In this video, Fr. Philip Hall challenges the worldly ideas of success and ambition, revealing the way of Christ. Discover why true discipleship means turning everything upside down and embracing the way of the Cross.
This is a sermon recorded on September 15th, 2024 at the All Saints of Lincolnshire Orthodox Christian Church, Lincoln, England.
Watch the full sermon on Archimandrite Philip’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8cayzXBh88
Fr. Philip:
If you want to follow after our Lord Jesus Christ, you need to accept a very different way of thinking about your life. The world wants you to be ambitious, to be taken seriously, to be after power, authority, status, and wealth. It wants you to surround yourself with things. This, says the world, is success. The world wants you to follow rules and customs and laws and precepts. Do these things, it says, and the world will owe you something—will owe you success. The world wants you to love only your friends and your family, and the world wants you to hate your enemies with all of your heart.
The world wants you to have worldly wisdom and knowledge to build yourself up, to impress other people. But those who follow the Lord Jesus Christ must turn all of that on its head. The Lord loved His enemies and forgave them, and we must do the same. The Lord displayed the wisdom of God, which to the world looks like mere foolishness—throwing His life away. The Lord did away with all of the laws, the customs, the rules. He Himself becomes all of that. We follow not those things, but we follow Him. We don’t follow some method of getting into Heaven or doing well in this world.
The Lord puts away our worldly ambition: “Lose your life,” He says, “lose this world, and you’ll gain life, and indeed you’ll gain everything.” God’s success looks very much like mankind’s failure. Ignore everything when following the Lord—whether earthly ambitions or heavenly ambitions—ignore them all and just keep to that narrow path of following the Lord. And that is called the way—the way of the Cross, the way of self-sacrifice, self-crucifixion.
Come after Him, for the upturned world is the one in which Christ lives inside you. Your prayers! God bless you! Amen!
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