SEEING BEYOND THE LABELS OF THE WORLD

SEEING BEYOND THE LABELS OF THE WORLD Fr Luke A. Veronis This past Friday, some of us from our Church Family joined Harry Kofidis in spending the day at a picnic he organized for prisoners and their families. I want to tell you what I saw. I watched men who are currently incarcerated sit on the grass with their children, playing soccer, pitching a wiffle ball, laughing with their kids and giving an ice pop to their toddler. I watched a mother, out on a day pass, hold her teenager’s hand and share her love with him. And as I stood there watching, do you know what struck me? I didn’t think, “Here is a group of prisoners.” Instead I thought, “Here are fathers and mothers. Here are children missing the presence of their parents. Here is love.” For a few hours, in that park, I wasn’t looking at inmates but I was looking at parents. And that stayed with me, because I know that for much of society, they won’t see these men and women in the way. The world has already decided who they are. They have a label — a felon, a convict, an inmate — and once that label is applied, it is almost impossible to remove, even after they have served their time in prison for whatever crime they committed. Once they get out, it will be extremely difficult to find an apartment with a felony on your record. Most people won’t even give them a job interview. Society has a way of saying, quietly but firmly: once a criminal, always a criminal. And that’s why 40% of formerly incarcerated people end up back in prison. The unemployment rate is 25% for ex-convicts. Our society sets these people up to fail and return back into prison. There's a moment in my favorite book, and play, Les Misérables, that captures this perfectly. The police inspector Javert looks at the protagonist, Jean Valjean — a man who had spent nineteen years in prison because he stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving nephew and then tried to escape from prison once there. And the police office says coldly to Jean Valjean, “Men like you can never change.” Even though throughout the story Jean Valjean becomes a Christ=figure in his compassion and love and mercy for those who are suffering, the police officer can only see one thing – the label of a prisoner. And that label defines who the person is. Not the human being created in the image and likeness of God. But the label. I want to suggest to you this morning that this is one of the worse ways the world works against the Gospel — and one of the deepest ways we, without realizing it, stand against the Gospel too. We label people. We simplify them. We take the worst thing we know about someone and let it become the whole of who they are. Felon. Drug Addict. Illegal Immigrant. Liberal or MAGA. And once we've pinned that label on a person, something terrible happens inside us — we stop being able to see anything else. We stop being curious about their story. We stop expecting them to change, because we've already decided who they are. “And men like you can never change.” But let me say this very clearly. This is not how God sees each human being! Listen to what we heard Saint Paul write to the Christians in Corinth in today's Epistle. Saint Paul describes how the world looked at him and the other apostles: “We are made a spectacle to the world... we are fools for Christ's sake...we are made as the filth of the world and are the offscouring of all things unto this day” (1 Corinthians 4:9-13). Think about those words. Filth of the world. The offscouring of all things — that's the scum you scrape off a pot, the garbage swept into the gutter. That is how the world of his day labeled Paul the Apostle. What a reputation the people placed on him and the other apostles. And yet Saint Paul understood something else. He knew he was as a child of God and a follower of Jesus Christ. Thus, he would say to the Corinthians, “I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Therefore, I urge you be imitators of me.” The man whom the world called garbage is telling the Christians in Corinth to imitate him. The world's label and God's truth weren’t just different, they were exact opposites. That is the pattern of our faith. The world places labels on people. God reveals to us who we truly are, and what our real label is – a beloved child of God with divine potential. There's a story I love from the Desert Fathers. A monk had sinned and the community gathered to judge him — to decide his punishment. They sent for the old elder, Abba Moses, to come and take part in the judgment. Abba Moses initially refuses but they keep insisting So he did something strange. He walks into the monastery carrying a sack filled with sand, yet there’s a hole in the bag so that a thin trail of sand poured out as he walked. The monks asked him what this was all about and Abba Moses replied, “My sins are running out behind me, and I do not see them. Yet today, you want me to come and judge the sins of another.” That is what it looks like to remember our own sins pouring out behind us before we place a label on another and judge them by that label. This is the Good News of our faith and the center of what we believe. Our true identity, the only label we need to place on any human being, is not a label determined by the worst thing we’ve done. Our true identity is given to us before we ever sinned at all. We are children of God, created in His image and likeness. That is the label God places on us. Not the label of felon. Or addict. Or illegal immigrant. Or liberal or MAGA. Child of God. Icon of Christ. And no sin, no sentence, no mistake, no opinion or worldview can erase what God Himself has written into our very being. Remember there is goodness and beauty in every person even when that goodness is buried under years of brokenness, sinfulness, bad choices, or a past that can't be undone. The goodness and beauty may be hidden. It may seem nearly impossible to see. Yet it is there, if we have the purity of heart to see as God sees. And here is our responsibility as followers of Christ. We cannot help someone discover that buried beauty and goodness if we ourselves refuse to look past other labels. We cannot be agents of resurrection while we're still standing at the tomb saying, “Men like you can never change.” I think of people I've known over the years who wear society’s label of “illegal immigrant.” I've sat in their homes. I've witnessed their work ethic. I’ve seen their sacrifice for their children to have a better future. I’ve seen the quiet dignity of showing up for exhausting jobs, jobs that most Americans wouldn’t accept, without complaint. And I think of many other people who carry the label “addict” or “alcoholic,” people I have sat with in their absolute lowest moment — and then, by the grace of God, journeyed with for years and watched them become entirely new people, people who found their true label at last as beloved children of God. None of this happens when we harshly judge people from a distance. It happens when we do what we did this past Friday at that picnic — when we actually enter someone's life, listen to their story, and let them surprise us. As we enter the second week of the Fast for the Panayia, I want us each to look at ourselves honestly and see where we place ugly labels on other people. It takes deliberate spiritual struggle to purify our hearts so clouded by the world's categories and choose to instead see the image of God standing right in front of it. Let this be part of our fasting these final days of the Dormition Fast - fasting not only from food but from the labels we place on others. The next time you're tempted to sum up a person p in one word — felon, ex-convict, addict, illegal immigrant, homeless beggar - stop, and ask God instead to help you see what He sees. Ask Him to purify our hearts enough to so that we can catch a glimpse of the goodness and beauty buried there, however deeply, in the other person. And try to enter into these people’s lives the way we did this past Friday at that picnic. Ignore the label that society has placed on them, and instead embrace them, listening to their story and getting to know them in a new way. Let them surprise you. Let God surprise you. The Good News we preach is not a Gospel that gives up on anyone. It is the Good News of the Prodigal Son still recognized by his father as His beloved Son. It is the Good News of the thief on the cross who heard Jesus say, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” It is the Good News that doesn’t say “Men like you can never change” but precisely the opposite, “You are not the worst thing you've ever done. You are My beautiful child, created in My image, and I am not finished with you yet.”