Straight from the Heart: Orthodox Bible Study with Father Lawrence

    There is a swing-style song, written by Jimmy Kennedy and Irving Berlin in 1929, and popularized by “the Four Lads” in 1953 named “Istanbul Not Constantinople”.   It begins:
“Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it’s Turkish delight on a moonlit night.

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you’ve a date in Constantinople
She’ll be waiting in Istanbul!”

It’s a silly song (like Mairzy Dotes, of similar vintage), and was meant to be.  But to those for those who can discern the prophetic voice of God in unlikely sources, it might just have something to say us who Orthodox in the 21st century.
If it’s true that Istanbul wasn’t always Istanbul, but used to be called Constantinople, it is equally true that Constantinople wasn’t always Constantinople.  Prior to the Emperor Constantine choosing the site for his own new capital (i.e. “Constantine City”) it was the smaller town of Byzantium, and its bishop was Metrophanes, who ruled his small flock there until 314, subject to his metropolitan, the bishop of Heraclea.   Under Constantine, the town of Byzantium had a new, unforeseen and glorious future as Constantinople, or New Rome.  But until then Metrophanes and his episcopal predecessors styled themselves “bishop of Byzantium”.  The new situation brought him a new name.  
Orthodoxy has always been remarkably flexible and adaptable.  The theology books call this “the principle of accommodation”, and they show how the Church changed with the changing times, accommodating itself to new situations.  That is why the secular civil boundaries became ecclesiastical boundaries as well—so much so that when the State divided a previously united area of Caesarea into Caesarea Prima and Caesarea Secunda (even though it severely limited the bishop of Caesarea’s previous jurisdiction and clout), the Church went along, and divided his diocese to coincide with the new secular reality.  The Church was not giving in to “Caesaropapism” (that western bogey-man), but following its calling to live in the real world.  
That is important, and not just because refusal to live in the real world often lands you into an asylum, but also because we cannot convert the real world unless we live in it.  For it is in the real world—the world found on the six o’clock news and read about in the newspapers—that people are saved or damned, sanctified or degraded, lost or won to Christ.  It is in that world only that hungry people are fed, that sinners heed the Gospel and return to the living God.  And these people, who know and care only for the world they experience, will listen to us only if we seem to also live in their world.  People who seem to them to live in a fantasy world (such as conspiracy theorists, holocaust-deniers, and people carrying signs proclaiming THE END IS AT HAND) will not get much of a hearing.
I would suggest that part of our calling to live in this real world means coming to terms with the difficult bits of it.  Calling our primatial city “Constantinople” has the advantage of stressing its post-Constantinian continuity, to say nothing of its canonical privileges, and that has value.  But by doing so we betray our apostolic flexibility, by which we turned Byzantium into Constantinople in the first place.  If a new situation transformed small-town Byzantium into glorious Constantinople, should not the newer situation (well, not that new—the city fell in 1453) of transforming Christian Constantinople into Turkish Istanbul be accepted too?  What does our insistence on refusing to acknowledge the city’s current name and status win us?  Its canonical privileges do not stand or fall with a name change, nor our love for the see’s occupant.  
Imagine the credibility we might gain in the world’s eyes if we abandoned our concern for Imperial pomp and long-departed glory and were content to be clad in the only real glory we ever actually had—the glory of the Cross.  All of this humility and true glory could be bound up with acceptance of what God has wrought and allowed in the real world, the arena of redemption—even something as difficult as accepting that Constantinople has fallen.  We might yet commemorate our beloved primate and martyric brother in new and ringing words:  His All-holiness, Patriarch of Istanbul.

                            

There is an old bumper-sticker aphorism that reads, "Each day is a gift; that's why we call it 'the present'.  Though corny (most aphorisms on bumper-stickers are), it is nonetheless true.  When we survey each day once it has gone past, we find it contains a number of things, some beautiful (the smell of flowers, the taste of coffee, the sight of a child's smile), some ugly (stupidity in traffic and other people reacting to that stupidity with road rage), and a multitude of other things which lie somewhere in between.  When we close our eyes at night and look forward to tomorrow, we might dismiss the day past as "just another ordinary day", and miss what a gift it truly was.  If that is the way we fall asleep, it is a nightly tragedy.

For suppose that the day past was the last one we would receive, and after we closed our eyes at night in bed we would die in our sleep, and only open our eyes after death, in the Kingdom.  We would then begin to realize how precious that flower was that we passed by so quickly and smelt so briefly, how delicious that last cup of coffee actually tasted, how radiant was the smile on that child.  As G.K. Chesterton said somewhere, Robinson Crusoe came to appreciate all the little things he managed to salvage from the wreck of his ship, because he might not have salvaged them, and he would miss if they were not there.  In the same way, each day is crammed with divine gifts that we would miss if they were not there.

God gives us now a new year, filled with 365 days.  That is, He give us 365 dawns, 365 sunsets, 365 opportunities to smell the flowers, and taste the coffee and bask in the radiance of another's smile.  A true gift indeed.

December 2009

Living in the Land of the Doomed

    The none-too-cheery words of the title may seem a bit unseasonable for a Christmas reflection, but they come from the Book of Wisdom 18:14-15, which is used as a Christmas reading in some lectionary traditions:  “While gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone, Your all-powerful Word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, into the midst of the land that was doomed”.  The Christmas application of the text (which originally referred to the word of judgment issuing forth against Egypt during the night of the first Passover) spoke of Jesus, the eternal Word of God, coming down from heaven to become incarnate of the Virgin.  And the land into which He came was indeed the land of the doomed, for everything in this world is born to die, and all men cower under the sentence of death.
    It is because of Christmas that we Christians do not cower.  For two thousand years ago, Christ leaped from the royal throne of the Father to share our human nature on earth and to trample down death, removing the sentence of doom and bringing life and eternal joy.  We still live in the land of the doomed, however, and those who do not know Jesus do not know this lasting joy.  Christmas-time is an opportunity for us to share that knowledge and that joy.  The merely secular welcome Christmas as a time of gift-giving and self-indulgence.  The somewhat more reflective may hail it as a time to become misty-eyed about “peace on earth”, and look to our politicians for political solutions.  (I always think of John Lennon crooning “Imagine”, and “Give Peace A Chance”.)  But we know that real peace flows only from hearts reconciled to God—that is, that it flows from the manger and the cross, and the empty tomb.  This is our message for the world—and the reason why, even in the land of the doomed, we can still rejoice in a merry Christmas.

November 2009:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

As I type this, I am in the throes of a move--the Farleys are moving a mere mile down the road, and we pile into the new place with all our boxes in two days.  And (let me confess) I HATE moving.  That is, I hate change, and in this I suspect I am not alone. 

This is unfortunate, for being a fallen creature, sinful and conflicted and doomed to die, I find that I must change if I am to live.  To stay where I am and as I am, lost in the desert, is to perish.  My only hope of survival involves moving on from the desert where I am and finding that eternal oasis of life, which is the Kingdom of God.  I don't have to move, of course.  If I insist, I can stay exactly where I am--lost in the desert, famished, thirsty, alone, doomed.  But God calls me to move and to change and to live.  He calls me out of the desert of death, into the life-giving oasis of His Presence.  To live means to embrace change and to be constantly on the spiritual move. 

Now that I think of it, that was the primordial lesson given to the Israelites when they left Egypt and travelled through the great and howling desert of the Sinai.  God could have set up a temple somewhere in the wilderness, or in the Promised Land.  But He didn't.  His original provision was not an immovable temple, but a very movable Ark, complete with instructions to the Levites as to how to transport it.  It seems as if He wanted to give His People the message that they were to be a pilgrim people, a people on the move, a people who even in the Promised Land "have no continuing city" (Heb. 13:14). 

So it is that I am doing my best to embrace being on the move--not just from one residence to another, but from this mortal vale of tears to the immortal Kingdom of heaven.  The temptation is to settle down, and to think that this present residence will be home forever.  But here we indeed have no continuing city; we were made for a city which has true and unshakable foundations, whose maker and builder is God (Heb. 11:10).  None of us must get comfortable here, for God will soon move us on--even though we may hate moving.  Moving will be alright.  We can move in peace and joy, for God is moving us to our true home. 

                                          all my love,

                                           Fr. Lawrence

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ!

I have added a number of articles to this website, which can be found in the "Read/Listen" section under the subsection "Articles" and "Articles II" (there were too many to fit into a single subsection).  I have also added a few poems to the "Poems" section.  I hope you like them.  The website, after all, is "Straight from the Heart" and so I wanted to share all that is in my heart with you.

Yours in the Lord,

Fr. Lawrence

Fr. Lawrence is now registered with the Orthodox Speakers Bureau.

Back when the OSB was first forming he was approached to join the roster, and agreed, but somehow or other it never came to pass. Then recently he got an e-mail newsletter from the OSB and contacted them to ask if he was indeed on their list. He wasn't, but they were glad to add him.

Fr. Lawrence avoids leaving his parish on Sundays as much as possible, but he is available for a limited number of speaking engagements in any given year. Check out the OSB site for more details.