A Protestant With Tons of Questions Visits a Beautiful Orthodox Church

what's up everybody i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour and we are fixing to go do one of my favorite things that we get to do together on this channel sorry i'm bumping things and that is visit a church that's representative of a tradition that's different from my own so for those of you who we haven't met yet i am a protestant i am reformed-ish and evangelical-ish and i've typically gone to churches that are built with economics in mind and are built with function in mind more than churches that tend to be more grand and impressive and loaded with theological art and theological meaning so i get pretty excited when i go to churches from other traditions that aren't built with the same economic concerns and that are built with grander theological concerns and all of the accoutrements and details i found that in catholic churches i found that in higher fancier protestant churches and i've found that in the orthodox church which is where we're going to go this time around we're headed to salt lake city utah to saints peter and paul orthodox church where we're going to meet father paul troubenbach and get a sense of a specific brand of orthodoxy called antioquian orthodoxy like antioch in syria where the christians were first called christians according to the bible so i showed up there i got a look at the outside the most distinguishing marks that caught my attention here were the domes the architecture that always gives away a church building is being orthodox in one form or another and these cool crosses up here that have a little different design i picked his brain a bit about that then we went inside and there's this cool entryway that i figured we'd just rush right through and get to the nave which is what people like me typically call a sanctuary but there's a bunch of art and icons and stuff packed with meaning even in the lobby and then we entered into this narthex and it smells like incense and the sound is different and the busy downtown salt lake stuff just sort of fades away and father paul explained that all of that is very intentional to reorient your senses away from what was going on outside to get your brain ready to go inside to this place of communal worship and then from there we walked into this glorious remarkable space that is where most of their worship happens and we're going to pick it up right there this is beautiful it's amazing there's no seating right stand up the whole time we do yeah uh orthodox services we stand almost the entire time every now and then we'll kneel in the scriptures almost every single case of somebody praying they're praying in a position of standing standing is the is the position of worship and of prayer i've been to a couple of other orthodox churches that had pews like i would see in churches i attend is there like a pew controversy is there a pew crowd in a non-pew crowd you can definitely find people who have a preference of one over the other um however however even as pews have become more common especially in america because that's just kind of what people expect but even in some of the countries like greece you'll find a lot of chairs and seating it does create some issues along with the worship for instance uh during great and holy lent we do a lot of prostrations which is bowing all the way down to the ground with your forehead to the ground can't really do that with pews you can't really bow down unless you're ready to whack your head when i was a kid yeah yeah okay so for the aesthetic nature of of our worship the fact that you know we're here trying to decrease ourselves decrease our egoism so there's room for christ within our hearts our hearts are so filled with ourselves we need we want to fill them with christ and so one of the ways we do that is we kind of embrace the discomfort of worship and we're here to just deny ourselves and focus all on god and part of that is you'll stand through maybe three four hours of services standing your legs your legs hurt your back aches but your heart rejoices yeah for us i think the the seating conversation is it's just an entirely practical one what's going to make this work the best for people what's going to get them in a situation where they're comfortable and receptive but i suppose even that has meaning i mean that sends a cue to people who attend church as to what we are hoping the experience is like right and so i'm not surprised based on how everything else here is looked that you have a theological rationale for right and at it that way and along with that there's also this sense of freedom within worship and that's one of the interesting things about the orthodox church is from the outside a lot of people see a lot of canons and rules and dogmas and history and they think it's all very constrictive but the reality is that this should help us bring out our true selves and there should be freedom within that freedom not only from sin but freedom to unite with god and so you'll notice during the services that there's a lot of walking around people may just feel the need to go light another candle or go venerate an icon or they see they see family members or god parents and the kids may want to go over and give them a hug what is that balance that you're going for between order and chaos this is this is our job as clergy is that we need to make sure that within that freedom we also maintain the purpose of why we're here we're here to worship god and that means that whatever we're doing can't be a distraction to others we have to make sure that our kids are learning how to pray in an environment like this which is why we really emphasize family prayer morning and evening get your kids used to standing in front of their icons and not having to move around and play and make a bunch of noise and so there is a balance to be had there of course there we need to make sure that the worship is not being distracted from with people moving around however we also want to make sure that people don't feel so restricted that that uh there's only one thing that you can and should be doing at every single moment but rather you want to be able to express yourself in in in the appropriate ways in worship what would it be like for somebody like me to show up and like visitors almost every single sunday and i always tell them just make yourself at home you can observe what other people are doing if you want to do that too you can if you don't want to you can take a seat be relaxed don't worry about it no one cares no one's here to watch you they're here to worship god and if they're they're here we're watching you more than they're worshiping god then they have a bigger problem than whatever you're doing you're mentioning that people might go and venerate an icon in the flow of worship right and i assume that's what we're looking at here up front that's what these are as you come in so i see these and to me i don't mean to be offensive i hope i'm not being offensive they look like like paintings like art but i get the impression that the paintings at my church that depict people from church history people from the bible mostly people from the bible and protestant church that that means something different than what an icon means what's the difference between the two right well with just a typical painting like you're talking about what's the purpose behind it depict just to depict somebody and to beautify the area with an icon there's there's much greater purpose because something actually is happening with this icon at least that's the theology of the church that there's there's some meaning being portrayed here and so you know ink on on a page doesn't necessarily make a book it has to come up in some certain form and then you know any book that you write just because the scripture is also ink on a page doesn't mean it's the same thing there's grace that comes out through reading the scriptures and so with this it's the same idea just as the scriptures are the written word of god we would see this as kind of the painted word of god and there's a theological reality and there's something more importantly happening with this veneration so what's happening is this is when we take uh when we take a figure that's depicted in this case this is saint piecios of mount dothos he reposed in 1994 died in 1994 so he's a relatively recent saint of the church very beloved in the church when i come and i venerate this what i'll do is i may come and maybe i'll do a bow i'll do the sign of the cross and then i'll venerate which means to kiss and i'm showing honor and respect so with the saints of the church we believe they can say with saint paul it's no longer i who live but christ lives in me and maybe even more importantly for me to live as christ and to die is gain and so we believe that this figure saint piecios is standing at the throne of god right now we believe that he's aware of us and so when i venerate his icon although i'm kissing wooden paint the veneration the honor and respect that i show the image is passed on to him and he in turn recognizes that and prays for us just as i would ask you know you to pray for me or you might ask me to pray for you we ask those who are uh are standing at the throne of god and constantly interceding for the world to pray specifically for us would you hold to the position that there's something more effective about his prayer than like say i don't know me well saint james does tell us the prayers of a righteous man availeth much and so what that tells us is more righteous more much it seems to indicate that not all prayer is necessarily equal not our prayer is exactly the same you know of course that doesn't mean that that i wouldn't want you to pray for me you know of course not i don't know your heart god knows your heart but with the saints these are figures that the church has officially said yes this is a person whose life is worthy of emulation who lived a life of righteousness and holiness and indeed whom christ actually dwelt within is it possible for the church to miss on a saint no no not in this case no um we believe that the church is led by the holy spirit with christ as the head in in the case of the what we would call the glorification or is often called the canonization of saints this is not something that we would miss on it's usually also why the church is very practical about this it usually takes about 50 years before the church will officially glorify a saint but in the case of saint paecios during his own lifetime everybody knew there's no question about this guy there's no question he's somebody you can go to and he'll know your name and all your problems before you open your mouth just being around him they could sense this as a man of prayer i mean countless miracles he's an incredible figure and so it didn't take very long with him are there things the church can miss on i feel like i've got something of an understanding that's starting to develop of the the western catholic notion of papal infallibility which i think is often overstated by outsiders and the fallibility of the church or lack thereof can the church make a mistake and in what areas is that possible yeah yeah to say can the church make a mistake is a really loaded question because when we talk about the church we're talking about just like christ was divine and human the church is divine and human the divine part can't make a mistake but the human part the human part is there to be made pure made whole really to be healed by the divine part and this is this is one of the primary images that we see given of the church in orthodoxy the church is a hospital for the sickness of sin so what do you expect to find in a hospital sick people yeah and sick people are going to mess up a lot and we see that throughout the history of the church and so we see councils that were called ecumenical that were later declared to be false councils we see obviously church leaders and ladies doing and saying things that were ridiculous sinful heretical all over the place but we believe that in the end the divine part will uphold and protect and guide the church and eventually it'll always prevail the true part will always prevail and sometimes it takes a while to kind of flesh out okay who are we looking at here this is saint john of san francisco we have a couple icons of him in the church we have this one here and then on what we call the econo stats he sees the figure on the far right um st john reposed in 1966 his relics his whole body uh continues to lie in state and in the uh russian cathedral in san francisco to this day where people go and ask his inner sessions is there meaning to the arrangement of the various icons is there pecking order sounds harsh but now i've already said it is there is there a ranking system among the saints or some more revered than others oh there certainly are some that are more revered than others that are some are just universally known for instance saint nicholas um is is universally known and when his feast day comes up in december somewhere in here somewhere yeah we do actually have an icon from back here okay i mean that's one i've heard of so you know i get all excited yeah st nicholas of myron lycea also known as st nicholas the wonder worker we have his icon here and there's not an orthodox christian alive who's been orthodox for more than a couple months who doesn't know his name and know a little bit about his life we also have the the icon of our church here saints peter and paul however there's really no rule for this in the narthex if we had the room we'd have an icon of christ and the virgin mary the theotokos but once you get inside of the church really there's no definitive order many orthodox churches don't have these especially if you have pews you don't have you have room for them so what the church will do is when they can they'll just put the figures that are really beloved in that particular community and in this case we have saints peter and paul the church the the church's patrons saint nicholas and then we have different figures that are just really beloved by this community i think it was a classy move not to have this one sponsored by coca-cola yes peter and paul i noticed this outside i meant to ask you there as well they're doing this brotherly kiss and embrace right is this a very old icon or is this something that needed to be expressed later as an attempt to bridge the gap between west and east no from from very early on from very early on you see these icons of saints peter and paul embracing and that's because of course the the little spat that they had the disagreement that saint paul describes in galatians as i think in the bible in the bible yes yes in that one in the new testament and and uh so it shows them embracing but beyond that there's also this really neat icon of the church as an ark and it shows it shows christ christ on it with all the apostles and it shows saints peter and paul i believe they're the rudder they're holding the church and the image of course is that if peter is the the apostle to the primarily to the jews and paul to the gentiles this shows the the unity in the homes of the church in this icon so as we move forward into the service i lied there the anchor you are being looked at oh the anchor the anchor yeah okay i think crisis what does it mean having them be the anchor i mean this is it the whole entire preach of the church is based on on the teachings of the the apostles and saints peter and paul represent the entirety of the apostolic lineage is that why we see that anchor image around in churches sometimes yeah i'm guessing so i'm guessing so okay so i walk in here and there's nobody else in the room except us and my friends here but it still feels like there's a lot of people in the room these icons are relatively life-sized it feels like you have company is that intentional yeah it's that that line in hebrew is uh to be surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses which is kind of the common sense that people want when they walk into the name of the church our hope actually is that this area that's just blue right now will eventually be covered likely with major feasts of the lord transfiguration crucifixion or maybe even of some of his parables which is a common thing again as i described that icons are kind of the painted word of god when people were illiterate this was one of the ways that they would memorize scriptural stories is by looking at the iconography so baptismal i assume just based on the fact that there's a faucet here that's right yep we have two fonts here we have the infant font which is that one right there i could fit in there you could you wouldn't want to okay fair enough and then we have the adult one which a little bit heavier but we can do it and there's the adult one with steps going down yeah that's big so these don't look like they're for dipping or sprinkling these look like they're for dunking right yeah baptizo literally means immersed and so the ideal in the orthodox church is always triple immersion the name of the father son and holy spirit but also triple because christ was in the tomb for three days so when you baptize a kid because so i'm assuming this is for babies too yeah yeah anything 40 days and old and older we can we can baptize the children how many days usually 40 days 40 days is when they're brought back into the church just like christ was brought to the temple but if there's an emergency we can do it even sooner i have seen some videos on the internet of what looks like just insanely vigorous orthodox baptizing is that an exaggeration or you really get after it like i see that we want to immerse them and so some priests do that by going really quickly some priests do it by holding the baby upside down and covering their mouth i mean there's a lot of different ways but we've been doing it for 2000 years i've baptized all four of my kids and they all came out okay i mean relatively so the vigorous dunk then is about not having the kid under the water any longer than needed but you want to fully right right now i've seen priests do this just at a steady pace the problem it really isn't with the baby because you know if you do this quick enough but not too quick the baby's fine it's really with the with the parents who kind of freak out about it so some priests just choose to do it really really fast is there any kind of achilles element to this i mean i mean it is a greek version of church where like if you're covering the baby does the water get between the hand and the baby i don't think we think too much about that everything else so okay okay cool yeah it's god who baptizes i mean this is we're asking god to to you know bestow the grace of baptism upon this child and i'm pretty sure he's not looking at it with his with his check mark box and saying oh uh oh so for the big one though i assume this is for someone who converts to orthodox so if i converted to orthodoxy i mean my dad baptized me in a baptist church when i was a kid right would i do this again or is it one baptism for all and as with so many answers it depends it really depends on the jurisdiction you're in which means that are you in a greek orthodox church a russian or a romanian in this case antiochian in our case in this parish we baptize everybody and the reason for that isn't because we reject everything that came before you in fact we really emphasize that people cannot come in with a bitterness towards their previous confession what you should do is be really thankful to god for the things that were good that came out of it and that led you to orthodoxy and the beautiful things about it those are all good things and we don't deny that however the orthodox baptismal service is very very full and there's a lot going on in it that most people don't get otherwise and so in order to receive the fullness of everything we like to make sure everyone gets baptized um i've had a lot of people who have been brought in just through chrismation which after after baptism in the new testament the apostles had the lane out of hand that became chrismation anointed with an oil and they would look back and regret it they weren't baptized in the orthodox church i've yet to have somebody who was baptized who looks back and says i wish that i hadn't done that what would the deprivation be what would you be missing out if you got baptized in a setting like i did became orthodox and then did get baptized again yeah if i ran through the entire service um i can just go do some highlight points we start in the back of the church because this is an entry into the church where we do exorcism prayers um we do exorcist prayers on everybody it's not that someone is demon possessed but rather that if we're going to fill you with grace first we want to make sure that you're completely emptied and this is just kind of the tradition of the church there are um various prayers that are done here at the font and with the people you're anointed with an oil in in commemoration of the the um the olive branch that was brought back to noah on the ark in the ark is this the symbol of baptism the waters drown out all sin and salvation is found within the ark and so there's anointed with oil which is also a commemoration of like like how bodies were anointed before they were buried because this again is a burial with christ and then there's a whole host of prayers and other things that happen along with it okay and so again just to make sure that somebody receives the fullness of it we like to baptize absolutely everybody the other issue is that a lot of people don't know how they were baptized they were baptized as infants they don't know was it with immersion was it with sprinkling was it with you know at one point in history i think um i read that that uh some denominations uh would just simply uh the pastor priest would lick his thumb put in salt and make the sign of the cross on their forehead you know is that really baptism and so just to to cover all the bases we like to do everything oh can i ask you a question about the exorcism part yeah absolutely you brought that up and i didn't see that one coming i guess it all comes down to soteriology like when does somebody become a christian because maybe i'm taking too many theological cues from time cop here but i think of like the you know the two bits of the same matter can't occupy the same space at the same time right so can you have a demon in someone who is already a christian can there be a thing that needs to be cast out or does the presence of christ of the holy spirit accomplish that but i guess it comes down to are they a christian already when they're back there and they have signed up to do this or do they become a christian when they get dipped that's a convoluted question yeah well i think the the issue is that we run into this this barrier when we talk about becoming a christian to becoming a member of the church baptism is the entry into the church okay but if someone were a catechumen one who has dedicated themselves to being baptized but they didn't make it at that point let's say they you know horrifically god forbid a car accident they would still receive a full orthodox funeral as if they had been baptized because they had dedicated themselves to that point and so one now outside of the context of the orthodox church what if someone's never heard of orthodoxy but they read the new testament they love christ they want to follow after him when do they become a christian that's really between them and god and that's not something that i'm going to make a judgment on and for you it's not when they go bit of the sign up sheet in the back they're like yeah i'd like to become a catechumen no i wouldn't it's an ambiguous i think it is ambiguous it's not that really about the state of the heart confrontation conversion point like you see it more baptistic i know plenty of people who have gone through the process and yet their christianity is all about them and it just feeds egoism over and over and over again have they really inwardly converted i don't know this again this is for god to decide their heart uh saint gregory uh the theologian of nazianzus he says something along the lines of there are some outside of the church who are um more christian than some of those who are inside of the church and i think we've all seen people like this like church leadership we go what's what's really happening here anyway you see people who have never even heard of christ who seem to have that christ-like disposition towards service and humility so where do people fall on this line that's really for god that's that's for god to decide it's not really for me to decide all i know is that he did give us a process this process has been going on for 2000 years and so we want to continue with that process if we know it's there if somebody's ready for it we're going to do it as best we can can i ask you a question about another water-based item sure what is this device over here this is where we keep holy water and so every every feast of the theophany in january or epiphany the baptism of christ we do a service every orthodox church says this service called the great blessings of the water and the great blessing of the waters there are various prayers that go along with blessing large amounts of water and then we store a whole bunch in the back and then we refill this every week so after liturgy people can come and they can receive some holy water if they want and drink some or they'll also keep holy water at their house and so they can come bring their their vessels for it and refill them from here other than the obvious application of holy water which is putting in little jars and fighting through castlevania with it what is holy water actually my wife is from transylvania that reference is not lost on you what does holy water actually do yeah there's this this sense of whenever we we bless an object what are we doing we're simply offering to god what he has already offered to us but through sin and corruption everything gets corrupted here and so when we offer it back to god there is there's now grace associated with it and now like we were talking about the icons it's not just what it it does something it does something and so it's kind of an interesting um thing and i don't know how to how to i don't know say this in scientific terms but one of the um relatively modern saint the church saint luke of crimea was a surgeon and uh after years of experience he was well known too he was well known for being a very a very good physician and a good surgeon and he was known throughout the medical field but he was also an orthodox bishop and of course during communism this created some problems you can't just get rid of the guy who's well known in medical circles and he has a quote where at the end of his life he says that he's convinced he's convinced that of all the medical things you could do for your health of everything that you could do nothing has greater benefit than drinking a little holy water every day and he says i say this not as a bishop of the church but as a physician i've seen that this has more benefit for people what so what does this mean again i'm not going to sit there and try to understand and qualify this is more about experience people who who who have a little holy water every day some somehow have this experience and uh we see miracles associated with holy water all the time in the church you know what i'm going to say i don't know what to do with that yeah okay okay well i i appreciate the perspective i wonder if they said the same thing when christ was baptized when christ resurrected i don't know what to do with this so right next to this in a room full of not furniture this really stands out it's elaborate and ornate and awesome looking and it's not mine and i don't get it what does it do what is this here for yeah so the when the bishop comes to visit uh he'll do some of the service from the altar but also some of the service he'll do from out among the people and this is actually the bishop's throne typically you'll have an icon of christ yeah it's called the bishop's throne wow yep typically you'll have an icon of christ either on it or above it in this case we don't have that because we already had iconography on the wall and it wasn't built into the throne but it's it's christ actually dressed as a bishop to show that there's really one true high bishop of the church and that's that's christ the one true high bishop and priest of the church and and he simply expounded upon his ministry essentially it's christ's ministry through him as it is with the priest um so this is this is where the bishop begins most of the services like right here you don't drag the chair out in the middle nope right here interesting position okay i got one more question over here on furniture if that's all right what does this booth or stand do yeah so all of our our services are basically chanted through there's very very little that is red and so things will be intoned in tone is just simply you keep one note a new drone when you talk uh other things are chanted in byzantine chant know any of them off the top of your head um yeah i could i mean i could chant um uh for instance we were talking about theophany when thou lord was baptized in the jordan worship of the trinity was made manifest for the voice of the father bore witness to thee calling thee his beloved son and the spirit and the likeness of a dove confirmed the truth of his word o christ our god who has appeared and enlightened the world glory to thee i could have chosen something shorter but okay that was a mountain of theology yes and also it's pretty good my sister never thinks so she hates when people come on live i'm impressed the uh the theology theology of the church will be found in in these the the the books that contain the services and the hymns of the church and we have a lot of these in fact behind this is just shelves absolutely the great horologion the book of hours which has the the service of ours but a bunch of other services and you'll notice it has for every month and day it has different services well let's go to now so is this is all of this sung yes yeah basically again every now and then something will be read for instance when we get to what's called the synax audience the lives of the saints the chances will read this but for the most part everything we do is is either intoned or chanted including even the gospels when we when the priest reads the gospel lesson for the day he'll intone it so what does it mean when it says fourth tone third tone first tone so byzantine chant uh has come to have uh eight different keys or tones um each tone is kind of like a like a western key that it's chanted in and so each him will have a particular tone that it's done in and sometimes there's a model him that will be modeled after do people know this it just takes people it takes a lot no uh what they'll what they'll know are the hymns that and the the typical chain that they hear every single week at liturgy you hear things enough time you start to get it but but as for the like the deep tones and stuff this takes a lot of study and uh chanters spend a lot of time kind of learning these things so nobody would walk up here there would never be a moment in the service where it would be like shunning all earthly incorruptible pleasures you choose a life of great i mean you wouldn't do that no we have something called the minor orders of the church and one of those is is to be to be taunted a reader and so this is somebody who has has done their work and has learned the chanting of the services and knows the services pretty well and can put them together from all the different books and they actually have a position and so we have a couple readers in the church who who are the main chanters you said taunted did they cut their hair yeah there is not only that but actually when we were talking about baptism after someone is baptized we also taunted them um not like the the rookie year tim tiny bit of hair tiny bit of hair with the idea that what do we have to offer god but our very selves so i mean he gave us everything that we have and so all we can do is offer ourselves back to god okay do you ever do a responsive reading like a protestant would do where somebody reads or sings part of it and then somebody echoes that back we do actually the chanters do that yeah quite a bit yeah there's there's a thing where there's uh um a chanting kind of back and forth in fact in some churches what you'll see is this will be a little bit further up closer to the solea and then you'll have another one on the other side and there will be chanters on both sides and one will chant one thing and then the other will have a response and kind of back and forth we call it dueling chanters and if you get primadonnas it makes it either really fun or really horrible but thank god we don't have that so is this all memorized for the congregation or do you have a little handout or a bullet no i mean this is this you know out of this for one one days of service you're gonna do very little of this most of the services that are i mean now we do everything in english which makes it easier on people but most the services that people go to are services that are done like the divine liturgy very little of the liturgy changes from day to day only a few hymns change everything else is basically the same and so if you come enough you start to memorize these things i mean my my three-year-old daughter will walk around the house chanting some of the hymns that she hears in church every single week just because they're ingrained in her would there ever be instrumentation no um now this is again this kind of goes back to the whole pew versus no pew debate in in america many churches have now brought organs into the church but there's debate over whether that's appropriate or not we always want to make sure that the first of all there's no greater instrument that god gave us than our very voices for most people not necessarily for everybody but we also want to make sure we stay away from anything that starts to lend our worship towards entertainment and so we're very very cautious not not because entertainment becomes about filling us and making us feel good this is about emptying ourselves and beyond that we also want to make sure that what's emphasized in the chanting are the words because as you said the words are absolutely full of theology if you want to know the theology of the church grab some of the books from the chandra standard orthodox church and read those you'll learn everything you need to know about theology when you do church are you up there the whole time are you out here at all i'm up there 95 of the time every now and then uh i or one of the deacons will come and we'll sense the entire church oh yeah well james told me about this at the catholic church yes the big sensor with the bells and you know it will swing that up and down and sense everybody in all the icons um and there are a few things that other services that will actually take place out here like baptisms and weddings and things will take place mostly in the navy but for the most part i'm in the altar at the missouri center lutheran church that i visited i noticed that the priest had his back to the congregation almost the whole time you do it the same way we do we do this is this is not supposed to be something i'm performing for the people but rather doing on behalf of the people that's emblematic of a little bit more of a sense of you being in a go-between role in your priestly role here as opposed to the pastoral role in a protestant church where there isn't as much of that sense of i do anything as the go-between rather we're kind of all in this together yeah i would say that we all we certainly are all in this together for instance i can't come and do the liturgy alone i need at least one other person here to save the amen we do this as a whole really however one other person is a quorum yeah yeah yeah in the worship sense yes i need at least one other person here however there are those who are set apart just as the apostles and deacons in the new testament are set apart priests are set apart specifically to lead the services i keep pointing at stuff as i ask questions is it rude for me to point at an eye no no not at all no you're fine okay i see you've got mary and christ as the icons that are at the very front i think this would be the highlight right right so when people walk in whenever they walk in even if the service is already started uh they'll come and they'll generate all the icons that we've already seen and then they'll come up and venerate christ and the virgin mary who we call the theotokos the birth giver of god they kiss these yep they'll kiss those as well okay so then you put little short ones in here for people like me that's right so i feel like i got to go to church too for you and children who can't quite reach this one okay they can venerate those then i look up here and you call this the iconostasis is that correct what is that i think i can break that down it literally means icon stand so it's kind of an interesting thing but in the very very early church these icons were really just on a rail or a stand and then this was slowly developed over time as christianity was legalized is it the same layout in all greek orthodox churches or is there something unique about this there are differences based on the church that you're in so uh this icon will always be one of christ in this case it's christ the teacher which is is pretty typical and then over here we'll have the virgin mary the theotokos holding the christ child always the same those are basically always the same the icon one over will be typically the icon of the church in this case where saints peter and paul and so we have saints peter and paul here together okay these are actually doors so we have the archangel michael on the left side and archangel gabriel and so these are what are known as the deacon's doors the priests will usually go in and out of the center the deacons will come out of the side doors although the priests will do that as well at times what's a deacon in orthodoxy a deacon is just as as he was in the uh in the new testament he's there to to assist the priests in the ministries and so he has a certain liturgical function but he also does a lot of the a lot of the work in the church now in our case we have two deegans who have secular jobs so they don't they don't uh they don't have full-time positions in the church although that does exist um it's just our particular parish but one of those first deacons was from antioch wasn't he nicholas of antioch was listed in that initial list of that's it folks who do that job look at that it all fits together sort of it just keeps going yeah uh from then on really there's no there's no universal tradition for what you do with the icons going down and so in this case again it's icons of figures who are especially important to people in the church we have a lot of russians and so we have saint vladimir who is known as the baptizer of the rus he baptized the slavic lands and then we have saint zenya of saint petersburg who is very very much beloved in our church and in fact we've built a second church an hour south of here and it's named after her to the right side i kind of cut us off we've got obviously jesus in position one right i could have told you that was john the baptist even without the name on there because of the outfit and that's a typical one in every orthodox church as well okay and then we had we have archangels on both of these doors is this another deacon story that's right yep that's the deacon's door that's with the archangel gabriel and who do we have on the end and then as we go down here we have saint catherine the great martyr he's an incredible incredible saint of the church that's not catherine the great that's saint catherine catherine the great martyr the great great right right a different catherine and then we're back to saint john of san francisco all right so we've got the iconostasis to recognize the gospel authors here below what happens behind the curtain well what i'll do is i'll open it up and if it's okay i'll head into the altar and you can kind of just see from here and just go over the doors i'll open it from here and there's the altar you know the word alter sometimes people mean the alter table in this case we mean the entire area but this is the alter table i'll just open these up on the altar you always have three things i mentioned before how there's kind of parallels between the jewish temple and the orthodox church i like to tell people that orthodox worship always looks backwards and forwards backwards because it grew out of the jewish temple worship and forwards because it should be a shadow of heavenly worship and so inside of the holy of holies you had the ark of the covenant in the ark of the covenant you had three things right you had the the uh tablets of the ten commandments you had the mana that fell from heaven and then you had aaron's rod that butted sure okay so on every orthodox altar we have kind of fulfillment of those three things the tablet of the ten commandments underneath this is the book of gospels aaron's rod that budded it's through the cross that salvation sprouted forth or butted forth for all salvation and so we always have a blessing cross and then the mana that fell from heaven you know what is it that sustains man we believe that was an image of holy communion and so we always have a reserved sacrament in this what's called the tabernacle what is a reserved sacrament so it's uh it's consecrated so it's the bread and wine that has been consecrated in the body and blood of christ and so when somebody is sick in the hospital or home or you know wherever they can't come to church i can take the pieces of communion with me in my hospital bag and take it to them and they can receive communion so can you consecrate new bread without somebody present or is that someone needs to be here to say amen thing does it apply that's always done within the context of the liturgy always done so what we'll do is we'll take we'll take an extra portion of the bread and consecrate rather than just one host we'll consecrate two and we'll let the other one dry out because we actually dip it in in the wine the blood we let it dry out and then cut into little pieces and put it back there and actually have one of the one of the breads if you want to see what we use absolutely so in the orthodox church we use leavened loaves of bread rather than unleavened so we have yeast in it and and that rising is a representation of the resurrection and the orthodox church will have this seal on it wait a second so you're flipping that levin metaphor from what at times in the bible is associated it could be a negative thing be where the level with the kingdom parable about right i mean at one point a little yeast working through the whole dough is like sin messing with your church right and another time it's it's a notion of how the kingdom grows and expands so you latch on to that kingdom idea of it yeah i mean certainly well you know you use both in preaching but in this case yes yeah we'll use it specifically for this spread yep okay so this is what a typical seal will look like different different churches will have slightly different versions of this but this is typically what we use in the middle you have ic xc which is the first and last letters of the name jesus christ in greek and you'll see if you look up in this icon of the virgin mary the one we talked about before more spacious in the heavens you see in blue above christ's shoulders i see xc so most most of the cases of christ and nikon has this icxe okay and then below you have nika and believe it or not you you're familiar with this because there's a certain sporting company that has used this as their name nike and the reason is is because it means victorious or triumphant so jesus christ victorious or triumphant and this square is actually what's cut out and consecrated as the body of christ okay and there's a little triangle here which is to commemorate the virgin mary and then we have nine little triangles to commemorate various ranks of angels and saints then let me grab the pattern i'll show you what that looks like so this this is the pattern and after we cut out the the lamb the body it'll be placed here the piece of the virgin mary here the nine ranks of angels and saints here and then we commemorate both living members of the church and departed and so by the time we start liturgy this will be prepared and this is a representation of the entire church you have christ patton we call it a patent yeah p-a-p-a-t-e-n e-n okay so then at the appropriate time of the liturgy right before holy communion that body that piece that says i see xc will be placed inside of a chalice and the chalice will have now the consecrated wine or the blood and it'll actually be placed inside of the chalice and dropped in there and left in there and as people come and receive communion little pieces will be cut off and they'll receive communion one by one like this down at the bottom of the stems how is it consecrated uh there are at the kind of the height of the linergy is what we call the great anaphora this is a long series of prayers the liturgy of st john chrysostom has the typical one saint basil has a much longer one which is really beautiful it goes to the whole history of salvation then we have the words of institution uh um this is my body take eat you know take drink this is my blood and then there's a prayer that that calls down the holy spirit this is one of the differences between orthodoxy and catholicism we always have a prayer that that asks the holy spirit to come and to sanctify these gifts and the priest will take the patent with the body on it and bless over it and then he'll do the same with the chalice there's of course prayers that go along with each of these and then over both together and that's that's the official consecration of the gifts okay so people hear that they they there's chanting that goes on over it um different churches will do it different ways in some in some cases um the churches like it that the priest says it very loud so the people say the ahmen after each and every item is consecrated or each item is consecrated in other cases the deacon will say the young men and the people are chanting something quietly but we'll say it loud enough that they can hear it do people understand what's going on do they does your average person get all the things that are occurring with your back to the room yeah the hope is that people have been well categorized but of course there's so much to learn in the church i mean the more you learn the more you realize you don't know and i'm constantly reading constantly learning more and so hopefully you've not only been catechized well and taught before you became a member of the church but even while you become a member this is what homilies are for this is what the extended teachings are for we do a lot of teachings outside of the liturgy and uh and go through these types of things lives of saints what's happened in the liturgy history of the church obviously scriptural you know bible study classes everything okay so you have this icon of christ crucified above all of it which it makes sense that that would be there given what we're doing when a when a reformed-minded protestant type person sees that image they're going to go right to notions of the atonement the idea of christ's sacrifice on the cross and what happened there how does the orthodox church understand what the atonement is what happened with the cross it's a massive question it's a massive question that could could uh be wrapped up in in about a four-hour long discussion but i'll try to wrap it up as quick as possible there were three main issues that mankind had at the fall he had his separation from his creator the uncreated god and the created man were separated then of course there's the problem of sin which is which is a a a an inability to love god perfectly maybe more so than just doing something bad maybe more so than just committing a crime against god of course that's part of it but this inability to really love god perfectly and live live in perfect union with him and then of course death and so it's the entire life of christ of course there's a great emphasis placed on the crucifixion and the resurrection there's no doubt about that but the entire life of christ begins to heal this in his very incarnation the divine and human are reunited in one person in in the cross sin sin is destroyed he who is sinless destroys sin of the cross and the resurrection death is destroyed and so it all comes together the the main issue that we have talking about this is that the orthodox church has never come up with one paradigm to try to describe the entirety of salvation and what salvation means because the mystery of it is too grand it's too massive of a thing to come up with one paradigm however we would say that if we look at all the paradigms that people have come up with i'd say there's truth in all of them but there's also limitations in all of them and so for us we look at things more kind of in a in a therapeutic sense sin is a disease and christ came to heal that disease he came to to grant man healing and we do that through a life of faith we were in the baptism we we die and resurrect with him and then through a life of faith we seek union with him so that when death looks at us death sees he who has already destroyed him and flees and runs the other way lots of us i suppose might like to heal sin or redeem everything what is unique about or is there anything unique about this particular style of death and what happened to jesus that stands out could he have died in another way and it would have accomplished the same thing is there what is the place of the cross in orthodoxy yeah it's there's there's a lot that could be said about this and part of the reason this becomes complex is because of course god is outside of time and so he knew he was going to die in the cross so we have all these images of the cross in the old testament i mean again and again and again we see these images of the cross we see you know abraham having isaac carry the wood on which he's going to be sacrificed up you know in order to be sacrificed on it um when we have hymns about moses part in the red sea we don't say that he went like this we say that he he took a staff and went like this and then like this you know the the the serpent on his staff i used to think of it kind of wrapped around the rod but now i think of it more like this you know this constant images of the cross the passage over blood of course the passover blood and we can keep going you know the wood being thrown into the rancid water and making it pure again and again this image of of of the cross was prophesied again and again and beyond that you also have the idea that it's it's through a tree that man fell it's through eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and now it's through the tree of the cross that mankind is saved saved and so how does this all play out within the grand scheme of salvation that's within god's purview and his providence and he seemed to work this out so there's a perfect story that we don't fully understand but the cross seemed to be the way that we knew christ was going to die or at least that that once he did die we could see it in the old testament it was also the the um it was also a completely shameful death and it shows the grand humility and the love that god has for his creation so in christ dying for us again he who was without sin who had no need of death out of just pure love mercy and grace for mankind took this upon himself so that when we unite with him he's already destroyed it he's already shown that he has complete power over all of this so whereas the reform type might look to the complexity of the westminster confession the westminster catechism i'd be like there we're trying to we think we can spell out every aspect of what exactly the bible says about the cross the atonement what jesus did there what is happening in the spiritual realm i'm hearing more of a sure that could all be but there's a greater mystery to this than we can articulate is that a fair restatement of yeah i'd say this is a mystery that we have to first experience and then understand and i think we spend too much time trying to understand it before we try to experience it and experience it we realize my mind can't fully comprehend this i can't put this into a nice neat little box and it's interesting because the scriptures really don't try to do that now of course saint paul does talk about the sacrifice there's no question about that but he doesn't go through a very systematic explanation of this is what this means this is what this means and that's all there is to it and it fits in this nice box and here accepted you have to read into it which is why we have 2 000 years of people interpreting his writings i mean if it was that simple we wouldn't have to spend too much time interpreting it it would just be very clear sure and so again i think there's truth in a lot of these different theories of salvation i just think as you said there's this limitation in trying to box it up and present it as this nice little gift you know with a big bow on it and say okay this is salvation for us it's more of a sense of this is so grand and there's so much that christ did on the cross there's one priest that said this it was really beautiful he said he said if you look at all the different names given for christ in the scriptures think of the new testament all the different names and he came up with a list of like you know 40 different names for christ and he said think of how each one of these pertains to the mystery of salvation and then try to come up with one paradigm that covers all of them there's no way there's no way one paradigm won't do it one paradigm may get to more the heart of it like this this explains pretty well more the the essence of what happened but there's a lot of other facets here that aren't completely covered last question so what is it to be an orthodox christian it means to it means to die daily it means to live a life of of repentance repentance that is is deepening and lived every day a living repentance this is what it really means to be an orthodox christian um i don't know how to explain it in any other words than that but to take up your cross daily and to follow after christ to completely and and wholly try to look at yourself and get rid of all these things that we we spend way too much time time trying to put on this image of ourselves of who we think we are but saint isaac the syrian who we have on a wall back there somewhere he has this very famous saying where he says he who knows himself is greater than he who can raise the dead by his prayers because to know yourself you can't know yourself apart from your creator but we also can't know our creator until we stop obsessing over ourselves so much and so what do we try to do through repentance daily lived repentance we try to decrease ourselves enough that christ comes and dwells inside of us and reveals the true self thank you [Applause] [Applause] [Music] i've got like 10 billion things running through my mind coming out of that tour and i'm sure you do too if you're orthodox you're probably like well normal tuesday night for the rest of us that is a lot to think about normally this is the part of the video after the tour where we sit and we game it all out together but i think that conversation merits its own video so i'm going to sit myself back down at this desk and the next video is going to be a game it out session between us about what we just saw so that video is coming up and then i also found another time to do a sit down deep dive theology church history interview with father paul and so the next video will be one of those like the next next video will be that interview thing number two and i am so excited about this thank you for hanging out with me so i can tell you about it this video is brought to you by africa renewal and i guess in a way i'm sponsoring them too this is the kind of thing that i don't normally do on this channel but i'm so amped to get to do this time around because well i'm asking you for something that gives you a chance to make the world obviously better regardless of where you're coming from what you believe how you vote what you're into politically or socially or any of that stuff there's a thing that is inarguably good and redemptive in this gigantic sea of things that you and i encounter right now every day that is difficult and troubling and that we can't do anything about here's a situation that we can do something about africa renewal does work in uganda where they find kids who are in need of sponsorship and then they connect those kids with people like you and me so for 40 bucks a month and yeah i'm straight up going to ask you to consider sponsoring a child for 40 bucks a month and change a kid's life 40 bucks is nothing to sneeze at i get that i get that it's a sizable commitment 40 bucks is a big deal to me and my family but then i get to looking at the numbers here you're talking about a country that has 60 percent unemployment in uganda the sponsored families the kids from the sponsored families the average income per day is like five bucks literally five bucks household income for a day and then you add to that that in uganda school is not free for a kid health care you got to pay for food the only kind of food you can afford on a household income of five bucks a day is not going to be the kind of food that a kid needs to thrive and so our 40 bucks which is a big deal turns into a whole lot more purchasing power when you take it to uganda and that's what africa renewal does now the deal right now is that they have got roughly a thousand kids without sponsors that they've been able to connect with and as that backlog keeps growing they got to a place where they just we need some help getting people to sponsor kids and to cut into this backlog get kids off the waiting list and into the actual make their lives better list and so they came to me and asked if i would help and my answer was yeah i will help and i think we can help with that so if you're looking for something that is just plain flat good and redemptive to do with your money if you've seen a bajillion things come down the pike that you feel frustrated and helpless to do anything about because they so obviously need fixing but you can't fix it here is something redemptive that you can do my wife and i had that same mindset that i'm articulating right now and we heard about this and we jumped on it and we decided to sponsor a little girl named monica and my heart was instantly soft for her is soft for her we got this card this is not the one this is a sample one that's not her we have this card that came after we signed up to sponsor her and has a picture of her and details about her life and we even got to see some stuff that she wrote to us it's like half words because she's just learning to write and have pictures of things she doesn't know how to spell the words of yet and so we got a sense of who she is and what her little brain little heart are like at this point i'm just excited for all of the opportunities that are in front of her and to think that we get to help in some way to open those doors so that whatever she's going to become is well what she's going to become and we got to get this this helper role in the whole thing and so we're pumped about that i'd be grateful if you'd consider the same thing africa renewal.org tmbh is how you learn more about that seriously thank you a ton for considering it and thank you for being up for conversations like the one we just had learning about other people's expression of faith as well i'm matt this is the 10 minute bible hour let's do this again soon

Channel: The Ten Minute Bible Hour

Views: 120,640

Rating: 4.9410243 out of 5

Keywords: Bible, Theology, Study, Matt Whitman, TMBH, No Dumb Questions, Matthew, Jesus, Orthodox, Antioch, Antiochian, Orthodoxy, Protestant tours, A Protestant Visits

Id: KX4zpZE-Yqk

Length: 54min 15sec (3255 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021