Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we have a most instructive linkage between the saints we commemorate today, and the words given to us in today’s Epistle and Gospel readings.

Let us first reflect upon the Epistle reading from this morning. The Apostle Paul is writing to the Church in Corinth, where divisions had arisen within the church community there. In the verses just preceding what we read today, Apostle Paul specifies that wherever we see envy, strife, and divisions among ourselves, we are not acting as Christians, but as carnal people. Indeed, the Apostle specifies that the factions within the Corinthian church were aligning themselves with mere men, saying: ‘I am of Paul’ or ‘I am of Apollos’. It is a great temptation to want to align ourselves with party factions… such things appeal to our pride and to our strong desire to want to be correct. Just as there were in the days of the Apostle Paul, there are many conflicts and causes today which vie for our attention and seek our allegiance. It is a good thing to seek the truth, but we need to know where Truth (with a capital ‘T’) might be found, and we need to know what are the proper fruits which come from that encounter with Truth.

We are greatly mistaken if we build our faith upon some magnetic Church personality, or upon an identification with a Christian culture, or a political party, or any other worldly influence. Our faith and our life must be built upon the rock and cornerstone of Christ Himself and His revelation to us in the Gospels and in the life of His Holy Orthodox Church. Apostle Paul cries out to us in today’s Epistle: ‘Let each one take heed how he builds on this foundation. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’

This foundational anchor is vividly illustrated for us in today’s Gospel reading.

In today’s Gospel, we find the disciples in the midst of the sea, where a storm began to rage and they were tossed about and began to fear for their lives. In the midst of this, they see our Lord walking toward them upon the waters – and, addressing their initial fear, He tells them the reassuring words that it is He, to be of good cheer and not to be afraid. The Apostle Peter, in his endearing zeal, asks Christ to call him to walk upon the water to Him. When our Lord summoned Apostle Peter to come to Him, Apostle Peter, in his zeal and love for Christ, immediately stepped out of the boat and began walking upon the water toward His Lord and God. He demonstrates in this moment a self-forgetting, Christ-focused faith in God. As long as he kept his eyes on Christ he walked upon the water as if it were dry land. But what happened?... We read that,’when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out ‘Lord save me!’ And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him, and said to him, ‘O ye of little faith, why did you doubt?’ The moment Apostle Peter took his eyes off of Christ - that foundation which the Apostle Paul points us toward in his Epistle – the moment Apostle Peter takes his eyes off of Christ and began to concern himself with himself, with his fears and doubts, this is when he began to sink.

This was the danger for the church in Corinth – when they took their focus off of Christ and began to align themselves with Paul or Apollos, they descended into conflicts and envies and hatred. And this is the danger for any of us today as well. How tempted we are to align ourselves with worldly figures and concerns which pit people against one another. Again, make no mistake, there is good and there is evil in this world, and we do well to align ourselves with that which is good. But the question is - where is our focus? Is it on the endless number of waves and issues that come crashing upon us or is our focus on Christ? As He Himself said: ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God and all things shall be added unto you.’

I said at the start of my homily that we have a third link in the lesson given to us today. In addition to the Epistle and the Gospel readings, we celebrate today the holy martyrs Boris and Gleb. Saints Boris and Gleb were sons of St Vladimir who united the people of ‘Rus with baptism into the Orthodox faith. After their father’s death, the eldest son Sviatopolk conspired to kill his brothers Boris and Gleb in order to seize all power. Sviatopolk sent assassins to kill Boris, who already knew that his brother wanted him dead. When they arrived, they heard him chanting psalms and praying before an icon of Christ. He asked the Lord to strengthen him for the suffering he was about to endure and he also prayed for Sviatopolk, asking God not to count this against him as sin. Boris then laid down upon his couch and the assassins rushed in and stabbed him with their lances. Having killed Boris, Sviatopolk turned his attention toward Gleb. Gleb was en route to his brother when he learned of the murder of Boris. Sviatopolk’s assassins seized the boat of Gleb and drew their weapons, but it was Gleb’s own cook Torchin who stabbed him with a knife. They threw Gleb’s body overboard where the martyr’s body came to rest upon the shore. He was buried alongside Boris in the church of St Basil. Sts Boris and Gleb became known as ‘passion-bearers’ because they courageously did not resist evil with violence.

The key point of the martyrdoms of Sts Boris and Gleb is that their focus was set above the waves and conflicts and ambitions of this world. Their eyes were set upon Christ and the fruit of that focus imbued them with grace and peace and love. They, like the Apostle Peter, walked above the waters of the temptations of this world. They forfeited a fratricidal fight over a kingdom of this world in favor of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Our Lord told us: ‘In this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.’ My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, conflicts are inevitable in this fallen world. Those conflicts may occur among couples within a marriage, among family members, within a parish, or within a community… or those conflicts may erupt into devastating wars between nations. The evil one delights in polarizing us to take opposite corners in whatever conflict may arise and to objectify the other as our enemy.

The lesson given to us today from the lives of the passion-bearers Boris and Gleb, from the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul, and from the example of Apostle Peter’s walk upon the waters toward our Lord Jesus Christ in today’s Gospel – is that our sights must be set higher than the distractions of this earthly plain. Conflicts and temptations will occur, but those conflicts need not drown us in the stormy seas of passions and anger and hatred. If we keep our eyes fixed on Christ, conflicts can be dealt with in good intention, with charity and without selfishness. With prayer and charity, some conflicts may be resolved and where we cannot find resolution, then we either just accept the differences or we defend the truth – charitably holding true to our conscience. We seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all things will be added unto us according to God’s will – and in that we can be content. Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the prayers of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul and the holy passion bearers princes Boris and Gleb, may God grant us such strength and determination to keep our eyes fixed upon Him.