Homily 630 – 35 APE
Holy Transfiguration, Ames, Iowa
February 23, 2025
Epistle:  (140) – 1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2
Gospel:  (106) – Matthew 25:31-46

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God.

One of the most frequent questions asked is “what do I need to do to be saved?”  The question is very ancient – well before biblical times, even.  It is sprinkled throughout the Gospel narratives.

But we may need to ask, what are we really saying with that question?  Since the Garden of Eden we’ve known the answer – in the garden it was “Don’t eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden.”

In Moses’s day it was the Torah – “Love the Lord Your God with all your being, and love your neighbor.”  In the words of our Lord Himself, “Deny yourself, take up the cross of self-denial, and do what I do.”

But as fallen humanity, when we ask the question again, what we are actually doing isn’t asking, we’re trying to negotiate.  Like Abraham asking for God to spare Sodom, in Genesis 18.  Lord, if there are fifty righteous in the city?  Would you spare it?  God said yes.

What about forty-five?  What about forty?  What about thirty?  Twenty?  Ten?  It’s almost comical, except it is telling us about God, who will not destroy the righteous with the unrighteous.  Which is, by the way, a good thing to tell people who believe natural disasters are acts of God.

But in a similar way, we are negotiating with God by asking “what do I need to do to be saved?”  What do I need to do to inherit eternal life?

In other words, what is the minimum I can do to avoid condemnation and hell?  If I do this or that, is that sufficient to stay out of hell?

That question betrays something very important.  It betrays our motives in following Christ.  It betrays our unwillingness to sacrifice our ego and our will and our pride.  It reveals that we follow Christ not out of love, but out of our need to assure our self-preservation.

This is, in my view, why the saints as they approached holiness in this life were very willing to say, with all sincerity, that if others being received into the Kingdom meant they spent eternity in hell, then that was OK with them.

To be clear – where we are, not being saints quite yet, not being in union with Christ, we have mixed motives about what we do.  Certain of our behaviors are indeed motivated by a desire to avoid judgement and avoid hell.

Over time, however, this motivation becomes less and less a part of us, and we begin to be consumed with Christ.  We are no longer concerned with fasting rules and prayer rules and material things, giving up everything to love our Lord, who heals and fulfills us, and returns us to the beings we were created to be.

As St. Paul reminds us in his first epistle to the Corinthians, which we read this morning, it isn’t the food we eat or don’t eat that causes God to think of us.  Rather, if our rigor, or our freedom, causes another to stumble, then we have committed a grave sin – we have injured one who is made in the image and likeness of our Lord.

Fasting, as St. Paul says, isn’t law – but it is spiritual exercise.  Asceticism, ascesis, means exercise.  And brothers and sisters, we aren’t exercising for God.  We exercise for ourselves – to become stronger, able to withstand more, able to bear more of the burdens of others.

And, as St. Paul goes on to say later in this letter, the greatest gift isn’t prophecy or preaching or poverty or philanthropy.  It is love.  Love for God, which manifests itself as love for others.

The same love that Christ offered – unconditional love.  That word “unconditional” is important.  We are told that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Right?  Romans 5:6-8?

Now, that means that we have to be willing to die for sinners too.  The adulterous, the glutton, the exploitative, the mean.  While we are probably never going to be asked to die for someone, doesn’t that willingness mean we will at minimum help them?  Be kind to them?  Help to provide their needs to live?

And, lest we think that St. Paul only thought in terms of grace for our salvation, let’s look at that most familiar passage of Ephesians 2:8-9:  For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

We know that verse, right?  But we stop reading sometimes too soon.  Verse 10, the very next verse, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Created for – good works.  In Christ Jesus.

Which brings us to the Last Judgement.  After all, the best way to know what will keep us out of condemnation, out of hell, is to know the criteria on which we will be judged, right?  It is like having the answer key to the exam.

It is quite simple, quite straightforward:  Come, you blessed of my Father! Inherit the Kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world! For I was hungry and you gave me food to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.

There it is.  That’s the criteria.  No exams on Orthodox beliefs and practices, no tests of doctrine and dogma, no one will be asked about the times they sung the wrong tone, or forgot to fast, or neglected to pray.  No one will be chastised for the way they made the sign of the Cross or for their prostrations.

But did you love?  That’s the question.  Did you love, everyone, unconditionally?  All the rest is for us, for our exercise and strength.  But love is for others, for God and for the world.

Beloved, love will indeed save us.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.  Glory to Jesus Christ.