Fools for Christ

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The church which is popularly known as St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow is associated with St. Basil, the fool-for-Christ, who dared to rebuke Ivan the Terrible. It was built in the 1550s. Actually, only one of the chapels is dedicated to St. Basil.

For it seems to me that God has displayed us apostles at the end of the procession, like prisoners appointed for death. We have become a spectacle to the whole world, to angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are honored, but we are dishonored. To this very hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed…. (1 Cor. 4:9-11)

St. Paul says that he and those who support him are fools for Christ. He mocks his Corinthian opponents who claim to be wise and strong and much more honorable or respectable. St. Paul is happy to be considered a fool if that means he is being faithful to Christ.

Many saints, especially among the Eastern Christians, have also embraced the appearance of foolishness–i.e. craziness–in order to remain faithful to Christ. Some of these saints might have been people that we would now consider mentally ill. Others were not ill but so devoted to following the Gospel that they looked crazy to everyone around them.

Fidelity to Christ and the Gospel does in fact demand that Christians look at least a little bit crazy. The word for blessed in Slavonic is the same as the word for crazy. So Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the peacemakers…. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness…. Blessed are the meek…,” can also be understood as “Crazy are the peacemakers…. Crazy are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness…. Crazy are the meek….”

Many of the most famous fools-for-Christ were the saints who were crazy enough to rebuke vicious secular rulers, such as Ivan the Terrible, who committed mass atrocities against their people. Others were ascetics who renounced social norms to such a degree that they seemed crazy to their contemporaries.

See the essay on “Foolishness for Christ” in Wikipedia here.

Excommunicate Evil

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Detail of a late medieval Greek Orthodox icon showing Saint Nicholas slapping Arius at the First Council of Nicaea.

In the letter I wrote to you not to associate with sexually immoral people, not meaning the sexually immoral of this world in general, or the avaricious and the greedy, or the idolatrous, because then you would have to leave the world. Now I write to you not to associate with someone who bears the name of brother or sister and who is sexually immoral or avaricious or idolatrous or slanderous or a drunkard or greedy. You should not even dine with someone like that.

Who am I to judge outsiders? Shouldn’t you judge insiders? God will judge outsiders. Expel the wicked one from your midst. (1 Cor. 5:9-13)

St. Paul refers to a previous letter that he had written to the parish at Corinth; alas, that letter has not survived. But in that previous letter, the apostle had instructed the Corinthians to shun the immoral. He hadn’t told them to shun everyone who was immoral because that would mean that they would have to shun the whole world! He had told them to shun those who were members of the Church but who behaved as if they were not Christians. St. Paul told the Corinthians not to worry about outsiders; God will judge the non-Christians. St. Paul told the Corinthians that they were responsible for maintaining the discipline of the “insiders” and that they should not even have dinner with the Christians who denied the faith by such notorious, public misbehavior.

The practice of shunning those who repudiate the Church by their public misbehavior came to be known as “excommunication” as the Christians being shunned were “former communicates” who were now forbidden to receive Holy Communion; in Latin ex, out of, and communio or communicatio, communion — exclusion from the communion). They were excluded from the fellowship, the koininia, of the Church. Excommunication was seen as spiritual medicine and not a spiritual punishment as it was not intended to punish the excommunicated person but was meant to correct the excommunicated person and bring them back to the path of righteousness.

As the Church developed in Western Europe, two kinds of excommunication developed. One was called “lesser excommunication” in which the person was not allowed to receive Holy Communion but could still participate in other aspects of parish activities. The “greater excommunication” involved the public shunning that St. Paul describes. A person who was a “greater excommunicate” was forbidden to participate in public communal life in any way: the members of the parish in good standing were not allowed to speak or eat or do business with or associate in any way with a person placed under the “greater excommunication.”

A lesser excommunication was issued if a person either hit or attacked a priest in public or associated in public with someone who was under a greater excommunication. Lesser excommunications have not been issued since 1869.

A greater excommunication is issued if a person denies the Christian faith in public, promotes incorrect teaching, throws away or mistreats the consecrated Eucharist, or if a priest reveals what someone said in confession. Great excommunication can be forgiven if the public misbehavior stops.

St. Nicholas–of Santa Claus fame–is said to have been so angry at the heretic Arius that he slapped Arius during the first ecumenical council held at Nicea in AD 325. Arius has become the “prototype” or “model” of those who are excommunicated or cast out of the Church for notorious misbehavior or incorrect belief.

Yeast, Sincerity, and Truth

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Bread for the Eucharist with yeast (on the left) as the Orthodox use; on the right, Western hosts without yeast.

Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the entire mound of dough? Get rid of the old yeast so that you may be a new mound of dough, because you are unleavened; for Christ, our passover, was sacrificed. Hence let us celebrate not with the old yeast, not with the yeast of evil and sexual immorality, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Cor. 5:6-8)

The apostle Paul urges the Corinthians to expel the man who has a sexual relationship with his stepmother before his immoral behavior spreads and destroys them all. No one’s behavior is “private,” even if it is something a person does when no one else is there to watch.

The apostle mentions the passover sacrifice and the passover bread because the Passover feast was about to be celebrated (1 Cor. 16:8). He compares the man’s bad behavior to the yeast that must be thrown away before Passover starts. He urges the parish to not be contaminated by the man’s immoral behavior when they celebrate Passover; the apostle wants them to celebrate with the new bread of sincerity and truth, unspoilt by the “yeast” of insincerity, dishonesty, and lies.

According to Jewish practice, bread without yeast would only be used once a year–i.e. during the Passover. When the first Christians–who were Jewish Christians–would have known that and would have used leavened bread for the weekly celebrations of the Eucharist. Eastern Christians still maintain the practice of using bread with yeast for the Eucharist. Western Christians also used bread with yeast but began to use bread without yeast sometime in the 10th century.

The Eastern Christians saw the yeast in the bread that they used as a sign of the Resurrection; they could not understand bread without yeast as anything except a denial of the Resurrection. They also saw the use of bread without yeast as the rejection of the 4th Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon as the Armenians, who rejected Chalcedon, also used bread without yeast in the Eucharist.

Yeast gives life to dough that is totally dead–grain harvested, ground into flour, pounded and kneaded, passed through fire. Yeast can mean resurrection.

Yeast gives life to grape juice that is also totally dead–cut from the vine and harvested, crushed beneath feet, dead. The yeast makes the grape juice come alive and ferments it, making it wine.

But if there is too much yeast or the fermentation goes on too long the wine goes sour. It becomes vinegar. The bread can grow mold. Too much yeast can make the wine and bread corrupt. Rotten. Uneatable and undrinkable. The moldy bread and sour wine must be thrown away. Yeast means Resurrection but it can also sometimes mean corruption.

See my popular 2019 blog post about Communion wafers here.