All of life is meant to be lived as an act of worship to God. Every experience is meant to be an experience of communion with God. The fact that we can be preoccupied with so many other things and sometimes forget about Him completely, is proof of our fallenness. It is the emptiness born of our futile effort to survive apart from Him, outside the garden. This empty life is no life at all. Working, eating and sleeping become an end unto themselves. Eventually, when we have worn ourselves out with this cycle, we may realize that it has become pointless because it exists merely for its own sake. Referring to this godless experience of the world, the Serbian St. Nikolai Velimirovich wrote: 

“All your gifts are an apple with a worm in its core. All your potions have passed through someone’s entrails many times. Your garments are a cobweb that my nakedness mocks. Your smiles are a proclamation of sorrow, in which your feebleness is screaming to mine for help.”  St. Nikolai Velimirovich

With this orientation in life, it is exhausting to seek the gratification of desires, and it is disappointing when we find the thing we were searching for. The day after Jesus fed the 5000, the crowd followed Him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, hoping for another free lunch.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.”John 6:26-27  

This is the re-orientation of perspective that we desperately need. The food which endures to eternal life - food which truly satisfies - is that which He will give us. And what exactly is it that He gives us? 

“‘I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.’ Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.’” John 6:51-53

He gives us Himself. He is the food which endures to eternal life. And yet there was never meant to be a conflict between our reliance upon Him as the source of life in a spiritual sense, and our reliance on food and other material things necessary to sustain our physical existence. From the beginning, it was all combined in one simple experience of Life. Adam and Eve experienced God’s goodness when they enjoyed the goodness of the fruit in the garden. Before the fall, it would not have occured to them to separate the two. It was the dualism of, “the knowledge of good and evil,” that shattered the simple unified experience of Life in Eden.  The Orthodox Church exists to restore this Life to every dimension of our experience in the world. Having received the life of Christ at the communion chalice, heaven and earth are reunited within us. This is meant to catalyze a transformation that overflows into everything we do, including education.  

To educate as an act of worship means that our instruction facilitates the work of God in the lives of our students, and within ourselves. If we promote information merely for its own sake, or for the inflation of our egos, the experience is like wandering through a desert rather than an abundant Life in the garden. Knowledge should lead to a holy life, but this depends on the way we respond to what we are given. We can only experience God’s work within us if we accept that He has the right to make changes to the way we think and act. Therefore, to educate as an act of worship is to educate, and to learn, with a disposition of repentance. 

To educate as an act of worship means that we measure success based on the quality of the relationships that we create rather than merely numerical outcomes like grades, (though grades may be necessary). Valuing our students and colleagues as co-heirs with Christ, rather than seeing them as obstacles, annoyances or tools that we manipulate, requires that we see ourselves in them. We must recognize ourselves in their weaknesses, rather than looking down on them. Realizing that we share a common life in Christ, we come to understand that their success is our success, and their failure is our failure. To educate as an act of worship is to educate with love.