Before I share this homily, let me share some background.

Our parish has a 100 year history.  Back in the day, the Ukrainian community in this area was HUGE, and St. Michael's was established explicitly to minister to and evangelize its members.  For quite a while, this was a successful paradigm, both in terms of growth and (more importantly) spreading the Gospel of Christ. 

But then things began to change.  Jobs left and people followed.  Fewer of those who remained identified themselves as Ukrainians.  The parish languished.

The (most excellent) "Watering the Branch" podcasts suggests that ethnic parishes have a three - four generation lifespan.  There is serious need in these parishes to re-envangelize; to focus on spreading the Good News of salvation through Christ and His Church to everyone with ears to hear.

Our parish has turned the corner from ethnic parish to one that offers Orthodoxy to all comers, and we do this using our Ukrainian culture.  This change was not easy - people had to sacrifice some things that were very meaningful and sacred to them.  But they did it for Christ (and to better ensure the future of the parish).

In Christ, all things are possible.  Even parish renewal.  All glory to God.

Now that you know its context, here is the homily:

1 Corinthians 15: 1-11

St. Matthew 19: 16-26

What a wonderful day to celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ! In fact, could there be anything better than gathering together here in this beautiful temple and offering the first few hours of this new week in communal praise of God? No, brothers and sisters, this love that you feel – for one another and for Our Lord – is what we are made for and the thing that perfects us.

Evidently, the Christians at Corinth had forgotten this. They were a community divided, a community that was torn by division, immorality, and spiritual weakness. St. Paul addresses each of these in turn in his epistle, but today he goes to the very root of the matter: the Church at Corinth suffered because it had wandered from the fundamental Truth: “that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again on the Third day.” (1 Corinthians 15: 1-11) He knew that this fundamental Truth was not only essential for their salvation, but that without it, any of his attempts to reform the community were doomed to eventual failure.

[Nor did St. Paul offer this Truth as if it were his opinion. If he had, those who loved him might have listened, but those who did not – or were threatened by the message he delivered – would have treated it as the opinion of a political adversary and denigrated or dismissed it. St. Paul, like all true apostles and preachers, shies away from offering personal opinion, instead relying on the Scriptures, the testimony of eye-witnesses, and what he had seen first-hand. He does not think of himself as offering a “lecture on a moral theme” (the definition of homily) so much as he is simply “declaring the Gospel” (1 Corinthians 15:1), which is the very same thing being preached by the other apostles (1 Corinthians 15:11). The fact that the Orthodox Church follows in this tradition is attested to by the fact that the homily is offered in the same place as the Epistle and Gospel during our Divine Liturgy.]

Today St. Paul is reminding the Christians at Corinth of the only thing that really matters; that Christ died for our sins and was resurrected so that we might be perfected in Him. This Truth must order everything in our lives, and everything that pulls us away from this Truth must be stripped away lest it eternally tether us to this fallen world and limit our sanctification. We cannot allow anything – not brothers or sisters of father or mother, or wife, or children, or lands – to come between us and Christ. As God said with His own mouth: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” (St. Matthew 19: 28-30). Of course those whose relationships with their houses, families, and lands, are based on Christ need not forsake them. But in order to grow, in order to survive, we must identify and purge all those things in our lives that are not of Christ.

This was the message that Christ gave to the young man, and he went away sorrowful. He went away sorrowful because he liked all of his possessions more than he cared about eternal life; more than he cared about the Truth. Can you imagine such folly? Please do not follow his witness! Choose joy and eternal life over sorrow; chose Christ over your possessions. As Jesus says; ‘if you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Returning to the example of Corinth, we can see that this choice is not just faced by individual people, but their communities and parishes. At the time St. Paul wrote his first epistle to them, the community of Corinth was at a crossroad – it could either hold onto its possessions … or it could surrender itself completely to Christ and follow Him without reservation. One would lead to further divisions, sorrow, and death, and the other to unity, fulfillment, and eternal salvation.

This parish of St. Michael’s is committed to Christ. As such, it is constantly identifying those things that are essential to perfection and growth and embracing them. Because the world is changing, this sometimes means giving up things that we cherish in order to better witness to Him. Today is Ukrainian Sunday, when we offer up most of our praises to the Lord in the Ukrainian language. This is our heritage, how our founders came to know and follow Christ, and we celebrate it. It was not that long ago that every service was offered in Ukrainian, but we now offer almost all of our services in English because this is what it takes to spread the Gospel to our newest generations and to the broader community. I mention this because it speaks to the faith and strength of the people of this parish. Offered the choice between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and something very precious and dear and that had, indeed, so long been such an integral part of sharing that Gospel, it chose Christ.

This faith in Christ is our Heritage. It is what we are really celebrating today both here in our Liturgy and later during our festival. This is the faith passed to us through the Apostles, through our Ukrainian forefathers, and through those strong men and women who brought it to us here in America: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” May God continue to give us the strength as individuals and as a parish to continue to embrace this and to order our lives accordingly.

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[P.S.  The festival went well, by the way.]