The title just about says it all, but a little extra general information:
My father is a Russian Orthodox priest, and these are the sermons he gives during Sunday Divine Liturgy.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand is a figure of the Eucharist. As the priest says at the Breaking of the Bread: "Broken and distributed is the Lamb of God, broken, yet not divided; ever eaten, though never consumed, but sanctifying them that partake thereof. "
It flows from the grace and compassion and love for mankind of God's only begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who was moved with compassion towards us sinners and gave himself to be our food—not the meat that perishes, but that which endures unto everlasting life.
This is that one bread distributed to us by the apostles which makes us one body:
"For we being many are one bread, and one body:for we are all partakers of the one bread." 1 Cor. 10:17
But as we read in our Epistle (1 Cor. 1:10-18), the Church in Corinth was divided into factions. Some claimed to be of Paul, some of Apollos, some of Cephas (or Peter), and others of Christ. So already in the first century, we see the Orthodox—those who held to Christ—differentiated from the schismatics, who clung to men. As Paul says later in the same epistle:
"For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. " I Cor. 11:19
Maybe it's just human nature to divide into cliques. We tend to gravitate towards those with whom we share a common interest or ideology. Or, perhaps it is somehow linked to the Tower of Babel when mankind regrouped into nations according to their ability to understand one another's speech. But Pentecost was supposed to reverse all of that. And indeed it did:
"When the most High came down and confused the tongues, / He divided the nations; / But when he distributed the tongues of fire / He called all to unity. / Therefore, with one voice, we glorify the All-holy Spirit!"
Strife and divisions in the Church are not the Lord's doing. Paul tells it like it is, and lays the blame squarely where it belongs--with us:
"For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men " (1 Cor. 3:3)
It is our carnality that is responsible for all of the divisions and schisms throughout history. Instead of walking in the Spirit as children of God, we walk as mere men, viewing matters from our fallen, human perspective.
As individuals, we are all spiritually myopic. We need corrective lenses in order to see the truth clearly. This past week I took an Amish family to the eye doctor. While sitting outside it occurred to me that the many and varied lenses in the optometrist's phoropter—that big funny-looking machine that looks like the eyes of a huge fly-- are like the many and varied denominations I explored over the past 40 years. "Better, or worse?" "This, or this?" "How about now?" I looked through the Baptist lens, and to my wonderment, I found I could read the first line, and exclaimed "I was blind, but now I see!) But then I looked through the Pentecostal lens and discovered I could read more lines...then I tried the Anabaptist lens and could read even more... and so on with the Quaker lens. Then I looked through a set by which I could make out all of the lines, but they were twisted and skewed—that was Roman Catholicism. I'm so glad I didn't stop there! Finally, I looked through a set of lenses by which I could read all the lines clearly and distinctly...and that was Holy Orthodoxy!
All of the sad divisions throughout Church history might have been avoided had Christians simply been willing to abide by that method of settling disputes and defining dogma which was instituted by the apostles themselves: the Council. Jesus said the Spirit of Truth would guide YOU (PLURAL) into all truth (John 16:13); i.e., the Church collectively, not the individual, be he Pope, Reformer, or self-appointed Bible teacher.
The Lord appointed the Church, not any individual, to be the "Pillar and ground of the truth." The apostle asks, "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? " (1 Cor. 3:5) Likewise, we might ask our Roman Catholic friends, Who then is Peter? Rome would seem to want to replace Christ with Peter--and his successors-- as the cornerstone of the Church. Only the Orthodox Church views Peter and Paul and all the other apostles in their proper perspective as foundation stones, laid in accordance with Jesus Christ the Chief Cornerstone.
A century before Luther was born, John Wycliffe wrote concerning the Great Schism, whereby the pope led the Western Church into schism and heresy:
"The pride of the pope is why the Greeks are divided from the so-called faithful. It is we Westerners, who are too fanatical by far, who have been divided from the faithful Greeks and the faith of our Lord Jesus. "
Today, more than 600 years after Wycliffe, Western Christianity is divided not only from the Orthodox East, but, as a result of the so-called "Reformation", has splintered into sects numbering in the tens of thousands. So what is the answer? Modern ecumenism exhorts us to ignore doctrinal differences for the sake of "love." While this sounds all warm and fuzzy, it only serves to reduce Christianity to the least common denominator and to produce a false union that cannot endure.
The path to Christian unity is found in a return to the unity we once had: "Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent..." saith the Lord. (Rev. 2:5). We must seek to return to the faith of the undivided Church of the first Millennium, as defined by the Seven Ecumenical Councils, those ancient landmarks which the Fathers set, and be reunited to the Orthodox Church which still holds the Ancient Faith unchanged "The Spirit and the Bride say, Come!"
So, we must ask ourselves the question: are we willing to give up the belief in our own infallibility (or that of the Pope!), and submit our understanding to the ancient wisdom of those who, with the authority of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, piloted the Church for 1,000 years (and, indeed even unto the present)? If we find that our opinions and understanding agree with the Faith of the Fathers --and in many points, we will no doubt discover that they do indeed agree-- well. But if they contradict or go beyond the teachings of the Fathers, we must be willing to lay them aside.
The bottom line is who do we trust-- in ourselves and our ability to discern the truth-- or in the Church established by Christ and the apostles, against which the gates of hell shall never prevail, having the promise of the guidance of the Holy Spirit into all truth, which the apostle calls the "pillar and ground of the truth" (II Tim 2:15)? ....Glory to Jesus Christ!
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