Forgive me, a Sinner. Yesterday was Lazarus Saturday, so we are now two days into Holy Week. This coming Saturday, we will experience one of the highlights of the entire week—and it will still be breath-taking. We will turn off all the lights in the nave. Then we will light the Paschal Candle, and that flame will be passed around the room. We will then process through the nave and go out into the narthex. When we are out in the narthex, the door to the nave will be closed, but we will listen to the Resurrection Gospel; we will sing, “Christ is Risen,” and then the priest will knock on the doors of the nave, and he will say these words: “Lift up your gates, O Ye Princes; be lifted up, ye everlasting Doors, and the King of Glory shall enter in!” That’s one of the most dramatic moments of the entire year; it’s a moment that everyone enjoys. But that moment is also part of a sequence, and that sequence begins today, on Palm Sunday. Because on this day, we commemorate the entry of our Lord and Master into Jerusalem; we are present as the gates of that city open before the King of Glory. And that’s simply the first set of gates that our Lord and Master passes through. Because what we are going to commemorate this coming Saturday is the Entrance of Christ Jesus into hell. When the priest knocks on the doors of the nave, and those doors are thrown open before him, that is an icon of what happens when our Lord and Master marches into the kingdom of darkness. Later that same night, the holy doors and the deacon’s doors on the iconostasis will be left open. We do that because we are celebrating the fact that Christ Jesus was not even inconvenienced by the doors of the tomb. And in two weeks, we will be celebrating Thomas Sunday. On that day, we will remember how, on two separate occasions, Christ Jesus is able to visit with the apostles, even though the doors of the house in which they are staying have been locked. And then, on Thursday [June 13 n.s.], we will celebrate the great Feast of the Ascension. We will rejoice in the Entrance of our Resurrected Lord and Master into the Kingdom of Heaven, and we will hear the angelic hosts call out to each other with those dramatic words: “Lift up your gates, O Ye Princes; be lifted up ye everlasting Doors, and the King of Glory shall enter in!” Those words actually come from Psalm 23, and we actually read that psalm every week because it’s part of the Pre-communion Prayers; we hear those words as part of our preparation for participating in the Holy Eucharist. And here’s the reason why the Church sets those words before us each and every week: Because even though Christ Jesus has entered into the gates of the City of Jerusalem, even though He has broken down the gates of hell, even though the door of the tomb and the doors to the Upper Room could not withstand Him, even though He has already entered into the Kingdom of Heaven, there is one gate, there is one set of doors through which He still has to enter, and that is the gate, the door of our heart. In the Book of the Apocalypse, St John the Evangelist has a whole series of visions, and, in one of those visions, this is what Christ Jesus says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. That’s a clear reference to the Great Banquet of the Kingdom, and our Lord and Master is waiting for us to open our hearts and our lives to Him. But what if we aren’t willing to do that? What if we just keep the door shut forever and ever and ever? In St John’s vision, nothing is said about that because that possibility simply doesn’t exist. After all, our Lord and Master could not be held in the tomb; He could not be kept our of Jerusalem or the Upper Room; Christ Jesus has broken down the gates of hell, and He has entered triumphantly into the Kingdom of Heaven, so do you really think that the door to our heart is going to be a barrier to Him? Can you really picture the King of Glory standing outside of our heart saying, “OK, well, I guess this isn’t a good time for you. I’ll just stop by again when you’re not busy.” That’s not how all this works. We may not want to open our hearts to Christ Jesus. We may want to keep Him out of our lives. We may be willing to make ourselves miserable and make everyone around us miserable for many years in order to prevent our Lord and Master from entering into our hearts, but if there’s anything that Holy Week teaches us, if there’s anything that the Paschal Season show us, it is this: There is no gate; there is no door, that can keep Christ Jesus out. Ultimately, He’s going to open them all, and that includes the entrance to our lives. And our Lord and Master is not going to knock down that gate like He does when He enters hell. He’s not going to slip through like He does when He rises from the tomb or enters the Upper Room. No, He’s going to process triumphantly into our hearts, because we are going to open our lives to Him. We are all going to choose to do that. Every single person that we know is going to freely choose to do that. And this isn’t going to be the result of some cosmic Jedi Mind Trick. This isn’t going to happen because Christ Jesus talks us all into opening these doors, as if the King of Glory were some sort of Divine Negotiator. No, all of us, each and every one of us, are going to open up to our Lord and Master because of His beauty, His love, His truth, His compassion, and His Joy are all irresistible. This morning’s Epistle lesson comes from St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. The passage comes from the fourth chapter of that letter, but, over in chapter two, the apostle describes what it’s going to be like at the end of all things, and this is what he says: “At the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” Some Christians believe that what St Paul is describing is a vast crowd of people, some of whom are kneeling out of love and devotion to our Lord and Master, but most of the people in that huge throng are kneeling because they have basically been forced to. They are rebellious people who have been constrained to acknowledge the omnipotent power of the Most Holy Trinity. That’s an interpretation of St Paul that is entirely unworthy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because if Christ Jesus can cast down hell and triumph over death and redeem all of humanity and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, then He doesn’t have to force anyone to do anything. That’s because His power is not about constraint; it’s about love. So, at the end of all things, when each and every one of us kneel before the King of Glory, it will be because we freely choose to do so. We’ve already mentioned that this morning’s epistle lesson is from St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. In that portion we heard this morning, the apostle reminds us that “the Lord is at hand.” And that is most certainly the case, because, during this holiest of weeks, we will each have the opportunity to partake of His very Body and Blood. So, Mothers and Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, as we complete our service together on this second day of Holy Week, let us open our hearts even now to the King of Glory, and let us look forward to that day when everyone we know will do the very same thing, and, with one mouth and one heart, we will praise and glorify the all honorable and majestic Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Source: Fr. Aidan Wilcoxson, Homily for Palm Sunday, April 10, 2020, St. John [Antiochian] Orthodox Church, Austin, TX. |
