Sinai and the Little Mountain - Sermon on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers (2025)

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. AMEN

INTRODUCTION

To put in words what has been manifested through deeds is no small task, but look around you, and it will be the most immediate.

A cruciform church with a central dome out of which the creator looks down and blesses his creation, thick masonry walls where painted frescoes are able to absorb into its surface, eight lofty plastered columns modeled after the 14th century Stretensky Monastery in Moscow, on which arches sit to support the roof covering the narthex, the nave, the base of the dome, and into the altar, creating an airy but not unmanageable height that allows light to descend from above (not below), an exposed timber truss roof made with the soft warmth of Douglas fir, a wrought iron polyeleos chandelier with verses from the Exapostilarion for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross our patronal feast, a travertine floor with classical square and round shapes in a variety of mosaic patterns that surround the central medallion under the dome. The whole design and theology is intended to transpose Orthodox architecture into rural America through a simple style common to historic precedent and thereby attempting to elicit an innate response of connectedness, familiarity, a resonance with not only the human soul, but the whole human person, not just to the mind or heart, but the whole person - what you see, what you hear, what you touch, what you smell - sensory and soul -  that leads one to pray to God.

You who gave a little, and you who gave a lot, are the reasons we are in this church today. You have given to the monastery, but you have also given to God, and at each Liturgy, you are all commemorated, because by building churches on earth, you secure the eternal habitation in heaven for yourself.

From the donation of the land to the conception of an idea to the architect’s draft of the final plans, contractors, managers, engineers, inspectors, consultors, advisors, suppliers, deliverers, laborers, electricians, plumbers, masons, roofers, glass blowers, metal workers, and all laborers and artisans are a response to the prayers of Fr. Seraphim (Fr. Panteleimon in schema), and of this monastic community, and of all those who love it. Yet, all of this would not have been possible if it had not pleased God to bring it to completion, a monastic catholicon where God and the heavenly world are experienced and known.

It is a home for you monastics; it is a refuge for a beleaguered world, a haven for the storm-tossed; it is a light in the darkness, and a beacon in the Orthodox world.

We broke ground on Monday, November 9, 2020, the feast of the Martyr Nestor of Thessalonica, in the thick of the COVID pandemic, and 1875 days later, here we are, and from this day forward, prayer will be offered here continually. Today is the 29th Sunday after Pentecost, two Sundays before the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, the Sunday wherein we commemorate the Holy Forefathers of Christ, his genealogy according to the flesh, who lived by faith, and of the Hieromartyr Hilarion Archbishop of Verey, that fearless defender of the Church, who died at the hands of the Soviet atheists.

The Two Futures

Two futures now come into focus, which are not in opposition but in tandem. The first is a larger church that, as a refuge, calls the world-weary to itself, offering rest within these walls and healing in a sick world.

When Elder Ambrose began the construction of the Kazan-Shamordino Convent, it could not be built fast enough to accommodate the influx of those who sought his help, from the poor to the wealthy, the infirm to the healthy. As his biographer notes,

Those who wished to enter the newly opened community flocked to it so suddenly that scarcely had they built a house than twice as many were already waiting for a new dwelling. And whom did the Elder accept and settle in the community he built? The greater part were in dire poverty: widows and orphans, and also the blind, the lame, the sick, and in general, the women and girls left most destitute by fate.[1]

The second future is the beginning of a permanent church in Holy Cross Monastery, a living organism that sets the rhythm of monastic life. A church that opens up the heavenly life to the hearts of all those who enter therein.

In his early twenties, while studying at Oxford, the young Alexander Golitzin took a sabbatical from academic life to live on the Holy Mountain, seeking out a spiritual father, whom he found in the person of the great Elder Amilianos, who changed the course of his life, and his theological perspectives on Christian worship and the spiritual life. The following section is informed by his work on that relationship between the Heavenly Liturgy and the human heart.

The Church on High, the Church on Earth, and the Little Church of the Heart

The foundations of the Christian church begin in the Old Testament with the Temple that was modeled after the Heavenly Temple according to the Book of Exodus where God, speaking to Moses, describes in precise detail how the Temple is to be built and adorned, emphasizing, “See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain”(Ex. 25.40). For fifteen chapters, God explains to Moses how to build and adorn the temple and instructs him as to how the priests are to be chosen and serve in the Temple and use its implements, and conduct the services – the ark, the table, the lampstand; the curtains, the altar, the court; priestly garments, incense, oil, at the conclusion of which Moses receives the ten commandments and descends from the mount of Sinai to instruct the Israelites with what God had revealed to him, most notably in the construction of the Temple and in right worship.

The significance is that the Temple with its trappings and prescribed worship were not the conclusion of human intelligence or a creative genius, but was delivered to Moses in a vision, given to him by the hand of God, which the Jews understood and as the Apostle Paul reiterates saying that those who serve in the earthly Temple, “serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain’” (Heb. 8.5), because it is none other than the house and the throne of God.

“A Temple stood in Jerusalem for almost one thousand years: from the time of the First Temple, built according to biblical tradition in the 10th century BCE, during the reign of David and Solomon, till the destruction of the Second Temple in the 1st century CE. Solomon’s Temple, founded around 960BCE, was destroyed at the beginning of the sixth century – 597-587BCE, to be precise – by Nebuchadnezzar. The Second Temple, built around 515 BCE after the edict of the Persian king Cyrus in 538BCE remained standing until 70CE, when the Romans razed it to the ground.”[2]

Both Jew and Christian had to deal with the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, and it is exactly their respective handlings of the missing center - and thus the place of God’s abiding in Israel - that marks their schism. The development of the Early Christian Church’s building and the execution of its services reflect directly from Moses’ experience on Sinai, and imitate the Old Testament Temples as Abp. Alexander Golitzin notes. However, for the Jews, the presence of God would now dwell in the holy text itself, the Torah, where communion with the written word would be had, and out of which proceed the written oral tradition, commentaries, and the laws of the Mishnah and Talmud.[3]

The Church on Earth

At the heart of Temple worship and Christian worship is the presence of the hidden God revealed.[4] As the earthly Temple in the Old Testament becomes the residence of the glory of God, which Moses experienced on Mt. Sinai, so within the New Testament, the Church, the new Zion of God, becomes the special dwelling place of God, where he comes to be experienced and known and where he reveals Himself as He did to Moses on Mt. Sinai. “The Church is nothing more nor less than Israel in the altered circumstances of Messiah’s death, resurrection, and the… outpouring of his Spirit,” writes Vladyka Alexander.[5]

“For you have not,” writes the author of Hebrews, contrasting the Israelites at the foot of Sinai with the new people of the Messiah, “drawn near to a tangible mountain and burning fire and thick darkness... but to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem and ten thousands of angels in festal assembly (Heb.12:18-23).

To speak of “Zion” recalls the temple imagery, and in the New Testament, this imagery is applied to the Church. In the writings of the Apostle Peter, we see that the assembly is “the holy priesthood that offers the spiritual sacrifices”, and the believers are also, and at the same time, they are “living stones making a spiritual house”, which is to say, a temple (I Peter 2:4-9). Exactly the same thought occurs to the Apostle Paul in Eph. 2:19-22: You are citizens and part of God’s household. You are part of a building with the apostles and prophets as its foundation and Christ Jesus himself as its main cornerstone. As every structure is aligned on him, all grow into one holy temple in the Lord; and you too, in him, are being built into a house where God lives, in the Spirit.

The revelation of God to Moses on Mt. Sinai is the same experience that is brought into the Old Testament Temple, where God is experienced. However, this “Sinai experience” also continues into the New Testament Church. This is why, for the Feast of the Transfiguration, the appointed readings are from:

• Exodus 24.12-18 (where Moses is instructed to ascend the mountain, and then a cloud covers him, in which God teaches Moses), and
• Exodus 33:11-23, 34:4-6, 8, (where God speaks to Moses face to face, knowing him by name, and promising to be always with him and revealing Himself to him).

Sinai is a foreshadowing of Christ’s transfiguration on Mt. Tabor. It is this same glory that appeared to Moses, and that also appeared to the Apostles on Mount Tabor, where the face of God is seen in the face of Christ, alongside Elijah and Moses.

At the institution of the Holy Mystery of communion, celebrated on Holy Thursday, we read from Exodus 19.10-19 where Moses is instructed about how the people are to prepare for God, who is about to descend on the peak of the mountain, a preparation that foreshadows our preparation for Holy Communion. The glory that fed Moses for forty days on Sinai is the same glory that feeds the faithful in the Eucharist.

The Christian experience of God in the earthly Church always recalls and repeats the Sinai experience, for it is the way God is experienced here in Church.

The Little Church of the Heart

Apart from the Heavenly Temple and the earthly Temple that existed in the Old Testament and now as the Christian Church after the New Testament, there is a third temple: the little Church of the heart, as described in early Syriac Christianity. This is the place, spoken of by the Prophet Jeremiah when he writes, “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people”(31.33); and when the Prophet Ezekiel writes, “ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh”(36.26). It is here where God communicates with the individual, as the Apostle Paul says, “you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,” (Rom. 8.15-16). And later, “For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell in them and walk among them.” (2 Cor. 6.16). Or, as a recent holy man has said, this is God’s revelation [of Himself] to the human heart.

What does all this mean? It means, brothers and sisters, the earthly temple is necessary in order to open up the heavenly temple to the temple of the heart. “In other words,” writes Vl. Alexander, “the liturgy of heaven becomes an accessible experience – even in this world… through the [earthly temple’s] sacraments and a corresponding ascesis of heart and body.”[6]

This is why St. Paisios’ spiritual father, Papa Tikhon, while celebrating the Divine Liturgy, would often pause during the Great Entrance during the Cherubic Hymn, only to resume a half hour later. When someone asked him what had happened, he answered in his broken Greek:

“Guardian angel take me up. Guardian angel take me back down.”

“And what did you see?”

“Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, Seraphim… heavenly choir… t’ousands, ten t’ousands”.

Beloved of God, this is our Orthodox Faith; this is our Orthodox Worship; this is our Orthodox Church.

CONCLUSION

And so here we are today, Mother and Fathers, brothers and sisters, our first of, god-willing, endless Liturgies. How blessed we are to be here today. However, is there some tragedy that is playing out because we are here and Fr. Seraphim (Fr. Panteleimon in schema) is not?  Are we here now, but orphaned by him? Should we not all have been here together with him, sharing in this moment, sharing in this festive joy? Ah, does that not sound so nice? But may we not be like those who have no hope, and be sad beyond what is healthy. For God saw fit to have it otherwise, for each of us. And in that, Fr. Seraphim would not want us to be sad, but to be thankful, to be peaceful, and to accept God’s all-loving providence.

Perhaps, but may we not forget that when he knew that he was dying, he thought no more of this church, but only of each of us. He sought not to be here with us in this place, despite his efforts up to that time, but to help us transition into a life without him. He gave us himself, and with his efforts, God helping him, he did his part to help make this church a reality. May his memory be eternal. And may we, those who live here and those who pilgrimage here, come to know You, O Lord, in this Church, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. Amen.

THROUGH THE PRAYERS OF OUR HOLY FATHERS, LORD JESUS CHRIST, HAVE MERCY ON US. AMEN.