Hey dear ones, God bless you.
Thanks for tuning in.
I have a reflection for you today that I'm entitling "Organized Religion".
"Organized Religion".
For 30 years, I've heard as a pastor,
as a priest of the church.
I've heard reference of organized religions
by people who are frustrated with their religion.
And who are abandoning their commitments
and their promises to God to practice it.
And, I heard this from the very first days
after my Ordination.
When I was first ordained, I was a mission priest.
I had a very small mission, a fledgling mission
that we were organizing.
And I was trying to win one of my charges,
one of my dear parishioners, to a more faithful Christian life.
And when I speak to him about the importance
of faithful attendance at worship, and placing commitment
to the sacraments and the preparation for interception of the sacraments
at the top of his list in his life.
And he said to me,
"Father, I just find that I feel much closer to God
and I pray better in nature.
So I like to go out in the woods, instead of going to church."
That was from the beginning of my pastorate,
and I've been hearing this ever since.
In fact, I've heard two references to people not believing.
Serious Orthodox Christians saying that they don't believe
in organized religion anymore, they aren't practicing religion.
I've heard this twice in a week, in a single week.
So evidently, three decades after being ordained,
this grotesque excuse for abandoning sacred vows to God
to practice our faith in the church, hasn't lost its potency.
It's still very commonly referred to as some sort of justification
for not participating in the community life
in the sacred koinonia of the church,
and not remaining faithful to the church to the end,
which is such an important thing for Christians to do.
In fact, all traditional religions, all significant religions
in human history have been highly organized.
There is no such thing as a influential world religion
that isn't highly organized.
And, certainly, the one true religion revealed from Heaven by God
to save the human race and redeem the cosmos
is highly organized.
It's highly organized.
In fact, we see in the Old Testament, tremendous organization.
We see Priests and Levites, and their duties articulated
in great detail, with levels of accountability.
Sacrifices, the nature of worship and how it's to be done.
The organization of singers and readers, on and on.
So, in the Old Testament, the Jewish faith was revealed by God,
through Moses and developed under King David,
and the Prophets in great detail, in great organization.
And, in fact, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
Well, He loved to pray in nature to His Father.
He liked to retreat to the hilltops and to pray in the gardens,
and yet, He also participated most directly and faithfully
in organized religion, both in the synagogue and the temple.
He was faithful growing up in Sabbath after Sabbath,
participating in the worship of the synagogue.
And He kept all of the feasts as God's faithful and true servant.
And when Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the fullness of His ministry,
set forth for us the nature of Christian worship
and inspired His Apostles.
He gave them also great detailed instruction about organization.
He had His three, He had His Twelve, He had His 70.
And then, by His Holy Spirit, after His precious cross
and His three day entombment, and then His resurrection from the dead,
and the descent of the Holy Spirit,
He gave great detailed instruction,
and inspired His apostles how to organize the church.
The church is His Body. And it's not an invisible body.
Bodies are highly organized, thank God.
And when they are not highly organized, they collapse.
And, so we see in the gospels not only does our Savior make reference
to the process of building His church, but he guides the apostles very clearly
on how to hear confessions, how to retain and remit sins,
how to deal with matters of church discipline.
Texts like these are found in Matthew 16; Matthew 18; et cetera.
And then as you see the acts of the apostles developing,
you see the ordination of the sacred deacons
who were to assist the apostles and the apostles organizing their lives
around prayer and the ministry of the Word,
and delegating many charitable acts of the church
to the diaconate, (Acts 6).
You see in Acts, Chapter 14, verse 22, Saint Paul ordained.
That's a very highly organized action.
He ordained presbyters, priests, in every church.
And in the Epistles, you see the detailed working out
of the early organization of the early church,
including such things as the nature of ordination,
the laying on of hands, the bestowal of spiritual gifts in ordination.
Lists of qualifications for priests and deacons.
You see guidance that Paul provides bishops,
like Timothy and Titus, his spiritual sons.
The whole section known as the Pastoral Epistles,
1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus;
absolutely chock full of detailed organizational guidance,
given from Saint Paul to the early church.
1st Corinthians, details on the celebration
of the Holy Liturgy and the distribution of the Eucharist.
If someone doesn't believe in organized religion,
they don't believe in Jesus Christ.
And they don't believe in the church that He established.
And they don't believe in the Bible.
The New Testament climaxes with the Books of the Apocalypse
in which heavenly worship is revealed.
The great door to heaven is open and John sees
what's going on in the next life,
and, what do you know?
The worship of God around His Throne is highly organized.
As is, the new heavens and the new earth.
So, dear ones, this is not a good thing to say,
"I don't believe in organized religion."
That doesn't mean that the truth faith,
the Christian faith, is externalisitic.
Organized religion doesn't mean externalistic.
It just means serious, and big, and old.
And, if fact, you would expect the Holy Church,
which is 2000 years old,
and has been growing and filling the world,
and winning men and women to salvation for the last 2000 years.
You would expect that she would be highly organized and developed.
And, in fact, she is.
It doesn't mean externalistic.
If we are externalistic, then we're not being true
to the core organization of our faith,
which Our Lord and Savior gave to us, which is to build from the heart.
Our faith is a matter of the purification of the heart
and the transformation of the inner man.
But, we're real men with real bodies.
Collectively, our koinonia has real structure to it.
And the church isn't just
an invisible reality of spiritual communion,
but also a tangible reality of loved expressed,
and sacraments consumed.
And people, body and soul being healed and transformed.
Usually people say comments like this about organized religion,
"I don't believe in organized religion." And they 'poo poo' organized religion.
Because somehow they have suffered from aspects of the organization.
Perhaps they have been abused by this or that leader in the church.
Or, they've suffered some terrible injustice.
Or, they've been slandered or hurt in some way.
And, so this is a protective mechanism in their minds.
They're overreacting to the fact that the church is not perfectly organized,
and not perfectly living her life because the church
on earth, while true, is not perfect.
And, that has been the case since the time of its founding.
Read the Acts of the Apostles and look at how many traumas
the holy Apostles had to work through and to guide the church through.
That didn't allow people to say,
"Well, I don't believe in the organized church
that the apostles were establishing everywhere, in fulfilment
of their obedience to Christ."
If you separate yourself
from that community and from its organization,
you separate yourself from Christ,
because those that receive the apostles, receive Christ.
And those that rejected the apostles, rejected Christ.
So, this is my encouragement.
If you ever think that thought, banish it.
That you don't believe in organized religion.
You certainly do if you're a believer and a Christian.
And if you have suffered, don't allow yourself to overreact.
Instead, invest more in the church.
Contribute to her proper organization.
From the heart, and in the body.
Contribute to her health by a greater investment
to the integrity of the body of Christ.
We absolutely believe in and love the organized religion,
which the most Holy Trinity has bequeathed to man
as the locusts
in the church of Communion with Him.
God be with you dear ones.
I ask your prayers.
(Narrator)
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(Music)