by Fr. Aris Metrakos
Scripture separated from its context can be confusing, misleading, and even destructive. Take the well-worn Bible college criticism of the way Orthodox and Roman Catholic faithful address their clergy, Matthew 23:9 (call no man father). The literal application of Mark 16:19 (snake-handling) is downright scary. Women’s southern summertime fashions being what they are, I’m grateful that no one is advocating an exact application of Mark 9:47 (if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out).
The ripping and twisting of scripture is not the sole domain of the folks who think that mega-churches are “non-denominational” and that the Orthodox Church was “founded” in the 19th century with the rise of nationalism. We Orthodox also know how to play the game of “Bible pick and choose.” My favorite contemporary Orthodox exegetical distortion is Luke 15:4: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?”
America’s Orthodox Christians look at the beautiful image of the Good Shepherd returning home with the lost little lamb around his neck and say to themselves “Let’s find all of the people who have ethnically Orthodox last names and get them ‘back’ in the pews!” Behold, another Lost Sheep Committee is born.
For all of the Lost Sheep Committees that have come and gone, this is an evangelical paradigm that has yielded little or no fruit. Why? Persons with “Orthodox” last names who don’t live the life of the Church do so by choice. They are sheep who have fled the flock — if they are even sheep at all. More importantly, Lost Sheep Committees don’t work because they are based on faulty exegesis. Luke 15:4 must be placed in the broader setting of verses four through seven:
15:4 “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? 15:5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 15:6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.’ 15:7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Emphasis added.)
Jesus uses the image Luke 15:4-7 to tell us that He is the good shepherd who calls each human being to repentance, and to remind us that His redemptive ministry is focused not on maintaining the status quo of the righteous but on the reclamation of the fallen. If we are to follow the words of the Lord, then we must go after the lost sheep. We just need to make sure that we know who those lost sheep are.
Who the Lost Sheep Aren’t
Igor Czht came to the United Stated from Slobovia when he was in his early twenties. After spending a couple of years working for his cousin in Chowderland, USA at the Chowderland House of Pottery (Slobovians are renowned pottery makers), Igor moved south to Countryland, USA. Twenty years after arriving in America, he operates the lucrative Countryland House of Pottery. He spends Saturday evenings consuming copious amounts of Slobovian brandy and playing cards and passes his Sundays fishing on his pontoon boat. He last sat through Liturgy two years ago, when his mother was visiting from the old country.
When Igor is asked why he doesn’t come to church, he answers with no hesitation: “They’re too judgmental.”
“But the priest, Father Boris, is energetic and hard working.”
“He’s the worst. He hates all Slobovians.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“I don’t need to. I’ve heard all about him at the Slobovian Men’s Club.”
“But Father Boris’ dad was Slobovian and he speaks the language. He even co-authored the book “Slobovian Pottery and the Major Feasts of the Church.”
“Look,” says Igor. I don’t need to go to no gee-dee church to be no gee-dee Christian.”
Igor might be described as a certain four-legged animal with three letters in its name, but he is certainly no lost sheep. He has never been part of the flock and has no recognition of his need for repentance. Yet, Orthodox churches around the country spend countless hours wringing their hands over the fact that the Igors of the world could care less about the Church.
Am I saying that Igor doesn’t deserve a phone call, card, or a visit? Of course not. But wasting too much of the parish resources on getting Igor “back” in Church is irresponsible. Worse than Igor’s not participating in the life of the community would be Igor’s hanging around the parish with the destructive attitude that he harbors. Instead of reclaiming a lost sheep for Christ, the parish would be deliberately introducing a disease into the flock.
Who the Lost Sheep Might Be
Panagiotis and Panagiota Pappas moved to Countryland three months ago. For a long time they had no idea that there was an Orthodox parish in their new city. The Slobovian parish has a one line listing in the white pages and their website has been under construction since the days of dial-up. When Panagiota finally found the number for the parish, someone answered the phone “Slobovian Church.”
Undaunted, she and Panagiotis drove to Liturgy the following Sunday. They drove past the church the first time (the sign is three feet by three feet). Then they drove around the block twice trying to find the entrance into the parking lot. After walking into the narthex, they were shown which were the “one-dollar” and which were the “five-dollar” candles. After the Liturgy, the priest made a point of welcoming “Mr. and Mrs. Panagiotis” and invited them to come next door for coffee hour-where no one spoke to them.
The Pappas’ are sheep in search of a flock. Meeting their needs requires only a little more money and a little less parochialism. Instead of placing their light under a bushel, the Slobovian parish needs to spend some money on a decent phonebook ad and Web presence. Dare I say it? Even an occasional radio spot would be nice.
Get some signage that helps people find the church. Do something about the parking lot traffic flow. At least pretend to be happy to see visitors. And please, please, please stop calling yourself the “Slobovian Church.”
Who the Lost Sheep Are
Jane and John Whitebread live in a 2800 square-foot house in a gated community. Both are educated and have good jobs. Jane was raised Baptist, but hasn’t set foot in church for years. John’s folks were never part of a faith community.
The Whitebreads work hard. Like most Americans, they enjoy creature comforts that antiquity’s royalty couldn’t even dream about. John goes through a bottle of scotch per week, and Jane is into retail therapy. Weeknights they fall asleep on the couch and love seat watching cable news. Saturday evenings are spent having gin and tonics with the neighbors.
They wake up with headaches Sunday morning. John stumbles out to the curb and retrieves the Sunday paper. A pot of coffee and a crossword puzzle later it’s time to think about mowing the lawn and getting caught up on the laundry.
Meanwhile, the Whitebread kids carry out their Sunday morning ritual. Their 13-year-old son IM’s his friends while checking out porn sites. Their nine-year-old daughter is glued to the TV. The six-year old plays video games.
Jane and John feel like something is missing in their lives. They wonder if it might be religion, but abandon the idea. They can’t relate to the fundamentalists that are always preaching to them at PTA and neighborhood association meetings. They think preachers in golf shirts and khakis look silly. Pithy church signs, services that start at 4:48 p.m., simplistic answers to complex questions, and moral stances that seem to accommodate society’s trends leave John and Jane cold. “Isn’t there a religion that offers a set of practices and beliefs that doesn’t require you to throw out half your brain or agree that gay marriage is a necessary step in cultural evolution?” they wonder.
The Whitebreads are America’s lost sheep. They don’t even know it, but they’re the reason that God became man. They have a life of comfort that is anything but abundant. What will we Orthodox do to help them out of their stupor and into the light of the Kingdom? This is the defining question for American Orthodoxy.
I don’t pretend to know the answer to this question. But I do know that fulfilling the Great Commission means that we must stop squandering our time and energy on going after ornery pottery makers and start going after the real lost sheep. Along the way we might want to make ourselves more visible and accessible.
And if a visitor wants to pay one dollar for a five dollar candle, it’s cool. The church pays less than a quarter for them in the first place.
This is positively the best article I’ve read in a loooong time! It’s so true it’s scarey! Thank you for writing it. I wish it could be mailed to every Orthodox parish I know of!
I’m brand new to JTO. What a very well written and on target article! May God use JTO to bring even one lost sheep into His Kingdom. Glory be to Jesus !!!
great article! its refreshing to see christians discussing Scripture in a meaningful way.
Great article, errr sermon, homily, it was positively edifying.
I am on my way to the great holy Orthodox faith after being raised Protestant and found always wanting. We are the lost sheep and I am thankful that by the Holy Spirit I was lead to the Orthodox Church. I feel greater measures coudl be taken to draw in all the lost sheep out there but I suppose that is another matter.
Baaaa.
bleat, bleat
The other day I was sitting around in Oxford (UK – the university city) talking about what we Orthodox ought to be doing in Oxford to bring in the unchurched. One member – a Lecturer who has spent a fair while in Oxford and knows a lot of the said academic unchurched was in the conversation. The upshot was the thought that we should start a “Orthodox Philosophy Study Society” Not a word to be said about Christianity, but the Society to have in its charter that it should study Aristotle, Plato and Maximos.
Now we all know that Maximos is none other that Saint Maximos the Confessor – and he dealt at length with the Greek philosophers. So we thought that without explicitly mentioning Christianity at the outset, this might be a way of gently bringing in people who would otherwise baulk at the very idea of Christianity.
So my question here is: What do others think of this idea?
Any start is a good start – and starting with Maximus the Great? It’s a win-win situation!
Seems like the lost sheep in America are the inner city poor who often don’t have any way out if depravity. When your Slobobjans start to reach out to the poor, dispossessed and marginalized, that’s when they’ll be acting like Christians. Courting rich whitebreads smells a lot like mimicking evangelicals, which is the last thing we need.
Greg, let’s not leave out the poor by any means. But Jesus died for the Whitebreads, too, who are in spiritual poverty as real as that of the inner city dispossessed. This is not an either/or proposition, but both/and!
Wonderful article, Father. Thanks.
I was brought up with an Anglican father and an Orthodox mother and I, somehow, managed to be in the Choir in the Anglican church and I also attended the Liturgy in the Orthodox Church, even though I was excluded from receiving the Holy Gifts. So I believe that I have a fair idea of both sides of the faith. It was very confusing for a small child and difficult to understand that my father had failed to grasp the truth in Orthodoxy, well, up until he was laying on his death-bed.
It wasn’t until I was sent to prison where I was blessed with a Roman Catholic Monk as a guide that I discovered the truth in respect of the root of Christianity. It seems obvious now when I look back, but there you go. He let me find this truth for myself by recommending different books from the east and western faith and through prayer I was finally grafted onto the true Vine. I wasn’t going to rest until I had found the true faith.
It isn’t an easy matter accepting that you are standing outside of the true Church and I had to deal with many strange feelings and emotions that pulled at my heart strings. The truth is that once I had discovered the truth and accept that it wasn’t negotiable. It is Christ’s Church, for He planted it! Who am I to argue against Him? I was no longer able to remain in ignorance, so there really wasn’t any excuse or anywhere else to go!
Once I had found the root of Christianity my strength of faith did the rest and my success came through prayer, which led me to succeed in repentance.
Whoever thinks that there is a way for repentance other than prayer he/she is deceived from the evil one, because through prayers you get power to come back to God.
As I said in a previous post…
I forced myself in prayer rather than in any other work, because it was through prayer that the wall between me and God was removed and I was able to come back to Him once more.
I was amazed at how many obstacles I threw up to distract me from prayer, because I really didn’t know how to truly pray. I would prefer to theologise, meditate, read, talk and serve the needs of others rather than pray in my cell (heart) alone. (To be one man, alone, with his God, forever in prayer. Ceaselessly!) Consequently I spent time in prayer. I leapt at the opportunity to attend religious meetings rather than to pray as I should and opened myself up to so many distractions.
This was the reason that I failed in my relationship with God for so many years.
I kept on praying, reading, serving others and I thought that I was doing the right thing, I kept on attending lots of religious meetings. As a consequence I had NO spiritual power or any real relationship with God. No true relationship!!!!!
I had to learn how to come back to God and how to take from Him. You see, I thought that I was doing well by spending time with God showing Him how much I loved Him and trying to do lots of good deeds in the hope that He would reward me, His faithful servant, BUT in truth God was always there, wanting me to take from Him. He had already done everything that was needed! I was blind and just couldn’t see.
I gave Him words, time and feelings, but there was no depth in my prayer. If there was I would have been able to take power from Him. He is the giver not the taker!
Once I learnt to pray and feel that I was taking power from God, then I knew that I had succeeded in prayer. When I prayed and took blessings from God, I knew that I had succeeded in my prayers and when I prayed and repented of all my sins He let me know that I had succeeded in my prayers.
Today my ‘soul’ aim is to succeed in prayer of the heart and to keep my conscience clean and to strive for holiness and every day I strengthen my relationship with Him. He is then able to use me as a faithful servant to do His will in my life. Once I had learnt to take power from Him, my mind was opened up to see the truth of our Holy Orthodox Faith and that it was truly His Church.
All I ask is ‘Have you done the same?’ If it helps, I have set up a web site called http://www.oldenglishchurch.org.uk where I have passed on, like a ‘Baton’, the faith to the faithful.
What you are searching for is a ‘Mystical Union’ and this cannot be fully explained or comprehended through human ‘Theology’.
Thank you for a wonderful article Father John.
In Christ, His wicked and unworthy servant,
Constantine
https://journeytoorthodoxy.com/2010/05/15/the-father-of-lights-constantine-georgiades/#axzz1G1usIwhP
https://journeytoorthodoxy.com/2010/05/15/the-father-of-lights-constantine-georgiades/comment-page-1/#comment-398
Greg, please remember that not all poor people are depraved or vice versa.
Fr. Michael, a philosophical club is a great idea as long as it doesn’t seem like you’re champing at the bits to introduce Orthodoxy and diss every other faith or belief.
I went various belief systems ranging from Buddhism to New Age beliefs to Ancient Egyptians on the way to Christianity, and when people played the my way is better than yours game I automatically shut down. I would have come to Christianity decades ago if it weren’t for this tactic or some variant of it. Though these Christians were speaking the truth, the obnoxiousness and self-righteousness was unbearable.
If someone had met me where I was,like St. Paul did the Greeks, and acknowledged the good in the philosophies I was living (because there is always some good) and gently led me to really think about the implications of my beliefs when applied to life,then I would have seen for myself how inadequate they were in meeting the needs I wanted met. This would have had to have been done sincerely without the intent to push Christianity down my throat.
The best witnesses to Christianity were those who were truly humble. They had such a powerful presence that I found myself seeking them out to find out what they practiced. I wanted to hear every word that came from their mouths. though at the time I wasn’t quite ready to give Christianity a go, their testimony brought me years closer and ultimately led me in the door.