Heirs of the Orthodox Faith

Reader Abraham Abraham (+1997)

 

 

My dear fellow parishioners:

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You may wonder why I am offering the sermon today, as it may seem unusual to you for a Chanter to give sermons in our Church. However, this is not at all unusual. In our Orthodox Church, and especially in the Greek tradition, the lower clergy and even lay theologians and preachers are often blessed by the Bishop or Priest to give sermons. But for quite some time I have debated with myself as to whether I should do so or not. For what I have to say many of you already know. Yet in the end, somehow I felt I had to step up.

Having been blessed to do so, then, if you will allow me, I would like to make a few comments about our Christian obligation to God, the Church, and our beloved Orthodox Faith. Now what do I know about Orthodoxy? Technically and historically, not too much. But I do know this: it is my Faith. It is the Mother of Christianity, and God blessed me to be born and raised in this great and true Faith.

God has also favored all of you and blessed you, giving you birth into Orthodoxy and placing a great responsibility upon your shoulders as Syrians and Lebanese who are descendants and heirs of the Orthodox Faith.

I am here before you, today, to beg and beseech of you: Let us uphold the dignity of our Church, the dignity of our Faith, and the dignity of our race. We claim to be the foundation of Christianity. Let us preserve this privilege in faith and dignity, becoming a shining light unto others, beholding and accepting the true methodology of Orthodox worship and spiritual life.

This cannot be, unless we define ourselves. It was not of our choosing that we were born into Orthodoxy. But it has happened. It is a fact. God, Who guides our lives and knows our destiny, saw to it that the torch was passed on to us to carry on. Does it not thus occur to you that we are the chosen children of God? His chosen people? That we are called to set an example of the true Faith, which has been broken up, desecrated, and preached in various denominations by those who wish to change and remodel it, so to speak, into something that will serve man’s goals, rather than God’s Law?

As Moses, ordered by God, led the Israelites (for they were God's chosen children), so Jesus Christ has asked you, the heirs of the Faith that He established on earth through His Apostles and Saints, to be His chosen children and to light the Way, that others might see. Because we are living in this modem age, in this sophisticated race, we think that we can live without God; or that we can give Him our spare time, as we see fit, thinking that this will satisfy Him. This may be the modem age, or the space age, if you please; we may claim to be educated and possess great knowledge. But just remember that our modem times were foreseen by the Prophets.

God, the Great Mind, gives us our knowledge. We not only need Him for all of the things that we think are the products of our works, but He can also take away what He gives. Therefore, let us not fail in our obligations. Let us not turn a deaf ear. For we cannot fool God. Holy Scripture tells us that His Ways are a mystery. We go along living each day, each Sunday, the Lord’s Day, as we see fit, conveniently fulfilling our desires and ignoring our obligations to Him, refusing to let our minds and hearts dwell on our guilt, as though He does not know our betrayal in forgetting Him as the Source of all that we know and have.

We fail to dwell on the thought that we are offending the Lord by disregarding our obligations to Him. We seem to get by, after missing a few Sundays of Church, and eventually, like callow youth, forget our adult duties. But we must remember that the Ways of the Lord are a mystery. He Who controls our everyday life can smooth our paths and impede our endeavors. He can both lighten our load, according to our faith in Him, or cause us to answer for our sins and disobedience in various ways. Now, how can you expect your neighbor to respect you, if you do not respect your neighbor? How can he honor you, if you do not honor him? How much greater, then, is our obligation to the Supreme Being Who rules our lives, Who in His own mysterious way is always near in spirit? He is near us. We feel Him, as the Supreme Source of our breath. How can we not respect, honor, and obey Him above all things?

These things I say to you because we must realize at all times that God is with us, has jurisdiction over our lives, and awaits our respect and the fulfillment of our obligations to Him. No one can truly say there is no God, in order to escape his obligations. Nor can he believe halfway; either we believe or we do not. There is no halfway with the King of Heaven and earth. Therefore, if we choose to doubt, or take our Faith or religion for granted, we lose all. It is better we stay away entirely. For God is no joke. But if we truly believe, as any sensitive person does, we must accept our obligations along with that belief, and fully so.

If we believe, yea, truly believe, in His Holy Existence, then let us accept God as He truly is. Let us do Him homage as our Lord and Master. Let us accept the love that He has for us in proving our allegiance to Him. Let us accept His Son, Whom He sacrificed for us to prove His love, by faithfully obeying and abiding by the beautiful teachings He gave us while He, God Incarnate, was one of us here on this earth. Let us fully realize that the laws of God and the teachings of His Son, Jesus Christ, were given to us to obey for the sake of our protection, to beautify our lives, and to bring us to salvation from our ancestral sin.

Have you read the Bible? I am sure you have. Can you recall one sentence or one word from the teachings of Christ that is not beneficial, but that is harmful to mankind? No, not one word. Let us take, for instance, His words and commandments about the laws of God. Do you think they were given to attain glory for Himself? If you read carefully, you will find that they exist for our own good. In the first of the Ten Commandments, God says: “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other God beside Me.” Here He tells us that He is the rightful God for us: The God of love, the God of justice, the God to Whom we must do homage and must worship, protecting us against the false god of hate and fanaticism.

The true and living God, Who put the breath of life in our bodies and gave us a soul, which He loves so much that He will never forsake it or allow it to deteriorate, as material things do, wishes us to worship a true Deity: the very God Who will accept us into His bosom after our allotted time here on earth is up. The God Who provides for our salvation, as long as we have honored Him and lived up to His law.

As the true God, He has asked us, as another example, to honor our father and mother, the mother who gave birth to you and the father who will father and protect you. You are of their flesh and blood. Would you cut off your arm or any other part of your body and toss it away or ignore it? No. Nor should you ignore your father and mother. For through them you are here in body. God also instructed us as follows: “Thou shalt not lie.” He knew it was better for us not to lie or bear false witness. How many times have we told what we thought was an innocent lie, but then see it bounce back in our faces and cause us a never-ending amount of trouble? We could analyze each Commandment. Each time we would find that each and every one was given us for our protection, for our own happiness, as well as for our salvation.

For remember, there is no other way into the Kingdom of Heaven but by abiding by the laws of God. If we do so, He will not forsake our souls and allow them to float around in the darkness and deep void after we depart from this life. Rather, He will be near, to guide and accept our souls in His Holy Light. What a beautiful and comforting feeling it is to know that God will be near and that we need not live in fear of the unknown and of the darkness. All of this is ours, when we fulfill our obligations to God and the Church.

Let us therefore, as Holy Scripture tells us, wash our faces, take off the old man, and put on the new. It is never too late to turn to God, to Jesus Christ, and to show our devotion by repenting of our past mistakes and accepting Him as our True God, as our Counsellor in time of trouble, cares, and grief. Lay these at His Door. For He said, “Knock and it shall be opened unto you... “Ask and it will be given.” Let Him help us to carry the burden of life, and in times of joy let us not forget to sing praises of Him for His blessings. For the Lord's blessings are all around us. The trials and tribulations are a test of our faith, and the blessings and good things are our reward.

During the Holy Liturgy, the Chanters sing a beautiful verse on behalf of all the Christians present. This occurs after our Communion with the Holy Mysteries, the Body and Blood of our Lord: “We have seen the True Light, we have received the Heavenly Spirit. We have found the True Faith, worshipping the Undivided Trinity, Who hath saved us.” Now can we truly say this? Think about it, whether you are here in the Church or away from here. My dear brothers and sisters, my dear friends: We have inherited this wonderful Faith and this magnificent way of worship from Christ Himself, through His Holy Apostles. So let us be in our Orthodoxy that shining example for others to see and to follow. For truly we are also apostles of the Faith—each and every one of us, truly the chosen children of God. For He has shown us this True Light and Heavenly Spirit by making us the heirs of His True Faith, the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

The late Reader Abraham Abraham [Ibrahim Ibrahim] (1910-1997), an accomplished Chanter, gave a number of instructive sermons at the St. John the Baptist Syrian Orthodox Church, founded in 1931 in Cedar Rapids, LA. The parish is now under the jurisdiction of our Holy Synod and is served by his son and grandson. Protopresbyter Father Raphael Abraham and Father John Abraham, as well as another grandson, Reader Jameel Abraham, and his great-grandson, Reader Hunna Abraham. This sermon was delivered and recorded in the 1970s. (Transcribed by Nun Seraphima.)

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXXII (2015), No. 1, pp. 43-46.