Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.” . . . if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:17-24)

The disciples are unable to expel the boy’s demon. Jesus’ reaction to His disciple’s failure is to chastise everyone. The disciples will later ask Jesus why they failed to cast the demon out and He tells them the issue is one of prayer. In the lesson itself, the father of the possessed child, expresses dismay and repentance over his own lack of faith. The disciples on the other hand never express any sorrow for their failure. However, their failure enables the man to come into Christ’s presence and to express his need to Christ. Conservative commentator Eric Metaxas writes about the purpose of prayer:

If the goal of prayer is really to ‘get the results we want,’ we have a strange candy-machine idea of God. It is as though we need only to put something in and we get something back. It’s a kind of trade. With this sort of ‘God,’ there is no doubt that if I do x, then he must do y. In a way, he has no choice in the matter. If that’s true, why would there be any gratitude on the part of the one getting what he wants?  . . .  Perhaps the thinking is that God is so rich it’s no big deal for him to give me what I want, so why should I be grateful? Perhaps I know I am only using God because I despise him and only want to do what I must do to get what I want. It puts me and what I want at the center of things and again creates a God who is no God.

This approach is what I’ve previously called ‘Dead Religion,’ which is contrasted with what I have called ‘True Faith,’ where the relationship with God is central, and the things we get from him are peripheral. We can think of it this way: If a child really loves her father and knows he really loves her, she trusts him. When he gives her what she wants, she is happy and grateful. But even when he doesn’t give her what she wants, she knows that he has a reason for not giving it to her, and not just any reason but a reason that has her ultimate welfare and concern at heart. So although it might take some effort, in the end she cannot help but be grateful. If we have that kind of a God in mind, then even when we don’t get what we want or ask for, we can trust there is wisdom and real love toward us in not giving it to us.

There are many people who may talk about God and prayer and who outwardly look very religious, but they’re really just performing rites and deeds and prayers so they can get what they want. If they felt that those rites or deeds or prayers wouldn’t get them what they wanted, they would stop doing those things. So they are not really worshipping the God they claim to be worshipping. They are selfishly worshipping getting what they desire. For them, God is only a means to that end. If he doesn’t give them what they want, they cut him off. Any parent understands that we don’t want our children to treat us that way. (MIRACLES, pp 62-63)

According to the Gospel, in their initial encounter neither the father nor the apostles get what they want. Perhaps because they fell short of faithfully loving God. Maybe the apostles wanted glory and to be held in honor and awe by the crowd because of their miraculous powers. Instead, they are humbled by their failure.

The father initially was only interested in getting what he wants, but then he realizes faith in God – a relationship with God – is more important than what he wants. Expressing his faith (‘I believe’) and confessing his failure (‘help my unbelief’) puts him back into a relationship with God. He is seeking God, not just what he wants, nor just what he can get from God. The Apostle’s failure gave him time to rethink what he was looking for and why.

As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting; for you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:9-10) 

There is an old joke which asks, “How many Orthodox does it take to change a light bulb?” There are different versions of the answer, but all of them have a similar meaning: “Change? The Orthodox never change anything!” 

While that joke aims at Orthodox Tradition, there is a way in which it is wrong – for Orthodoxy from its beginning in the Gospels is a call to repent – to change our hearts and minds. Repentance isn’t simply enumerating one’s sins, but a change in outlook, a paradigm shift, seeing the world in a new way. Change is the path to the kingdom, and everyone is called to repent throughout their lives. Repentance isn’t just a onetime awakening, it is a way of life in which we are mindful of falling short of God’s commands and wishes for us, and so we constantly strive for a course correction to keep us on the straight and narrow path. Thus we pray that “we might spend the remaining time of our life in peace and repentance.” The spiritual life is dynamic, not static. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2)  Because the Kingdom is near, we are called to repentance (a change of heart and mind).  [This is unlike the Prodigal Son who had to go far away from his father’s house to come to repentance – to bring his father’s house back into focus. There are many paths to the Kingdom.]

 We need not be surprised that the word ‘change’ inspires a stampede of panic within, for change always means a confrontation for us with the unknown. To consider changing at all is itself a threatening confession of dissatisfaction with the present. Given the choice, we would much prefer denying anything is amiss, believing that we have already arrived at the point where no change is needed, that center of eternal stability. Our hearts, however, know only too well that it is not so. Like those pioneers who again and again had the courage to pick up their belongings and go after their dreams, this journey will require the rest of our lives. 

How could we be so mistaken about change? In reality, the summons to change is liberating, which is why a message so allied with change could be called ‘gospel,’ good news. True life never develops without change, and ongoing change is at the heart of all genuine spiritual traditions. None of us is exempt from this. (The Monks of New Skete, IN THE SPIRIT OF HAPPINESS, pp 64-65) 

And Jesus said to all, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23)

Do you believe that the words of your Lord: ‘Take up thy cross‘ refer also to you personally? If you believe this, then take it up. The Lord has laid it on your shoulders in the present grievous case. Do not say, it is too heavy; God knows better the measure of your strength. To some God sends trials and sorrows, brought about by circumstances and in no way dependent on people; these are more easily borne. To others He sends those caused by people, and they are harder, especially when we cannot take the grief caused to us as unintentional, and still harder when we have done some good to those people. The last case is the hardest to bear. If God sends you this, know that it is precisely what is most useful for you, and to this realization add the inspiring thought: God sees that you are strong enough to bear it and expects you actually to bear it with a good heart, without complaining. So do not disappoint God’s expectations. (Lorenzo Scopoli, UNSEEN WARFARE, p 132)

St Luke is very clear that as a disciple of Christ each one of us must bear his/her own cross:

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27)

Bearing one’s cross might mean faithfully enduring whatever trails and tribulations comes our way in life which is the gist of the above quote and a monastic understanding of taking up one’s cross. However, it can also mean being patient with others and/or helping others with their difficulties as St Paul has it:

Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.(Galatians 6:2)

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves; let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to edify him. (Romans 15:1-2)

Christ tells us that the burden He wants us to bear is not heavy:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

St Peter is adamant that Torah (the Law of the Old Covenant) is a burden which the Jews could not bear and thus should not be imposed on the Gentiles either:

Now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? (Acts 15:10)

Of what else might the burden we are to bear consist, if it is in fact easy and light?  The New Testament is clear that Christ’s disciples are to bear witness to Him and also to bear spiritual fruits to the glory of God. Christ asks us to bear our crosses in imitation of Hin because He does not go unburdened Himself (John 19:17), for He came to serve us.  His bearing the cross is symbolic of what else He takes upon Himself:

This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” (Matthew 8:17)

He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24)

And the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”

Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” Nathan said to David, “You are the man.  . . .  David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the LORD, the child that is born to you shall die.” (2 Samuel 12:1-14)

 

Orthodox scholar John Barnett writes:

It is a commonplace of modern New Testament scholarship that parables engage hearers. Often cited is the example of the prophet Nathan confronting David with the sin of his adulterous affair with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, by drawing him into a parable about a rich man who takes the only lamb, a ewe lamb from a poor man. (2 Samuel 12:1-4). First, ‘David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man‘ and then, when he realizes that he is the rich man, thus enacting the intention of the parable, David confesses that he has ‘sinned against the Lord‘ (2 Samuel 12:5, 13). Similarly, when Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard (Luke 20:9-16), we are told that the scribes and the chief priests ‘tried to lay hands on [Jesus] … for they perceived that he had told this parable against them‘ (Luke 20:19). Again, the intention of the parable is fulfilled.

And when Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in response to the lawyer’s question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ (Luke 10:29), we are told … that the Jewish hearers of the parable were shocked that a Samaritan, their bitter enemy, rather than the establishment figures of priest and Levite, had fulfilled the commandment to love neighbor. Once again, the intention of the parable is fulfilled. (SEEKING CHRIST IN THE SCRIPTURES, Pages 207-208)

And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them forth out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them; I am the LORD their God. (Exodus 29:46)

In the above verse from Exodus, God says the very point of the Exodus was so that God could dwell/tabernacle with His people. Thus, this passage says the purpose of the Exodus was to prepare for the incarnation! It was not just to liberate Israel from slavery in Egypt that the Passover events happen. God was not just displaying His miraculous powers to awe people.  The goal always was to prepare the way so that God could dwell in His people.

The reality for us is this too is the point of Great Lent – of fasting, self-denial, and cross-bearing: we do it so that God can dwell in us (that is in the plural – not just in me but in the people of God, the Church). We should not lose sight of this fact that Lenten discipline is to prepare God’s people together for Christ dwelling in our midst – amongst the community. Too often we see it only as an individualistic enterprise, but it is how the Church prepares for Christ. It is how I participate in the people of God, thus experience salvation in community, in the Body of Christ.

The value of the Exodus is not its factual history, but it serves as a preparation and a prefiguring of salvation for the Church.  We miss the point if we focus on history or think the story is about the destruction of Egypt or Pharoah. The Exodus prefigures the salvation in Christ through His life, death and resurrection. God brings us out of our slavery (in Egypt or to our own sins) so that God can dwell with us. As we sing at Pascha:

This is the Day of Resurrection, let us be radiant, O people; Pascha, the Pascha of the Lord: for from death to life, and from earth to heaven, has Christ our God led us, as we sing the hymn of victory. (Paschal Canon – note the us and we, not I and me)

We see in this also how the early Christian teachers tended to interpret the stories of the Old Testament in a spiritual or symbolic way, as typology and prefiguring and allegory. We read these Old Testament stories to understand our current situation by seeing the old texts as spiritually describing our spiritual lives more than just giving us history.

“The Israelite wars found in the Old Testament are interpreted by means of re-reading the text in a new way: Israel now typifies the church, the war in Canaan signifies the Christian battle against vice.” (Bryan Stewart, THE OLD TESTAMENT AS AUTHORITATIVE SCRIPTURE IN THE EARLY CHURCHES OF THE EAST, p 29)

There are clues in the texts of the Jewish Scriptures which help us to look beyond reading them literally.  As in the Exodus 29 text above where God explains the purpose of the Exodus being so that He could dwell/tabernacle with us His people.  The texts are reminding us of what God intends for us, so that we can better prepare ourselves to receive Him into our lives.

Today the Church honors the memory of St Patrick, Enlightener of Ireland. Here is a prayer credited to him: 

I bind to myself today

God’s power to guide me,

God’s might to uphold me,

God’s wisdom to teach me,

God’s eye to watch over me,

God’s ear to hear me,

God’s word to give me speech,

God’s hand to guide me,

God’s way to lie before me,

God’s shield to shelter me,

God’s host to secure me…

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:37-40)

In His parable of the Last Judgment, Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, completely identifies Himself with the most lowly, suffering people – the least of His brothers and sisters to whom we have opportunity to minister.

But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:9)

When we see someone suffering, we should look to see Christ in them and then have compassion on the sufferer, treating him/her as we would treat Christ if we found Him in the same squalor, prison, homeless or destitute.

Christ became incarnate to identify with the suffering people of the world, not with the rich and comfortable. He wants us all to have that same mind.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

 

It is not the rich and powerful who should attract our attention (see Luke 1:46-53; James 2:6-7, 5:1-6; 1 Timothy 6:9-10). “Successful” businessmen or politicians are not our models for behavior, the humble Christ is both our model and our teacher. We should not be so awed by the rich and their prosperity as to lose our minds and think they are the examples of what God wants us all to be. God wants us to be people of mercy, compassion, charity. We will learn to be so if we can see Christ in those people who are often deemed less than everyone else.

 

When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. (Mark 8:34-35)

On the 3rd Sunday of Great Lent Orthodoxy venerates the Cross of our Lord. St John Chrysostom (d. 407AD), writing in the Patristic era, enumerates some of the many ways which Christ’s death on the cross has benefitted us:

The Cross of Christ, which has raised up the whole world, which has put an end to error, which has made the earth heaven, which has severed the sinews of death, which has made hades of no effect, which has destroyed the citadel of the devil, which has put the demons to silence, which has made men angels, which has broken down the altars and overthrown the temples, which has planted this new and wondrous way of life on the earth, which has produced countless awe-inspiring great and lofty benefits – has it not been a scandal to many? Did not Paul proclaim it every day without shame, saying: We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:23)? (ON THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD, p 116)

A modern preacher, Adam Linton, reminds us that each of the four Gospel writers push their version of Christ’s life relentlessly toward the crucifixion of Christ – His passion occupies a large part of each Gospel.

 If we read and study – and teach – the Gospels as the literary wholes that they are, it’s colossally evident from their very opening pages, that they all display a relentless, increasing focus forward, to the cross.

When we ‘hear … read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest’ the Gospels as a whole, we will be inoculated against the unsustainable notion that Jesus was mostly about moral exhortation; that the Gospel narratives are simply about someone ‘who came to show us how to live’; that our core problem, therefore, was lack of information. (FROM THE EAST GATE, p xvii)

The Cross is both central and essential to our salvation. As such, it is venerated on the mid-Sunday of Great Lent. It is not our Lenten ascetical efforts that attain salvation for us, for we receive salvation as a gift from God for which He paid the entire price.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.  (1 Peter 2:24)

While “The Fall” became central to the Christian understanding of Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection, Metropolitan John Zizioulas points out that the modern understanding of the Fall was not on the minds of early Christians, nor in fact is it much mentioned in the Bible. The sin of Adam and Eve is found in Genesis 3, but its theological implications are not much discussed in the Bible – the theology of “The Fall” evolved in the centuries following the emergence of the Church in the world. He writes:

1. The narrative of Genesis 2-3 comprises a unity. One cannot reduce it to a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ the fall. Both parts of the narrative form together the ‘primordial event’ which lies on the other side of history. To split it into two parts and conclude that it speaks of an ‘original’ and a post-fallen state is to distort its meaning and intention.
2. The idea of a ‘fall’ as something passive, fateful, and transmissible to all of humanity appears only in the apocryphal Book of 2 Esdras in the 1st century AD, and taken in this sense, it is absent from the story of Genesis. ‘The narrative of Genesis 2-3 does not speak of a fall.’ . . . 
3. It is noteworthy that the story of the fall never appears elsewhere in the Old Testament. It is also surprising to see how little Adam figures in the other books of the Old Testament. . . .  And when we come to the Gospels we are struck by the absence of any reference to the pre-fallen state of the human race. Only Paul seems to refer to Adam’s disobedience (Rom 5:12-21), but his interest is not so much in the first as in the last Adam, Christ. Paul in his text exalts the state of grace offered in Christ far more and higher than the original state of Adam (Rom 5:15-17, 20-21). The intention and purpose behind this text on which so much of the Augustinian theology of the fall was constructed, is eschatological rather than protological. Its aim is to speak of the last rather than the first Adam.  . . .

6. …  whose central point is that humans were expelled from paradise precisely because they attempted to obtain immortality that only the gods enjoyed.  . . .

To begin with, there is no reference to the fall in the Apostolic Fathers, the Didache, I Clement, Ignatius of Antioch, or the Letter of Barnabas. Even in Hermas, who speaks extensively about penance and the connection between sin and death, the idea of the fall is absent. The silence is noteworthy.  . . .

Justin mentions the disobedience of Adam and Eve, but he uses the word ‘fall’ (ptosis) only for the demons, symbolized by the serpent. The demons ‘fell,’ Adam and Eve ‘disobeyed,’ and all those who disobey God’s commandments ‘are like Adam and Eve’ (exomoioumenoi) – no inheritance or transmission of sin is implied. And what is more significant is that the perspective is eschatological: the disobedience of the first human being had no other result but the loss of the future theosis and immortality. Human beings were deprived not of what they already possessed but of what they would have obtained had they not disobeyed, namely theosis (theoi genesthai).  . . .  

The cause of [humanity’s] creation guarantees (pistoutai) the ever-lastingness [of it], while the ever-lastingness [guarantees] the resurrection, without which humanity could not persevere. … The resurrection demonstrates the cause of creation and the mind (gnomen) of the Creator. (Athenagoras) (REMEMBERING THE FUTURE, pp 173-175)

And taking a small child he stood him in their midst, and folding the child in his arms he said to them, “Whoever in my name receives one of the little children, like this one, receives me; and whoever receives me receives not me but the one having sent me forth.” (Mark 9:36-37) 

There are several lessons in the above words of Christ, which are important for our spiritual lives. One of which is a reminder to all of us that Christ saw in children some goodness which He believed we all needed in our own adult lives for us to be able to enter the Kingdom of heaven. 

Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. (Mark 10:15) 

Another lesson: To deal with any child as if that child is Christ, is to receive Christ Himself in our lives. Jesus totally identifies Himself with such little children. 

Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me… (Matthew 18:4-5) 

All human lives are important to Christ, but especially children hold a special place in His heart and mind. Many have pointed out Christ is not talking about childishness in adults, but childlikeness. There is something about a child – the innocence, awe, curiosity, love and mirth – which we each need to be a disciple of Christ. We also need to be able to see Christ in each child we meet which is a challenge for adults who see children only as noisy, bothersome, disruptive nuisances.  

We also might call to mind that Jesus tells us that how we treat children has something to do with how we will be judged on that Last Day for they are among the least of His brothers and sisters: 

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:37-40) 

In addition to Christ pointing to a goodness in children which we all need, Christ also told us we must be “born again” (John 3: 3). Biblical scholar George Lamsa says that in Aramaic languages to be “born again” means to start all over, in other words, to become a little child (Idioms in the Bible Explained and a Key to the Original Gospels, Kindle Location 1258-1259). If Lamsa is correct, then Christ’s words in John’s Gospel that we must be born again are related to His words in the Synoptic Gospels that we must become like a child to enter the Kingdom. We must see the world in a new way like a child – with awe, fascination, wonder instead of with jaded eyes. [I readily acknowledge that this assumes the child has had a healthy upbringing, not one sullied by abuse or neglect which so discolors their view of the world (though some studies say many of the ill effects of neglect or abuse can be overcome).]