Orthodox Christians Need to Be Orthodox Christians

By Jackie Morfesis

The recent opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics has lit a justifiable global firestorm. However, I see this as a much bigger picture and conversation than just a choice of depicting Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper as a Drag Queen bacchanal – a perception that has been contested by the artistic director of the opening ceremony. I see this as a broad statement on the state of Christianity in the world.

I grew up Greek American, of Greek lineage on both sides for generations. My mother, Lucia Manos Morfesis, was a French teacher, and spent the summer of her junior year schooling in Paris while a student at the College of Charleston. She was awarded a medal by the French government as the best foreign student. She obtained a master’s degree in French literature from Ole Miss.

Our home was flooded with the musical sounds of Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf. I was exposed to the poetry of Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud. My father, a chef and restauranteur, cooked Greek and French cuisine.

I cried when I saw Notre Dame Cathedral burning years ago to the astonishment of my coworkers at the time. They did not understand my deep connection to all things French. The one cemetery that I long to visit is Pere-Lachaise in Paris, where all the great artistic luminaries are buried.

Fast forward to The Last Supper a la Drag Queen with Dionysius thrown in for good measure. The French are being French. I did not watch it live. From the images and video footage, it was for me, tasteless, with the practically naked Dionysius. Indicative of the times – which is why we must guard our mind, mouth, devious lips, and eyes as told in Proverbs 4:23:27. However, here is the bigger question. Are Christians being Christian? Are Orthodox Christians being Orthodox?

Christians are justifiably concerned that their faith and indeed identity has been attacked, blasphemed, and denigrated. Yet – we don’t need anyone else to attack our identity. We do a very good job attacking it ourselves.

To be Christian is to be Christ like. “He that saith He abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked” (1 John 2:6). Yet how are we Christ like when we put the needs of those who He called us to serve on the back burner. As an afterthought. Even in the very neighborhoods of our Orthodox churches. When we are more interested in churches for profit than building the kingdom of God on earth. When we build multi-million dollar community centers without a clothes closet, food pantries, or fellowship space for those in need. Certainly, without a soup kitchen.

When we do not honor the sacrament of marriage? How many Orthodox Christians live as if they are married without being married? When we do not stand for and protect the unborn. When we do not align our faith with our lives. When we keep our faith inside the doors of our Orthodox churches during service but dare not stand in our faith outside its doors as we were told to do so in scripture and by Bishop Sevastianos of the Greek Orthodox Atlanta metropolis during a sermon which I heard in person.

When we continually preach that God is a mystery and unknowable while forgetting that He sent His Son incarnate to have a relationship to the mystery. When the Bible is the unfolding story of a call to knowing and having intimacy with God. When we diminish the power of the Holy Spirit within given to us at our baptism, simultaneously diminishing what Christ can do through us. When we forget that we are the church, and the church is not a business but God’s House. “The house of God is the church” (1 Timothy 1 3:15). When we forget that we are the church, the bride of Christ. We hear this during our Holy Week – and forget it the next week.

Anyone has the right to be enraged over a mockery and parody of the Last Supper. Yet every day we mock the Last Supper when we do not honor living, loving, and being a present-day disciple of Christ. When we do not know God’s Word, stand in the power of the gospels, and know our true identity in Christ. When we only see Christianity as a treasured artifact, embedded in history, but not truly alive today. Forgetting that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). When tradition, dogma, and theology has given us a religious spirit but not a spirit on fire for God.

Shining light and being light in the world is an invitation for forces both earthly and divine to cast shadows, threaten, and even silence. No one promised that the faith walk would be easy. Mockery, ridicule, non-appreciation, devaluation, even persecution of the faithful come both from inside and outside our houses of worship and have since the beginning of time. “If the world hates you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18).

The artistic expression of the French at the opening ceremony is one issue. The greater issue is that I am heartbroken that right now Christians, especially our Orthodox Christian brothers and sisters are being martyred, tortured, and discriminated against in the Middle East, acknowledged at a service I attended at St. Michael’s Church on Broad Street in Charleston, South Carolina. Bias against Christians is real – Christophobia. Yet, again, it is also those who self-identify as Christians who mock the Last Supper. We must take upon us seriously our salvation and be good stewards of the sacred work, service, love, and mercy that was and is the very meaning of Christ’s sacrifice and celebration of the Eucharist.