In the audio, both lessons are read, and are followed by a homily by yours truly.

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 5:17

As Jesus was teaching, there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they sought to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this that speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God only?” When Jesus perceived their questionings, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, take up your bed and go home.” And immediately he rose before them, and took up that on which he lay, and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen strange things today.”

A Lesson His Commentary on S. Luke by the Ven. S. Bede

The cure of this paralytic signifies the salvation of the soul who sighs out to Christ, after the long stagnation of carnal pleasure. First of all, it has need of servants, who may lift it up and bring it to Christ, that is, of good teachers, who may furnish hope of healing and the means of intercession. These are properly found to have been four, as S. Mark relates, whether because the whole power and message of preaching is fortified by the four books of the Gospel, or because there are four virtues by which the faith of the soul is raised up to deserve redemption. Of these virtues it is said in praise of eternal wisdom: “For she teaches self-control and prudence, justice and courage; nothing in life is more profitable for men than these: (Wisdom 8.7). Some call these by the alternative names of prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. And note that the four men want to bring the paralytic to Christ, but every way was cut off by the intervening multitude, because often the soul who comes in repentance to God and desires to be healed by divine grace after languishing in shameful torpor is held back by the obstacles of its old habits. . . . And what is to be done amid these distractions? Certainly there should be not staying outside down below, but the root of the house in which Christ teaches must be ascended, that is, the sublimity of holy Scripture just be sought after, and the Law of the Lord must be pondered with the Psalmist day and night. For, “By what does a young man correct his way By observing yours words,” he says. And so the roof was laid open, and the sick man is let down before Jesus, because, after the mysteries of the Scriptures have been revealed, he is brought to a knowledge of Christ, that is, he is lowered to His humility by the piety of faith.

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There are two things that stand out to me in our Gospel passage, about Jesus healing the paralytic. The first is that in healing the paralytic, Jesus recognizes not the faith of the paralytic but the faith of the people who brought Jesus to the paralytic. For as Saint Matthew records: “When Jesus saw their faith.” And the second is that the healing of the paralytic means for Jesus that the sins of the paralytic are forgiven. Again as Saint Matthew records: “He said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.’” And as Jesus says a couple verses later: “That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” There is much to say about both of these things, which in a moment I will look at. But to speak simply, what this points to is the mystery of Christ’s healing, which we turn to today.

We know that the paralytic was sick because he was sinful. This is the straightforward interpretation of the text according to the letter, even according to our Lord’s words and actions. Jesus tells the paralytic that his sins are forgiven, and the paralytic is healed. He was able to rise and walk home, after being previously bound to a bed, unable to walk. What happened is that in being healed, the paralytic learned who Jesus was. He learned that Jesus Christ, the man before him, has authority given to Him by God to forgive sins. He did not know this before, and now that he knew it, and believed it, he was healed. This points to an important aspect of the mystery of Christ’s healing: that knowledge about Christ heals us. Without knowledge of Christ, we are living in our sins. With knowledge, we are able to live in truth.

Living in truth, in the truth which is Christ, is what separates Christians from non-Christians. Hence Saint Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “You must no longer walk as the gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance which is in them.” Ignorance of Christ, not knowing about Him, leads to a life of darkness; such a life of darkness for Paul means hardness of heart, callous, slaves to the sensual, greedy, impure, speaking falsehood, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. A life of darkness is alienated from the life of God. This is the life of sin, the waters darkened by the Devil and his unholy angels.

What a difference it is to know about Christ, for Paul. To learn about Christ allows us, again in Paul’s words, “to put off our old self, which belongs to our former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of our kind, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness.” This is healing. This is the way of healing—we are healed so as to be able to begin to live this way, and living this way heals us more and more. We can think differently, we can speak differently, we can treat people differently, we can forgive ourselves and others. Knowing about Christ allows us to rise and walk: to rise in a resurrection like His, and walk in His footsteps and do all such good works as God has prepared for us to walk in.

It remains to understand why it was that the faith not of the bedridden man, but rather the faith of the people who brought Jesus to him, that stirred forth the healing of Jesus to the man. Again the words from Saint Matthew: “And when Jesus saw their faith,” He then pronounced the paralytic’s sins forgiven, by which he was healed, and able to rise and walk home. The key to this is to remember that the Christianity is lived in community. Specifically, Christianity is lived in a community of the baptized. Paul, for whom baptism was truly life-changing, writes: “having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” The knowledge of Christ in the community around the paralytic, their faith in Christ as healer, led Jesus to pronounce the paralytic forgiven and healed.

Christian community teaches us; Christian community forms us; Christian community—called in Acts 2 “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship”—heals us, because in Christian community we meet Christ, we walk among Him, and He walks among us. And He Who walks among us does so that we know Him, and are known by Him. He Who walks among us is Son of God and Son of Man, with all authority given to Him by the Father Almighty. And Christian community knows Christ as He is revealed in the opening of Scripture, the unveiling of Scripture, and in the breaking of bread, in the Eucharist. Give us this day our daily Bread, because Christ is our bread, and the heavenly Bread which is Christ is our salvation; Jesus Christ is our healing; Jesus Christ hears us, feeds us, and gives us strength: He will always be our Lord: He Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost; ever one God, world without end. Amen.

“How do the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of David?” Jesus asked. And then He said, “David himself calls Him Lord, how is He His Son?” The question of what it means for Jesus to be Son will be what we look at today. Two of our readings today speak of the title of Jesus which is “Son.” I am referring to the first reading, from 2nd Samuel chapter 7, and the Gospel passage from S. Mark chapter 12. We are very used to the title of “Son” because we hear it two ways. Jesus is the Son of God, or the Son of the Father Almighty (which are equivalent in meaning); and Jesus is the Son of Man. It is important that we grapple with this term “Son” and find its significance; thus, as another installment of my series “The Mystery of God,” in which we look at the various aspects or dimensions of the one Mystery of God, we turn today to the holy mystery of Christ’s Sonship.

We are very accustomed to the title Son of God, probably because of its use in the Nicene Creed: “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God.” This sonship is referred to in 2nd Samuel 7, when we hear the Lord of host speaking these words: “I will establish the throne of His kingdom for ever. I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to me a Son.” This is not speaking of David because it is clarified that this will happen after David lies down with his fathers; that is, reaches the end of his earthly life.

We are also accustomed to the title Son of Man, but perhaps in a lesser way than the title Son of God. Son of Man is not in the Nicene Creed directly, but indirectly, in these words: “He was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man.” But we probably should be very accustomed to the title Son of Man, because Jesus uses it about Himself in many places in the Gospel. Jesus said to the High Priest: “But I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Mt 26.64) Earlier in that chapter of Matthew, whilst in the Upper Room at the Institution of the Eucharist, Jesus says of Judas Iscariot: “The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” To the disciples in Mark 8, Saint Mark tells us this: “And Jesus began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Earlier in Mark chapter 2, Jesus says: “But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” And there are many more examples I could cite.

I have gotten this far in my sermon, but perhaps I should have clarified earlier what “Son” in fact means. Whether it is used in Son of God or Son of Man, what Son means is sharing in the nature, essence, or quality of the one named. It is perhaps most straightforward to substitute “nature” for Son when ever we read it. Thus, to say that Jesus is the Son of God means that He shares the divine nature of God. “I and the Father are one,” Jesus says in John’s Gospel account. And to say that Jesus is the Son of Man means that He shares the human nature of Man. Saint Paul emphasizes this when Paul calls Jesus the “Last Adam.” Adam is a word that means both a singular human being named in Genesis, and also “adam” means humanity itself, all of human nature. And the term “Last” in “Last Adam” means that Jesus is perfect man, perfect humanity, the completed and fullest expression of humanity, which is what “It is finished” means when Jesus utters this on the Cross right before He gave up the Spirit and died.

Thus the holy mystery of Christ’s sonship begins by recognizing that Jesus is very God and very Man; “very” means truly and completely. Jesus is completely and utterly the Son of God, and Jesus is completely and utterly the Son of Man. He is perfect God and perfect Man, and at no point in His existence, before all time in His divine sonship, and from His conception in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, at no point in His existence is He anything less than perfect God and perfect Man. What seems like a contradiction is in fact the truth of Christ, and because He is both God and Man, we adore Him and we bless Him and we worship Him.

But we want to keep the mystery of Christ’s Sonship of God and Man present in our thinking, and there is no better way to do so than to meditate on the Definition of the Union of the Divine and Human Natures in the Person of Christ provided by the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, the fourth ecumenical council attended by over 520 Bishop and completed on the 1st of November, AD 451. It is found in the Book of Common Prayer, page 864. My dear brothers and sisters, hear these words which express the holy mystery of Christ’s sonship perfectly and completely, because it was provided to all the bishops by the Holy Ghost:

“Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer (Theotokos); one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the Fathers has handed down to us.”

Thus it is the mystery of Christ’s sonship that captures the primary mystery of Christ. It took the Church praying and arguing for over four hundred years before it came to this understanding that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and at the same time the Son of Man, fully and completely in each nature, each sonship. And in knowing this, and meditating upon it, much is revealed to us as to Who Christ is, what we know of Him, and how we ourselves are known by Him. He sits on the throne of His Father’s kingdom, and at the same time is like us in all respects, apart from sin. Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, King of kings, and Lord of lords: Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Today I want us to reflect on covenant as it is revealed in Holy Scripture. We hear of covenant directly in the reading from the prophet Ezekiel, wherein Christ says, “I will make my covenant of peace with them” (meaning the faithful of Israel), “It shall be an everlasting covenant with them.” Covenant is spoken of more cryptically in the other two readings. Paul refers to it when he speaks of “the calling to which you have been called,” and Our Lord and Savior Jesus expresses it in the parable we heard when He said, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted,” and it is implied in the healing Jesus gave to the man who had dropsy, especially because the healing violated the letter of the law, which prohibited such activity on the Sabbath. Thus we turn today to the mystery of holy covenant.

By covenant we mean sacred commitment between God and His people. By covenant we mean holy partnership, with promises, signs (on God’s side), and secondarily conditions (which are on our side), all of which are part of God’s economy, that is to say, God’s plan for salvation, the ordering of history and creation towards salvation. God expresses His economy through a variety of covenants. What are these covenants?

To understand covenant, we start with Jesus Christ Who makes a covenant with us at the Last Supper. Jesus speaks of His precious Blood, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my Blood.” The Holy Spirit has written God’s law on our hearts, forgiveness is granted to all who repent and confess their sins, and we have God’s grace to be obedient to Christ’s words. All Christians are invited to partake of Christ’s Body and Blood to feed our inner transformation and nourish our ability to walk as a new creation according not to the flesh but to the Spirit; to live a life of obedience, not defiance, toward God. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, which we participate in through the Eucharist, we can attain purity of heart, lowliness of mind, and all the virtues of Christ. Hence the words of our Lord in our Gospel passage: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Our humility is our side of Christ’s covenant, which if He sees in us, He promises everlasting life and eternal salvation.

With this covenant, or as I should say, within this covenant, are all previous covenants recorded in Scripture. Firstly there is the covenant God made with Noah and his family after they disembarked from the ark. This covenant follows the flood, and expresses God’s commitment to preserve His creation despite whatever human sin might occur. God promises to never destroy the earth – meaning His relationship with us, the relationship that allows for our spiritual growth toward Him – never to destroy the earth by flood again. The sign of this oath is the rainbow, which is a permanent reminder and symbol of God’s mercy upon all creatures, human and animal.

Secondly, there is the covenant with Abraham. In Genesis 11 and the following chapters, God promises to bless all nations and people through Abraham’s lineage. God says his descendants will be more in number than the stars of heaven. This covenant is expressed through circumcision, which as unveiled by the Cross and taught by Saint Paul, means circumcision of the heart and faith in Christ. Church Fathers elaborate on Paul’s teaching by emphasizing that not only our heart must be circumcised, but our ears, our lips, our mouths, and in fact all of our members, even our mind.

Thirdly, in Exodus and Deuteronomy, we hear of the covenant God forms with Israel through Moses, to be a kingdom of priests, what Saint Peter calls the priesthood of all believers. This priestly kingdom, which is the Church, is thereby through grace able to mediate God’s holiness to the world. God promises His protection if we obey the Ten Commandments, and the teachings on worship, justice, and morality. We are blessed if we have obedience faith; we are cursed if we have rebellious hearts.

Finally, at least for this sermon, there is the Davidic covenant. This is in 2 Samuel 7, and we learn of God’s promise of an eternal dynasty through David, which fulfills the blessings promised to Abraham through a faithful king. God promises that His Name shall be upon the hearts of His people, even in their hearts; He promises rest from enemies, and an everlasting throne for His Son, Jesus Christ. In this covenant, God’s promises a Messiah, and this is Jesus Christ, the King of kings, the Right Hand of the Father.

My dear brothers and sisters, what the mystery of God’s holy covenant must always teach us is that everything we have is a gift given to us by God: everything – our life, our soul and body, our family. By His covenant with us, God makes existence itself His gift, and our relationship with God a gift beyond the telling. By the mystery of covenant, by holy covenant sealed in Christ’s Blood, we know that God guarantees forgiveness, internal transformation, and direct access to God. Through Christ we have an eternal covenant, so that the God of peace can equip us with everything good, through Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the true covenant, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The feast of Saint Michael and All Angels celebrates the ministry of the holy Angels, and does so straightforwardly. These creatures: made of spirit and fashioned without material bodies; these creatures, according to the Church Fathers, who were created by God before time, created in heaven, and who serve God in heaven and help and defend us on earth—we celebrate these Angels, the armies of Angels, led by Michael their commander, who, in the words of 4th century Church Father S. Gregory of Nazianzus, are “sent to proclaim God’s will, to guard the faithful, and join in the divine hymnody, ever circling the heavenly throne.” Today we celebrate the mystery of the angels, described throughout Scripture from the first pages of the Bible to the last.

What is most striking perhaps about our Gospel passage is how easily our Lord Jesus Christ mentions angels to His disciples. “See that you do not despise one of these little ones,” He says, “for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.” His mentioning of Angels is almost offhanded, and without explanation. Christ simply assumes that the disciples already know about Angels, and instead of lengthy teaching, simply affirms that that because children demonstrate the kind of humility and awe and wonder and love of God which is necessary to enter the Kingdom of Heaven—that is, necessary to enter into the life of the Holy Spirit—that they ought not be despised, for God will hear about it, their angels will report to the Heavenly Authority any such sinful behavior.

Here our Lord refers of course to Guardian Angels. And because He is so unambiguous about this, the Church has always taught about Guardian Angels as the primary relationship humans have with the angelic order. Hence the 3rd century Church Father, Origen of Alexandria, writes: “Every one of the faithful, even the least, has an angel who accompanies him, beholding the face of God and guiding him through life’s perils to salvation.” What assurance this gives us: not only that our Guardian Angel seeks to guide each of us through life’s perils to salvation, but that our Guardian Angel beholds the face of God. Because we are not able to behold the face of God—not as of yet, for as Paul teaches, we are meant to behold God face to face, the “beatific vision of God” in the life to come—our Guardian Angel is able to behold the face of God on our behalf, vicariously, as a kind of proxy spiritual eyesight, seeing God for us until we are able to see Him in heaven. Thus the Angels are able, again in the words of Origen, “to bear divine inspirations to human souls, enlightening them through the grace that flows from the Holy Spirit.” Angels announce to us divine inspirations which enlighten us with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Hence the words of 17th century Anglican bishop Jeremy Taylor, that as Blessed Virgin Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit through the Archangel Gabriel and caused her to conceive, that we may be so overshadowed through angelic ministry to “conceive the holy Jesus in our hearts, and bear Him in our mind.”

Our readings from Isaiah and the Revelation to S. John refer to Saint Michael the Archangel, who is depicted in our icon which we venerate today. The two readings go together. Isaiah addresses Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, the Dragon (all names for the same unholy angelic being). Isaiah says: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground.” It is S. John who provides the background about this, describing the event in heaven which is before time was created: “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” That Satan was thrown down to earth before time is how is able to make his infamous appearance to Adam and Eve. He had already lost the battle with Michael.

Isaiah also provides key detail about the reason for the battle. Speaking to Satan, Isaiah says, “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” Satan thought himself like God, even greater than God. Thus, in the words of S. Gregory the Great (7th century Church Father): “Michael, whose name means ‘Who is like God?’, is set over the powers of heaven to cast down the ancient serpent, contending for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.” The humility of Michael always overpowers the pride of Satan.

And so, today we give thanks to God the Trinity for ordaining and constituting the ministry of Angels. We ask of God that the Angels continue to defend us in battle, that the Angel of this temple of Saint Paul guard us and keep away all evil and help us to worship rightly; we ask of God that the angels, as ministers of the Holy Ghost, continue to reveal to us knowledge of God; that as we conceive the holy Jesus in our hearts, and bear Him in our mind, we may grow up to the fullness of the stature of Christ, to be perfect in Christ Jesus, Who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

In audio, both lessons are read, and are followed by a homily by yours truly.

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 5:27

After healing the paralytic, Jesus went out, and saw a tax collector, named Levi, sitting at the tax office; and He said to him, “Follow me.” And he left everything, and rose and followed Him. And Levi made him a great feast in his house; and there was a large company of tax collectors and others sitting at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes murmured against his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

A Lesson a Gospel Homily by the Ven. S. Bede

Saint Luke says that the Lord reclined at table with publicans in Matthew’s house, and that Matthew himself prepared a great feast for Him. If we long to search out what these happenings are at a more profound level of understanding, it was not only in his earthly house that Matthew produced a bodily feast for the Lord, but with great gratitude in the house of his breast he prepared a feast for Him through faith and love, as Christ Himself attests, saying, “Behold, I stand at the doorway and knock. If anyone listens to my voice and opens the gate, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with Me” (Rev 3.20). The Lord stands at the doorway and knocks when He pours into our heart the memory of His will, either through the mouth of a preacher who is teaching us or through his own internal inspiration. When His voice is heard we open the gate to receive Him when we willingly present our assent to His counsels, whether secret or open, and devote ourselves to accomplishing those things which we recognize are to be done. He comes in order to sup with us and we with Him, for He dwells in the hearts of His elect through the grace of His love in order to restore them always by the light of His presence, so that they may advance more and more to heavenly desires, and so that He Himself may feed their zeal for heaven, as it were, with a most pleasing banquet. . . . It is a pleasure to remember, brethren, to what height of justice the Lord fetched Matthew, whom He chose out of His publican activities in order to increase for sinners the hope of forgiveness. The apostolic band into which he was incorporated teaches what kind of person Matthew became. The nation of the Ethiopians teaches this as well. By his preaching he converted this nations from the farthest end of the earth to the fellowship of holy Church. . . . Whenever we recognize that the magnificence of the eternal King is proclaimed in the books of the holy evangelists, we should fall down humbly before Him, implore His mercy with devout prayers, and attribute whatever sort of good work we are able to have not to our own merits, but always to His grace.

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From our patron, the holy apostle Paul, we hear teaching about living in community. The Christians in Galatia, as the Church in Galatia which Paul himself had planted, probably in the late 40s, needed to be taught about how to live in community in a Christian way. They needed to be taught, and we today need to be taught; because Christians always have to be taught how to live in community in a Christian way; that is, how to live in Christian community, in Christian fellowship locally worshipping together. Why to Christians have to be taught how to live in Christian community? It is because, like everything else of the Christian reality, the nature of community is part of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. And so, today, we turn again to the topic of the mystery of community: the mystery of life in community around God.

I say, turn again, because we have looked at this topic of Christian community earlier, ten Sundays ago. I want to bring into our reflection some words from my preaching on the 4th Sunday after Trinity. I said, “In community, we must ever remember that God already knows everyone’s sins, that God already knows everyone’s heart. In community we must ever remember that God is at work in the heart and mind of every person to bring them to repentance, to confession, to humility and honesty before Him. Within the mystery of God is the mystery of trusting Him that He is in control, that unto Him all hearts are open, all desires known, and from Him no secrets are hid.” It is because of this that Paul exhorts us to restore anyone in our community who is caught in any transgression in a spirit of gentleness. Gentleness is one of the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit; it is a gift from God, not something we are born with or naturally use. Gentleness is comes from the virtue of Love (or Charity in its traditional name). To love fellow Christians who have committed any transgression involves a gentleness toward them, rather than being blunt and heavy-handed. The Gospel of Jesus Christ expects us to act in such a way. And when we remember that God already knows the transgression that has been committed, there is no need for anything but gentleness, because God is already at work in the heart of the person.

Paul has more to say in our Epistle on this topic of community, of living in community by the Spirit, walking together as a community with the Spirit. He says, “Keep watch on yourself, less you too be tempted.” How can we not here be reminded of Saint Peter’s teaching (1 Pet 5.8): “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour.” The more we keep watch on ourself, the more we resist temptations of the demons each one of us have to deal with every day, the more we are serving not only God, and not only the betterment of ourselves, but we are serving our community. Rejecting the proposals of unholy spirits helps the whole of our parish community, Paul is teaching. We hear this in 1 Cor. 12.26: “If one member is honored, all rejoice together.” That is, if one member is victorious by the grace of Christ in the unseen warfare against a temptation from the Devil prowling around our heart, all benefit.

Finally, we hear Paul teaching on Christian community with these words: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” To bear one another’s burdens is what compassion means. When we bear another’s burdens, we are suffering with them: we are like S. Simon of Cyrene carrying the Cross of Christ. It is the story of the Good Samaritan, who bore the burdens of the man left half dead on the road. It is as Paul says in Galatians 5: “The whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” To love is to bear others’ burdens, to carry them. When someone in a Christian community commits a transgression within the community, to carry them is to be gentle to them. We carry their burden by not piling on to them, which guilt, shaming, and judgment do. Our gentleness lightens their load, trusts that God is at work in the transgressor’s heart and conscience.

Brothers and sisters, those who walk in the Spirit live in the fruits of the Spirit: let us live in love, in joy, in peace, in longsuffering, in kindness, in goodness, in faithfulness, in self-control, and in gentleness. God is all-knowing and all-powerful, for Him nothing is impossible; and our lives, and the that of our parish community, are in the loving hands of His Son Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. John 3.13

Jesus said, No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.

A Lesson a Gospel Homily by the Ven. S. Bede

The Book of Numbers tells that the people of Israel were wearied in the desert from their long journeying and exertion, and murmured against the Lord and Moses, and so the Lord sent fiery serpents in among them. When they cried out to Moses because of their wounds and the death of many of them, and he prayed for them, the Lord ordered him to make a bronze serpent and set it up as a sign. He said, “Whoever is bitten and looks at it will live,” and so it happened. The wounds caused by the fiery serpent are the poisonous enticements of the vices, which afflict the soul and bring about its spiritual death. The people murmuring against the Lord, and stricken by the serpents’ bites, provide an excellent instance of how one may recognize from the results of an external scourge what a great calamity a person might suffer inwardly by murmuring. The raising up of the bronze serpent (when those who were stricken beheld it, they were cured) is our Redeemer’s suffering on the Cross, for only by faith in Him is the kingdom of death and sin overcome. The sins which drag down soul and body to destruction at the same time are appropriately represented by the serpents, not only because they were fiery and poisonous and artful at bringing about death, but also because our first parents were led into sin by a serpent. And just as those who looked at the bronze serpent which had been lifted up as a sign were cured at that time from temporal death and the wounds which the serpents’ bites had caused, so too those who look at the mystery of the Lord’s Passion by believing, confessing, and sincerely imitating it are saved for ever from every death they have incurred by sinning in mind and body.

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We are observing in the Liturgy today a very old feast of the Church: the feast of adoring the Cross of Jesus Christ. And I am reminded about the message Bishop Greg Brewer offered to this parish at the Mass of my Institution as the Rector of St Paul’s, four years ago. His message was for St Paul’s to continue full throttle in what he called the charism of our parish, meaning the special gift this parish has, in a way that is unique among parishes in the Diocese of Central Florida. Our charism, he said, is that we have a particular gift of adoration. Through our Anglo-Catholic tradition, the Bishop strongly and enthusiastically voiced his support for us to continue to use our charism to adore Jesus: His Word and His Sacrament, a charism of beauty, reverence, and prayer, and do so as an example for the diocese.

You can see why this is particularly fitting for Holy Cross Day: a very old feast that goes back all the way to the early fourth century, even the year of our Lord 335. The Emperor S. Constantine, at the urging of his mother S. Helena erected great churches at Mount Calvary over the holy places of the crucifixion and the burial of our Lord. The present day Church of the Holy Sepulchre incorporates what remains of those early edifices. And in the course of the construction of these shrines were discovered relics of the true Cross, relics which became immediately employed for veneration in liturgy. The faithful Cross: alone counted worthy to hold the world’s Redeemer.

In worshiping toward the Cross, facing the Cross, adoring the Cross, bowing our knee to the Cross, we worship Christ: Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen One. And we can understand who Jesus is no other way than through facing the Cross in worship; for the Cross is Our Lord’s chosen means by which to reveal Himself to us. The Cross is the completion of the project begun in Adam and Eve – the making of the human being, the revelation on the Cross of humanity in its fullest sense; and the Cross is our beginning, for by it we are newly created. As Saint Paul writes in 1 Cor 1:18: “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Jesus shows us what it means to be God in the way He dies on the Cross as a human being. What it means to be God is shown through this profound and unspeakable act of apparent weakness. I say apparent weakness, for we know that while it seems like weakness, in fact it is the opposite. For as Jesus told Paul: “My power is made perfect in weakness.” The Cross is Christ’s glory and ours; on the Cross is Christ’s victory for all time. It is through this weakness that His endless love is revealed: His supreme love shown in His sacrifice. His perfect love shining through the holy Cross.

It was for this revelation to us and to His Church that Jesus was lifted up as Moses lifted up a fiery bronze serpent set on a pole (as described in Numbers 21), that those bit by a serpent of sin may look upon the serpent lifted high on pole by Moses, and, by this vision, live. Notice how on many crucifixes Jesus is often shaped in a kind of twisted sort of way (which reflects of course His holy suffering). This reflects His suffering final breaths but also because it affirms that Jesus is the fiery bronze serpent held up by Moses by which sin is healed. Therefore in Lent and in our Good Friday liturgy in Holy Week we pray the antiphon “We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You, because by Your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.” By gazing on the Cross, we live.

Our Lord Jesus taught His disciples these words: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” Let us allow our hearts to be drawn deep into the holy mystery of the Cross. By the Cross on which Christ died, we are healed. The glory of the Cross shines over heaven and earth. Our Lord’s most holy Cross is for all Christian people an endless source of grace and blessing. For those that believe in the power of the Holy Cross which we exalt this day, weakness is turned into strength, shame into glory, and death into life. By the Cross, Christ trampled down death by death, and upon those in the tomb bestowing life eternal.

Our Lord is the true paschal Lamb that takest away the sins of the world. Through the Cross, Christ is risen from the dead. O come, let us adore Him and His most Holy Cross. Let in adoration look upon His Holy Cross, and by the Cross of Jesus, live. We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You, because by Your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world. You Who live and reign with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

A Lesson from the Gospel according to S. Luke 10.38

Now as Jesus and the disciples went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.” Then Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

A Lesson from his commentary on S. Luke by the Ven. S. Bede

Our Lord Jesus pronounced blessed not only the mother who was worthy to bring Him forth physically, but also all those who kept His commands. For when He was teaching the people in a certain place and working miracles, and everyone was marvelling at His wisdom and virtues, “a certain woman raised her voice and said to him, “’Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!’” But willingly receiving this testimony to the truth that she had brought forth, He immediately answered, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” so that the woman herself and everybody who was listening might trust that they also would be blessed if they were willing to comply with the divine mandates. It is as if He were clearly saying, “Mary has a singular privilege of blessedness since she, a virgin, was worthy to harbor the incarnate Son of God in her womb, to give birth to Him and to nurture Him. Nevertheless those who conceive His faith and love in a chaste heart, who bear the recollection of His precepts in a sincere mind, and who busy themselves nourishing this recollection also in the mind of their neighbors with skillful exhortation, they too will have a place in the same everlasting life of blessedness. . . . Now also as very good and most beneficial custom has developed in Holy Church, of her hymn being chanted daily by everyone along with the psalmody of the evening office, so that in this way a very frequent reminder of the Lord’s incarnation may enkindle the minds of the faithful to a feeling of devotion, and by reflecting very often on the example of His Mother, they may be confirmed in the stability of virtues. And it is pleasingly appropriate that this occurs at Evensong, so that our mind, which has been tired out in the course of the day and stretched in different directions by diverse thoughts, may, as we settle into a time of quiet, pull itself together in its reflection.

If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago to help to rebuild the Anglican tradition.