Outside the Camp
Outside the Camp
Notice that we began our prayers in Holy Week outside the camp: we pray most of the week away from the sanctuary and the altar, remembering how Christ was led outside the camp because of us, bearing our reproach. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).
The simplest aspect of being outside the camp is that Christ was led outside Jerusalem so that He would not defile the holy city as a bearer of sin!! But the most difficult aspect is that He was led outside the camp of the Father, enduring the Father’s wrath and judgment, saying to Him: “…Why have You forsaken Me?…”
The matter of being “outside the camp” was the first punishment for sin from the beginning.
Adam was driven outside the camp, outside Paradise after his fall. Likewise Cain, who said to the Lord: “Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face” (Genesis 4:14). And being cast outside the camp is what the prophet David feared when he said: “Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11).
There were sinners whom God cast outside the camp of the whole earth, such as those drowned by the flood and those whom the earth swallowed up.
“Put away from yourselves the evil person,” thus said the Lord, meaning cast him out from the holy fellowship. And the Church practiced this separation through the judgments of excommunication, anathema, and exclusion.
“Holiness adorns Your house, O Lord,” therefore those who are not saints belong “outside the camp.” Many, in the ages of the early Church, were sentenced to years outside the Church…
The most difficult thing about being outside the camp is being outside the camp in eternity, like those who remain in the outer darkness, far from God, the angels, and the believers…
Among those who stood outside were the five foolish virgins…
But here on earth, there is still room for repentance and for moving from outside the camp to inside it, as the Lord said: “The one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:37).
Here on earth there is a great bridge called repentance, by which we cross into the camp. But in eternity, our father Abraham said to the rich man: “Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed” (Luke 16:26). No one from you can cross over to us…
The Lord Christ suffered outside the camp in order to bring us inside the camp. He saw that we had been condemned to be cast outside the camp, so He took our place in carrying out the sentence, and endured remaining outside so that we might enter…
And when Christ delivered His spirit into the hands of the Father, He went to those who were outside the camp, in Hades, and brought them into Paradise. Blessed is the Lord who suffered outside the camp in order to open the camp to us once again, after it had been closed since the sin of our father Adam…
And now, as we remember these things, we do not want to sin and depart from the circle of the saints. The long time we spent outside the camp is enough for us.
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