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Serve One Another Through Love
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
The Apostle Paul wrote - "For you, brothers, were called to freedom. Only don't use your freedom as an excuse to gratify the flesh, but serve one another through love" (Galatians 5:13). Two main ideas are expressed here: Freedom and Serving. Let's take a look at them:
The Greek word "eleutheria" is translated in English as "freedom" or "liberty," so these two English words mean essentially the same thing. Christ told His disciples - "If you remain in My word, then you are truly My disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:31-32). The Apostle Paul wrote - "Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17).
Truth brings freedom, it sets people free, it liberates us! Jesus Christ said - "I AM the truth" (John 14:6) - so He is that which sets us free. Christ is present with Christians today through the Holy Spirit, and where the Spirit is, there is liberty or freedom.
Conversely, lies and deception bring un-freedom, that is, slavery and bondage. The Apostle Peter wrote about such liars and deceivers - "For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping from those who live in error; promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for by whom a man is overcome, by the same is he also brought into bondage" (2 Peter 2:18-19).
This is what St. Paul meant by writing - "Only don't use your freedom as an excuse to gratify the flesh" - true freedom doesn't mean that you're free to eat and drink as much as you want: that's gluttony and drunkenness, not true freedom. It doesn't mean that you can have sex whenever and with whomever you want - that's libertinism, not true liberty.
So a pseudo-freedom leads to actual bondage. How? By saying that freedom means you're free to do anything you want, to gratify your fleshly desires, drives, and lusts. Then you're trapped in compulsive-addictive behaviors that you can't break free from. That's phony freedom, a liar's liberty that is actually libertinism. The English word "liberal" in the past meant one who believed in the form of liberty that came from the moral and spiritual values that accompany faith in Christ: honesty, purity, and charity: love your neighbor as yourself. But then things changed:
The article "Liberalism Is Failing Because It Rejected Orthodox Christianity" aptly describes the devolution of Liberalism into libertinism because it has rejected its foundation in the Christian faith. What is "Orthodox Christianity"? It is traditional Christianity, the faith of the Church when it was one, united Church, the Christian faith of the first ten centuries, the faith expressed in the Nicene Creed, "That which is believed everywhere, always, and by all" (St. Vincent of Lerins).
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When the meaning of "liberty" has devolved into libertinism, it signals that society's values have degenerated into gratifying the lusts of the flesh. Mateen Elass is a Christian who converted from Islam. He writes - "Two of the questions I am most often asked are, 'Why does Islam seem so attractive to converts?' and 'Can Islam be defeated?' Not surprisingly, these two questions are interrelated." He goes on to explain how Islam promises in lofty-sounding words to gratify fleshly desires. Christianity can only overcome it by returning to its ideals of diakonia-serving and selfless agape-love.
Now we've come to the second half of our key Scripture verse: "Serve One Another Through Love." What do you think of when you hear the word "serve"? Do you think of a pretty waitress in a restaurant bringing you food? Or a soldier fighting to preserve your way of life? Or a nursing assistant changing a patient's soiled bedsheets? That last one is most likely closest to the New Testament idea of diakonia-serving. The first deacons were selected to care for the poor widows in the Jerusalem Church. Later, deacons and deaconesses were sent out to "minister" or serve the sick in their homes and in early hospitals. It's strange that today we think of a "minister" as a man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, sitting behind a big desk, with walls covered with seminary diplomas and bookshelves of hefty theological tomes.
Our serving must be motivated by love, not merely by a paycheck, or by hope of recognition, or by a guilt complex - doing some grungy work to pay for our sins. How much do we love ourselves? A good yardstick for this might be how much time and money we spend on ourselves. But the very next verse, Galatians 5:14, states - "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" If we loved our neighbors as much as we love ourselves, wouldn't we be spending about as much time and money on them as we spend on ourselves?
That phrase "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" comes from Leviticus 19:18 and is one of the most quoted phrases in the New Testament: Matthew 5:43; Mark 12:31; Romans 13:9; and James 2:8 all refer to it. How do we do that, love our neighbor? How do we serve one another through love? In the next chapter, Galatians 6:2, we read - "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." What is the law of Christ? It's to love our neighbor! So helping each other, bearing each other's burdens, is how we love our neighbors. We serve them in love by bringing them food and/or helping with housework when they are sick, helping them with money and with finding them a job when they're out of work... washing their hair, giving them a haircut (and a shave, if they're male) when they're bedridden.
Do you have any neighbors who are mobility-impaired so that it's hard for them to carry in groceries or take out the garbage or clean their home? They're someone who needs to be loved like you love yourself! Are there home-bound elderly people in your congregation who can't drive to church? You can pick them up and give them a ride to church... or take them shopping, or to the doctor, or simply to the park to smell the flowers! Or it might simply be listening to and weeping with and praying for a distressed person when their relative is dying.
When we begin to think like this, all sorts of new ideas, new ways to serve one another in love, will pop into our minds. The whole world is full of opportunities to visit the sick and elderly in hospitals and nursing homes, to call and send get-well cards to the sick and those recovering from surgery, to mow the lawn or shovel the sidewalks of our handicapped neighbors... the list can go on and on!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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NOW, THE NEWS:
IS RUSSIA WAKING UP? PROTESTS IN YEKATERINBURG END IN CHURCH CONSTRUCTION BEING STOPPED
from: The Nation
(6 June) The residents of Yekaterinburg did not allow the authorities to build a new church on a square in the center of town. The result of the tense standoff in May 2019, widely covered in the national media, has been called the most serious defeat for the Russian regime in recent years. Protests are under way since the beginning of the year in other regions as well - in Arkhangelsk Oblast, the Moscow region, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Ingushetia.
The causes are similar: ecological problems, construction of elite sites inside public recreation zones and nature preserves, open garbage dumps next to residential areas, unpaid salaries, and most important, a total disdain for the needs and opinions of citizens and an unwillingness to hear them. Tellingly, the recent protests are totally lacking a political component, unlike the Bolotnaya demonstrations in 2011–12; these protests are about everyday interests, often localized issues, that unite various viewpoints, ages, incomes, and education. The situation in Yekaterinburg is typical for Russia.
The protest is not against the Kremlin - it is local and not initiated by a political party. The church honoring Saint Catherine (Yekaterina), the patron of Yekaterinburg, was due to be completed in time for the city's 300th anniversary in 2023. As Yulia Kalinina, columnist in the popular daily newspaper MK, wrote, "If they want to build a church in the middle of the city, there's money there." Building churches in Russia has long been a profitable business that invites the zealous participation of government officials, who grant permission for construction, and friendly firms and no-less-friendly church officials.
The political commission for the important ideological construction in Yekaterinburg went to two of the largest companies in the Urals region in metallurgy and copper. Besides the church itself, the project envisioned parking lots, a mall, and other infrastructure that promised major income for the builders and the owner (the Russian Orthodox Church). That is why the chosen site was right in the center of the city.
For the last two decades this scheme has been followed in many Russian cities - new churches arising where parks and kindergartens had been. The local citizens are not asked for their opinion. And no one reacts to the calls from naive enthusiasts to restore or at least save dozens and hundreds of old churches from destruction, churches of the 16th–19th centuries that had miraculously survived the years of revolution, wars, and the official Soviet attack on religion. [read more...]
RUSSIA BUILDS 3 NEW CHURCHES A DAY, ORTHODOX LEADER SAYS
from: The Moscow Times
(27 May) Less than two weeks after mass protests erupted over the construction of a new cathedral in Yekaterinburg, Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill has claimed that Russia constructs three new churches per day.
The Orthodox Church's influence has grown in recent years as it has received increased support from the Kremlin. Last year, Patriarch Kirill announced that 25 new churches were built in Moscow alone.
"It's not because we have too much money and don't know where to spend it on. Our people who have gone through years of atheism [under the Soviet Union] have realized with their minds and hearts that without God, nothing happens," Patriarch Kirill was quoted as saying by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency on Sunday.
Patriarch Kirill added that the increased concentration of churches will give Russians the opportunity to feel closer to God, lead happier lives and tackle the difficult circumstances of the modern world.
Earlier this week, the Bell news website reported that the Kremlin will allocate 2.8 billion rubles ($43.4 million) toward luxury renovations at Patriarch Kirill's 2.5 hectare (6.1 acre) mansion south of St. Petersburg. [read more...]
YEKATERINBURG RESIDENTS OFFER SOME 50 SITES FOR CHURCH CONSTRUCTION
from: Interfax-Religion
(27 May) The Yekaterinburg administration has received from the city residents several dozens of options of sites for the construction of the Church of St. Catherine, the city administration said on its official portal. "Forty-eight options were submitted as of May 27, not including overlapping proposals," the report said.
The sites are located both in the city center and on the outskirts, for example on Island Baran, on the Koltsovsky Tract, in the Sortirovka area, at Khimmash, Elmash, and in the Akademichesky neighborhood. The options also include the 1905 Goda Square, the Labor Square, and the site where a television tower, which has now been demolished, was located.
Mass protests against the construction of the church in the park on Oktyabrskaya Square in downtown Yekaterinburg began on May 13 after the potential construction site was fenced off. On May 18, a week after protests and detentions, and also the statements made by President Vladimir Putin on the events, Kuivashev asked Yekaterinburg residents to discuss alternative sites for the construction of the church.
On May 20, the Yekaterinburg administration announced a collection of citizens' proposals on possible sites for building the church, which will last ten days. The fence around the public garden was removed. [read more...]
OCU HEAD: WE ARE READY TO ESTABLISH VICARIATE FOR ROMANIAN-LANGUAGE PARISHES
from: Religious Information Service of Ukraine
(7 June) The main liturgical language in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is Ukrainian, but national minorities can use in their communities the language that is their native and is comprehensible to them. Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv and all Ukraine, Head of the OCU said it in an interview with UKRINFORM.
"Since the state designates Ukrainian as an official language, the main liturgical language of our Church is the Ukrainian language. Other national minorities can use in their communities a language that is their native and is comprehensible to them. Recently we even ordained a Bishop for the Greek-speaking parishes. There are many Greeks in Ukraine who gather for the Liturgy and can pray in their own understandable language in our Local Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The same now applies to the Romanian-speaking parishes which are located in Bukovyna," said the hierarch.
He said that the Romanian Orthodox Church embraces the parishes that pray in Ukrainian. They constitute the Ukrainian-speaking vicariate. According to the Primate, in the Ukrainian Church there is a desire in the future to set up a vicarate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for Romanian-speaking parishes. There are about 150 of them in Bukovyna. The Metropolitan stressed that the vicarate is a component of the Church on whose territory they are canonically located, but the language of their worship, in this case is Romanian.
"If we come to an agreement, agree on this with the Romanian Orthodox Church, we will support such a model. Now there are parishes which come to us and ask to keep the Slavonic language, and we don't create barriers for them in this issue. But they will preach in Ukrainian. For example, in such parishes the Gospel can be read in the Ukrainian language and in the Slavonic language in parallel at first, and over time, in the future, the community will gradually become Ukrainized," the Primate explained. [read more...]
POPE FRANCIS SEEKS TO MEND OPEN WOUNDS WITH ORTHODOX CHURCH IN ROMANIA
from: New York Times
(1 June) When Pope John Paul II made history in Romania 20 years ago by becoming the first leader of the Roman Catholic Church to visit a predominantly Orthodox nation since the schism of 1054, he was welcomed as the global figure who helped bring down Communism. Still, wary Romanian Orthodox officials limited his travel to Bucharest, the capital, and kept him from going to the Transylvania region, where many of the country’s Catholics lived.
Now, Pope Francis has returned to a more vibrant and internationally connected Romania, with permission to roam northeast from Bucharest to Iasi, on the border with Moldova, and then northwest to Blaj, in Transylvania. In Miercurea Ciuc on Saturday, he celebrated an open-air Mass at an important Catholic pilgrimage site, where large crowds, many from Romania's Hungarian-speaking minority, gathered in the mud and rain to hear the pope deliver a homily.
At the Marian shrine, he told the crowd, estimated at more than 80,000, that Mary had asked that "we not let ourselves be robbed of our fraternal love by those voices and hurts that provoke division and fragmentation." He described going on pilgrimage as being "part of a caravan" that could increase cooperation, integration and solidarity. The pope reached the pilgrimage site on Saturday after something of a pilgrimage of his own. Bad weather forced his plane to be rerouted to Targu Mures, from where he drove for more than two hours across the Carpathian Mountains on winding roads.
A major goal of Francis' three-day trip here is to help mend an open wound between the two churches that ultimately goes back to centuries-old theological and political clashes. Improving relations with the Orthodox, as well as the Muslim, world - where so many Christians live in peril - has been a hallmark of Francis’ papacy and a driver of much of his recent travel, from Egypt to Morocco, Bulgaria and Romania, where in his three-day trip he has warned of the dangers of populism. [read more...]
SBU FOILS ATTEMPT ON CLERIC OF PRO-RUSSIAN CHURCH IN ZAPORIZHIA: MEDIA
from: UNIAN
(7 June) On June 7, agents of the SBU Security Service of Ukraine prevented an attempt on a representative of what was formerly known as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), Metropolitan of Zaporizhia and Melitopol Luka. The act was aimed at sparking religious tensions and feed Russian propaganda narratives on alleged "violence" toward priests of the Russian-controlled church.
Metropolitan Luka, one of two Ukrainian hierarchs who participated in the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, got into a spotlight for his clear anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. Kurnikov, his bodyguard, better known in Zaporizhia as a leader of the local Union of Berkut [Yanukovych-era riot police] veterans, was also an infamous figure.
It is reported that Metropolitan Luka has recently filed an application with the local police with a request to start criminal proceedings into "incitement of interfaith hatred." He was allegedly offended by a Facebook posting saying that "during the years of independence, men in cassocks seized a bunch of churches or land plots to build more churches."
"However, it turned out that the statement did not get enough of the hype needed. To add fuel to fire, they initiated an attempt on life to once again raise the topic for another report in the Russian Vesti TV program titled 'Priests are being killed in Ukraine'," ZIK wrote.
Fortunately, there were no real victims and pretexts for the Russian media to spin their propaganda, according to the publication. Journalists suggest it is not the last attempt of the aggressor state to stoke the fires of religious tension. [read more...]
Answer the Call!
All Christians, not just monks or clergy, are called to be saints. The main task of bishops, pastors, deacons, evangelists and teachers isn't just to teach doctrine (although that's important too!), it's to equip the saints to offer service, to do ministry (diakonia in Greek) to build up the Body of Christ, the Church (Ephesians 4:12), the Ark of our Salvation. That's why we're Building the ARC.
Ever since Christ established the Church, it has been compared to the Ark: see Hebrews 11:7 and 1 Peter 3:20-21. The water of the Great Flood has its antitype in the water of baptism, which saves us just like Noah and his family were saved from the Flood by being in the Ark. Back then, most of the people laughed at Noah building the Ark and went about their ordinary busy/iness, not thinking this was a matter of life or death. YOU have a 70% probability that you'll need an ARC: over 2/3 of us retired people will spend on average about 3 years disabled before we depart this life.
The word "holy" comes from the same Greek word as "saint" - they mean to be set apart or totally committed to serving God. So all of us, clergy and laypeople alike, are called to be holy, to be saints: "...as children of obedience, not conforming yourselves according to your former lusts as in your ignorance, but just as He who called you is holy, you yourselves also be holy in all of your behavior; because it is written, 'You shall be holy; for I am holy'" (1 Peter 1:14-16).
As the culture becomes less and less Christian, "Cultural Christianity" - just going through the motions one hour a week or so - won't cut it anymore. What's needed is an environment where we can live out our faith on a 24/7 basis. Building the ARC is more than just a building, it's a complete lifestyle change:
"Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God" (Romans 12:1-2). "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Matthew 22:14). God has called you to total commitment! Have you chosen to answer the call?
As you'll notice in our first three news articles and in our fourth news headline, quite a controversy has flared up over the Russian Orthodox Church constructing new church buildings in Yekaterinburg and other cities. It is usually secular people - unbelievers - who are protesting against "their" parks and playgrounds being fenced off, dug up and used for constructing churches. We witnessed similar protests when we were living in Moscow during the early 2000 years.
The SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) foiled a scheme by the pro-Russian underground to plant a bomb in the car of UOC-MP Metropolitan Luka, which would have likely killed his bodyguard/driver Kurnikov, according to our sixth news article SBU FOILS ATTEMPT ON CLERIC OF PRO-RUSSIAN CHURCH IN ZAPORIZHIA: MEDIA. Such "false flag" operations are common for leftists, even when it means killing one of their own low-level pawns.
- 8 Jun. 2019
