[Sermon for Gaudete Sunday (III Advent Roman/VI Advent "Ancient"), December 11, 2022, at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona.]
✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.
“When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?””[1]
John the Baptist asked this question waiting out his last days in prison.
Flash forward almost three hundred years to Myra on the south shores of Asia Minor, where its bishop Nicholas also languishes in prison, put there as well by the orders of officials whom he angered by what he had to say. We have no record or journal of how he spent his time in prison, but it is entirely likely that he might have asked the same question, deprived of news from the outside world, when his very survival was in doubt.
The period in question was during the Great Persecution under the emperor Diocletian, lasting roughly from the year 299 AD until 305 in the West, and persisting in the East until 311, with its formal cessation in 313 with the Edict of Milan. The actual toll of the persecutions was never tallied, but many of the local churches were “widowed,” their bishops and their clergy killed outright, and many more saw their clergy survive, but only after unspeakable torture. When the emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea in 325, accounts of the proceedings made note of how many bishops and their attending presbyters and deacons were missing digits or other body parts because of the tortures inflicted on them. In the 1950’s and later in 2004 experts examined the verifiable relics of Nicholas of Myra to show that the bishop had sustained a broken nose as part of his incarceration.[2] He was one of the lucky ones. Many others were not.
It is entirely possible that while in these dark and forgotten hellholes these targets, for targets they were, asked Jesus in their prayers, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” When John the Baptist asked that question from a similar hellhole, this was the answer that Jesus sent:
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”[3]
Many of those Christians withering away in the shadows under Diocletian’s malice would have remembered this or had been reminded of it. Not only would they have remembered this, but these people left in the dark to rot and to be tortured and even killed had even seen others perform similar wonders in Jesus’ Name, and some of these unfortunates had in Jesus’ Name performed wonders of their own or would later come to do so once delivered from their despair.
Nicholas of Myra was one of those blessed, who suffered for not only taking no offense at Jesus, but for refusing to deny Him. Today we do not know much about him. He came from a Christian family, he was made a bishop at a relatively early age, but other historically verifiable biographical details are obscured by the passage of time and literary embellishment. His life and witness were remarkable enough however that many Christians who knew him or knew of him ensured his memory would not fade into the dim reaches of the past. One surviving account related how he rescued three unjustly condemned men by appearing at the last possible moment and unmasking the false witness who had taken a bribe. Another account, this time of a miracle, relates how he stilled the seas on a voyage to the Holy Land. Many of these accounts show his love for the poor and oppressed, interceding for the unjustly condemned, helping a poor family afford wedding dowries for their daughters, looking out for the welfare of the local children. That was Nicholas taking no shame in professing his discipleship and living out the Gospel of Jesus. Other examples just did not survive the ravages of over sixteen hundred years of time.
One account of Nicholas not being ashamed of Jesus, of some historical controversy, offers how much he loved the Lord. While no official record of him survives being at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, Nicholas was reputed to be there for at least part of it, up to an unfortunate incident where he proved that saints are decidedly not perfect people.
The Emperor Constantine convened this Council to discuss many theological and operational issues confronting a Church that was beginning to poke its head out of the trenches of an extended period of uneasy existence punctuated by short bursts of naked hostility. Its new friend on the Imperial throne was surprised to learn just how fractured this community was. He should not have been, as the Church had been under tremendous pressures and a few cracks in the walls should be expected. While they had an easier time handling issues like bishops trespassing in cities not their own, or determining how to calculate the Paschal cycle, one issue was proving to be a bit more difficult to resolve.
Some of you may remember the internet meme of a kid on Santa’s lap asking, “Ὁμοούσιος or ὁμοιούσιος?” and upon Santa’s expression of confusion the little boy snarling, “You’re NOT the REAL St. Nicholas!” This big issue of the Council was the determination whether Jesus was of the same being as the Father, ὀμοούσιος, or of a similar being with the Father, ὁμοιούσιος. The difference in spelling and pronunciation is a single iota, hence the saying, “Not one iota’s worth of difference,” but the difference in meaning had massive implications, and the Bishop of Myra was firmly in the ὀμοούσιος camp.
This was no minor linguistic quibble as some today may wish us to believe. If one adopts that Jesus’ substance, His essence, His core being is only like that of God, then it means that the work of the Cross and Resurrection is that of a righteous man, but only a man, which really costs God nothing. If there be no Divine substance to Jesus, then His Resurrection would be like any other resurrection attested in Holy Scripture, imposed from the outside and doing nothing, ultimately, to destroy the grip of Death and Corruption on Humanity. It would merely be a reward for one who suffered greatly to bring the news of the Kingdom of God to Israel, just like any other prophet in Israel’s history. Also, substantial portions of the early Christian witness in the Epistles and the Gospels themselves no longer make sense.
However, if one adopts that Jesus’ substance, His essence, His core being is shared with the Father, then it means that the work of the Cross and Resurrection is the work of God Himself, and costs God dearly. His Resurrection then becomes a Divine reordering of the Human Condition and not a reward for a special servant. It is this idea, ὀμοούσιος, the same Being as the Father, that suddenly renders all those “I AM” statements from the Gospels sensible,[4] that causes the spark of understanding for the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel[5] to spring to life. This union of the Person of the Father and the Person of the Word, of Jesus, in the same Being and the resulting union of Human and Divine has immense implications for the ultimate salvation of Humanity from the chains of Sin, Death, and Corruption. It was for this that Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, suffered a broken nose and years of imprisonment in one of the world’s most horrible prison systems ever.
It possibly explains an incident that historians doubt but likely did happen just because it was so human and so not acceptable for a saint or bishop of Holy Church to do.
Some say it was a random Arian, a person of the ὁμοιούσιος camp, or even Arius himself who during Council deliberations so got under the delegate from Myra’s skin, that he got up, walked over, and slugged him.
Now, this was not Nicholas of Myra’s first and only demonstration of a bit of a temper. Remember the story of the unjustly condemned? Apparently, he had come up and knocked the executioner’s sword out of his hand, then singled out the bribed official and chased him around the execution grounds. We are not told whether the esteemed bishop was shouting during this rather unseemly demonstration or quite how it ended, but it does paint a picture of a man who probably was working on issues with the sin of wrath. In fact, this little incident may be why we do not see Nicholas of Myra’s name in the list of bishops at Nicaea because he was being disciplined for this little display of pique. The accounts do not excuse his behaviour, but they do show us that sometimes even the holy can lose their composure and need re-reconciliation.
The point is that Nicholas of Myra believed that the Word was God, that the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us, that grace and truth came through this same Flesh, Jesus Christ, who has given us power to become the children of God.[6] He believed and that sustained him through the dark days of prison and fueled his love for the poor and the oppressed. Holy Nicholas believed Jesus to be God Himself, not some facsimile thereof. Holy Nicholas knew Him to be the One Who came to live among us, and that we should seek no other. That is the real St. Nicholas.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Nicholas the Wonderworker, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.
[1] Mt. 11.2-3 [2] Wilkinson, Caroline, "Archaeological Facial Depiction for People from the Past with Facial Differences", in Skinner, Patricia, Cock, Emily (eds.), Approaching Facial Difference: Past and Present, London, England: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018 as noted in the Wikipedia article on St. Nicholas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas#Bishop_of_Myra [3] Mt. 11.4-6 [4] Many such references may be found at https://dlddogmatics.com/2020/01/28/homoousios-or-homoiousios-notes-on-the-deity-of-jesus/ [5] Jn. 1.1-18 [6] Op. cit.