The Power of Faith and Commitment

Fr. Geoff reflects on the courage and faith of the Patriarch in Syria, the confession of St. Peter, and the commitment of St. Paul. He shares the remarkable life of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, urging us to consider what we are ready to live or die for. Fr. Geoff's message challenges us to find God within ourselves and live a life dedicated to His glory.

Transcript

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Just a few thoughts before we go into the sermon about what happened last week in Damascus in Syria. Since then, they've had the funeral already, and the patriarch spoke at the funeral. He was quite bold; he spoke the truth and challenged the government in Syria to really find out who did this. Because if nobody's held accountable, then it's going to happen again and again. At that point in his talk, they were being broadcast on national radio in Syria, and the whole thing was cut off. There were people watching, and they didn't want to hear what he was saying after that. He was quite bold in what he said, but it needed to be said. He spoke on behalf of not just the Antiochian Christians but all Christians, and actually, he spoke on behalf of the whole of Syria. We need to pray for the patriarch because he's coming for a lot of accusations of treason and things since that funeral, would you believe? So we need to pray for the patriarch and all the churches over there in Syria.

If you haven't looked at the latest email that I sent out later in the week with an amendment on it, I put in two more YouTubes there for you to watch about what happened last week and one from Ancient Faith Radio. I really want you to watch that one because if you want to see how Christians respond to persecution, wow, what an example that church is. The response was just amazing. The church was full afterwards, everybody singing at the top of their heads and dancing in the streets. It was extraordinary. So if you haven't seen how Christians under persecution respond to it, go and watch those videos because we need to pray for them as well.

Also, if you haven't heard how Orthodox Christians sing in the congregation, listen to them singing too in the church. It's amazing. The whole congregation singing is fantastic; it's beautiful. We have a choir, but the choir is not just to carry the whole load. The choir is there to guide us, so if you want to join in, please do. We want you to join in and make a joyful sound to the Lord. It might not be in tune, but as long as it's a joyful sound, that's the main thing.

All right, so today is the feast of the holy apostles Peter and Paul. Should I have the other microphone? I've just realized, yeah, because I'm echoing here. Thank you. All right, hope that's better. All right, so today it's the actual feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. It's interesting because if you know the story of St. Paul, where did he go after he was converted? He was knocked off his horse, blinded, and they took him to Damascus. They took him to a street named Straight, and you know where the patriarch has his cathedral today, 2,000 years later? A street called Straight. That's where the Antiochian Cathedral is today. So there's a big connection with the Antiochian church and St. Paul, but also St. Peter as well, of course.

So I've got two points today; they both begin with P. I wonder if you can guess. One of them is Peter; the other one is Paul. Very good, I think you remember the outline. Okay, the first one is the confession of Peter and then the commitment of St. Paul. So I just want to look at two aspects of their lives.

The confession of St. Peter: we touched on this gospel a few weeks back when I said the whole challenge of the councils was the question of who is Jesus. Who is Jesus? And do you remember Jesus in the gospel today asked them, "Who do other people say that I am?" And they said a number of things. They said John the Baptist, some say, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But then Jesus says, "And who do you say that I am?" And that's a question to all of us: who do you say that Jesus is? It's a question we have to answer. That's our final exam really before the judgment seat of Christ. Who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." And this is what I want to focus on here; this is very important. And Jesus says to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." So this wasn't something that he worked out rationally; this was a revelation.

And the thought that I got here for all of us here as we think about what happened in Damascus last week and we think about what happened in Iran and around Palestine, Lebanon, all these terrible things happening around the world, we sometimes ask, if you're like me, where's God in all this? Where is God? What's he up to? Why is he allowing these... whatever, I don't know how to describe them, to carry on the way they are in the world? It's certainly not good for anybody.

And here's the answer really: if you've come today to worship God and you've come today, we're going to recite the creed in a moment, and we're going to basically say that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. Now, how do we get to this point, I ask you? How do we all get here? Did you sort of think about it and think, "Yeah, it must be the case that Jesus is God." That's not what you learn at school; that's not what you learn in society; that's not what you learn on TV. Where did that come from? Why have you been drawn to say this today? Why have you come to this church today? It's because God is in you. So where is God? He is in you. He's working in you. You wouldn't be here if God wasn't working in you. And I just wanted to leave you with that thought today when you think about what's going on in the world because there's some terrible things happening in the world. Where's God? He's in us. That's why we're here to worship him and to repeat Peter's confession of faith.

There's lots more I could say about Peter, but that's all I'm going to say. I'm going to go on to Paul, the commitment of Paul. Now, Paul's commitment: when you read the epistle and realize what he'd gone through, unbelievable hard work, been in prison, flogged more severely, exposed to death, 40 lashes minus one, beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, shipwrecked, constantly on the move, in dangers from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the country, in danger in the city, in danger at sea, in danger from false believers. I've gone without sleep, I've had hunger and thirst, I've been cold and naked, I've often gone without food.

How many of you this morning thought, "Oh, it's a bit cold this morning, maybe I won't go to church." And then you listen to what St. Paul went through for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of this confession that Peter had. And how did he do it? How did he do it?

I want to tell you another story, and it'll lead me back into St. Paul. How many of you heard of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom? Few nods, yes, okay, good. Yeah, he's one of my heroes, actually. He lived from 1914 to 2003. He was a monk and a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was born Andre Borisovich Bloom. His father was a diplomat in the Tsar's diplomatic service, and in the Russian revolution, they found themselves in, of all places, Iran. But once the revolution took place, there was no more need for the Tsar's diplomats, so they were out of a job just like that, just like that.

It wasn't until 1926 that the family was able to get to Paris, and he started his life there and did his education in Paris. That was pretty tough for the family and for him. Then in his teenage years, I mean, they were Russians; they're Orthodox, but he hadn't really come to faith at this stage. Then as a teenager, he writes this: "I met Christ as a person at a moment when I needed him in order to live." St. Paul could have written this. "And at a moment when I was not in search of him." He wasn't even looking for Christ. "I was found. I did not find him." That's true for me; it's probably true for many of us here. Somehow or other, God got our attention and brought us into faith and into the church. I'll continue with what he's saying: "I was a teenager then; life had been very difficult in the early years and now it had suddenly become easier. All the years when life had been hard, I had found it natural, if not easy, to fight, but when life became easy and happy, I was faced quite unexpectedly with a problem. I could not accept aimless happiness. Happiness seemed to be a state if it had no further meaning." This was in the 1920s. It's the same problem today, isn't it, for the young people in Australia, especially where life is very easy? There's no meaning. And you struggle with that.

As it happens when you are young, when you act with passion bent on to possess either everything or nothing, I decided I would give myself a year to see whether life had a meaning. And if I discovered it had none, I would not live beyond the year. So he decided he was going to end his life if he couldn't find meaning. Last year in Australia, there were nearly two and a half thousand males committed suicide. Three times as many as the females. Females are committing suicide too, but not as many, because it's lack of meaning.

But thanks be to God, Andre Borisovich Bloom chose to follow Christ, and the world is richer for it, thanks be to God. After school, he studied at the University of Paris. He graduated in physics, chemistry, and biology, and then he took his doctorate in medicine. Then the Second World War started, and what did he do? He worked with the French resistance. He was a surgeon; he went off with the army, the French army before they lost, as a surgeon, and then he served with the French resistance. After, just before he went off to serve as a surgeon with the army, he became a monk, a secret monk. He was made a monk, and then in 1943, later on, he was taunted and received the name Anthony.

During the occupation, as I said, he worked as a doctor but also with the French resistance. After the war, he continued practicing as a physician until 1948, when he was ordained a priest and he was sent to Britain. So he's gone from Russian culture to French culture, now to British culture. He went there as a chaplain to start with, and then he was put in charge of a church, and then he became a bishop and then a metropolitan for the whole of Western Europe.

It's interesting, the story of his church. The church, the church they were given, the Russian church was given to them in 1716 by the British government. It was the Russian embassy church. It was a condition of them having that church that no Englishmen were allowed in there. They just were not to evangelize for the Orthodox faith; that was England back then. Anyway, they had this place.

And this caught my attention because we're struggling with buildings and things and what we're going to do. They ended up moving seven times, seven different buildings over 250 years. They're now in a very nice church in Enism Gardens in Kensington in London. But it took them 240 years. Now I'm not going to be here that long, so I'll have to leave you guys to carry on with that, but we haven't even got our first building yet. But they started in something like this, a sort of chapel which was loaned to them by the Anglican Church, and then they went on from there. So we're following in the footsteps of a very great man here, or a very great church, I should say, in England.

So why was this parish... oh yeah, that's right. There was a report in the Times newspaper in London, whole page, whole page of the Times, about this church and his more gardens in London. And the headline was: Police called to church. Why were the police called to the church? Usually, it's because there's somebody in there causing problems or whatever, like on Sunday last week. But actually, the problem was there were too many people trying to get into the church, in the middle of London, would you believe it? And so it made headlines in the British media. And what was he doing that drew people in? He was doing Orthodox liturgies in English, 100% English. The Greeks were doing it in Greek; the Romanians were doing it in Romanian, etc. But Metropolitan Anthony Bloom did everything in English. And that's how he got that response.

Now, when you look through Anthony Bloom's life, now I have to say one thing, that since then, they've gone back to Sonic, since he died, would you believe? And we know what's going to happen to this church in the future, I don't know. After I've gone, it's not going to go into Arabic, over my dead body. I mean, it might be over my dead body. But I'm going to entrust you guys with the responsibility. We priests are under obedience to the bishops, and he might put pressure on us, but he won't when I'm alive, I'm sure. He's promising me he won't, but in the future, we don't know. You guys are going to have to hold the line on this one to keep the English going in the Orthodox church.

Now, looking at Anthony Bloom's life, born in Russia, completely uprooted because of a revolution, complete change of culture to French, teenage crisis, became a monk, worked with the French resistance during the war, that was a foreign squad if you got caught, another complete change of culture when he went to England, priest, bishop, archbishop, metropolitan. He learned to serve liturgies in English, authored many helpful books. He's one of my heroes. What a life. What's the key to his life?

What's the key to his life? Young ones, listen to this very carefully. I want you to take this away with you today if there's nothing else you take away. When he was very young, his father said to him, "It should be of no importance whether you live or whether you die." That doesn't kind of fit in with our culture, I don't think. But it should be of no importance whether you live or whether you die.

What matters is what you are ready to live or die for. Got that? What matters is what you are ready to live or die for. That was what he got from his father when he was a young man, and he took it through the whole of his life. And that, I think, shows us why he did what he did with his life.

And that takes us back to St. Paul, because we find in St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, chapter 14:8: "If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." So St. Paul is emphasizing the idea that followers of Christ live and die for the purpose of serving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that our lives should be dedicated to His glory. That is worth living for, and that is worth dying for.

So God is calling us to choose how we're going to live, what we're going to live for, what we're going to die for. All right, so there we are, two great men, three I've told you about today: Peter, Paul, and Metropolitan Bloom. Actually, now Peter and Paul, just to finish off, they were very different people. They even had a fight at one stage between them and disagreement, but they made up later, and that's why this icon here and that icon over there, the second one along, has Peter and Paul actually kissing, making up. They made up in the end, but even though they were different people, different characters, different gifts, they had one purpose, and that was to give glory to God, and they worked together. They did so much for the church. This is why they're greatly honored in the church on this feast day today. May God help us to remember them. May God help us to follow their examples throughout our lives, whether long or short.

Amen. Now to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit be ascribed to all majesty, dominion, and praise now and forever to the age of ages. Amen.