2 Corinthians 11:19-12:9
Psalm 82:1-8
Luke 8:4-15

"Caught Up in the Third Heaven"

This morning we complete our first week of journey, now passing the milestone of Sexagesima Sunday on the Holy Calendar, the Calendar used by the Lord Jesus and the Apostles (indeed, used by all English-speaking people until 1751). Our journey is in purple, for it is a royal progress. And our destination is more royal still: Heaven.

We travel together in the safety of the ancient Church, yet the landscapes we tread are within each of us. For among us are those who have been visited by citizens in the Greater Life. Among us are those who have seen angels. By virtue of this, our pilgrimage is guided by revelations and visions. I do not say that we wander in an airy, unsubstantitial mist, therefore. No! Far from it! Anyone who has experienced the Divine will tell you that it is very real. Indeed, who would dispute that it is the only reality — lasting, true, good, and right?

Yet, we must be careful, for it turns out that our seriousness, our focus, and our character are very much at issue as we enter holy company. We will always see our shortcomings as we draw near to the holy ones. And this brings us into the atmosphere of St. Paul's Second Letter to the Church at Corinth, which is our Epistle lesson this morning:

Paul is conscious that other evangelists have been in the neighborhood. The issue now before us is who is most qualified to lead God's people toward Heaven. Having the right guide is a matter of eternal life or eternal death! The Church at Corinth has the Apostle Paul standing before them. We can imagine that some have asked, "Did he know Jesus? Was he called to be a Disciple, one of the Twelve? What exactly is St. Paul's qualification to lead us to Jesus and to His Kingdom of Heaven?" This, of course, is the primary question that should be asked of every pastor, of every vowed religious who guides others, and of every spiritual writer.

In our time and place, the meaning of this question, "Who is qualified?" varies greatly depending on which Christianity you find yourself in. Even Christians who are grounded in the ancient Church, who follow the path of the tried and true saints, must live in a pop culture of Christianity. It is everywhere, and it has become everyone's basis for theology. Turn on the radio or television. Surf the web. Its words and phrases and categories are everywhere. Pretty soon, this culture and its imperatives begin to permeate your mind and soul. Yet, the architects of this "seminary" do not venture back more than five hundred years in their spiritual reading — back to Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and the other Protestant reformers. Most often, they read contemporary writers. The truth is, most people do not read at all. Instead, they are devoted to the pastor of their local church as their only theologian and guru. Each is challenged concerning one's "personal relationship with Jesus." Many will claim that they speak with Jesus regularly.

It goes without saying that every praying Christian through his or her prayer life enjoys a certain relationship with God. But a very great, extra step is taken when someone claims to consult with God regularly in heard sentences. I recall a man who kept contradicting his pastor at a local Evangelical Christian Church: "No!" he would say. "That's not what Jesus told me this morning. You're headed down the wrong direction, and I know that Jesus is not going to be happy about this!" Soon the pastor instructed this young man to leave his congregation and to set up his own congregation since Jesus was issuing daily instructions to him. And this he did. He started a house church. But no one came.

What is going on here? When the context is a PTA meeting, differences in opinion play out on a modest level. But when the setting is religion, the effect is more dramatic. Technically speaking, what we have here are two mystics in conflict. A war between two wizards. Each claims the mantle, worn by Moses and the prophets, of being God's representative on earth. Each claims to speak with God, and then to inform the people of God's will. The content of these sacred words is known as revelation. The question before us, then, is who to trust. Which is the authentic prophet?

This scenario is not unusual among Evangelical, Charismatic, or Pentecostal Christians. Their tradition was born on the American frontier. The ancient tradition of spiritual pilgrimage was not open to the people they ministered to at that time. There would be no monastery or church to receive them the morning after revival meeting and then guide them over a course of years to Heaven. There was only tonight, under the tent. Tomorrow, even the tent would vanish, and the preacher would be off to the next town or county. If it was going to happen, it had to happen tonight. And this is where the "Altar Call" was invented and "the sawdust trail" when people would make their path to the itinerant preacher, who perhaps would lay his hand upon their heads. In an instant, they believed, they were crossing a line from being damned to being saved, now having a personal relationship with Jesus.

Everything was instant. It had to be. The journey was really no journey, but rather a flash of light. No one there knew anything about spiritual tradition or the saints. Indeed, most people could not read. And if they could read, there were no editions of the saints, not their writings or their Lives. No Philokalia. Only Bibles. And this suited Luther's theology very well, for he was trying to reach the common man in Europe and assured everyone that all one needed was a Bible.

Needless to say, there were as many different theologies as there were itinerant preachers in the American West. Many of these men were self-taught, claimed to be prophets receiving revelation from God, and soon confused the people who realized that each new preacher contradicted the one who visited last month. Indeed, with each new Christian being told that all one needed was a Bible, anyone who owned a Bible became a theologian.

I once found myself sitting next to a man on a plane who turned out to be Baptist pastor, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. I asked him about that word convention, and he told me it was about belief. He was extremely exercised about all the Evangelical congregations that were springing up and especially "super churches." "Who is regulating the theology?" he asked. "In the Evangelical tradition, each pastor is his or her own 'school of theology.' No one challenges them. Each denomination is one church-building wide with the top man inside being his own pope. The purpose of the Southern Baptist Convention," he went on, "is belief. No one can go off half-cocked and hurt individual lives, putting salvation at hazard." I then learned that fifteen million people were members of the Southern Baptist Convention — many individual lives indeed.

As we parted, I thought of the passage placed before us today, 2 Corinthians, Chapter 11. The question of authority matters greatly. And it will not do to grant credibility to everyone who claims to "know" Jesus. Indeed, this whole fuzzy, gauzy world of "knowing Jesus" is far worse than troubling; it is dangerous. Falsely claiming friendships that are not yet ours to have or "slapping Jesus on the back" as a key to salvation is apt to lead us to that place where we hear, "'Lord, Lord!' You call me, 'Lord'! Depart from me, you evildoers, for I never knew you!" (Mt 7:23).

This past Tuesday, we celebrated the Feast of Ss. Aquila and Priscilla (in the Holy Calendar). The Epistle reading was Acts 18, depicting workers in the vineyard, a warm and friendly scene we have known since childhood Sunday school or CCD. We are apt to enter this world with a sense of familiarity: "Look! There's old Aquila! And Priscilla is right next to him!" We think we know the characters very well. But this casual attitude could lead us into a kind of ... what does Jung call it? Unheimlich? The world of the surreal. Things that are near and familiar can suddenly become unbridgeable distance. "Bearings" we thought we possessed unravel into strangeness and disorientation. A fearful desolation can suddenly take hold when we hear, "Depart from Me! I never knew you!" Our only defense is mindfulness, humility, and silence, that hallmark of the saints.

By contrast, how confident are the self-proclaimed Christians all around us — on television, on the radio, riding beside us on the bus! Their world is a neat and settled place. In their "Gospel world," John the Baptist bows out immediately, humbling himself before the Lord, Who now becomes the center of everyone's attention. Everyone knows that Jesus is Lord! Right order is observed as His baptizer prepares to exit the great drama. The Holy Trinity appears with Son standing in the middle of stage, with the Father's voice being heard, with the Holy Spirit descending as a dove. Christians may now feel free to step forward to have a personal relationship with Jesus — to sidle up next to Him and to declare their close friendship with Him. Many will mention later that they speak with Him daily. He "has their backs." He is their "Bro," their "Bud." They know what Jesus would say or do in any situation. Their only challenge in "Doing What Jesus Would Do" is the cost in self-sacrifice, but never in in terms of knowing WJWD. What Jesus Would Do? That is obvious to them!

But such clarity is not what we find in Chapter 18 of the Acts of the Apostles. We may well return to this book feeling that we know Aquila, Priscilla, and Apollos as "old friends." But, of course, we do not know them at all .... any more than any of them can claim to know Jesus, Whom they never met. For some time now, Aquila and his wife Priscilla have been assisting St. Paul, who also never met Jesus of Nazareth, the life-and-blood man. No doubt, Aquila and Priscilla heard one of the Paul's letters read in their congregation back in Rome, and now they are serving his apostolate in Corinth. Christianity is growing in so many places! It is natural for us to feel a kind of fellowship in the faith with these our forebears. Newly arrived is Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria. He, too, has come to help. What a cozy picture of the settled faith we have with so many giving their lives to Jesus ... as we wish to.

But none of this is true. If we were to ascribe any religion to Apollos, it would be "John-Baptistism," which seems to have been a widely practiced, early form of Christianity. There is so much to understand about Christianity in the case of Apollos, that he must be tutored. What year is this anyway? Well, Claudius is on the imperial throne. That is two emperors after Tiberius, who ruled during the time of Jesus' crucifixion and death. As the Jews have been expelled from Italy, the year may be as late as 50 A.D.

You mean the cult of John the Baptist continues in full career roughly two decades after the Resurrection?! That should not surprise us. Just read the "Prologue" to St. John's Gospel. Fully half of the words expended there are devoted to dislodging the preeminence of John the Baptist. Half! Then, when was the "Prologue" written? That date has been a source of argument since the second century. Many believe that St. John's Gospel was completed around the year 100. And it is still necessary dislodge the claims of this competing religion at the beginning of the second century?! St. Peter called it a tsunami, which swept over the Levant— the beliefs and ministry of St. John the Baptist!

If that is true, then what does our faith look like in the year 100? What does a good, solid Christian believe at this moment? That is an imponderable. But we may say a few tentative things. It is far from clear to Christians of that time that Jesus is God. This would be debated for another two hundred years bringing the Church into widespread division and violence. You recall St. Athanasius' motto: Contra mundum! Against the whole world! ... he stood.

And the Holy Spirit? What are the good Christian's beliefs concerning the Holy Spirit? Well, by the late fourth century, when St. Basil the Great was writing his landmark work, On the Holy Spirit, a settled theology of the Holy Spirit, and therefore of the Holy Trinity, had not yet been worked out.

May I pause to say something obvious? The nearer you draw to the brilliant, unbearable light of the Advent of Christ, the closer you are to the thing itself, nearer to the purity of what happened, not yet corrupted by mistellings of many tales. Yet, if Apollos, working along side St. Paul, did not understand Christianity ... the brilliant Apollos possessed of the greatest education in the world at Alexandria ... if he did not understand, then surely we must be chaste in laying claims to "knowing Jesus," much less "What Jesus Would Do" in every situation. The greatest Christology of the twentieth century, written by Roch Kereszty, O.Cist., closely examined predecessor Christologies over the last several centuries. Fr. Kereszty showed convincingly that each scholar who has set out to understand and then describe Jesus succeeded only in describing himself and his own priorities and burning desires. (This is a space that bends back on itself!)

What then is the route to understanding Christianity? With this question we return yet again to 2 Corinthians, Chaper 11. Who is best qualified? Whom do you talk to? Whom can you trust? Following his encounter with a vision of Jesus on the Damascus Road, does Paul set off like a modern newspaper reporter seeking reliable sources? No. It turns out that Paul distrusts the human perception of Jesus. He takes these treasures within and goes to Arabia to meditate ... for three years.

Now, if you saw an angel would you go to a psychologist to explain it? If you were granted a vision of Heaven would you rush to a university physics department to work out the details? Did not Jesus die alone and abandoned and forgotten by humans? Did He not go to His own ... but His own received Him not? Following St. Paul's three-year "wilderness period," he then carries certain questions to St. Peter and to the Lord's brother, St. James. He sees no point in consulting other "witnesses."

What conclusions does Paul come to in the Epistle lesson today?

We seem to have come full circle. The question at the end of the day is, "Whose visions and revelations do you trust?" In our own culture, do you trust the visions of someone who suddenly became Christian last night under the spell of a revivalist preacher? They only have just begun their journey and have a long, long road of pilgrimage ahead with so much yet to learn! Do you trust a radio preacher who is living a life of ease and luxury? Countless saints have attested that this is not the Christian life. If you are Saint Paul, do you turn to the Disciples? Did not Jesus warn us over and over, and again this morning in our Gospel lesson, that "they have eyes but cannot see and ears but cannot hear"? Even the ones to whom the parables were explained did not understand. Did they not abandon Him at the crucial hour?

St. Paul required three years to square what he had experienced on the Damascus Road with all that he knew of himself up until then. And then he sought Peter and James in Jerusalem. There is something special here: St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem; St. Peter, who by tradition would become the first Bishop of Rome. In a sense, here was the the first Ecumenical Council ... including Saint Paul, the Apostle-at-Large, and in a sense the Bishop of Antioch, of Corinth, of Ephesus, of Thessalonika, of Colossae, of everywhere. Three great bishops.

Which is the route we follow as pilgrims? It is a route of visions and revelations, but only those revelations that are in this special protection and governance: the mystery of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church. I do not mean just any Fathers, but the centuries following this special meeting when the Apostles and the first Fathers developed a consensus, free of contradiction, that golden area of undoubted agreement, tried and tested by countless reliable and holy lives, discerned and selected by men like St. Paul. We Orthodox Christians call this the Patristic Consensus. Even today, our own Apostle, our Metropolitan Hilarion, descended from the Apostles, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, protects the faith by shepherding us within this thousand-year consensus, when the Church was One and Undivided. His role is to protect the purity of the faith, which is essentially a body of sacred revelations, and one more thing: all of us, who are living stones built unto a spiritual temple. Our Bishop is the gatekeeper admitting people into the Orthodox Church following a period of spiritual journey and training and then chrismating them to seal them in this authenticity. He ensures that each sacred minister, deacon, and priest be grounded in the authentic and ancient faith and only then ordains them, when he decides that they may be relied upon (and deposes them when they cannot be relied upon). You see, here are the two sacraments of the bishop: chrismation and ordination. He is the gatekeeper. And the overarching question is always one: right belief. Here the word Orthodoxy shines in all its brilliance, for nothing is possible — not faith life, not salvation, not theosis — until we believe aright. Otherwise, we have no idea where we're going. And there is not all the time in the world! As St. Paul has written, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand" (Rom 13:12).

By virtue of our acceptance under the hands of Orthodox bishops, we have been granted the high honor of entering into these holy mysteries. We attempt to follow the saints in light who have succeeded in stepping further and further into these mysteries. The way is uncertain. The dangers are many. Our only surety is our bishops and their bishops and their bishops ... all the way back to the Fathers and the Apostles in that area of consensus. Read contemporary Christian writings? What would be the point of that? Follow the saints! Read the Philokalia! Steep yourself in the consensus of our deepest and surest forebears! And then, upon this sure footing, say your prayers. And without question God will hear them, for you are speaking now in His language. I say "His language"? Yes, for these revelations came from Him.

We are made in His Image. We may claim a royal birthright as we journey toward Him. As Jesus did, we are to grow into that resemblance such that we become One with Him even as He and the Father are One. As we read in our Psalter lesson this morning, we were made to become gods — in perfect unity with the Triune God Who is One. This is our destination. This is our goal. And in this confidence we continue down a road that chills the body but warms the soul.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.