Embraced by the Poverty – Sermon, 21 July 2019
Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907-2005) was one of the most important Orthodox theologians of the 20th century. Born in Alsace, France, to a Protestant father and a Jewish mother, she was attracted to the Liturgy and the unique spirituality of the Orthodox Church. She converted to Orthodoxy at the age of 24 and became a member of the extraordinary circle of Orthodox who had fled to France from Communist Russia. Among some of the greatest Orthodox theologians of recent times she developed her own theological voice and even became controversial because of her strong advocacy of women in the church, going so far as supporting the ordination of women! She was a woman way ahead of her time… way ahead of our own time!!
I was struck by one lengthy passage from her notebooks quoted in the book Toward the Endless Day: The Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, by Olga Lossky. She wrote these words in a time of spiritual struggle, and she wrote them for herself. She found wholeness by allowing the Liturgy and the paschal joy to transform her struggle into a vision of the risen Jesus Christ. Listen, read, you might find yourself in some of the language she uses.
This morning I attended the Sunday Liturgy and received Communion. Without much fervor, at first, with the same despairing feeling of barrenness. Our poor choir sang as badly as ever. The chapel with its ridiculous “transparent” curtain over the altar, the reading in Slavonic, incomprehensible, the new altar boy who acted like a big, frightened bird – all this conspired to make any real meditation impossible. But suddenly it was as though everything became concentrated in an exclusive and intense spiritual contemplation of the victorious Christ, while the choir once again sang the Easter hymn, “Christ is risen from the dead…”
Christ, Victim and Vanquisher, the prototype of the procession of vanquishers, of those who have washed their robes in the blood of the great tribulation. This awful history of humanity, a history of suffering and blood, recapitulated in Christ to become, in Him, the Eucharist. In this poor church, through these poor people who were singing Христос воскресе! (Christ is Risen), I thought I saw, in a purely spiritual vision, the icon of the Risen Christ, triumphant over death, pulling Adam and Eve from limbo with His powerful grip.
Certainty, peace, and joy (painful) beyond all words.
Not any death, but the death, the agony in faith, of the whole Christ is victory over the ancient Serpent, the crushing of its head. The least, the most pitiful (in appearance) of our Eucharists announces this death and this victory over death until the return of Christ.
Believe that Love is stronger than death. Not human love, but the Love of God. And it shines in the darkness and enlightens everyone who comes into the world. It opens the way, it shows the way, it is the way. Think of the Christ of the Descent into Hell as depicted in the fresco at Kariye Camii (the Church of the Savior in Chora, Constantinople).
Open myself to the strength, to the energy coming forth from Death Triumphant to a suffering taken in hand by faith, to the love and the Hope of the God-Man. Experience all its reality.
Despite the poor singing and the mediocrity of the little church she attended, her spiritual struggle was somehow embraced by the poverty of that Liturgy and she experienced Love and conquest throughout the victorious Christ of Easter. The central statement is magnificent: “Certainty, peace, and joy (painful) beyond all words.” The pain was still there, but it was embraced by certainty, peace and joy.
And her final paragraph reads almost like instructions for everyone going through the trials that test our faith…..Experience all its reality. That is the ultimate goal of Christian maturity and wholeness: to experience all of our reality in union with Christ, the risen, conquering Christ. But for Elisabeth, it began by allowing her struggle to be embraced by poverty in the Liturgy.