Sermon for the 9th of July - Fifth Sunday after Trinity

The ancient Greeks had an expression that was used when someone finds themself in an impossible situation in life (we have all been there) – when they have two choices and don’t want to take either of them, but they have to make a decision in order to move on. Then, they have, as was said, to ‘put on the harness of necessity’, make their decision for good or ill, and take the consequences. They are constrained by their Fate.

A chain of cause and effect follows which nothing can stop, unless a god or goddess intervenes on their behalf. Take King Agamemnon, commander of the Greeks during the Trojan War, for example. He has a problem. Because he has offended the goddess Artemis, his fleet is becalmed, the winds will not blow and he cannot set sail for Troy. The only thing that will appease the goddess is the sacrifice of his youngest daughter Iphigenia. What should he do? He must fulfil his destiny, he must get his army to Troy but he does not want to kill his daughter. Agamemnon is in an impossible situation so he has to ‘put on the harness of Necessity’. He sacrifices his daughter, the winds of Fate blow and he sails off to win victory at Troy. But, as the Classics scholar E.R. Dodds points out: ‘… a man who wears such harness has indeed lost his freedom, but a man who puts it on might have refused to do so’… but he did not.
Of course, later on, Agamemnon gets his come-uppance and it is not a pretty sight! And the cycle of blood-letting would have gone on and on, generation after generation, if Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, had not intervened and appeased the Furies, always thirsty for blood, who cried out for vengeance in the name of justice.

Now contrast the idea of putting on the ’harness of necessity’ with ‘my yoke is easy’. Now I know a harness sounds rather similar to a yoke, but it is, I think, slightly different. A harness controls something or someone, whereas a yoke (defined as a wooden crosspiece fastened over the necks of two animals so that they can pull a cart or a plough) links two creatures so that they can work together and are stronger.
This is where we can see how the light of Christ pierces the pagan world. Fate cannot be altered, if the implacable Furies called for a blood feud, what can stop them? It is true that Wisdom in the form of Athena flatters them and coaxes them into submission ¬ but for how long? The Furies are still at large in our world today, as we see everywhere from domestic gun crime to the cluster bombs that are being dropped on innocent people in Ukraine and Russia. The blood-letting, the vengeance in the name of justice continues…

But here another completely different force at work. ‘My yoke is easy’… You can just slip into it. It suggests a lightness of touch that gives a profound result. This is a practical piece of advice for those who are trying to follow Christ. When we work or pray together it is certainly easier …  as he tells us: ‘where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am among them… ’ We can see clearly that, as one body, we are stronger. This is my body given for you…

Then there is a second element… ‘and my burden is light’. It sounds like a play on words and a contradiction in terms! How can something heavy, like a burden, be light. But it can be if we submit to a higher force ¬ as Christ, himself, does. Here, light can mean ‘illuminated’ and also ‘weighing very little’, and both can be true ¬ but we can’t bear the burden alone. This is the difficult bit. We have to work, all of us, yoked together and submit to something higher. Then our yoke will be easy and our burden will be light…

Now, let us hear what a 17th-century Orthodox monk named Agapios Landos has to say on the subject:
‘And in order not to be timid and low-spirited, always remember that where the sorrows of the world are, this is where there is the heavenly consolation of the Holy Spirit. The more our nature fights and opposes us, the more Grace helps us, which is stronger than nature.

So, it is a yoke that we carry, but it is a sweet yoke, it is a load, but it is a light load. Because what nature makes heavy, Grace relaxes in a miraculous way. It is sorrow and yoke, but the power of mercy of the Divine Grace wears away the weight of the yoke and eliminates it.

So, if with the thought of the yoke, you become timid and careless and lazy, let you become willing to fight with the thought of the mercy of the Divine Grace and even more with the expectations of the treasure of the eternal Happiness.’

From Salvation of the Sinners a devotional work written by an Orthodox monk Agapios Landos in 1671. (translated by Dr Nick Stergiou)



Biographical note:
AGAPIOS MONACHOS, a-gɑ̄´pi-os mo-nɑ̄´kos (‘Agapios the Monk’; Athanasio Lando): ascetic writer of the Greek Church; born at Candia, Crete, toward the end of the 16th century; died between 1657 and 1664. After a wandering life, he joined a monastery in Mt Athos but found it hard to submit to the strict discipline there. He is one of the most popular religious writers of the Greeks. His excellent translations from Latin, Greek, and Italian into the vernacular made many ancient devotional works accessible to his people. Although he was Orthodox, he was influenced by Roman Catholicism and, in his works, he quoted Peter Damian and Albertus Magnus as well as Ambrose, Augustine, and others. In penance he distinguishes between the contritio, satisfactio, and confessio; and, in the Lord’s Supper, he accepted the doctrine of transubstantiation without using that term. The question of his orthodoxy was seriously debated in the 17th century by the fathers of Port Royal and representatives of the Reformed Church (cf. J. Aymon, Monumens authentiques de la Religion des Grecs, The Hague, 1708, pp. 475, 599). The most important of the works by Agapios is the Salvation of Sinners (1641), a devotional book for the people. His Sunday Cycle (1675), a collection of sermons, was also much prized. His writings went through many editions, especially those containing biographies of the saints; as Paradise (1641), New Paradise (c. 1664), Selection (1644), and Summertide (1656). The first three contain translations from Symeon Metaphrastes…………………………Philipp Meyer