Dear Friends
There’s something I want and there’s nothing I can do to get it, and for the first time in a long time I turn to prayer. “Lord, help me get that job … Lord, let me get the grade I need … Lord, I’m begging you, do this one thing for me.” And I feel like a hypocrite, I know I have been distant from the Lord, I know that this is not a usual event for me, I know that God is not my fairy godmother, but I try it anyway.
But it is in this moment I start to comprehend the truth of my life, the truth of all of our lives, “We have no other hope save thee.” God allows me to see the hypocrisy within myself and says to me, “Repent.” He knows that for which I am praying is frivolous and not worthy of him yet he hears my prayer and calls me to turn from the path to death towards life. We know that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4) For the Lord says, “For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies …therefore turn and live!” (Ezekiel 18:32)
Standing before the Lord with this hypocrisy running through my veins is uncomfortable, I want it to end, I would do anything to avoid it. But if I do not face it now the wound to my soul will deepen, the infection will grow and fester. I would do anything to return to this world, to return to a dulled and numb mortality where I never really have to live but merely exist on a path to death, yet the Lord has shown me that there is life, there is love, there is beauty.
And so I must choose, I must make a firm decision, am I willing to face my hypocrisy or not? Because only by making a firm decision can I be led to life.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if you feel hypocrisy when you pray, pray anyway. If you want to give up, pray anyway. If you think you are praying for the wrong things then pray for the right things—repentance, love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness—and pray anyway. This is a gift to wake us up from complacency and turn us to the Lord that we may repent and be true followers of Christ.
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Sermon
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
When the paralytic is carried by four friends and let down through the roof before the Lord, we are told “When [Jesus] saw [the friends’] faith, he said to him, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you.’” (Luke 5:20; see also Matthew 9:2, Mark 2:5) Immediately on coming before Christ the paralytic is forgiven all his sins. In today’s Gospel reading by contrast, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Zacchaeus must wait until later for salvation to come to his house.
His first encounter with the Lord he had climbed the sycamore tree. He had come into contact with Christ by his own efforts and it may well be by his own pride. The Lord noticed him, acknowledged him, yet it was not in that moment that salvation came to him. The Lord then called him down, and he had to show humility, the Lord recognised this humility—this self-humbling—yet in that moment he had not received salvation. The Lord journeys on and enters the home of Zacchaeus, for even to those who are unworthy the Lord will come. He enters the home and Zacchaeus changes, he finally recognises that he must respond to the encounter with the Lord, he must change, he must repent. “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold.” He must make restitution, he must pay back to those whom he has cheated, and in that moment salvation has come.
And I consider my own life. I encounter the Lord from my own efforts, from reading, from listening, from studying, from getting out of bed and travelling to Church, and the Lord looks at me in my pride and acknowledges me, but salvation has not come to me. And the Lord looks at me and calls me to humble myself, to rid myself of my pride. He has seen me, he knows me, and is willing to enter my home and my heart: yet salvation is not yet mine. But if, in that moment, I recognise how I have offended my neighbour, how I have robbed and cheated by my actions and my inactions, by my words and by my deeds, and I choose to repay not only what I owe but fourfold then I would immediately receive salvation and be numbered as a son of Abraham—not by a blood lineage but by being the image of Abraham’s faithfulness.
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Services this week
Friday 27th January
Discussion on the Book of Numbers, 8 pm
Online only
Saturday 28th January
Vespers, 6.30 pm
At St Francis’ Hall, Eastleigh
Sunday 29th January
Divine Liturgy, 9.30 am
At St Francis’ Hall, Eastleigh
Online session is via Google Meet: please get in contact for the details.
Please join us: all are welcome, come and see.
Attending Church
We meet at St Francis’ Hall, Nightingale Avenue, Eastleigh, SO50 9JA. Come and See.
Can I help you?
I am here for you, you need only ask. Is there a way I can support your life of faith? Get in touch.
Can you help the community?
Yes, absolutely. Offer yourselves to the Lord: pray! Make available to him all your talents and ask him how he would like you to use them — listen for his reply.
Your prayers!
With love in Christ
Fr Alexander
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