Hosken-News Blog

Saturday, June 30, 2018

We Who Are Strong

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

We who are strong... The Apostle Paul wrote - "Now we who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, to be building him up" (Romans 15:1-2). Are you reasonably strong and healthy? If so, what do you think about those who aren't? Or do you not even bother to think about them? St. Paul tells us that we "ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves."

How can we do that? How can we build up our infirm or disabled or elderly neighbor? We shouldn't just live to "please ourselves" - we can wear a mask and practice social distancing when going to places where we might pick up a virus or when we're near people who have compromised health (mostly the elderly), and wash our hands when we come home. We can run errands for home-bound people who have no relatives nearby to care for them. We can take them grocery shopping, to doctor's appointments, to church, and especially to pleasant places like the park, the botanical gardens or the zoo in the summer: show them that they are important and loved! Again, the Apostle Paul wrote -

"The eye can't say to the hand, 'I have no need for you,' or again the head to the feet, 'I have no need for you.' No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. Those parts of the body which we think to be less honorable, on those we bestow more abundant honor; and our unpresentable parts have more abundant propriety; whereas our presentable parts have no such need. But God composed the body together, giving more abundant honor to the inferior part, that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. When one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or when one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually" (1 Corinthians 12:21-27).

We really do need each other! Not only do dependent little children need their parents' love; but also, disabled adults and lonely elderly people need love... and we who are reasonably strong and healthy also need them. Why? To learn how to love with a pure heart, not thinking of material gain or our own pleasure. As St. Paul wrote, "...not to please ourselves." You probably have heard the term "4G" meaning "fourth generation internet." The internet started out in the 1990s as a means for the free exchange of ideas, but has degenerated today into what I call the 4G's - "Greed, Gluttony, Gossip & Grumbling." All four of these are focused on self rather than others: satisfying my desires for material things (online shopping!), indulging my desires for food and other bodily pleasures, watching videos or reading the latest rumors about politicians and celebrities, and grumbling about how bad things are today because they aren't like they used to be.

What can we do about it? Once more, the Apostle Paul wrote - "Therefore, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:1-2). Lose weight! Are you focused on food? "Lay aside every weight!" Focus on Jesus: He will help you overcome that overweight! St. Paul wasn't just speaking in metaphors, he was telling us how our physical condition affects our spiritual health. In verses 12-13 he wrote - "Therefore, lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed. That means exercising to bring healing!

In Galatians 5:16-26, the Apostle Paul wrote about how to "walk" (or "live" - another analogy of our physical life) in the Spirit vs. fulfilling the lusts of the flesh. The disciplined spiritual life of discipleship is a struggle, and sometimes we fail. So in the next chapter (6:1-2), St. Paul wrote - "Brothers, even if a man is caught in some fault, you who are spiritual must restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; looking to yourself so that you also aren't tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." It's all about restoration, not punishment! "Bear one another's burdens!" "We who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak!"

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 30 Jun. 2018.)

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Sunday, June 17, 2018

The Separated Life

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

(description of photo)

This photo is from the sermon "The Separated Life" delivered on 20 May, 1956 by the famous Evangelical preacher Dr. W. A. Criswell. It is based on the Scripture passage in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 (KJV) -

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

I'll let you read the whole sermon for yourself, but I'm pretty certain that most preachers today would mince their words and be more cautious than Dr. Criswell was 60 years ago. Too many churchmen today are either afraid of lawsuits or losing church members or forfeiting their tax-exempt status, or else they've totally caved into the spirit of the world in order to be "tolerant," "relevant" and "compassionate" toward the LGBTQ crowd.

On the other hand, too often conservative Christians have taken a hard line toward LGBTQ people, condemning them and banning them from polite society, much like the strict commands in the Old Testament on this topic. But that was when the Israelites had their own country and government: they could make and enforce the laws. The Church is to be a holy, separate community distinct from the surrounding society at large. What we are seeing today may be the backlash against O.T. practices by semi-Christianized cultures that have carried those O. T. ideas and practices into their belief system. But in the New Testament times, it was different - Christians were a despised minority sect in the surrounding pagan Greco-Roman culture, as we are in today's post-Christian age.

When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well and asked her for water, He didn't beat around the bush regarding her morals, but neither did He condemn or scold her:

"Jesus answered her, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.' The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I don't get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.' Jesus said to her, 'Go, call your husband, and come here.' The woman answered, 'I have no husband." Jesus said to her, 'You said well, "I have no husband," for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly'" (John 4:13-18, World English Bible).

And when the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in the very act of adultery, look at how they demanded she be stoned to death, and how He handled the situation, recognizing her sin but not condemning her:

"'Now in our law, Moses commanded us to stone such. What then do You say about her?' They said this testing Him, that they might have something to accuse Him of. But Jesus stooped down, and wrote on the ground with His finger. But when they continued asking Him, He looked up and said to them, 'He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her.' Again He stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground. They, when they heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning from the oldest, even to the last. Jesus was left alone with the woman where she was, in the middle. Jesus, standing up, saw her and said, 'Woman, where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you?' She said, 'No one, Lord.' Jesus said, 'Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more'" (John 8:6-11, WEB).

Next, consider how Jesus interacted with the "sinful woman" who anointed His feet with precious perfume. (BTW, the story in John 12:1-8 is very similar in its details and names the woman as Mary, the sister of Lazarus.) Again, He didn't excoriate and reject her; instead, He forgave her and said "Your faith has saved you" - He recognized her faith in spite of her sins.

"One of the Pharisees invited Him to eat with Him. He entered into the Pharisee's house, and sat at the table. Behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that He was reclining in the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of ointment. Standing behind at His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and she wiped them with the hair of her head, kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw it, he said to himself, 'This man, if He were a prophet, would have perceived who and what kind of woman this is who touches him, that she is a sinner.'

Jesus answered him, 'Simon, I have something to tell you.' He said, 'Teacher, say on.' 'A certain lender had two debtors. The one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they couldn't pay, he forgave them both. Which of them therefore will love him most?' Simon answered, 'He, I suppose, to whom he forgave the most.' He said to him, 'You have judged correctly.' Turning to the woman, he said to Simon, 'Do you see this woman? I entered into your house, and you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave Me no kiss, but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. You didn't anoint My head with oil, but she has anointed My feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.' He said to her, 'Your sins are forgiven.' Those who sat at the table with Him began to say to themselves, 'Who is this who even forgives sins?' He said to the woman, 'Your faith has saved you. Go in peace'" (Luke 7:36-50, WEB)

When the Pharisees asked Christ about His doctrinal position on divorce, He gave a straightforward answer that it isn't allowed:

"Pharisees came to Him, testing Him, and saying, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?' He answered, 'Haven't you read that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall join to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh?" So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don't let man tear apart.' They asked him, 'Why then did Moses command us to give her a bill of divorce, and divorce her?' He said to them, 'Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so. I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries her when she is divorced commits adultery'" (Matthew 19:3-9, WEB).

As we can see from the previous Scripture texts, however, Christ treats the individual person differently than the way He defines doctrinal cases. An individual is not a doctrinal case, he or she is a person. We should have compassion and understanding for the social environment, family history, and personal history of each individual. And remember: first of all, Christ wants to forgive, not to condemn the sinner.

When the Apostle Paul learned that one of the believers in Corinth had committed incest, he wrote them to exclude that person from the Lord's Table until he repents: "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, are to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (1 Corinthians 5:4-5, WEB). Notice that Paul recognized that Satan's goal is to destroy that person physically, but hopes for his spiritual salvation. Then he gives the doctrinal position that we must keep the Christian community, the Church, pure from sexual immorality as well as many other serious sins, but we must not judge people who are outside the Church - leave that to God:

"I wrote to you in my letter to have no fellowship with sexual sinners; yet not at all meaning with the sexual sinners of this world, or with the covetous and extortioners, or with idolaters; for then you would have to leave the world. But as it is, I wrote to you not to have fellowship with anyone who is called a brother who is a sexual sinner, or covetous, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner. Don't even eat with such a person. For what have I to do with also judging those who are outside? Don't you judge those who are within? But those who are outside, God judges. Put away the wicked man from among yourselves" (1 Corinthians 5:9-13, WEB).

(Later, as we read in 2 Corinthians 2:6-8, that person repented and was welcomed back into the church.) Again, those in the Christian Church must be separate, set apart from the world. What might be legal in society at large (divorce, gossip, adultery, homosexuality, drunkenness, greed, idolatry) must not be allowed in the Christian community. Also, our bodies are to be kept pure because sexual sin is so enticing and can keep people from repenting and turning to Christ. Our bodies are to become temples of the Holy Spirit:

"Or don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don't be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes [men who assume the female role in sex, transgenders and cross-dressers], nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortioners, will inherit the Kingdom of God. Such were some of you, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God. 'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are helpful. 'All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be dominated by anything.

Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Corinthians 6:9-12 & 18-20, WEB).

Finally, always keep in mind that the greatest sin is not homosexual behavior; instead, rejecting Christ is the worst sin: "Whoever doesn't receive you, nor hear your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake off the dust from your feet. Most assuredly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city" (Matthew 10:15, WEB). First and foremost, we must preach God's love and forgiveness and our need for repentance and new life in Christ!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

Saturday, May 26, 2018

The Fire of Pentecost

Come, Holy Spirit In his article Come Holy Spirit! The Whole Church Needs a New Pentecost, Deacon Keith Fournier, a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the 1990s, writes:

"On Pentecost the early followers of Jesus gathered as the Lord had instructed them. Why? To expect the fulfillment of the promise he had made to send the Holy Spirit. We refer to Pentecost as the birthday of the missionary church for a good reason. Their encounter with the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room changed them.

They were filled with the same Holy Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead. The Apostle Paul would later explain the experience. He was not at that first Pentecost. But he certainly experienced the same encounter, and came to know of its powerful, transformative effects! (Romans 8:11)"

Last Sunday, Western Christians celebrated Pentecost, and this Sunday, 27 May, Eastern Orthodox Christians will celebrate this Feast. But it is not merely a time to feast and party, Pentecost is a signal to get busy doing what Christ commanded: "All authority [exousia] has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I commanded you to do. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Mat. 28:18-20). Some translations say "power" instead of "authority," and "observe" instead of "obey," but in Acts 1:4-8 we read -

"Being assembled together with them, he [Jesus] charged them, 'Don't depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which you heard from Me. For John indeed baptized in water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days from now.' Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, 'Lord, are you now restoring the kingdom to Israel?' He said to them, 'It isn't for you to know times or seasons which the Father has set within His own authority. But you will receive power [dunamis] when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.'"

Notice what Jesus foretold: they would receive the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit. Then notice how the disciples totally missed the point, asking if now He was going to set up His kingdom on earth. Jesus replied: "It's none of your business to know" (exact translation from Russian!). Third, notice the difference between "power" in the Great Commission above and "power" here in Acts 1: the first is apostolic authority or the right to evangelize, baptize and make disciples, but without the second power, "dunamis" (from which we get the word dynamite), they didn't have the strength or ability to carry out their authority.

So many preachers today may be good Bible teachers, but they lack apostolic authority and/or "dunamis" power. They may teach good theology and think that by doing so they are making disciples, people who learn all the doctrines of the Christian Church. That's all well and good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. Jesus commanded the Apostles to make more disciples by teaching them to obey or fulfill or carry out "everything that I commanded you to do." What did He command His Apostles to do? Spread the Gospel! Heal the sick! Cleanse the lepers! Care for the poor!

Why isn't this happening today? It's because we have allowed the state to co-opt our Christian responsibilities to society. Instead, we are content to teach Bible stories and talk about loving God and neighbor and how God will comfort you when you're feeling down: nice warm-fuzzy "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" (MTD). We are safe if we keep our beliefs to ourselves within the four walls of our churches, which makes us into harmless, toothless, paper tigers, irrelevant to the rest of the world.

Look what happened in Acts ch. 2:1-8 -

"Now when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all with one accord in one place. Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. Tongues like fire appeared and were distributed to them, and one sat on each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. When this sound was heard, the multitude came together, and were bewildered, because everyone heard them speaking in his own language. They were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, "Behold, aren't all these who speak Galileans? How do we hear, everyone in our own native language?"

God poured out the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and they preached the Gospel in the native languages of all the Jews in the Dispersion who had come to Jerusalem for this feast following Passover. The "gift of tongues" is clearly the God-given ability to speak the Good News in human languages. I've experienced this several times, being able to speak and write songs and poetry in various foreign languages.

Later, when Peter and John healed a lame man in the Temple, they were called before the council: "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'You rulers of the people, and elders of Israel, if we are examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, in him does this man stand here before you whole'" (Acts 4:8-12. Here they didn't mince words; instead, they exercised their apostolic authority to preach and heal the sick.

Then Peter said - "'He is "the stone which was regarded as worthless by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner." There is salvation in none other, for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, by which we must be saved!' Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and had perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled. They recognized that they had been with Jesus. Seeing the man who was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it" (verses 11-14). The proof of the pudding, the formerly lame man, was standing right there!

Then the council of the Jewish leaders threatened them, telling them not to preach about Jesus and the resurrection, but Peter and John replied - "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, judge for yourselves, for we can't help telling the things which we saw and heard" (verses 19-20). They prayed - "'Now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of your holy Servant Jesus.' When they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were gathered together. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness" (verses 29-31).

This is the very sort of Pentecostal power that we need today: the power to heal the sick and to speak the word of God with boldness!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 26-May 2018.)

Sunday, May 13, 2018

On The Holy Trinity

the holy Trinity In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!
Vo imia Otsa i Syna i Sviatovo Dukha! Khristos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!

We greet one another throughout the Pascal season with these words, and they always remind me of my first Pascha in Russia in 1991. Just before the USSR fell, "Khristos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!" was emblazoned on banners strung over the streets of Moscow. Christ is risen as victor over death and despair!

"Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God" (1 John 3:1). "Beloved, let us love one another … for God is love" (1 John 3:7-8). The Holy Trinity is the image in which we were created, the manifestation of divine love, and the example for us to follow. "For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one" (1 John 5:7). A monad god that is a single entity would be incapable of love; a dyad or dual god is still lacking in community; only the Trinity, the Three-in-One, can express the fullness of agape-love.

I mention this at the outset because as we study, discuss and debate over terms such as homoousios vs. homoiousios and Sabellianism vs. Arianism vs. Nicene Christianity, that it's easy to miss the forest for the trees; it's all for naught if we don't love one another: "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. … By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?" (1 John 3:14, 16-17).

St. Basil the Great took these words to heart as he not only helped to hammer out the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, together with the other Cappadocian Fathers: his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Gregory of Nazianzus ("the Theologian"), Basil also gave his riches to the poor, building hospitals, hospices, homes for the poor and orphanages. As we should know, the original Nicene Creed of A.D. 325 described God the Father as the Almighty, creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible. It described the Son as the Only-begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, very God of very God, of one essence or "ousia" with the Father. But the original Creed simply stated: "And I believe in the Holy Spirit" – full stop, no explanation. It wasn't until after the Cappadocian Fathers wrestled with the ideas homoousios vs. homoiousios and Sabellianism vs. Arianism that the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 could add to the Holy Spirit phrase: "the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, Who spoke by the Prophets." Here we see that the Holy Spirit is fully God, co-equal with the Father and the Son in essence and glory.

He is not merely an emanation of the Father, nor the spirit of the Son, as the Sabellian heresy taught: one "monad" in three different forms. This age-old heresy has popped up again these days in modalism – that the Father morphed into the Son and the Son morphed into the Holy Spirit, as a large segment of modern Pentecostalism teaches: I ran into some of these in Russia and Ukraine. On the other hand, the Arian heresy taught that only the Father is God pre-eternal, before all time; Jesus Christ for Arius and his followers was a created being of lower stuff than the Father, and the Holy Spirit was similarly a created being. This smacks of Gnosticism with its various levels of supernatural beings, and also of Islam, modern humanism and Moralistic Therapeutic Deism that put Christ on the level of a prophet or a really good man, an example, or a therapist, that's all, not God incarnate.

The Cappadocian Fathers also struggled with the terms homoousios vs. homoiousios, that is, "of one essence" vs. "of like essence." The former seemed too close to Sabellianism, that God is a monad, just one Being or Essence that takes different forms. But the latter term, homoiousios, just one iota different, was too close for comfort to some forms of Arianism. They finally came up with the formula of three Persons (hypostases) in one Essence (ousia). This explanation has held for all historical Christianity: Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Protestants until the eras of Modernism and Post-Modernism.

But there are always some would-be internet theologians who will say, "The word 'Trinity' isn't in the Bible, so I don't have to believe in the Trinity!" The Bible itself, however, doesn't use the words "sola Scriptura" either; in fact, it states, "But if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15). The Church, not the Bible, is the foundation of the truth. The Church was established in A.D. 33, but the New Testament canon was only agreed upon almost 400 years after the Church was born. The printing press was invented 1000 years later, in the 1400s; thus the Reformation and sola Scriptura would have been impossible without readily available, relatively inexpensive printed Bibles.

Further, oral tradition handed down (or "traditioned") from the Apostles was of equal authority in a semi-literate society where hand-copied books were rare and expensive. St. Paul wrote, "Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle." Also, "But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us" (2 Thes. 2:15 & 3:6). But the ultimate source of authority is Christ Himself: "All authority [exousia] has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe [tereo – "fulfill" or "hold fast," not just sit back and spectate] all things that I have commanded you (the Great Commission, Mat. 28:19b-20). What was the number one thing Christ commanded? Love God, and your neighbor as yourself! Here we have Christ, the final authority, sharing His authority with the Apostles, the leaders of the Church, and affirming the concept of the Holy Trinity. So let's take a look at what else the Bible says about the Holy Trinity, as interpreted by Holy Tradition, not by some wet-behind-the-ears, would-be internet theologians:

"In the beginning God made heaven and earth. … The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water. Then God said [the Word] 'Let there be light', and there was light" (Gen. 1:1 & 3). Here, in the very first verses of the Bible, it tells us of God (the Father), the Spirit, and the Word. The Apostle John echoes these verses in his prologue to the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-2 & 14). From this, the Church Fathers taught that Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh, is pre-eternal with God the Father and is of the same essence as the Father. When God spoke the Word, the whole cosmos came into existence.

We learned in the Great Commission that Christ shared His authority with the Apostles, but He also shares it with all believers: "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right [exousia – the authority] to become children of God, to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12). We, the laos theou, the laypeople of God, have the authority to become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4)!

When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, he confessed, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him" (John 3:2). He recognized that Jesus was from God. Then Jesus uttered the verse we so often see at football games, John 3:16 – "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." From this and from the above quote in ch.1, the Church Fathers taught that Jesus is pre-eternally begotten of God the Father. They also taught that the reason God gave His only begotten Son is because God so loved the world – the whole cosmos including mankind – He loves us so much, that whoever believes in Him can have eternal life: God invites us into His family!

The Apostle and Theologian John has more to say about the Trinity: "But the Helper [parakletos], the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you" (John 14:26). The Helper is sometimes translated as the Comforter or the Advocate, and here it says that the Father will send Him to teach and remind us of what Christ taught. And the most central text on the Holy Spirit is this: "But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me" (John 15:26). From this verse the Church Fathers at the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Councils defined the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father. Only much later, in A.D. 589, did a local council in Toledo (now part of Spain) add the filioque, that is, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father "and from the Son" that subordinated the Spirit to the Son, thus leading eventually to the Great Schism in A.D. 1054.

Another important Bible text on the Holy Spirit is – "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you" (John 16:13-14). So from these texts we learn that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father for the purpose of teaching and reminding us of the Truth (Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life), and the Spirit will glorify and testify of Christ, not bringing attention to Himself. Perhaps this is why some early Christians had difficulty defining the Holy Spirit, because He didn't want to draw attention to Himself! In the very next chapter, John 17, the words glory, glorify and glorified are used seven times to describe the action of the Holy Spirit in the relationship between the Father and the Son, "that they [we, Christ's followers] may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. … that the love with which You loved me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:24b & 26b).

So the Trinity's glory and love go together: when Judas the betrayer had left the Last Supper, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately. … A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:31b-32 & 34-35). Did you get the message?

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: the Holy Trinity, one in essence and undivided! Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

______________
Sources:
KJV+ = King James Version with Strong's Dictionaries and Concordance (e-Sword)
OSB = Orthodox Study Bible (used throughout except where otherwise noted)

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 13 May 2018.)

Saturday, April 28, 2018

Community and National Tragedies

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

For a few years, I had been noticing that on the corner of Cable Avenue and Sycamore Street, the narrow brick road beside our church building, the fire hydrant was sinking into the muddy hillside. Or rather, I should say that the hillside was gradually sliding down and beginning to cover the hydrant. At first, just the bottom quarter of the fire hydrant was enveloped in muddy earth. Then several months ago, I noticed that about one-third of the hydrant had sunk into the mud. But a couple weeks ago, about half of it was enveloped by the moist hillside. [The following contains a bit of hyperbole:]

Then it happened: the spring rains had soaked the whole steep hillside, from Highway 30 seventy-five feet above down to our church building and the apartment buildings just 350 feet away, causing the earth to liquefy and come pouring down upon and into the church and apartment buildings. The walls and the roofs collapsed under the force of this mudslide, the basements and first floors were totally filled with mud, with a huge section of Highway 30 fallen into this muck and mire so that heavy excavating equipment was called in to haul away what was left of the highway and the buildings.

State disaster officials have applied for federal disaster relief and estimate that it will require at least six months of intensive, almost round-the-clock work to build a 500-foot-long and 75-foot-high concrete retaining wall, then fill the hillside with compacted earth up to the level of Highway 30 and reconstruct the highway. Meanwhile, the church and attached rectory are no more. The apartment complex was evacuated as the hillside began to give way. so nobody was injured. Residents, mostly elderly and/or disabled, have been placed in extended-stay motels until more permanent housing can be found for them. Thankfully, one church member who lived in those very apartments had vacated his apartment due to a systemic infection just days before this disaster, so we had time to remove his possessions.

"Why did this have to happen to me?" in his case changed to: "Why did this happen to our town, to the church and all those poor people?" We might be able to answer the "How?" question: in order to extract coal and iron ore, human settlements gradually built up the whole Pittsburgh metropolitan area from the three rivers confluence basin into the steep hillsides of the northern Appalachian Mountains. Then came decades of economic decline and infrastructure neglect after the coal mines and steel mills shut down, and finally heavy rainfall. But the "Why?" we may never fully know.

And yet, this was not to be the only tragedy to befall our community and nation. Exactly one hundred twelve years earlier, on April 18, “The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire” (HistoryNet) destroyed most of that city, which had risen in just 60 years from a 500-inhabitant sleepy hamlet of Yerba Buena to become one of the wonders of the world. And yet, the works of man were no match for the power of nature and nature’s God. The San Andreas Fault, running right through San Francisco Bay, creaked and rumbled at 5:12 a.m., causing great fissures in the earth, collapsed houses and city buildings, broken gas mains and resultant fires that destroyed much of the city: the quakes had broken the water mains, so what remained of city fire crews could barely get a trickle to fight the flames.

But this was just a foretaste of the disaster to come: in the same month in 2018, the San Andreas Fault gave way again. The North American Plate that creaks south and the Pacific Plate that creaks north “came unstuck” and broke completely apart, causing hundreds of miles of the Pacific Plate to slide into the sea. Tens of millions of people were simply swallowed up by the collapsing earth as the sea rushed over them. The tremors, 9.4 on the Richter Scale, caused buildings to crumble, huge fissures to appear in the earth and fires to destroy many cities and towns from British Columbia to the Mexico border and inland for hundreds of miles. The entire U.S. civilian economy came to a halt as virtually all available resources were directed toward this national emergency. The resultant tsunamis severely damaged countries all around the Pacific Rim. Hundreds of millions of human lives were lost or forever traumatized and trillions of dollars expended trying to piece the country and the world together again.

The "Why?" question was asked over and over: "Why could God – if there is a God – let this terrible, awful tragedy happen?" Some would blame it on the fact that for several decades, California had been the “leading edge” of modern culture with its sex-and-violence themed movies selling all over the world, more recently had become a center of the LGBTQ movement, and just in the last few weeks even banned the expression of anti-LGBTQ ideas, including traditional Christian doctrine – it had become a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah.

But when Jesus Christ sent out His disciples to preach the Gospel and heal the sick, He warned those who would not receive the Good News: "And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!" (Mat. 10:14-15). Are sexual sins more evil and deserving of divine judgment than any other kind of sin? No! It was not directly because of sexual sins that a huge chunk of California was wiped off the map and much of the remaining "left coast" of America decimated by earthquake and fire: it was because they had rejected the Gospel. Granted, the enemy of our souls often uses the hook of sexual temptation and sin to lure people away from the path toward holiness and godliness: far too many are kept from the faith in Christ by these temptations and too many Christians have fallen away due to this kind of sin.

But outwardly religious people who haven’t succumbed to sins of the flesh may be bound by the sins of complacency and pride in their pseudo-piety. Christ told us about some Jews whom Pilate viciously slew and mixed their blood with their sacrifices: "Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish." Then Christ brings up a natural disaster: "Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all the other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish" (Lk. 13:2-5). Death can come by the malice of others or by natural disaster as well as by our own sins.

The point of all this, all these community and national tragedies, human malice and natural disasters, is that we live in a fallen universe where both the natural world and human nature are distorted by the Fall. The results of Adam and Eve’s sin, as well as our own sins, are all around us in our broken relationships and our despoiled environment. We build cities, houses, churches and apartments on hillsides and on geological faults unsafe for human habitation. We likewise build our relationships on shaky "I’m OK, you’re OK" relativistic foundations. Then we ask: "Why did God let it happen to us?"

Thus we blame God for our personal sins and our collective errors. In his apocalyptic vision, the Apostle John foresaw this as the fourth angel poured out his bowl: "And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory." And when the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the beast’s throne: "his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds" (Rev. 16:9-11).

America needs to repent. Each and every one of us need to repent of our outward sins and our inner pseudo-piety. Refusing to repent only hardens us in our sins. Let each man and each woman, all of us together, examine ourselves, the hidden motivations of our own hearts, and pray: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner!" Only then He will spare us and restore our land.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 28 Apr. 2018.)

Saturday, April 14, 2018

Two Sets of Grave Clothes

Christ's grave clothes In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Orthodox Christians continue celebrating Pascha (Easter) for the seven weeks up to Pentecost. If you've followed the Scriptural narrative leading up to Palm Sunday and Passion Week, you know that in John ch. 11, just before Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He goes with His disciples to Bethany because His friend Lazarus is sick, as his sisters Mary and Martha inform Him. He tells the disciples, "Lazarus is asleep, let's go wake him up!" (v.11).

Of course, with the wonderful gift of hindsight, we know that actually Lazarus was as dead as a doornail… or so everybody thought. They arrive in Bethany and He asks, "Where have you put him?" (v. 34). Have you ever heard of someone being "put away" because they act so strange? "By now he stinks really bad! It's been four days since he died!" (v. 39). Is there anyone you'd rather not be near because they stink really bad?

But that doesn't bother Jesus one bit: "Lazarus, come forth!" (v. 43). And everyone's eyes pop out: here comes Lazarus, he can barely walk because he's bound head to toe with grave clothes… but he's alive and well! "Loose him and let him go!" (v. 43). So they unwind all those rags that bound him up – can you imagine all those people coming one by one, at first afraid to come near because they think he stinks? But no, he's perfectly fine, no smell at all! I can see Lazarus spinning around and around as they pull the grave clothes off him. Many believed on Jesus, but others went to tell the Pharisees, who said – "This guy Jesus is rocking the boat: we've got to get rid of Him!" (vv. 45-50).

In the Gospel reading for Palm Sunday, John 12:1-18, Mary and Martha say – "Let's have a party with Lazarus and Jesus!" Martha busies herself fixing the food and serving it, but Mary… remember Mary, the one who sat at Christ's feet listening to Him while her sister Martha was fixing food? (Luke 10:38-42). This same sort of thing happens again with Mary! She breaks open a bottle of expensive perfume made from a very aromatic plant, sumbul as the Persians called it or jatamansi as the Hindus called it (TSK), with it she anoints Christ's feet and wipes them with her hair, in preparation for His burial, as He explains to greedy Judas, who would later betray Him for money.

[As an aside, was this the very same woman who, just before Passover in the home of Simon the leper, anoints Christ's head with myrrh (Mat. 26:6; Mk. 14:3)? Like Matthew and Mark, Luke in ch. 7:37 describes it as taking place in a Pharisee's home, but puts it earlier in His ministry and records the Pharisee saying that she was a sinful woman, a harlot. For those who hold to the verbal inspiration of Scripture, this poses a big problem: too many details are the same for it to be different events, but too many details differ. But it's no problem for the Orthodox, who believe in the Bible's overall sense. We worship the living Word of God Who became flesh and dwelt among us, not just a printed Book.]

Now the plot thickens: not only do the Pharisees feel they need to get rid of Jesus, now they also feel they need to kill Lazarus because too many people are believing in Jesus after He raised Lazarus from the dead (Jn. 12:9-11). Jesus makes His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the crowds go wild over Him: they cut off palm branches, waved them and said – "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Ps. 118 [117 LXX]:26) – a prophecy of the Messiah. And He's riding in like a newly-anointed King on a donkey's colt, as prophesied in Zech. 9:9 – very ominous threats to the Pharisees' authority. Again, John emphasizes the point that the people who saw Lazarus raised from the dead are instigating the crowds to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. "The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, 'You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!'" (v. 19).

The interesting thing about all this is that it appears to be coming together like in a script, as if Christ has it all stage-managed from the start: He knows Lazarus is dead but heads out to Bethany to raise him up, knowing that it will excite the crowds. He lets Mary anoint His feet, knowing that it will provoke Judas' greed and later cause Judas to betray Him. He sends a few of His disciples to find a donkey colt and it turns out that the owners were quite willing to let the colt be taken. He rides into Jerusalem with the crowds hailing Him as Lord and the anointed King, knowing that in just a few days the crowds will be turned against Him. He has told His disciples three times that He will be betrayed, beaten, mocked, crucified and raised from death, knowing that they don't understand, they will forsake Him in spite of their false bravado, and only after His resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit will they begin to comprehend the enormity of these events. All of these mistaken ideas and wrong but free choices of men are woven together by the foreknowledge and sovereignty of God to fulfill His eternal plan.

How quickly the tides changed, from His coming into Jerusalem as the newly-anointed King, to be tried, condemned to death, and nailed to the Cross like a traitor against Rome and a blasphemer. What an anticlimax for this story! Imagine how the disciples felt: crushed, depressed and afraid for their lives. But two men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, stepped up to the plate, took Christ's Body, "bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews' Preparation Day, for the tomb was nearby" (Jn.19:40-42).

Then early on Sunday morning, the first day of the week, an explosion of energy blasted the stone off the mouth of the tomb, the earth trembled and shook, and the Roman soldiers fell over like dead men. The women came, found the tomb empty, and reported it to the disciples. Peter and John ran to the tomb and found only the grave clothes and the handkerchief that had been wrapped around His head folded neatly. Those grave clothes and the handkerchief would be treasured by the Church for centuries. Is the Shroud of Turin that same handkerchief with an impression of Christ's face etched into it? It doesn't really matter to me – I don't know and I don't worry about it. The real plaschanitsa – the blood-stained grave clothes folded neatly, not unwound in a heap – testify to the fact that Christ died and rose again.

Now, you're probably wondering how I'm going to tie together the grave clothes Lazarus was wrapped up in with the grave clothes Christ was wrapped up in. I'm not going to! No, Lazarus' raising was just a stage rehearsal for Christ's real resurrection. The first set of grave clothes go back 33 years earlier: "And she brought forth her firstborn Son and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn" (Lk. 2:7b). Those "swaddling cloths" were actually strips of burial cloths, the first set, indicating God's plan from eternity past.

In the beginning, in Genesis, we read that "for Adam and his wife the Lord God made garments of skin, and clothed them" (Gen. 3:21). Jesus is that garment of skin, "God with skin on." As Isaiah prophesied – "I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garment of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness" (Is. 61:10, NOABA). John in Revelation wrote that Christ is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8b), and "He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God" (Rev. 19:13).

As St. Athanasius wrote, "Without the Incarnation, there is no Salvation." Only if God would take on our weak and sin-stained human nature, could we become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). For this very reason, some people celebrate Christmas or Easter all year long. They are not the ones who are sort of strange, the rest of us are.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

______________
Sources:
NOABA = New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha
OSB = Orthodox Study Bible (used throughout except where otherwise noted)
TSK = Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (e-Sword)

Saturday, March 24, 2018

The Tale of Two Marys

The Virgin Mary and St. Mary of Egypt In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

We have an extraordinary coincidence this Sunday: we commemorate St. Mary of Egypt on the fifth Sunday of Great Lent, which this year for New Calendar Christians falls exactly on March 25, nine months before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know what happens nine months before a baby is born: it’s conceived! Yes, this Sunday we also celebrate the Annunciation by the Angel Gabriel to St. Mary the Mother of Christ our God. At the very instant Mary said to Gabriel, "Let it be unto me according to your word," the Word became flesh… God became incarnate… our salvation had begun! As St. Athanasius said – "Without the Incarnation there is no Salvation." Only when God partook of our humanity could we become partakers of His divinity (2 Peter 1:4). And the pure and sinless Virgin Mary's "yes" made it all possible.

But what about the other Mary? We can hardly identify with the Virgin Mary because of her purity and her not committing any personal sins. But we certainly can identify with St. Mary of Egypt who had yielded to temptation not just once or twice, but had relished and rollicked in her sin, dragging others along with her into the pit of debauchery. How many times have we repeated our favorite besetting sin – gluttony, gambling, porn, sexual, nicotine or alcohol addiction – over and over and over again? How did St. Mary of Egypt finally break free, and how can we?

In Joshua 24:1 & 14-28 we read Joshua's promises and warnings to the Israelites when they had entered the Promised Land and as he was about to die: "If you disobey the Lord, take foreign wives and worship their idols, the Lord will punish you!" And they replied, "We will worship only the Lord God!" But then they turned right around and did exactly what Joshua had warned them against. Mary of Egypt had boarded the ship to Jerusalem, going through the motions of a religious pilgrim while in her heart still being a harlot. Only when stopped by an Angel from entering the church in Jerusalem did she finally realize she must cease leading a two-faced life. Joshua told the Israelites, "Choose this day whom you will serve!" ...and they faked it. But Mary of Egypt finally realized that she couldn't fake it any longer, she must get real with God. Are we at that point where we realize that we need to stop faking our faith, and get real with God?

Why did the Church Fathers link St. Mary of Egypt with this Sunday's Scripture readings? The Epistle reading for this Sunday, Hebrews 9:11-14, tells us about this higher reality. The Israelites in the Old Testament had to repeatedly offer animal sacrifices, which were a mere shadow of things to come, but Christ offered His own Flesh and Blood as the once-for-all eternal reality that cleanses our guilty conscience from continuing in sin while faking our faith, and He enables us to get real with God.

In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Mark 10:32-45, we see the same sort of phony holiness and fake bravado among the disciples. Just after teaching about faithfulness in marriage (which the early Mary of Egypt would have nothing to do with), Jesus rebuked the rich young man who wanted to follow Christ but also wanted to hang onto his wealth (serving God and Mammon), then in this Scripture passage He detected the same double-minded thinking in James and John: nothing against these two disciples in particular – in the last chapter we saw that all twelve were jockeying for first place, "who would be the greatest in the coming Kingdom."

The reading for this Sunday begins with Christ telling His disciples for the third time now that the destination of their current trek, Jerusalem, would be what seemed to them the end of the road for Him: He will be betrayed, condemned to death, scourged, mocked and executed. But they couldn't grasp that He would rise again to conquer all evil, all banal and worldly thinking, all self-centered seeking after one's own advancement.

James and John addressed Jesus as "Teacher" or didaskalos in Greek, which can also be translated as master or doctor (KJV+). It appears that they still viewed Him as a master teacher or doctor of this new philosophy. They were dabbling in learning some new philosophical ideas, which the Greek-speaking world really loved to do. But the Gospel is more than learning philosophical or theological ideas!

St. John Chrysostom wrote that this text teaches we are not to ask for privilege in the kingdom without readiness to die for it. The sons of Zebedee were not mistaken in recognizing that they were special recipients of His love, but they were mistaken in imagining that this would be without cost (ACCS). We all want to be transformed and glorified, but few of us are willing to take up our cross and deny ourselves. This is precisely the point Jesus was getting at when He said – "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (v. 38). To "drink the cup that I drink" is a Jewish expression meaning to share the same fate (NIVSB).

That cup is His Blood and that baptism is His death, burial and resurrection. Do we fully comprehend that when we were baptized we joined ourselves to His death, burial and resurrection, that is, we really and truly died, our old self was buried and a new person was born again into newness of life? Is it really real to us that partaking of the Eucharist is taking His crucified Body and His shed Blood into us as our new life in Him and He in us? This is a life-and-death issue, not just learning some religious doctrines!

"And when the ten heard it, they began to be greatly displeased with James and John" (v.41). The New Oxford Annotated Bible puts it – "they began to be indignant at James and John." They were really ticked off! These two were trying to cut ahead in line! Nobody likes it when someone else cuts ahead in line or cuts you off in traffic. Beside that, as Matthew tells us, the two didn't have the nerve themselves to ask Jesus, they had their mother ask Him (Matthew 20:20-21). What a couple of wimps! But Jesus, being God incarnate, knew their future: James would be beheaded and John would die as a prisoner on the island of Patmos. They would indeed drink His cup and be baptized with His baptism. So He called the disciples together and taught them – "This isn't the way it works in My Kingdom: if you want to be great, you've got to become a servant, if you want to be first, become a slave" (v. 43-44).

Like the early Mary of Egypt, they still had their value system upside-down, but by the grace of God she rose up from the abyss of sin to the heights of holiness. They thought life was all about power, prestige and pleasure. Soon they would learn how fickle was their faith, as Jesus goes from being a hero in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to being executed as a rebel and a heretic the next Friday. Tune in next time to see how it all turns out: it just might turn your value system right-side-up!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!

________________
Sources:
ACCS = Ancient Christian Commentary on the Scriptures, on this passage (e-Sword add-in)
KJV+ = King James Version with Strong's Dictionaries and Concordance (e-Sword)
NIVSB = New International Version Study Bible
NOAB = New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha
OSB = Orthodox Study Bible (used throughout except where otherwise noted)