The Unity of the Body
Sermon preached by Dn. James Wilcox on Sunday, June 1, 2025
Acts 20:16-18, 28-36; John 17:1-13
Today in the Orthodox Church, we gather on a day that is nestled between the Feast of the Ascension and our forthcoming celebration of Pentecost. And this particular day is set aside to commemorate the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. As you may already know, the First Ecumenical Council was held in the city of Nicaea in the year 325, which makes this year rather fitting for us on the Church calendar, because 2025 marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.
This Council after all, was a first-of-its-kind, in that it worked together as a gathering of Bishops across the Roman Empire to settle theological disputes, and to establish a formal doctrine around what we know to be true about God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Granted, one cannot simply draw a boundary around the living God with a simple definition, but in this case the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council were able to provide adequate language, by first understanding what God is not. By affirming what God is not, they were able to construct a basic statement of faith that the unified body of believers could use to profess their understanding of God. The final result, of course, was a rudimentary form of the Creed that we use in our divine services today.
And so, from the Creed we can affirm today our belief in “One God,” which is to say that we do not believe in three gods or multiple gods. We affirm also our belief in “One Lord Jesus Christ,” who is “begotten of the Father before all ages.” This affirmation means that we do not believe that Christ came into existence on the timeline of human history. Rather, we believe that Christ was begotten of the Father outside of time — before all ages — or before all things came into being, and is therefore, co-eternal with the Father. Lastly, we believe in One Holy Spirit “who proceeds from the Father.” We do not believe the Spirit is a second begetting of the Father, or a the manifestation of a second Son. We believe, rather, that the Spirit is co-eternal with the Father and the Son, and that the Spirit proceeds.
Simply put, when we speak about the nature of the Triune God we believe the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, and that the Spirit proceeds. Around these three persons of the Holy Trinity is a unity that cannot be broken, and around which the Church today seeks to model itself —as an unbroken and unified body of believers who retains a diversity of gifts to be utilized for the good of the Church! For we cannot come together as the unified body of Christ, if we suffer from any form of division. For this reason, a formal Creed was drawn up at Nicaea to provide not only a rudimentary doctrine of the faith, but to preserve the Church in unity, and to help guard against any divisions that might potentially arise when speaking on the nature of God.
In today’s Epistle reading there is a similar occurrence that takes place. As Paul is traveling to Jerusalem he summons together a small council of elders out of Ephesus in order to give them a warning. In his exhortation to them he gives them the following charge:
“Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son. I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them. Therefore be alert…” 1
There is a clear picture given in this warning from the Apostle Paul, which is not unlike the situation facing the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. Namely, that it is from within the body of believers that division will threaten, not from outside of it. For the body can only be divided when it is fractured from within. It is, therefore, essential that we hold to the rudimentary teachings about God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit that have been passed down to us through the centuries, for this is where our salvation lies! The faith we possess is not some passing trend or a way of life, which serves as a suitable alternative to worldly living. It is, rather, a confession of faith that demands our conformity to the reality of who God is.
I offer this because there are various movements in the Orthodox faith today which present themselves as being “Orthodox,” but truly are false versions of it, Some iterations of these stress that men should behave more “manly,” others lure women into becoming a 1950s version of themselves to raised up dozens of kids, and others, still, promote the rejection of medicine, or the necessity of belief in a literal 6-Day creation. All of these are distractions. None of them lead toward a proper framework of the faith that is inherently Orthodox. Moreover, none of these resemble any of the core tenets of the faith preserved from the early church councils onward. Long beards, head-coverings, fancy vestments and cassocks might make us feel like we’re more stridently Orthodox, but none of these can lead you toward your deification in Christ. This is accomplished only through the work of the Holy Spirit, who rests in the Son, who together leads us toward the unbegotten Father. And insofar as we demand these false versions of the faith as necessary, we seek only to create division.
When we proclaim the unified statement of faith given to us by the Fathers of the Nicene Council, we proclaim a Crucified Christ whose divinity is revealed to us in a most “unmanly” way. Jesus Christ gave up all power to become human, to suffer and to die on behalf of humanity. This was a man who was humiliated in the worst possible way. He was stripped bare, beaten, tortured and abused on behalf of ALL people. And He did this because he had compassion and empathy for all people. And He did this willingly in order to heal us and to bring us into right standing before God.
And here’s the kicker… By dying in this manner, Jesus Christ shows us what divinity is. To quote Fr John Behr, “Jesus shows us what it is to be God in the manner by which he dies as a human being.” 2 Divinity, in other words, was reveled to us in Christ’s death upon the Cross on behalf of all! And this means that we cannot look anywhere else to find divinity. Not in an ideology, not a passing trend, and not in some fancy way of life promoted on social media. To share in Christ’s divine nature — to participate in our theosis — we must do AS Christ did. Denying ourselves and giving ourselves on behalf of others, having compassion and empathy toward them, to restore them to their rightful place as human beings in the image of God. If we can learn to take up our faith in this manner — acting as Christ did — we welcome the Spirit of God among us. And like the disciples at Pentecost, our inner transformation will begin as the Spirit descends within us and unifies us as one mind and one body, glorifying the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who is one God, indivisible and undivided! Amen.
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1. Acts 20:28-31a, NRSVue
2. John Behr, Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image, (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013). 21.