Bible Study for the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent
Hebrews 9:11-14
BRETHREN, when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Mark 10:32-45
At that time, Jesus taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise." And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him, and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." And he said to them, "What do you want me to do for you?" And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" And they said to him, "We are able." And Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared." And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant of James and John. And Jesus called them to him and said to them, "You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Introduction: On the Fifth Sunday of Lent the Orthodox Church commemorates our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt. The feast day of Saint Mary of Egypt is April 1, however, she is also commemorated on this Sunday due to her recognition by the Church as a model of repentance.
I. The focus of this Sunday is on ACTION, REPENTENCE, and SACRIFICE. Jesus, taking leave of Galilee and Samaria, crosses the Jordan river, passes by Jericho, and climbs the uphill road that leads from Jericho to Jerusalem…that great city that killed the prophets, and stoned those men that God had sent her to lead her back to Him….so He went Himself.
a. Like the disciples, we took leave of our former home, through baptism crossed the Jorden River, passed many trials and tribulations, and begin at the end of our earthly journey to ascend towards the Heavenly Jerusalem. Like the disciples, we sometimes want to know “what’s in it for us?”
b. Or at some point, after baptism, after some struggle, some tend to want to relax from the daily chores of fasting and prayer along with repentance. Christ tells us that the way involves more action, repentance, and sacrifice.
II. St. John Chysostom states, “The Cross still loomed in the future; nether had the grace of the Holy Spirit been granted them. After the crucifixion, after Pentecost, after the coming of the Holy Spirit, they would understand fully the significance of their positions.”
III. So, as Jesus came to show us as Christians THE WAY, he shows that the path to Him is filled with struggle…it is an ACTIVE Faith involving the Cross. That is why St. Mary of Egypt is so important today.
a. The Sunday of St. Gregory demonstrated that we should sit in silence and stillness to see God. The Sunday of the Cross showed that we must take up our cross and follow Him. The Sunday of Orthodoxy focuses on the right way to view and worship God; the Sunday of St. John of the Ladder shows action, prayer and repentance in order to ascend to Heaven.
b. St. Mary teaches us what is possible if one puts all of that together. She walked on water; she had the gift of knowledge; she attained theosis. She did this in light of today’s reading by completely following Christ. Here is her story:
Our holy mother Mary was born in Egypt. She had left her parents at the age of twelve to go to Alexandria, where she spent the next seventeen years in debauchery and the greatest profligacy. Living on charity and linen-weaving, she nevertheless offered her body to any man, not being forced to it by dire necessity as were so many poor women, but as though she were consumed by the fire of a desire that nothing was able to appease.
One day, seeing a crowd of Lybians and Egyptians moving towards the port, she followed them and set sail with them for Jerusalem, offering her body to pay her fare. When they arrived in the Holy City, she followed the crowd that was thronging towards the Church of the Resurrection, it being the day of the Exaltation of the Cross. But, when she reached the threshold of the church, an invisible force prevented her entering in spite of repeated efforts on her part, although the other pilgrims were able to go in without hindrance. Left alone in a corner of the narthex, she began to realize that it was the impurity of her life that was preventing her approaching the holy Wood. She burst into tears and smote her breast and, seeing an icon of the Mother of God, made this prayer to her: "O Sovereign Lady, who didst bear God in the flesh, I know that I should not dare to look upon thine icon, thou who are pure in soul and body, because, debauched as I am, I must fill thee with disgust. But, as the God born of thee became man in order to call sinners to repentance, come to my aid! Allow me to go into the church and prostrate before His Cross. And, as soon as I have seen the Cross, I promise that I will renounce the world and all pleasures, and follow the path of salvation that thou willest to show me."
She felt herself suddenly freed from the power that had held her and was able to enter the church. There she fervently venerated the Holy Cross and then, returning to the icon of the Mother of God, declared herself ready to follow the path that the Virgin would show her. A voice replied to her from on high: "If you cross the Jordan, you will find rest."
Leaving the church, she bought three loaves with the alms a pilgrim had given her, discovered which road led to the Jordan and arrived one evening at the Church of Saint John the Baptist. After having washed in the river, she received Communion in the Holy Mysteries, ate half of one of the loaves and went to sleep on the riverbank. The next morning, she crossed the river and lived from that time on in the desert, remaining there for forty-seven years without ever encountering either another human being or any animal.
During the first seventeen years, her clothes soon having fallen into rags, burning with heat by day and shivering with cold by night, she fed on herbs and wild roots. But more than the physical trials, she had to face violent assaults from the passions and the memory of her sins and, throwing herself on the ground, she implored the Mother of God to come to her aid. Protected by God, who desires nothing but that the sinner should turn to Him and live, she uprooted all the passions from her heart by means of this extraordinary ascesis, and was able to turn the fire of carnal desire into a flame of divine love that made it possible for her to endure the implacable desert with joy, as though she were not in the flesh.
After all these years, a holy elder called Zosimas (April 4), who, following the tradition instituted by Saint Euthymios, had gone into the desert across the Jordan for the period of the Great Fast, saw one day a human form with a body blackened by the sun and with hair white as bleached linen to its shoulders. He ran after this apparition that fled before him, begging it to give him its blessing and some saving words. When he came within ear-shot, Mary, calling by name him whom she had never seen, revealed to him that she was a woman and asked him to throw her his cloak that she might cover her nakedness.
At the urging of the monk, who was transported at having at last met a God-bearing being who had attained the perfection of monastic life, the Saint recounted to him with tears the story of her life and conversion. Then, having finished her account, she begged him to come the following year to the bank of the Jordan with Holy Communion.
When the day arrived, Zosimas saw Mary appearing on the further bank of the river. She made the sign of the Cross and crossed the Jordan, walking on the water. Having received Holy Communion weeping, she said: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation" (Luke 2:29). She then took leave of Zosimas, asking him to meet her the following year in the place where they had first met.
When the year was past, Zosimas, going to the agreed spot, found the Saint's body stretched on the ground, her arms crossed and her face turned towards the East. His tearful emotion prevented him from noticing at once an inscription traced on the ground by the Saint, which read: "Abba Zosimas, bury here the body of the humble Mary; give what is of dust to dust, after having prayed for me. I died on the first day of April, the very night of the Passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, after having partaken in the Holy Eucharist." Consoled in his grief by having learned the Saint's name, Zosimas was amazed to discover that she had, in several hours, covered a distance of more than twenty days' march.
After having vainly tried to break up the earth with a stick, he suddenly saw a lion approaching Mary's body and licking her feet. On the orders of the Elder, the beast dug a hole with its claws, in which Zosimas devoutly placed the Saint's body.
On his return to the monastery, he recounted the marvels that God had wrought for those who turn away from sin and move towards Him with all their hearts. From the hardened sinner that she had been, Mary has, for a great many souls crushed under the burden of sin, become a source of hope and a model of conversion. This is why the Holy Fathers have placed the celebration of her memory at the end of the Great Fast as an encouragement for all who have neglected their salvation, proclaiming that repentance can bring them back to God even at the eleventh hour.
Adapted from The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, Vol. 4, compiled by Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra and translated from the French by Mother Maria Rule and Mother Joanna Burton (Chalkidike, Greece: Holy Convent of the Annunciation of Our Lady, 2003) pp. 295-298.
IV. In light of St. Mary’s achievements, we see in the Gospel reading that two sons of Zebedee request to be given places of honor. Jesus replies, “You don’t know what you’re asking.” This aspect of the story is so relevant today.
a. People today don’t know what they are asking of Christ, neither do they know what He is asking of them (or us).
i. So many Christians ask for glory, wealth, sensual pleasures, power and dominion over others.
ii. What they should ask for is genuine life, truth, salvation, grace, redemption, and sanctification…in other words, the cross.
b. Often, people in the parishes expect the wrong things from the Church.
i. The laymen want to exercise power over the clergy while the clergy is overly interested in the affairs of the clergy. We wish to exert mastery over others whether or not that mastery coincides with the spirit of the Gospel.
V. Jesus shows us in this passage what true leadership is.
a. True leadership involves action and sacrifice. He who would be first must be the servant of all.
i. Let him who thinks himself superior take the basin and towel of Christ, and wash the feet of his brothers and sisters.
ii. True Christian dignity and glory are based on the one’s service and not on the person’s standing in the world.
iii. Christ does not care who one knows or how high a status one has attained in society.
iv. St. Photius says, “but in the heroism of the basin in which our Lord washed the disciples’ feet, is judged the value and genuineness of a true leader” (Dimopoulos, p. 44).
VI. But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way. 1 Cor. 12:31
VII. The disciples did not realize what Christ was saying. The Blessed Theophylact says that they thought he was speaking literally when he spoke of the cup and the baptism. What He was really taking about was martyrdom. And, eventually, they would drink that cup and be baptized in what Saint Nikolaj Velirmirovic calls “the third baptism.” St. Nikolaj says, The first was John’s baptism by water, the second is Christ’s by water and the Spirit, and there are only some that are given baptism by blood( Medakovic, http://www.saintgregorypalamas.com/2010/02/fifth-sunday-of-great-lent-sunday-of.html).
VIII. In the mysteries of the Church, that is to say, the faithful journey through the desert of this earthly life with their hearts nailed to Christ’s Holy Cross and buried in the sacred tomb of Christ’s Holy Pascha. To the faithful, the Lenten Fast, as the flower of abstinence that grows from the wood of the Cross, opens onto the inner hell of the human heart that has been filled with the uncreated light of Christ in His Holy Pascha. By nailing themselves to the Fast as to the Cross of Christ, the faithful taste and see, even now in the wilderness of this earthly life, the glory of Christ’s Holy Resurrection. The trials of this life become the testing of our faith, more precious than silver and gold; and Egypt loses its attraction. Its glittering lights are darkness compared to the Robe of Light the faithful put on through the ascetic disciplines of the Fast; they are misery compared to the joy of partaking of the divine nature in the Eucharistic mystery of Christ’s Holy Pascha (http://www.sthermanmpls.org/sundaysermon.html)
IX. Medakovic goes on to point out that the disciples would go on to accept the suffering of the Cross through humiliation, torture, and death…all of them that is except Judas. Judas did not accept the action, repentance, and sacrifice necessary to be a true follower of Christ. This is a powerful lesson for each of us.
X. Again, Medakovic,… Many of us do not want to do this work and follow the path of the cross in order to receive God’s gifts. This Gospel reminds us that it is only by following Christ’s path that we can receive the joy of the Kingdom of Heaven. As we heard on the Sunday of the Cross, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) It is only through accepting defeat of our own will and desires that we gain victory over our selfishness. Following the way of the cross is the way in God makes all things possible for us to enter into His kingdom.
XI. Conclusion: The Christian life is a life of fasting, prayer, and repentence. Within the life of Christ is contained an active Faith where we must heed the Lord’s command to take up your Cross and follow Me. This involves giving up the desire to dominate others, to seek vainglory, to elevate our own selves in the eyes of our fellow man as well as with ourselves; in short, to give up our ego and pride. This is the way of the Lenten season and without these sacrifices, fasting is useless.
In the ancient Church, the Mysteries of God were protected among the faithful. One reason why stems from the Gospel Lesson today. Those outside the Faith do not understand what taking Christ’s baptism and cup really means. Those people in the world may see the martyrdom of Christians and not understand the joy it brings that comes from Christ’s Resurrection. The Christian Faith can only make sense when repentance, struggle, and self-sacrifice are viewed through the lens of the Resurrection.
The joy of Christ’s Resurrection is the great secret that only the faithful know. Only the faithful can know this secret, for it is a joy that is experienced only by freely renouncing the glittering lights of Egypt in order to unite oneself to Christ in the likeness of His death by taking up the ascetic disciplines of the Fast in the spirit of repentance and of obedience to His holy commandments. (Fr. K Paul Wesche)
References
Dimopoulos, G. (1971) Orthodox Sermons for All Sundays of the Year. Christian Orthodox Editions. Scranton. PA. pp. 42-44.
Adapted from The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, Vol. 4, compiled by Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra and translated from the French by Mother Maria Rule and Mother Joanna Burton (Chalkidike, Greece: Holy Convent of the Annunciation of Our Lady, 2003) pp. 295-298.
Medakovic, M. (2009) retrieved from http://www.saintgregorypalamas.com/2010/02/fifth-sunday-of-great-lent-sunday-of.html on April 6, 2011.
Wesche, P. (2010) Retrieved from http://www.sthermanmpls.org/administration.html on April 6, 2011.
