St. Michael Russian Orthodox Church

July 5, 2009

In the early days of the fourth century AD, the persecution of Christians under the Emperor Maximian was in full swing. More than a decade before St. Constantine would see the image of the Life Giving Cross in the sky as he stood near the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber River in Rome (by which sign, he conquered, winning the crucial battle over Maximian’s son in a battle that served to consolidate Constantine’s power as Emperor and that, as a result, brought the persecutions to an end), a Roman army officer named Zeno was stationed in the land that we now call Turkey. Zeno reported to the governor, Maximus, and when Maximus under orders from the Emperor told Zeno to step up the Christian crackdown, Zeno, not unlike the centurion in today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 8: 5-13) (of whom Christ declared “I have not found so great faith”), refused, confessing his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and even being so bold as to try to convince Maximus to accept the One True Faith. Maximus furiously jailed Zeno and then did the same to Zeno’s servant, Zenas, when he tried to visit his master in prison (just as Christ tells us all to do). Zeno and Zenas were brutally martyred for the Faith and they are both honored today as saints, just as they are each July 5 in the Church calendar.

The city in which St. Zeno and St. Zenas were martyred is now called Alasehir, a town not too far from the Aegean Sea and south of Constantinople, the metropolis St. Constantine built up soon after the martyrdom of Zeno and Zenas, the metropolis he intended to become the second Rome, the new capital of a Christian Roman Empire--now, of course, Istanbul. But the ancients knew Alasehir by a Greek name much more familiar to us: Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. So here today on July 5 we commemorate spiritually the lives of two ancient men of Philadelphia, while we also commemorate secularly the lives of fifty six men who signed a document in the new Philadelphia that was first printed up for distribution just down the street exactly 233 years ago this very day: the Declaration of Independence.

Those 56 men signed up to these words written by Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness….” This wonderful concept, endorsed by 56 men of their own free will—and in direct opposition to the ruling authority, the British Empire—was based on their belief in one God—“that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Our democratic republic, Brothers and Sisters, was born 233 years ago yesterday out of the belief that all men are created in the image of God, and, as such, have the same unalienable characteristic that God has: “Liberty,” as Jefferson called it, but the Fathers of the Church had long before named it “Free Will.” God created the universe out of nothing. Why? Because He wanted to. He exercised His free will, His liberty. Man, created by God in His own Image, inherited God’s free will and, through that free will, Adam and Eve sinned. The Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky eloquently says: “The decadence of human nature is the direct consequence of the free decision of man.” Through man, sin came into the world, and through sin, death, for as Lossky continues: “The reason for this is not only that human freedom has created a new state…, a new mode of existence in evil, but also that God has placed a limit on sin, allowing it to end in death.” And he punctuates his point by quoting St. Paul (Romans 6: 23) “For the wages of sin is death.”

But we know, as the Orthodox faithful, that Christ came into the world bringing salvation to us sinners, that He trampled down the wages of sin by His own death on the Life Giving Cross. And He did that through His own Free Will, which, of course, He has as the second person of the Holy Trinity.

By free will, Zeno and Zenas challenged the might of the Roman Empire, and found salvation.

By free will, 56 men challenged the might of the British Empire, and gave us a country in which we are free to exercise our free will.

The question is—Will we? For if we do, then Christ may say of us, as He did of the centurion: "I have not found so great faith.”