Protopriest Nicholas Karipoff Sermon (18th August 2013) 8th Sunday after Pentecost In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit Today’s Gospel reading about the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand gives us an image of the Church. The Church is fed not by bread alone but as the Lord said even in the Old Testament and quoted to His adversary, Satan in a desert: “Man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” And in this the Lord, God and the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ - He not only teach us, the Church, but He gives Himself to become food for the faithful and as we hear in the wonderful hymn that sung on Great Saturday: ”Let every mortal flesh be silent” which is sung instead of Cherubic hymn. Having perform this miracle and fed the five thousand, on the next morning at the Capernaum synagogue the Lord explained a meaning of that He did by giving a wonderful talk about Heavenly Bread and about His body and blood (we can read about this in Chapter 6 of the St John’s Gospel). The world, especially a contemporary world is on selfish alienation which affects, the spirit of world, affects us , Christians and whose many people who called themselves Christians may come on with the statements like: “I don’t really need a Church; I and be a Christian without a Church.” Total absurdity. And they say: “I can be a good person and pray to God privately.” Sin and death is a loss of love; and the loss of love is the loss of God. Christ explains to us that all the commandments can be contained in the one word – love. Love of God and love of our neighbour. However, the way to God is only through our neighbour. We cannot get to God by passing our neighbour because, and this is more powerful words we can read concerning this, the same Evangelist John writes in his Epistle: “How can you say that you love God whom you can’t see when you hate your neighbour whom you do see?” And for that purpose the Lord has established the Church. The Church is (in Greek coenobia) common life, it is a community, it is a family. It is a family that teaches us about love of God through bearing of burdens of our neighbour, by loving our neighbour. Let us enter into this life of the Church, let us create a Church life that is not just me coming to pray to God in this building, privately, because that is not very different from the person who says: “I don’t even need to come to Church, I can be a Christian at home.” If we come individually at Church it is almost the same, it is almost as bad. We need to know who a family is, we need to interact with our brother and sisters: we need to know who they are. And how we do that? We do through participating in sacramental life of the Church, we doing it now, but we are doing it through a spiritual connection. We need also a psychological connection that is formed through interacting with other parishioners, other people in Church projects, Church working bees, taking responsibilities in various ways
either in parish council, coming to an AGM (which we will have next Sunday). People think it is drag, it is boring, club of the elderly; and I can’t roping young people to come. It is important to understand our responsibilities to participate the life of the Church, participate in the work of the Sisterhood, been in many ways. We can drag each other. I observed how nice to see people coming to working bees; people become a friends. They realised that we are all brothers and sisters. Let us fulfil the commandment concerning love towards our neighbour and then Good will let us know His love: what it means love Him. As we increase in this growth, as we understand what it means to bear each other burdens, we will fulfil the Lord of Christ, as St Paul says. Then the Lord will enable us to participate in His body and blood, in His renewed nature, in alter nature that we could have art with Him in the Resurrection and eternal life. Amen.
