Homily for 20 September 2015--The Sunday after the Holy Cross

The Holy Cross is the Road Sign for our Lives

Homily for the Sunday after the Holy Cross (20 September 2015, 18 September 2005)

Galatians 2:16-21                                         Mark 8:34-9:1

 

On the Sunday after the Feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, the readings once again remind us of the importance of the Holy Cross in our lives.  The Cross is not merely the symbol that identifies Christians—no, we have to carry the Cross and follow Jesus.  The Cross is not merely the instrument of the death of the Son of God—no, we must also be crucified; we also must die on the Cross.

Why?  Because, as Jesus the Messiah says, “What does it profit us to gain the whole world but lose our life?”  And, remember, that’s our eternal life that He’s talking about.  As St Paul says, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

If we don’t have faith in God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—life is meaningless.  If we don’t believe in Jesus Christ—the only-begotten Son of God, who gave his life on the Cross for our salvation—our life is meaningless.  If we have all the success and power and money and pleasure and comforts in the world, but we don’t have faith, we really have no life, because we have no future and we don’t know where we’re going.

The Holy Cross is like a road sign or traffic signal for our life.  It stands tall, pointing to Heaven.  The arms reach out, embracing the world and each one of us.  The arms also point outward, showing that we can also move away from Christ, if we choose to do something so stupid.

But the lowest bar on the Cross—the piece of wood where Jesus rested his feet—shows us the consequences of our choices in the world.  On the right side, this bar points to the Good Thief crucified at Jesus’s right hand, the one who defended Him and said, “Remember me when You come into your kingdom.”  This bar points up, as Jesus told him, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.”  If we also acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we will live eternally with Him in paradise.

On the other side, the lowest bar on the Cross points to the other thief crucified with Jesus, the one who mocked Him by saying, “If you are the Messiah, save yourself and us.”  Here the bar points down, to show the condemnation and punishment that waits for those who refuse to believe.

At the top of the Cross is the sign clearly identifying Jesus as the King.  St John tells us it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek—the principal languages of the Roman Empire, the whole of what was then considered the civilized world.  This shows us that everyone can know about Jesus, no matter where they are from.

So we have the Cross as the most important sign on the highway of our lives.  Everyone can read this sign.  Everyone can see where it points.  Everyone can choose to obey it or not, and everyone can see what will happen as the result of their decisions.

We need to believe the sign that Jesus is our King—our Lord, God, and Savior.  We need to step into the outstretched arms of His loving embrace.  We need to follow the route to Heaven shown by the Good Thief and turn away from the road to Hell shown by the Bad Thief.  And in all things we need to deny our sinful pride and carry our crosses and follow Jesus, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for 13 September 2015--The Elevation of the Holy Cross

The Message of the Cross Makes the World’s Wisdom Foolish

Homily for the Elevation of the Holy Cross (13 September 2015, 14 September 2003)

1 Corinthians 1:18-24                                         John 19:6-35

 

In today’s reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul explains “the message about the Cross.”  It is still a hard message for us to understand.  Like so many aspects of Christian faith, it seems contrary to what we think of as normal.

Just think of a few of the paradoxes of our faith:  Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to forgive those who hurt us—but our first reaction is to hate our enemies and to try to get revenge.  Mary was a virgin, yet she gave birth to a son.  Jesus is the Son of God, yet He became a man.  Jesus died and was buried, but He rose to new life.  In the Divine Liturgy, we offer bread and wine, and the power of the Holy Spirit changes them into the Body and Blood of Christ.

So here’s another paradox:  the cross was the most humiliating and degrading form of death the Romans used to execute common criminals.  Yet Jesus willingly suffered that death so that He could rise in glory and give salvation to the human race.

This is what St Paul is talking about when he says, “God has made foolish the wisdom of the world.”  The wisdom of the world is what we think we know.  It is the whole mass of facts and beliefs and opinions and customs that “everybody knows.”

But in fact what everybody knows is different from place to place and from time to time.  A few centuries ago, in Europe, everybody knew that bathing frequently was unhealthy.  Now we are almost fanatical about washing.  Not so long ago, everybody knew—including the Catholic Church—that God approved of slavery.  In the USA, everybody knows that all of the people in the Middle East are Muslim.  When I was growing up in the almond-growing country of Central California, everybody knew that green almonds were poisonous.

What “everybody knows” isn’t necessarily true.

St Paul says, “The Jews demand signs and the Greeks desire knowledge.”  He means that different groups or nations have different ways of looking at the world.

For us Christians, the Holy Cross changes the way we look at the world.  It is a stumbling block to some and a joke to others, but to us believers it represents Christ,, the power and the wisdom of God.

The Holy Cross is like the flag of Christians.  It does not save us, but it is a symbol of our salvation.  It reminds us of God’s love and of Jesus’s life-giving death.  It consoles us with the knowledge of forgiveness and salvation.  It inspires us to endure suffering.  It stands in the middle of the world like the Tree of Life stood in the middle of Paradise.

But the Cross is meaningless to us unless it makes us remember that the wisdom of the world—the stuff “everybody knows”—is foolishness.  When we see the Cross, we must remember that Christians are different from the rest of the world.  We live by the message of the Cross—Jesus’s message of love and forgiveness and justice and salvation—not by the message of the TV dish or the internet.

Today we sing, “We bow in worship before your Cross, O Christ, and we praise and glorify your Holy Resurrection.”  The world’s wisdom says the Cross is humiliation and death.  The world’s wisdom says there is no Resurrection.  God’s wisdom says that Jesus came so that those who believe in Him would be called by Him, would be His brothers and sisters, would love one another as He loved us, and would not perish but would have eternal life, giving thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.  Amen.

Homily for 6 September 2015--15th Sunday after Pentecost: "Which Commandment is the Greatest? Love."

Which Commandment is the Greatest?  Love.

Homily for the 15^th Sunday after Pentecost (6 September 2015, 5 September 2010)

2 Corinthians 4:6-15                         Matthew 22:35-46

 

Today’s reading from the Gospel according to St Matthew tells about the scholar of the Jewish Law who tried to test Jesus by asking, “Rabbi, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?”

We have to wonder about this question and the motivation behind it.

Why would this scholar or anyone want to test Jesus?

Did he want to find out if Jesus really knew the Law?

Did he want to see if Jesus will give the answer that the experts in the Law would agree with?

Did he want to see if Jesus would say something wrong?

At any rate, we can be sure that if he was “testing” Jesus, it wasn’t just out of curiosity or the innocent wish to have a discussion.

Asking “which commandment is the greatest” implies that some commandments are not so important as others.

Maybe this fellow was expecting to hear about the importance of proper offering of sacrifices or about the right way to fast or about money or property or ritual purity—all of which are covered in the Law.

Maybe he was fishing for an excuse to slack off one some things if Jesus said something else was more important.  We can imagine him thinking, “What a relief!  Not working on the Sabbath is more important than welcoming strangers or paying my tithes.”

Maybe, just maybe, he was actually trying to find out what was important in his life.

Of course, people are still asking these same questions two thousand years later.  Now, they can’t talk in person with Jesus as the scholar of the Law did, so often they ask their priest.

And, again, sometimes it’s a test—they want to find out if Father really knows the Bible or the Liturgy or Church teaching or our Tradition.

Sometimes people ask questions in the hope of getting an answer that will make them happy—or at least not guilty.

Sometimes they want to catch a priest saying something “wrong” so they can report him to the bishop or ignore him or gossip about him.  (Actually, that’s the opposite order.  They would rather talk about him—“Do you know what Father said?”—or ignore him—“We know better, so we don’t have to pay any attention to him—than call the bishop to complain, knowing that the bishop probably wouldn’t listen to them anyway.)

Sometimes people ask about commandments or the Bible or Church teaching because they want easy answers.  They want the priest to tell them, “Just do A, B, and C and you’ll be OK with God and you’ll go to heaven.”

And sometimes they want to hear an answer that lets them think that they are already doing everything right.

But the answer Jesus gave to the scholar’s question—which is the answer Jesus gives to all of our questions—upsets all expectations.  It destroys legalistic, simplistic, rule-oriented, what’s-the-minimum-I-need-to-do thinking.  It destroys it completely.

Jesus almost says that individual commandments are important because, if you keep these two basic general commandments, you will naturally keep all the rest of them.

Here they are:  “Love God completely, totally; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

These two simple commandments are actually more difficult to keep than a whole list of specific do’s and don’t’s.  They require us always to be aware, to be thinking about how our actions and thoughts and feelings reflect our relationship with God and with other people.

This is because God loves each one of us as a person, not as a unit or an abstraction, so relationships with God and with other people cannot be reduced to abstract rules.  Real life is messy and unpredictable, as we all know, and only love can handle that messiness and unpredictability.  Rules and laws can’t handle it.  Only God’s love and mercy are flexible enough to deal with human life (after all, God created it!)—and our love and mercy have to be based on God’s (because God created us in God’s image and likeness).

If we always act out of complete love for God and if always love other people as we love ourselves—or as if they were ourselves—then we can’t go wrong.  Laws and rules can provide guidelines, but they cannot take the place of the mercy and love of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to whom we give thanks and praise and glory now and ever and unto the ages of ages.  Amen.