Brother Nathanael - 07-25-2017 - The Church Is Our True Country
Aired: 2019-12-17
Duration: 03:12


=== The Church's Unbroken Continuum (03:11) ===

[00:00:01]  We're living in days of alienation.
[00:00:03]  In the name of peace, we wage war on each other.
[00:00:07]  In the name of honor, we smear the other side.
[00:00:11]  And with broken families, broken hopes, and broken morality, we are estranged even from ourselves.
[00:00:19]  We're in search of a country, a country great again, but the sins of the past have come back to haunt us.
[00:00:27]  Best to look forward to the world to come.
[00:00:31]  It's found in the Church, our true country, whose borders are marked by transformation and rebirth.
[00:00:38]  Nothing pie in the sky about it.
[00:00:41]  The Church is the embassy on earth of the heavenly Jerusalem above.
[00:00:46]  Here the Lord Jesus Christ is present on His throne, not absent from the world at all.
[00:00:54]  We breathe a different air here, where heaven joins earth, transfigures it, and unites humanity with divinity.
[00:01:02]  No fake news here, but good news of forgiveness of sins and fellowship with the saints.
[00:01:09]  And we go within to the Kingdom of God inside us, birthed by baptism, watered in prayer, and nourished through Holy Communion.
[00:01:20]  We savour the Lord's Supper, not fast food for the masses.
[00:01:26]  It is served not by robots, but by the successors of the Apostles, of which the Orthodox Church enjoys an unbroken continuum.
[00:01:36]  It's been said that a country's culture resides in the hearts of its people.
[00:01:42]  Rediscovered in Russia, where a Christian culture ripens within the hearts of both rulers and the ruled, while a culture of division and animosity splinters any shred of unity that's left in America.
[00:01:58]  And when once upon a time December was a month of joy in America, we're stuck with Hanukkah menorahs that unites synagogue with state and denies the birth of Jesus Christ.
[00:02:11]  The Maccabees without the Messiah only means wars and rumors of wars for the Jews.
[00:02:17]  But the citizens of the church, with Christ's birth in their hearts, celebrate and taste of God's kingdom to come.
[00:02:26]  We have an altar, Christ's own festal table, whereof they have no right to eat who await a sham Jewish temple, awash in stinking animal sacrifices that has no priesthood, no atonement.
[00:02:42]  For without a priesthood, Jewish worship is worthless.
[00:02:47]  But the church's priesthood is after the order of Melchizedek, foretold by the prophet David with Christ as high priest.
[00:02:55]  Where the apostles' successors of bishops accomplished the new covenant sacrifice.
[00:03:01]  I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God, the psalmist said, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
[00:03:09]  America has fallen.
[00:03:11]  Everyone knows it.