The Call to Spiritual Soldiering

In this inspiring sermon, Fr. Geoff reflects on passages from the Gospel of Matthew and the Second Epistle to Timothy, exploring themes of faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, and our spiritual calling as soldiers of Christ. With wisdom and clarity, Fr. Geoff challenges us to open our eyes to God's mercy and strengthen our hearts for the journey of discipleship.

Transcript

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.

Today the church in its wisdom gives us two very rich passages to ponder. From the gospel according to Matthew chapter nine, revealing the healing touch and compassion of Christ, and from the second epistle to Timothy where St. Paul exhorts us to be strong in the grace of the Lord and endure as faithful servants. In these readings, we find the life change, the life calling to open our eyes to the mercy of God and to strengthen our hearts to walk the path of discipleship.

I've got three points today: the Son at work, the Spirit at work, and the soldier at work.

So, first of all, the Son at work. In the gospel today, two blind men call out to Christ, "Son of David, have mercy on us." They couldn't see physically with their eyes, but by faith, they recognized who it was that stood there in front of them. Their physical blindness is a sign for us of the deeper blindness which can afflict our souls when we don't notice Christ in our midst, when we don't trust his mercy or turn to him in our need.

Some people come to a service and they go away saying, "Oh, I didn't sort of, you know, didn't get anything out of that." I don't know if you noticed just before we say the creed every week, Father Nicholas says to me, "Christ is in our midst." I don't know if you picked that up. And it's just a reminder to us all that Christ is in our midst. He's here. And if we don't notice him, guess what the problem is? It's not that he's not here. It's that we have this spiritual blindness.

These two men are not discouraged by their limitations of sight. They persevere in seeking the Lord, following him even into the house. When he went into the house and there Jesus asked them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" Their reply is simple but full of faith. "Yes, Lord," they said. And immediately their eyes were opened. We too are called to approach our Lord Jesus with a persistent faith of those blind men. In our own darkness, whether it's doubt, pain, sin, or sorrow, we must never cease to cry out, "Lord, have mercy on us." Son of David, our Lord never turns away those who call on him with humble and repentant hearts. He heals, he restores, he opens the eyes of those who trust in him.

But the gospel continues. Christ warns the men not to make his identity known. Yet we're told they went away and spread his fame through all that district. Such is the joy of experiencing Christ's mercy. When we are truly touched by the Lord, we can't keep it secret. The love of God overflows from our lives into the lives of others, drawing them too to seek our loving savior.

Then the gospel goes on and Jesus heals a man who is mute, couldn't speak, and possessed by a demon, freeing him from bondage. And the interesting thing in this little story is the response of the Pharisees. Blinded by pride, they accuse Jesus of working by the prince of demons. Here we see the tragic alternative to faith, the refusal to see God's work, the hardness of heart that rejects the mercy offered by Christ.

But that didn't stop Christ being merciful. We're told that he went about all the cities and villages teaching, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity. Today we're remembering St. Peliman and that's why we have this particular reading chosen for today. He was a healer. So Jesus healed during his time. The apostles continued healing in his time. When St. Peliman's time came, he was healing in his time. And God is still hearing today. We were with the bishop yesterday, over the last two days actually, and he said to us clergy, "One of the reasons that we're not having so many healings in this culture of ours is that we're not really praying to the saints and to Jesus because in his home, you know, in his home country of Syria, there's miracles and things happening all the time. They need those miracles. They're pleading with God for them and they get them."

Christ's compassion is unlimited. His love reaches all and it's the same today as it was when he walked on this earth. This is our mission as well, to bring the good news to all and to be instruments of Christ's mercy in the world. So that's the Son at work. He's at work. He was work. He is at work and he's working through us.

Now the Spirit at work. St. Paul in his letter to Timothy urges, "Then you, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." When I was a Protestant, I understood grace. I took the four letters G R A C E, is that four or five? Those letters, God's riches at Christ's expense, you know, that was kind of what we were taught. But the understanding of grace in Orthodox Christianity is deeply, deeply interwoven with the Holy Spirit. Grace is understood as the uncreated energies of God which are not a created substance but rather the very actions and presence of God himself.

This grace is seen as the means through which God interacts with us, with humanity, offering salvation and spiritual transformation. So when we come into this church, at the beginning of the service, Father Nicholas today prayed, "Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and heaven comes down and we are—the energies of God are in this place. So, when we leave, we are filled with the energies of God. We're changed by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

The Holy Spirit's activity is both general and special. The general activity of the Holy Spirit applies to all of creation involving a variety of activities which is not my focus today. The special ministry of the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, involves the internal operation of grace through baptism initially, continuing in the mystical life of the church, mainly through holy communion. The grace of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from spirituality. The Holy Spirit cannot be demanded by everybody. It's not an automatic thing that comes to everybody. He comes to those who have prepared their hearts. This preparation involves a life of prayer, fasting, and other ascetical disciplines, which are means of spiritual discipline to help reduce sin and foster a closer relationship with God. We use our mnemonic C.A.F.E.S.—confession, almsgiving, fasting, Eucharist, scriptures, and saints all undergirded with prayer. So the goal of the Christian life according to Orthodox teachings is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.

This is achieved through a synergy, a cooperation between our efforts and the help of the grace of God, the Holy Spirit. So the grace of the Holy Spirit is seen as the source of spiritual life and the means of deification, of becoming more like God.

So I hope you can see that when we are called to follow Christ, we're not asked to rely solely on our own strength to live the Christian life. Our own strength is so weak as we face the very real challenges and difficulties of life. Instead, we are to be strengthened by the grace of Christ as St. Paul urged Timothy to be the Holy Spirit which is poured out abundantly in his church through prayer, through the sacraments, and the support of the faithful community.

So, St. Paul said, "You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." He wants Timothy to be strong, and he wants us to be strong. And we can all do this because of the work of the Holy Spirit. So that's the Son at work, the Spirit at work. Now the soldier at work. In today's epistle, Paul uses certain images to illustrate the path of discipleship. In today's epistle, he uses the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer. The soldier endures hardship and does not entangle himself with worldly affairs. The athlete is disciplined and competes according to the rules. The farmer works hard, patiently waiting for the fruit of his hard work. In each of these three, there's a call to perseverance, faithfulness, and trust in God's provision.

This call to perseverance, again, we need the Holy Spirit for this. If it wasn't for the Holy Spirit, I wouldn't have persevered this long in my life. I can show you as a priest. So, you know, it's God's gift. Um we just on Friday night, we had an acathist for St. Raphael of Brooklyn. His one of his relics has been brought to Australia and now resides in Australia. They brought it to St. George's Cathedral on Friday night and we prayed this acathist, and one of the things I was thinking about the sermon and one of the things that jumped out at me is one of the keys to St. Raphael's life in the acathist. It said, "Rejoice, for your perseverance was a gift of the Holy Spirit."

That's it. There it is. Today though, I want to focus on the soldier. Soldiering is not an easy life. Deliberately, it's not an easy life for good reason. The soldier, if he's not successful in the demanding business of war, he's always training and preparing for it. St. Paul doesn't picture the Christian as someone who turns up weekly to church for a good feed with his napkin. Someone who receives holy communion, hears a good sermon, God willing, and goes home filled and rejoicing to enjoy his life. That's not what a soldier does. The soldier has work to do and it's hard demanding work. Even when not in war, he's constantly training. C.A.F.E.S., I've just said cafes.

Um, I'm thinking about adding another s to C.A.F.E.S. I not too long ago added one more which was the saints. But now we've got scripture, saints but also I think we need to add one more s for service.

So it becomes confession, almsgiving, fasting, Eucharist, scriptures, saints, service all undergirded with prayer. And a quick aside here, we're trying hard to get enough volunteers to help us to set up before the service starts and to pack up after the service ends and also to help with the morning tea. And we need people to help. We need soldiers, not people coming for a feed. We need soldiers. And St. Paul says we got to be soldiers. This is the image he uses about the Christian life.

Um, I love military history. Because I've spent 20 years of my life in the military, I've continued this interest in military history. And somebody a while ago gave me a book called September Hope, and I've only just got around to reading it. It's about um you probably all heard about Market Garden. There was a film where the allies sort of went through Holland trying to break through at the end of the war, and this book was about the American's involvement. The market garden film was all about the British paratroopers who were dropped in and actually got defeated because it was a very serious battle. But the Americans, they were dropped a little bit further back, and they had to capture a few bridges on the way to the British. My goodness, I tell you what, these American paratroopers, wow. I mean, they had a lot of time training, and they were bored by it to be honest. They couldn't wait to get into the battle. And it's a bit boring putting up the iconos every week and taking it down again and getting the morning tea and putting it all away again. It's a bit boring, but there's a reason for it. And these paratroopers, once they got into the battle, they realized why they'd been doing all the training because they were fighting for their lives. Thousands of them got killed. The Germans didn't sort of go, you know, here's the Americans. Let's go home now. No, they fought. They fought very hard. It was a fight to the death in many cases. Then having captured some of the ground as far as they could, then they had to hold the ground through a winter, freezing cold, wet trenches, terrible problems. This is soldiering. This is the image that St. Paul presents to us today. It's not a picnic. He said, "Take up your cross and follow me." Not, "Take up your cushion and follow me." So it's a challenge. It's not easy.

To protect his country, the soldier must expose his life to great risk. To serve his king, he must be ready to lay down his life. The soldier is not a self-preserving a self-serving man. He's self-sacrificing. He doesn't live for his own pleasure. He's under command. Every hour of the day in the military is required duty, and he must be obedient to the command of another and not his own will. This, says St. Paul, describes the Christian, someone who is under the command of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Soldiers are often suffering people. There are wounds. There are sometimes spells in hospitals. There may be terrible wounds which at the extreme let the soul out with the blood. Soldiers must be ready to suffer and endure hardship. Soldiers often long for honor and seek glory by extraordinary deeds. Many medals were won by those American paratroopers who dropped in to capture the land in Holland there. But the Christian is driven by higher ambitions than earthly warriors. The Christian seeks a crown which can never fade. He loves a king who is worthy to be served. He also has a divine Holy Spirit encouraging him or her to the most self-sacrificing actions.

St. Paul doesn't challenge Timothy to be an ordinary soldier but to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. The reality is, from my experience, not all soldiers are good. There are people who are just soldiers and nothing more in their fight, and in the spiritual realm, in the fight against sin, we need only a little bit of temptation and we become cowardly, idle, useless, and worthless. The good soldier is the bravest of the brave. Courageous at all times, zealously doing his duty with a good heart and earnestness. He trains hard. So he's prepared to be in his master's battles in the thick of the fighting where he's needed at any time.

So there we are. To sum it up: three points. The Son at work, the Spirit at work, the soldier at work. The Son has revealed his mercy to us and we are to reveal it to others by our lifetime. The Spirit enabled the apostles and has been enabling Christians for 2,000 years, and he's going to enable us. The soldier is an image for us to take with us through our lives. Coming to church is soldiering. It's not coming in here to sit around, have a feed, see your friends, and go home again. It's part of soldiering. It's a discipline. It's a training. It's a preparation. I don't know what's coming. The world is in a complete mess at the moment, and it seems to be getting worse. I don't know what's coming, but I feel like something is coming, and we need this training. We need to be close to God. We need to be full of the Holy Spirit to cope with whatever is coming. May God help us with that.

So, let us then with the faith of the blind men and the perseverance and endurance of good soldiers like St. Raphael continually pray, "Lord, have mercy," trusting that Christ will open our eyes, heal our infirmities, and make us instruments of his love in this world. This world needs love. May we be strengthened by his grace and in all things give glory to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.