world a better place for everyone. It’s obvious that it’s our job to take care of the poor and helpless such as Lazarus, right? Okay, if that’s our job then what is the job of the poor and helpless? If it’s our Christian duty to take care of them, then what is THEIR Christian duty? Obviously Christian life cannot be based on a spirit of activism.

But another one of the ideas in this book that I really enjoyed was his description of secularism. He writes that secularism is a "negation of worship," it is to not worship God. Secularism is not atheism because many secularists believe in God. Secularism can allow for something out there greater than us, and it can even allow for the practice of some kind of religion. But secularists do not worship God, and therefore they cannot fulfill one of the most basic and most human of needs, the need to be in communion with God. We sing in the Liturgy, "It is proper and just to worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. . . " and we sing those words because they are true. It is proper and it is just to worship God because we were made for Him.

So, Father Alexander says that for those who believe that Christianity is basically about this world and trying to make it a better place to live, when we worship it seems only right to bend it to serve the secular age we live in, and to adopt its perspective, because if we do not we will be considered irrelevant as believers. He says,

"If the proponents of what basically is nothing else but the Christian acceptance of secularism are right, then of course our whole problem is only that of finding or inventing a worship more acceptable, more 'relevant' to the modern man's secular world view. And such indeed is the direction taken today by the great majority of liturgical reformers. What they seek is worship whose forms and content would 'reflect' the needs and aspirations of the secular man...."

He wrote this in 1971, and if we look at Christianity in general, we can see how true these words have become. Some of you who live in North Eugene received flyers in the mail some weeks ago announcing the establishment of a new Protestant church. The flyers proclaimed in bold letters, "We hate church!" Their idea is that they know you've been turned off by churches in the past, but we're different because we're not church like they are. We are cooler, hipper, more casual. The flyer said, "Short services," because who wants to spend much time worshipping God? "Dynamic music," because what's wrong with being entertained at church, especially when we spend so much time trying to entertain ourselves outside of church? "Great programs for the kids," because why would you want to worship the Lord together as a family? It's churchy, it's religious, but is it worship or just secularism with a Christian label? Because it's not about God, it's all about us.

It's a very, very popular approach today for churches to ask, "What will bring people in? What do they like, what do they want, what will attract them?" And those questions seem very reasonable don't they? How can you give them the Gospel unless you get them in the door and create an atmosphere that people will enjoy? Fr. Alexander is right when he claims that this way of thinking is all focused on us, and certainly not on the worship of God, so who then are we worshipping? Or is this style of Christianity simply an exercise in therapy? It makes us feel better about ourselves, and ultimately it's about us, as the phrase, "Church is so boring," seems to show. When we read the New Testament, do we find this continued need to pray, think, act and believe in a way that people will find attractive, entertaining, compelling, something that will fit into their lifestyle and make sense with the way they are already living? No, instead, over and over again, the Faith preached by Jesus, the Faith proclaimed by His disciples is not an endorsement of the way that good people want to live. Instead it starts with something totally different. Not with us--but with God. God Who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, Who suffered, died and was buried, and rose from the dead so that we might share in His own divine life. So that we might live not according to our own lowly hopes but instead to live in hope of all that the Father has promised us. So that we are not tempted to think that the world given to us by God, and that our lives, given to us by God, must somehow be conquered and bent to our own satisfaction, but instead since we recognize His gifts, we also listen to what He tells us about Himself, about this world, about our own lives and our eternal vocation. When we hear His word, and when we are nourished by His Body and Blood, what else can we say but,

"May our lips be filled with your praise O Lord, so that we may sing of your glory. . . keep us in your holiness so that all the day long we may live according to your truth?"

Of course there are plenty of people who never bother to worship God. But even for us who are here we can still be tempted by distractions around us, by thoughts of people and things and duties and all kinds of thoughts that want to pull us in other directions because it's so easy to forget that we were made to live in God's love, when our weaker natures tell us we were made to live for ourselves and do our own thing and find our own happiness. So as the Liturgy instructs us, let us be attentive, let us come and worship and bow before Christ, that He may save us who sing to Him. That He may save us for Himself, that He may save us from ourselves, that we may choose life and not death, virtue and not sin, faith instead of self-confidence.

Let's do our best not to come to church as secularists, but as sons and daughters of the living God, who worship Him here in a way that connects to the worship we offer Him in our homes every day. We were made to worship God and only in that greatest vocation will we ever find that elusive goal that so many people are chasing after today--only in worshiping God can we find genuine self-fulfillment.