When Christ was about to be crucified, He prayed for the Church. He prayed that we might know Him. He prayed that we would have life in Him. He prayed that knowing Him as Father, Son and Holy Spirit would mean eternal life. The Church has protected that truth ever since.
My brothers and sisters, today the church commemorates the fathers gathered at the first ecumenical council, and this is important for us 2,000 years later because I’m often asked, how can we be so sure about what we teach as Orthodox Christians? How do we know that we have the truth?
You’ve heard me say so many times, there are more than 45,000 denominations of Christianity in the world. 45,000 different answers to, “Who is God?” It boggles the mind. It’s no wonder people ask me, “How do you know you’re the one right?” And my response is always, “I’m not the one that’s right. It’s the church that’s correct.”
It’s the church, my brothers and sisters, that has been protecting the truth of God since the apostles themselves were promised the truth by Christ. And this morning’s gospel, Christ – setting the scene for you. This prayer is taking place before he goes up on the cross, and he’s praying to the Father, and he’s praying for the unity of the church, that we may be one as Christ is one with the Father.
But he also says this. He says, “So that the Son may glorify you, as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him.” And now listen to this: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
You see, my brothers and sisters, eternal life is not something that doctors give to us. We try and try and try to live forever through modern medicine. We spend millions and billions, maybe even trillions, who knows anymore, just to stay alive on Earth. And what is always the result? We end up right here in a box. The box might be pretty, but it’s a box.
You see, my brothers and sisters, eternal life is not something that the world can give us. Eternal life is to know God. Not know about God, that’s something in our brain. We can learn about God. We can learn his teachings. We can learn his history. We can learn his power. That’s learning about God, but that’s not knowing him.
Knowing him, my brothers and sisters, is only through holy communion. And no other church on the face of the Earth has the truth but the Orthodox church. Now, some people may not like me saying that, but either Christ is true or he’s not. Either Christ said the truth in the gospel or he did not. And his promise was that the apostles would know the truth, guided by the Holy Spirit.
We are the only church on the face of the Earth, forget the other 44,999, you can trust, not because of me, not because of Metropolitan SEVASTIANOS, but because everything we teach has been given to us by the apostles, who received it directly from God. We can trust the church. We can trust the truth of the church. It’s not some magical experience. The church has worked hard for 2,000 years to keep the truth. We only teach what the apostles taught.
And the apostles, my brothers and sisters, taught that to know God is to be in communion with him.
Now, some ask, and I’ve heard this so many times, “We’re all Christians, Father. We’re all the same.” We may all believe in Jesus Christ, but I’m here to tell you, it’s the absolute truth: the other 44,999 denominations believe something different about Jesus Christ. It’s that simple.
And so when we say we are in communion with the Russian church or the Bulgarian church or the Serbian church, these are the churches, my brothers and sisters, who maintain the same truth of God. We are not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church. We are not in communion with the Lutherans and the Presbyterians and the Baptists, etc, the other 44,000.
We hold the truth, and that is what we are celebrating today. From the very beginning, God has given us this truth, but it isn’t intellectual. Stop trying to make it a brain exercise. Allow it to be a faith exercise, to live the life that the apostles have given us, to live the life of communion with God, the true God, not a false God.
This is our call, my brothers and sisters, as Orthodox Christians. This is what so many in our country are coming to discover about the Orthodox church, our consistency and our loyalty to the truth of the very first church in Christ.
Don’t give up the truth. Don’t allow yourself to be entertained away, to be fooled by the world. Our church, my brothers and sisters, is not out of touch with anything. We are the most in touch with the world as any other church in the world because we know the true God, as we have been proclaiming and as we have been honoring and worshiping for these 2,000 years.
Keep the faith, my brothers and sisters. Be loyal to the church because the church is loyal to Christ. It doesn’t mean our friends are bad. It doesn’t mean our friends are necessarily going to hell. It also doesn’t mean all of us are going to the right place either. We ourselves have a lot of work to do. None of us is perfect. I know some of you think it’s me, but it’s not.
But the church is perfect because the church maintains the truth of God. Glory to God.
