Homily - The Myrrhbearers, the Living Christ, and the Living Church

On the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers, this homily examines the temptation to treat Christ as a figure of the past rather than the Living Lord. It explores how even faithful Christians can reduce Him to something studied at a distance—especially in an age of endless religious content. Grounded in the Church’s sacramental and communal life, the message calls us to encounter Christ where He truly speaks: in His Body. The result is both comforting and demanding, as the living Christ not only teaches, but calls us to repentance and transformation.  Enjoy the show!

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Homily for the Myrrhbearers
St. Mark 15:43–16:8; Acts 6:1–7

Today we celebrate the holy Myrrhbearers: Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, the most holy Theotokos, Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Clopas, Joanna, Salome, Mary and Martha, and Susanna—those who loved Christ enough to come to Him even in death.

Their love is beautiful. It is courageous. It is faithful. But it is also, in one very important way, mistaken. They came to anoint a corpse. They came expecting silence, stillness, finality. They came to do one last act of love for someone who was no longer present to receive it. And that is where we must be careful—because we can do the same thing.

We sing again and again, “Christ is Risen!” But how often do we live as if He were not? Think about how we relate to the dead. We remember them. We honor them. We reflect on their words. We study what they said, and we try to apply it to our lives. But we do not expect them to speak to us now. We do not expect them to guide us in real time. And this is exactly how many Christians treat Christ. We treat Him as a figure from the past—a great teacher, whose words are preserved in a fixed collection of texts. If we want to know what He thinks, we go back and study what He said, like we would with Plato or any other historical figure.

Please—do not misunderstand me. We need the Scriptures. We must study them. But if that is all we are doing—if Christ is only someone we study—then we are treating Him as if He were dead. Because if He were truly risen—if He were truly alive—then we would expect Him to still be teaching. And He is.

Christ is alive—not only in heaven—but here and now. He lives in the hearts of the faithful. He lives in His sacraments. He lives most fully as the Head of His Body—the Church. And that means something very concrete: the Church is not a memory. She is not a museum. She is not an archive. She is alive.

And here is where the danger comes in—because just as we can treat Christ as if He were dead, we can also treat the Church as if she were dead. We do this when we reduce her to an institution, when we treat her traditions as relics instead of life, when we experience the Liturgy as repetition instead of encounter, and when we assume that nothing truly happens here—nothing new, nothing real—only the preservation of the past. We do this when we think, “I already know what the Church says,” “I’ll decide how to apply it,” or “I’ll take what is helpful.” But a living body does not work that way.

If Christ is alive, then His Body is alive. And if His Body is alive, then it speaks—not just in the past, but now. In the hymns, in the prayers, in the canons, in the counsel of those who are faithful and wise, in the real, sometimes difficult life of the parish—where we are taught through living out our salvation with one another, in patience, repentance, and love—and in the quiet voice that speaks when we have learned to be still.

And this leads to the second reaction—the more difficult one. It is one thing to doubt that Christ is speaking. It is another thing to realize that He is. Because “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). A dead teacher can be interpreted. A living Lord must be obeyed. A dead teacher can be studied at a distance. A living Lord sees you, knows you, and calls you to change.

And here is one of the ways we avoid this. We listen to the Church—but at a distance. We listen through podcasts, through videos, through discussions online. We hear sermons, teachings, arguments, explanations. And again, these things can be good. But notice what happens when this becomes our primary way of listening. We receive the words, but not the life. We hear, but we are not known. We learn, but we are not accountable. We can pause it, skip it, choose one voice over another, agree or disagree without consequence. In other words, we remain in control.

But that is not how the living Christ teaches. The living Christ teaches through His Body—a Body that we must enter, a Body that sees us, a Body that corrects us, a Body that calls us to repentance, a Body that we cannot curate or control. You can learn about Christ anywhere, but you can only be taught by Him within His Body. To receive Christ only as content—even Orthodox content—is still, in a subtle way, to treat Him as if He were not fully alive. Because the Risen Christ does not simply inform us; He forms us.

It is much easier to interpret what Christ said two thousand years ago—indeed, much easier to interpret what the Councils and Fathers said hundreds of years ago—than it is to hear what He is saying to you today. Because interpretation can be shaped by our pride, by our ego. Obedience cannot.

So how do we learn from the living Christ? The answer is not new. We give our lives—our bodies, our minds, our souls—to Him and to His Church. We pray. We enter into the Liturgy. We love our neighbor. We learn from the Fathers. We seek counsel. We quiet ourselves so that we can hear—not because this is a system, but because this is where He is: ministering to us, teaching us, healing us, enlightening us.

The Myrrhbearers came looking for the dead. Instead, they encountered the Living One. And that is the same invitation given to us. Do not come here to remember Christ. Do not come here to study Him from a distance. Do not come here as if nothing real is happening. Come here to meet Him.

Because He is not in the tomb. He is not confined to history. Christ is risen. Indeed He is risen—and He is with us, here, now, and always.