The dia-logos of faith
I came upon a striking phrase in an article by Dionysis Skliris: Ο Χριστός, επομένως, ως ενυπόστατος διάλογος Θεού και ανθρώπου…: Christ, the ‘enhypostasized’ (let’s just say ‘personified’ for simplicity) dialogue between God and man. I’m sure that calling Christ the “dialogue between God and man” is not original with Mr. Skliris, and perhaps I’ve come across such a phrase before, but it struck me as something profound. Dia-logos means ‘by words’, a transaction of words. And Jesus Christ is the Logos! What better dialogue than with the Logos. Every Sunday in our Gospel reading we engage in dialogue with our Lord who is the Word of God, the Logos.
I alluded to today’s Gospel reading last week as I tried to pull together all the feasts and Sunday readings of August. Today is in many ways the culmination of the Gospel explorations this month has offered to us. I won’t repeat what I said last week, but I will remind you that the episode of the boy and his father comes immediately after the transfiguration of Christ on the mountain.
The great Origen, in his commentary on Matthew, wrote: “For the sake of the people he descended to his human ministry from the high mountain of divinity as it were…” Origen was comparing the descent from the mountain to the incarnation – the same downward movement, from the heights of divinity to his ‘human ministry’ – a beautiful phrase.
Καὶ ἐλθόντων πρὸς τὸν ὄχλον προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ ἄνθρωπος. . . .
The preposition πρὸς is the root of the Greek word for person, πρόσωπον (prosōpon). Jesus comes to the crowd and the man comes to him, προσῆλθεν (the verb προσέρχομαι). An encounter is set up, and at the heart of every encounter is dialogue. An encounter between God and man. The first words out of the man’s mouth are Kyrie, eleison. The first words any of us will speak when we come face to face with the Lord will be Kyrie, eleison! Have no doubt about that.
The preposition πρὸς denotes movement. Jesus comes to the crowd and the man comes to him. There is movement. St. Gregory of Nazianzus famously expressed one of the great truths of Christianity: “the human being must be sanctified by the humanity of God” (Oration 45.22). Just as we see in the icon of Transfiguration: the rays of divine sanctifying energy radiating out from the humanity of Jesus. Jesus came into the world not to show off divine power and perform miracles. The miracles are a by-product of what was really happening: an encounter between God and human being. While people ask for a cure, a miracle, Jesus talks of faith. The miracles he did perform were merely signs – and John’s Gospel does call the miracles “signs” – signs of the fulness of life to which we are all invited. He invites us as one of us, his humanity touching our humanity. He came as one of us, taking upon himself all our weaknesses and sufferings, taking them to his heart as a precious treasure. The same Gregory also famously said, ‘what is not assumed is not healed’ – a profound expression of what salvation is all about: the healing of human nature by the humanity of God.
Salvation is not about things you believe. Faith is not a thing, not a summary of truths or ideas. The faith Jesus speaks of here and elsewhere in the gospels is faith that can move mountains. And yet it is faith that is small, like a grain of mustard seed. It is a faith of movement and personal encounter, and a faith that begins with Kyrie eleison. The faith Jesus wants to plant in our souls is faith that grows little by little, from a mustard seed to the transformation/transfiguration of our humanity by the humanity of God! This is why Jesus plaintively asked, πλὴν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐλθὼν ἆρα εὑρήσει τὴν πίστιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς; (Luke 18:8) The faith of words and slogans and bumper stickers is plentiful. But faith that can move mountains – will he find such faith?
Do not reduce faith to a bunch of slogans like many Christian groups do. Faith is dynamic, it’s about movement. That is why Jesus likens it to the grain of a mustard seed. Seeds are about growth, and the smallest seed can produce a towering tree. Faith is not static like the faith preached by so many, a faith that rests on its laurels. That was the problem with the disciples, why they couldn’t heal (can’t you hear them? “We belong to Jesus’ inner circle!”) and why Jesus rebuked them. Faith is about opening ourselves to the transfiguring grace of God, making us a new creation daily. Faith is about offering to God what God has given us: Τα σα εκ των σων, “Your own of your own” in the Liturgy. Faith grows from a mustard seed to the full glorious embrace of infinite divine glory. And so on, faith is always about movement. But it starts with a person-to-person encounter, a dialogue. Faith begins there, in a dialogue – a dia-logos with the Logos of God, the Christ that we meet here every Sunday.