"God is the Lord and has revealed Himself to us, blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord!"  This beautiful hymn, sung at the Orthodox matins service (and a conglomeration of different Psalms) is a significant, if not the most important, starting point for our conversations about God.  When we enter a theological discussion, we do not begin with a generic belief that there is "a" God-some nameless higher power, and move from there to God's plan of salvation ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  Rather, we do and must begin with Jesus himself, God incarnate-because the Lord, He is God, and has revealed Himself by His incarnation.

At the most basic level, here is where we part significant ways with Islam-we believe that God became man.  While the Koran indicates that Jesus existed (Isa, they call Him) as the son of Mary (Miriam), and was a prophet, the Koran also seems to say that Jesus did not actually die on the cross; rather he was substituted out.  So, prophet-yes.  Man-yes.  Crucified and raised-no.

Well, to be blunt, we cannot fall into a modern day trap which venerates (somehow as co-equals) the "three Abrahamic Faiths".  "If Christ is not raised [from the dead], then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain".  If Jesus Christ is not the incarnate Son of God, there is no Christianity.  If He is not co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, there is no Christianity.  If there is no Cross of Christ, there is no Christianity.

The parable we hear from our Lord this morning (Matthew 18:23-35) is about forgiveness. It's often interesting to put the Sunday lectionary readings into their Scriptural context, sometimes it gives us a bit more insight into the meaning of the passage. Immediately before our reading, St. Peter asks Christ, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" (Matthew 18:21) Christ then answers, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven," (Matthew 18:22), and then he tells the parable we heard this morning.

The parable is an example of the principle-forgive up to seventy times seven times. The way the Fathers interpret this number is simple. Christ does not intend for us to count 490 offenses from a single person, and then stop forgiving them. Rather, this number symbolizes infinite forgiveness; as often as we're offended, we forgive.

And then we have the parable (basic interpretation taken from Blessed Theophylact's Exposition of the Gospel of St. Matthew)-in this parable, there are several key "players": a king, several debts, and several debtors, who are servants of the king. The king is Christ-and the Scriptures teach us "the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22). So as the King, and as the Good Judge, Christ settles accounts with His servants.

Obviously, we are the servant who owes the King 10,000 talents. As with the 70x7, this number of 10,000 is symbolic-10,000 talents is more than a laborer could earn in a lifetime of working. This is the debt accumulated for an entire lifetime. Blessed Theophylact writes that every day we receive the grace and the mercies of God, but we give nothing to God (or very little, amounting to nothing) in return. So the debt the servant owes, the debt we owe, is a debt we can't pay. The Scriptures often use the language of debt for our sin, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," we pray in the Lord's Prayer (and this translation is more accurate than trespasses-the prayer refers not to people who have gone where they shouldn't, but to people who owe, who are in debt). The debt of our sin is something we can never repay. We've fallen short of God's righteousness, we've ignored the will of our Creator, and nothing we can do on our own will ever make us right again. It's a debt we can't pay.

All of us, at some time or another, have faced some kind of ridicule, being looked down on and judged by someone else, being singled out. This happens in so many ways. Kids with each other and in school, as we're in the world or at our workplaces, even in the Church or in our homes with our families. So often we find ourselves being judged in some way, looks, clothes, interests, faith and morals. The list is endless because we can all be singled out and attacked for basically everything about us, depending on who we're with at any given time.

And when we're treated like this, we have a tendency to react in one of several ways. We get our feelings hurt and we become dejected-we get down on ourselves and we wonder what's wrong with the way that we do things, what's wrong with us. One of our most common responses to being looked down on is to begin to mimic, to look down on ourselves. The other most common reaction is anger-to be angry with those who are mistreating us, to lash out in some type of retaliation, to stew in our anger and just despise the people who ridiculed/questioned us. Depression/sadness, and anger, these are the two ways we normally react when our interactions with people leave us with the idea that we're being looked down on, or made fun of, or in some other way unfairly treated.

The Apostles dealt with this type of reception everywhere they went, from people they knew, and people they didn't know. They were persecuted at every turn. And in our Epistle reading this morning, St. Paul reminds us of how we're supposed to respond when we find ourselves being mistreated by others. [We are not talking abuse here, that's another level where some intervention may be needed, we're only talking about the terrible way we as human being tend to treat one another]

"Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat" (12b-13a). It's not arrogance to take this verse and apply it to our lives. Even if our "persecutions" aren't on the level of St. Peter and the Apostles, and even if we're not really being treated that bad, or for our faith-this verse still provides us with guidelines for how we're to act, and what even how we're to think when we're confronted with revilement, persecution, and defamation. In other words, how to deal with something we face almost every day. *First note that this isn't simply a psychological answer, the way the Apostles react has nothing to do with positive thinking and coping skills. This verse takes us to a deeper level. If you'll take note, as we talk about each of these three proper ways to respond, we'll see that we're called to respond with love and virtue that counter the attacks we may come under.

  At every Divine Liturgy, the Priest (or the Deacon when there is one) elevates the chalice, and the celebrant exclaims, "Thine own of thine own, we offer unto thee, in behalf of all, and for all!"  These are remarkably powerful words which sum up the whole liturgy--indeed our whole life as it was designed to be.  In this moment we are offering to God not only the bread (including the hands that made it and the laborers who afforded us the ingredients) and the wine (including the sun, the rain, and the grape-stompers), we also offer the silver chalice and diskos--the finest we can offer--as well as "ourselves, each other, and all our life.  This is the divine reversal of the Fall--we are giving our Lord thanks and praise.

 But when we are away from the liturgy, often we are quick to forget that everything in the world is God's, including what is in my bank account, my wallet, my garage, etc.  For some reason, we often revert to a sinful stinginess that betrays an young-childlike possessiveness about these 'things' which actually aren't "Mine!".

 It was precisely for this reason that God could call the Israelites "God-robbers".  They had forgotten that God is the source of every good and perfect gift (see James 1:17 as we pray in the Liturgy).  Instead, they had kept their possessions selfishly, not re-offering them to God for his blessing.  Have we done the same?  Recall the passage in Malachi 3:

In this morning’s Gospel reading (Matthew 14:22-24), we have one of the most well known (and most often retold) of Christ’s miracles, walking on water. We hear this miracle told with the focus mostly on Christ, on how His command over the elements, His ability to walk on water, demonstrates His divinity. But this morning I’d like us to focus not on what Christ does, but on what St. Peter fails to do.

In our Epistle reading this morning (1 Corinthians 1:10-18), St. Paul touches on a very significant aspect of the life of the Christian Church—Her unity, Her One-ness. St. Paul is addressing a specific issue in the Church in Corinth, an issue that seems kind of silly to us perhaps.

The Epistle reading assigned for this morning’s Feast is an incredibly important reading, especially for those of us who are trying to sort out what is means to be an Orthodox Christian, our purpose, our goal.

Many of the Holy Week services are available for streamling and download by visiting our Holy Week archive.