"True Worshipers"

In this familiar Scripture, Jesus reveals two very different religions: The first we might call busyness. The second let us all contemplation of God ..... relationship with God. The first is impersonal. The second involves adoration and, by that fact, examination of one's life and motives. The "religion of busyness" had become the rule in Judah since the return of the Babyonian Captives under the strict auspices of the Persian Empire. But this was not the legacy of the Patriarchs, who, by the way, never heard of Moses. The religion of Abraham was one of personal transformation. We think of Abram being called out of the great city, Ur of the Chaldees, of going into the wilderness, and undergoing transformation, even to his name being changed. leading to intimacy with God, which is betokened by Communion with the Holy Trinity beneath sacred groves of Mamre.

The former signified a religion of meaningless doing; the latter, a religion of Union with God. This is the basic crossroads presented to us in the Gospels, so brilliantly displayed in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus asks, "Who is justified before God?" Is it the offerers of incessant blood sacrifice (represented by the priest and the Levite in the story) or the one who offers the sacrifice of righteousness (represented by the Samaritan)? This was a live topic during Jesus' lifetime: practitioners of the cult of Judah, whose procession of blood sacrifices in their Temple never ended, versus the Essenes, for example, a large population of non-Judahite Hebrews, who presented a prophetic face against the Temple, meeting there to offering the religion of virtue and examination of conscience. In the words of Philo (who knew the Essenes)

Sounds like St. Paul, doesn't it?

On the occasion of a great feast — the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple — let us together face this crossroads. With the Entry of Theotokos into the Temple, we celebrate the end of a whole life-world: the true Temple of God ascending in the very midst of the false temple. The religion of busyness and of blood sacrifice still bedevils Christianity today. In fact, while the central teaching of Orthodoxy, which is intimacy with God in the form of theosis, the Western Church continues to teach that the blood sacrifice of Jesus is offered in trade for salvation.

Yet, the Twelve Disciples of Jesus never spoke of any blood sacrifice and, certainly, they did not teach the offering of blood sacrifice. By contrast, the Early Church Fathers offered models for entering into intimacy with God but did not mention blood being offered. The leading Orthodox theologian of our time, Met. Hilarion Alfeyev, has said,

We understand how this cult entered into our lifeworld. I don't mean in the nineteenth century or the eleventh century, but in the sixth century B.C. The most powerful force on earth, the Persian Empire, subjugated the Babylonians along with their vassal peoples. They believed that the favor of their god, to whom they offered blood sacrifice, lay behind their world conquest. They saw themselves as their god's agents on earth assuring the well-being of his lifeworld. And everywhere that god would receive due and proper worship.

In Jerusalem the Persians ordered a temple to be built on Mt. Zion which would house the administrative center of their province Judah: collecting taxes, administering laws, convening tribunals, and ensuring exact and precise worship, which would mean feeding their god's insatiable thirst for blood. Everything revolved around blood sacrifice. A stele that has survived attests that the Persian monarch's sacred obligation to ensure right worship of their god was his most important responsibility.

Writes Prof. Yihai Kiel of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,

This, of course, is exactly what we find in the revisions to Scripture carried out by Ezra under the supervision of the Persian governor, Nehemiah.

There would be no angels ascending and descending upon the sons and daughters of man (Jn 1:25). These were expressions of the religion of the Patriarchs. We recall Abraham encountering angels, of Jacob wrestling with an angel till dawn and of a ladder unto Heaven, and of Lot's family being saved by angels for Abraham's sake. But these were to be suppressed. Sadducees prohibited talk of angels, the afterlife, and the immortality of the soul. To open the door to personal relationship with God cannot be tolerated. Who would come to the Zion temple and pay temple taxes? The Temple authorities alone must be dispensers of Divine interaction.

Following invasion and conquest, the task before any imperial power was to maintain civil order: centralized government, centralized taxation, and centralized control of religion. And these were overseen by Nehemiah and his brilliant scribe Ezra, whose achievement can be seen in the Persian religion being cleverly grafted on to the existing Hebrew Bible. Remember, Judeans of the first century did not have "Bible study" or marked-up Bible in their homes. They could neither read nor write (literary rate of 3%). They did not watch "60 Minutes" on television or even know what an exposé was. Access to holy texts was mediated by religious officials. And Ezra's appropriation of those texts can be seen plainly — for example, the last passage of 2 Chronicles is the first passage in the Book of Ezra.

But in the historical Northern Kingdom, the Hebrew people were reluctant to accept such teachings (yet they were compelled to travel to Jerusalem to the monetary enrichment of the authorities). One notable Northerner, a Teacher from Nazareth, called the whole enterprise into question, wryly mocking blood sacrifice as a means to relationship with the Father (as I have said, in His Parable of the Good Samaritan). And, on one occasion, Jesus riotously protests within the Temple itself — overturning cages where sacrificial animals were being sold, even beating men who sold them with a whip that He made for this purpose. He cried out, you shall not make my Father's house a "place of trade." We should read this phrase very carefully and not bring our modern English idioms into the mix. It was an ο̄ικον έμφοριον / oikon émphorion. What was being traded? It was a vain attempt to trade blood for salvation. And this Jesus could not tolerate.

When thousands of Jews were converted to "The Way," they wanted to know where the sacrifice was being offered. Certainly, we can't rely on ourselves for salvation. Someone needs to make a sacrifice. And, St. Paul, who was "all things to all men, that I might by all means make disciples, certainly said nothing which might lose these prospects. As Paul registered the Cross (which would not mainstream as a symbol the faith till the sixth century) alienated people. And the earliest name for our religion was "The Way" — the Way to Heaven, the Way of theosis.

At the sixth-century B.C. arrival of these Persian agents — speaking Babylonian (Aramaic), dressed as Babylonians; and familiars of the Persian authorities — whole migrations of Hebrew peoples began — to the south in Elephantine of Egypt where they built a Temple honoring YHWH (a Name which was not permitted to be said in Jerusalem) and to the north, in Samaria, where a Temple was built on Mt. Gerizim.

In the era just preceding Jesus' birth, the the rulers of Judah, the Maccabees, had taken this Persian hybrid religion, which they called Judah-ism, to a new level insisting that all Hebrews be conformed to it.

But let us turn away from the society at-large and focus on the disciples of Jesus in a personal way. After all, they were not from Judah. They were from the historical Northern Kingdom, away from hated Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the last place they wanted to go!

Now tell me, what would your prayer-life be without our Father in Heaven? When I pray to God, I unfailingly say, "Gracious Lord, Almighty God and Father ....." If I could not, my entire faithlife would collapse. It would not be enough to say abstract prayers to a distant God.

We see a world around us alive with the Presence of the Holy Spirit. And what would your conception of life be without a Kingdom of Heaven? I couldn't bear having the Bosom of Abraham taken away from us? And at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, all these things He proclaimed.

And who is the son of Man but ourselves? That is, Jesus announced a restoration of the old ways. This what the Advent of God would be all about — restoring right relationship with God which had been taken away during the Babylonian Captivity. And more than anything else this is what our feast is all about — the Entrance of the Holy Theotokos into the Temple.

If we were asked to single out one thing that prompted God to be born into the world, what would it be? The Roman Empire represented no threat to God's people. Said Jesus, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Done! it would be that hateful house of blood that sought to subjugate the hearts and souls and minds of God's people should be expunged. "I will destroy this place!" Jesus said. The whole concept was mocked by God in the Psalms:

It was mocked by the Father, and it would be mocked by the Son.

As Jesus confided to St. Photini, the woman at the well,

And He said this virtually in the shadow of the ruin of Mt. Gerizim Temple.

Let us pause to note that this is same the teaching which Jesus communicates to Martha of Bethany. "Emulate your sister Mary," He says, who is already worshiping in spirit and truth. She is already as a "true worshiper." She has aleady has arrived to intimacy with God, which is the goal of theosis.

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Can we imagine the long, bitter, lifeless winter. The sky is gray. The earth is hard, yet, a little, fragile and delicate flower is seen forcing itself up between the enormous stones of the Temple. A breath of fragrant, warm air is detected. These are the first intimations of spring. The ice begins to crack. The sound of dripping water is heard .... everywhere. And the centuries-old oppression begins to fall.

For a tender Virgin, little more than a toddler, has entered the Temple. Her tender and pure feet tread the Temple's heavy steps. Her little frame proceeds past its massive columns. Her perfect and innocent soul ascends toward the slaughterhouse. For she — this powerless, diminutive girl — will be the conqueror of this colossal fortress. She will be the place, by the grace of God, in Whom the vastness of the cosmos and beyond will dwell.

She will be the new and definitive Holy of the Holies. For in the First Temple, the High Priest realized once a year theosis, perfect spiritual Union with God.

This Virgin's body in every fiber of her being will participate with the heartbeat of God — literally, "one bone, one flesh," her every cell, will be intermixed with God's. She is the perfection of Union with God, which we in our Eucharist will faintly echo. We participate in His Body and His Blood just as the Most Holy Theotokos did ..... as I say, a faint echo.

The Temple's immensity, designed to impress a fearful people, now had admitted One Whose lightness of being is angelic. And in so doing they were doomed. This would be a foreshadowing of Jesus' death as the hook the devil swallowed, dooming hell by inviting Him in. The Temple stinking of animal blood that cannot be washed from its porous stones with its lightless corridors, yet Her life from its conception and birth is one of Divine and immaculate cooperation, shedding a kindly radiance upon all. She will be filled with the Uncreated Light. She is the Creation of Man which cannot fail. She is the second Eve, Who in Her purity and in Her perfect faithfulness will not stumble. And She will guarantee that the second creation of humankind will not fail.

She is immune from the Temple's deathly vapors. And the trajectory of Her life will be taken in every direction: Nazareth, Bethlehem, Egypt, Jerusalem, Ephesus .... God's Everywhere, which is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Her presence begins the collapse and fall of Temple worship. For "God has chosen the .... the weak .... to confound .... the mighty" (1 Cor 1:27). And in her simple unknowing, the Theotokos has comprehended, mysteriously, the incommensurable Greatness of God. She encompasses it.

As we continue our fast, emptying ourselves before Her perfect humility, before Her loving gaze, Divine revelation floods into our souls and understanding.

Let us, who follow the path of fasting, be united to the Most Holy Theotokos as She, a mere toddler, ascends beyond the holy of holies, beyond the house of darkness and death. And let us become enlightened as we follow in Her royal train. For we too were born to receive the Most High. The Most High overshadows us. We too were created to become the dwelling-place of God. And we stand at a crossroads facing as she did: the religion of death, on the one hand, and the only Way toward Life, on the other. Yet, beneath Her Mantle we will never become lost or confused. Through Her, the Way we know, for it is Her way:

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