Supper at Acton with Metropolitan Jonah

Metropolitan Jonah

Folks,

One of the great things about Acton University is the variety of people you get to meet and talk with over dinner. For me, the first night it was key figures in that hive of workplace theology activity, Seattle’s Bakke Graduate University, including the engaging Dr. Gwendolyn J. Dewey. Second night: that ubiquitous evangelical ecumenist, Act 3‘s John Armstrong. And tonight, Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America.

I had the pleasure and benefit of sitting at dinner tonight with a couple of the Orthodox Church in America’s priests and their Metropolitan Jonah, who was the dinnertime speaker last night.

Metropolitan Jonah is clearly a man dedicated both to the church and to Christ. A pleasure to hear last night, and a pleasure to converse with tonight. We talked about Evagrius of Pontus, the materialism of modern America, and the importance of the doctrines of Creation and Incarnation in a society bouncing between rank materialism (the secularists) and dangerous gnosticism (some evangelicals).

Of the division of the church that so scars the American Christian landscape, he had only two words: “Jesus weeps.” Of the occasional non-Orthodox 20-something who comes to his monastery on the West Coast: “They are searching for a personal encounter with God.” And a fair number of them find Him, and get baptized there at the monastery. Of Creation: it shimmers with God’s presence. May God bless you, Metropolitan Jonah.

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