Of all the 12 great feasts of the church—or 17 great feasts, or 17 ranked feasts if you’re following Father Alexander Rentel—this is probably one of the most political. This feast, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, commemorates the finding of the cross by the Empress Helen, mother of Constantine, and also the recovery of the cross when it was captured by the Persians, and then the emperor Heraclius conquered them and brought the cross back to Jerusalem.

So there’s a lot of politics involved here. I want us to consider where that comes from and where we go with it.

The most important thing that we need to start with is, of course, the origin of the feast. But to get at the origin of the feast and the significance of this particular event for Christians, you have to understand the cross. That’s one of the reasons why we just heard a summary version from the Gospel of John about Jesus’ crucifixion. If you don’t understand the cross and what it means and what it represented for centuries up until that point, then you’re not going to get the significance of what happened at that moment.

The cross was, of course, the great instrument of torture and death by which the Romans struck fear into the hearts of their enemies. It was one of the most horrifying, torturous, and excruciating ways that man has ever devised for his fellow man to put him to death. When you are crucified on the cross, it’s a long and agonizing, torturous ordeal just to die, because, of course, embedded in the heart of every human being by God himself is the desire to live, is that instinct to preserve life.

As you’re hanging on the cross, you start to suffocate because your arms are stretched out and you have to push yourself up to take the next agonized breath, and then you let yourself down because you can’t sustain that. It’s just a long ordeal. People survived on the cross for entire days before they finally passed away in agony, naked, and hung up there for everyone to see what would happen to Rome’s enemies and to tremble.

So it was a horrifying and a very political symbol.

Imagine now, this is centuries’ worth of the experience of being in the Roman Empire. This is what has been the instrument of torture and death for everybody—except the Christians. For Christians, of course, this now takes on a new meaning. This takes on a new resonance because the cross, this instrument of torture, fear, death, and oppression, becomes for the Christians, because of what Jesus accomplishes on the cross, because of not only his death but his resurrection, it becomes a symbol of God’s power over death, of God’s mercy as he reaches out to us, of God’s love as he embraces us. He stretches out his hands in the person of his Son to embrace us and the whole world by offering us his mercy.

The other aspect of the Christian experience up until that point, when the Empress Helen found the precious cross, was one of torture and death. If you hang around here on Saturday evenings, you’ll hear the reading of the lives of the saints, and you’ll hear over and over and over again just how many of them were tortured and died for the faith. Jesus himself prepares his disciples for this. Just before the bit that we read, he says to his disciples,

If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet, because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake, because they do not know him who sent me.

And he goes on to say, “If they’ve done this to me, they will do even worse to you.”

And again, that prophecy was fulfilled. His disciples, generation upon generation, were tortured and suffered and died for the gospel. But the strange thing was that no matter what the Romans did, they couldn’t seem to stamp this Christianity out. In fact, it was really weird. Christians would go singing to their deaths. The people looking on would be inspired by this, and some of them would stand up and say, “I too want to be a Christian.” This is obviously the best-case scenario. There were also horrible worst-case scenarios where people who professed to be Christians were taken and left the faith at the very last minute because they couldn’t face the suffering and the death that was in store for them.

But Jesus is clear, and the apostles are clear, that those who persevere to the end will be saved. You need to be ready to die for what you believe. If it is the truth, if it is indeed the source of eternal life, you need to be ready to lay down your life no matter what torture comes, and persevere in that until the end, because the only thing worth living for, and therefore the only thing worth dying for, is the Truth—the truth that at the heart of the universe is a God of love.

So, after generation upon generation of suffering, torture, and death at the hands of the authorities, at the hands of those who ran the empire in which they lived, all of a sudden you had this emperor who came along and first proclaimed an edict of toleration and then began to show his favor to the church. Then his mother came to the Holy Land, seeking out the places that Jesus had walked, and been born, and died, and raised again. She even commissioned one of the first archaeological digs as she learned that this cross had been buried, but people knew where it was. And they took the cross out from where it had lain and found it to be life-giving. They raised it up. She raises it up. The mother of the emperor of Rome raises up the cross and honors it. This could only be a miracle. This could only be the hand of God at work. This could only be the fulfillment of prophecy. And so, the Christians rejoiced and continued rejoicing every year over this amazing work of God.

I’ve said often that I feel like we are living in a time that’s maybe parallel to those early years in the Roman Empire. Admittedly, it’s probably kind of hyperbolic. Most of us are not getting killed and tortured for what we believe. It happens. It happens quite frequently over in Egypt, and occasionally we face something like this here. But this should not be a surprise to us. As Jesus said, he has chosen us out of the world. If we were of the world, then the world would love us, but we’ve come out of this world system into the light of the Gospel, and therefore we are considered a threat: potentially hateful, obviously wrong, and dangerous to the existing order of things. And so, yeah, it’s not surprising that they would not like us very much. We should not be surprised.

That being said, if we are going to suffer for the sake of the Gospel, we have to be very careful about how we do that. Yeah, sure, it would be great to live in a time when the country was at least theoretically Christian again. We had a time like that: it was problematic, but our laws were kind of informed by the Christian faith, and most of the people considered themselves Christians, at least nominally, and went to church occasionally. That was nice. That was great. We’re not there now, and it would be nice if that came back. But really, we have to think about how is it to come back? We have to be very careful about how we think about that.

When Jesus was before Pilate, what does he say? When Pilate asks him, “Are you a king?” Jesus says to him, “Well, you said it.” But then he goes on to say, “But my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would take up arms and fight for me.” And Pilate knows this stuff. There’s all sorts of insurrection. That’s why Pilate gets sent to this horrible backwater, and he’s not happy to be there, because there are all these insurrections. The Jews keep rebelling, and some guy named Theudas not too long ago rose up with 400 men and was put down in this bloody revolt. This happens over and over again. So when Jesus is saying this, it’s not some kind of abstract concept. No, no, this is exactly what’s happening. But he says, “My followers are not like this. This is not what we do because the kingdom that we belong to is not of this world.”

And so, as we celebrate the cross, as we, at the end of this service, fall down in adoration before it, singing, “Before your cross we bow down in worship, and your holy resurrection we glorify,” we need to remember a couple of things. The first thing is when Christ calls us to follow him, what does he call us to do? To take up our cross daily and follow him. What does that mean? Well, it means we have to be ready to die, of course. But it also means that the way that we are living is the way of the cross, is the way that Jesus manifested himself and his love to us on the cross. We do not live, we cannot live for ourselves any longer. We must die to ourselves on a daily basis.

So, as we prostrate before the cross, if that’s going to mean anything, that means we have to be like the one who is up on the cross, praying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Caring for those whom he saw at the foot of the cross: he sees his mother and says to the disciple whom he loves, “Behold your mother,” and says to his mother, “Behold your son,” making sure that she would be taken care of.

Even in that extremity of death, our Lord was looking out for others. If we are to be his true disciples, we must do the same. And if we are to manifest what he manifested on the cross, we must manifest love even to—especially to—those who seem to be our enemy, because the way that God works: the way that he works salvation in the midst of the earth, is to make us, formerly his enemies, his friends.

This is what he calls us to do, so that if, by God’s grace, we have the blessing to be actual martyrs one day, we will be prepared and we will have prepared ourselves and our hearts by being defined so entirely by love for others, so entirely by self-sacrificial service toward others, that those who are putting us to death can find no just cause to do so, can find nothing bad to say about us that is true.

This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. This is what it means to take up our cross daily and follow him. This is what it means as we bow down before the cross of Christ and worship, making it the centre of our life, making it the way that we live and die to the glory of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.

Scripture readings referenced:

* John 15:18-21

* John 19:6-11, 13-20, 25-28, 30-35

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It is the way that things transpire afterwards that reveals the true significance of events; it is in retrospect that we see the hand of God. And where we see the hand of God and how we understand it is often in and through ordinary things: the birth of a baby girl, stepping across a threshold for the first time, getting clean by immersing ourselves in water, the movement of trees in the wind. We see this as we look at the context of John 3:16, as Jesus reminds Nicodemus of that which he already knows and adds to the knowledge through that which is entirely ordinary: in order to become a member of the people of God, washing with water is necessary, but a work of the Spirit of God must also occur, even if it be as invisible as the wind. This is the spiritual rebirth into a new reality needed to enter this new and lasting spiritual life; this is why and how we must be born again in order to become members of the people of God (the ekklesia) and thus enter into the kingdom of God. And this healing is ultimately to be effected by the same means that Nicodemus and any other Jew already knew: as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness for the healing of the people of God and those who looked to it and saw the provision of God were healed, even so, in order for heaven and earth to meet and for the people of God to be able to look up, believe, and be healed of their sins—even so, the Son of Man must be lifted up. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

Scripture readings referenced:

* John 3:1-17

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Forgiveness is hard. It’s not just hard for us—it has been a human problem all the way back. Today’s gospel reading was occasioned by a conversation about forgiveness. Peter says to Jesus just before he tells this parable, “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times?” Wow, he’s doing well, right? Not just once, but seven times. And Jesus, of course, responds, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven.” And I don’t think he means work out the math and keep track. Then he tells this parable.

This parable is, I think, one of the greatest tools in our spiritual arsenal for figuring out how to forgive. I do want to make one comment, though, about the nature of the story. In the parable, it’s a king, but we all know who the king is supposed to represent. And yet, of course, at the very end of the parable the king delivers the servant over to the torturers until every last cent of what he owes is paid. He seems like a pretty strict guy.

It’s actually kind of interesting. If you look through the parables Jesus tells, when a character represents God, it’s not infrequent that God comes off as pretty strict, harsh, and even scary. Think about the parable of the talents, where the servant hides his master’s talent. What does he say to him? “Lord, I knew that you were a hard man, reaping where you have not sown.” Or take the parable of the unjust judge. If you’re tracking who God is in that parable, he would be the unjust judge. I sometimes wonder if Jesus is having a bit of fun with us, because as human beings our biggest struggle is that we tend to think of God as harsh, unjust, maybe even terrifying—if he exists at all. Some might even prefer he didn’t exist, because that would feel easier.

It could also simply be that the Jews of the time had a very strong sense—drilled into them over many generations—of God’s power, justice, and even arbitrariness. Yet they also held a deep understanding of his goodness. Perhaps Jesus was playing with that tension. But whatever the case, the king in this parable wants to settle accounts, and he has a servant brought forward who owes him ten thousand talents. That’s obviously an ancient measurement we don’t use anymore. For perspective, one commentary notes that in 4 BC the total taxes collected in Judea, Samaria, and Idumea combined was six hundred talents. So this is a debt on the level of a nation-state.

There is simply no way the servant could pay it back. Yet he falls at his master’s feet and says, “Be patient with me and I will pay you all.” It’s absurd—he never could. And so he’s in danger of being sold into slavery with his wife and children. But the king forgives him. This is the real revelation of God’s character.

If Jesus is playing with our assumptions about God, we tend to assume that God is not only big and scary and perhaps kind of arbitrary, but also unforgiving. He has this law that he wants us to keep. And we have a debt according to that law, and we must pay it off no matter what. We'll be sold into slavery or thrown into prison or handed over to the torturers.

But what does the king do here? He forgives his servant the entire debt—all ten thousand talents.

So the servant goes away presumably very happy—like he dodged a bullet. But then he finds a fellow servant who owes him one hundred denarii. For context, one denarius was a day’s wage, so this was significant—maybe equivalent to about $10,000 today. His fellow servant begs him (and this is sounding familiar…), “Be patient with me and I will pay you.”

Now, this is a debt that he could actually pay: it's within human ability to pay something like this. It might be a stretch, and it might take a while, but it would be something that he could do. But the forgiven servant refuses, demanding payment, and throws him into prison.

Now this is where I usually point out—and I will point it out again—this is the biggest and most important weapon in our arsenal as we struggle with forgiveness. Because we can look at this and just see how stupid it is—how irrational and how dumb this servant is, what an ungrateful wretch he is. And, as soon as we manage to get to that realization (which hopefully isn't too hard), we need to then turn that inward and look at ourselves.

Have we gotten angry with somebody?

Have we got a grudge against somebody?

Has somebody hurt us?

It might be a very significant hurt, one that would take a very long time to repay, even if there was a willingness to repay.

But how often is our response exactly like that servant's response?

But today I want to go on and note there are other people in this parable. And that's actually kind of significant. Because, you know, it's not usually just God and me and the guy who was offended. All sin takes place in a context. And generally speaking, it's in the context of a community, in a context of relationships. There are other people who are involved.

And one of the things I've often said is how dangerous it is to take offense on another person's behalf. This is really dangerous. Don't do it! That person on whose behalf you are taking offence might end up forgiving the person who has done them the wrong. And then you still are hanging on to the other person’s hurt for dear life, while the person who has been hurt is now fine, having forgiven. They're reconciled and you're left stewing.

So, it's interesting to see, given this context of relationship, that there are fellow servants involved here. And the fellow servants hear about this incident. They've heard about both incidents, actually. They've heard about the generosity and the forgiveness of the king and how this person's been forgiven this completely unrepayable debt. And they also heard about this, what the servant then did to its fellow servant.

And what do they do?

Do they go and they tell everybody about it and gossip and maybe even go up and confront the servant?

No, they don't do any of that.

It's actually kind of interesting because that is our tendency if we're honest, right?

We want to set things right. We want to make sure everybody knows what was wrong. That they shouldn't do that.

But, that's actually not what they do.

They go to the king, and they tell the king about it.

And then the king deals with it, with the very harshness that we actually have come to expect.

This, I think, is our greatest tool for forgiveness. Forgiveness is a process. It’s hard. It takes time, patience, and energy—like paying off a huge debt. But it’s also important to get the channels of communication right. Where do we go when we see wrongdoing, injustice, or sin? We go to the King. Tell him about it. He will deal with it.

And as I say, I think Jesus is having a bit of fun here with our understanding—or, perhaps I should say, misunderstanding of God. I mean, how do we understand God?

His ways are higher than our ways. He is the one who governs the entire universe. There's no way we can understand really what his goodness is like.

We can come to some understanding of God through analogies, but when we start to evaluate God's righteousness or his goodness according to what a human being should do, we're just not qualified to judge him in his divine goodness.

But we should know that already. He's the creator and sustainer of the entire universe. Of course, he's beyond us. And the laws of the universe—even the spiritual laws that he has laid down—are immutable, and, in that sense, they tend to be pretty harsh.

But the good news is that the ultimate revelation that we have of his character is that he forgives.

Yes, he will also make sure that justice is done. That is important too. Because otherwise, we end up trying to take justice into our own hands and become a whole bunch of vigilantes running around hurting and killing one another. And that is not a good scene.

That's why God says, “Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord,” as the Apostle Paul quotes in Romans chapter 12.

So, leave judgment in the hands of the one who is qualified to judge the universe because he is the one who created and maintains it and who knows the secrets of men's hearts.

And when you see injustice, when you see wrongdoing being done, when you see sin that is maybe not being done against you, cry out to him.

He will do something about it.

But also, and again I want to bring us back to this tool in our toolbox.

Remember, as we fall down before him, as the chief of sinners, saying ,“Be patient with me and I will pay you everything” to the King of the universe:

* He is patient.

* He is loving.

* And he extends that love and mercy to us.

And the only expectation really that he has of us is that we then turn around and extend what we have freely received and freely give that same love and mercy to those around us, that our actions in this matter, that our forgiveness in this matter, that our love in this matter may mirror his.

That we might be to his glory, the glory of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Now and ever unto ages of ages. Amen.

Scripture readings referenced:

* Matthew 17:14-23

* Romans 12:19-21

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A baptismal homily after Transfiguration

Our Lord, as he comes down from the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John, comes face to face with his disciples’ failure. He heals the epileptic boy by casting out the demon they could not, then explains to them that “this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” While it’s not clear why the disciples were not able to cast out this particular demon and heal the boy, it seems likely that their faith failed, in this case, because they felt abandoned by Jesus—as they had when Jesus was asleep in the boat. In that case, as in this, he rebukes them for their lack of faith. But, of course, they were not abandoned by him: he showed up, and got up, and came down precisely when they needed him to, as he always does, and saved the day, the boy, and them—as he does with us. Which is why we need to and ought to fast and pray and have faith in his presence and in his love for us.

Scripture readings referenced:

* Matthew 17:14-23

* Matthew 8:23-27

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Mary, the Theotokos, represents, for us, who we are called to be, in Christ, and the feast of her “falling asleep”, in which we commemorate her death and her physical resurrection from the dead and her exaltation by her son, shows us our own corporate destiny in Christ. Mary is, for us, the new Eve, and her perfect response to God—her yes, where Eve said “no” to God, her listening where Eve failed to listen, and her treasuring of God’s gift which Eve failed to treasure—allows her to become the vessel by which God brings new life and salvation into the world, and establishes the example by which we are to do the same.

I must also note here my debt, in this homily, to Hilary White’s recent article on Eastern and Western depictions of the Dormition and the Assumption: it’s well worth a read!

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The disciples, like Moses, went up the mountain and saw the glory of God, as far as they could bear it. Like Elijah, they went up the mountain and heard God in His divine humility. They saw the new Adam, shining with uncreated light in His unfallen glory, and they heard Him preparing to enter His true glory: the glory of the revelation of His love for us, revealed when He is lifted up on the cross.

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We tend towards a perception of scarcity and competition—and scarcity is indeed a part of our human experience, as Jesus Himself experienced upon the death of His cousin, John the Baptist. But, even in that condition, Jesus acted out of an abundance of compassion. And He heals and teaches the crowd who came to him, and has his disciples feed them, giving thanks (eucharistically) to God for what little they have and then having his disciples distribute to the crowd even more than they need, putting the people in a position of abundance so they can learn. And the teaching is that we ourselves, as we freely receive an abundance of grace and compassion from God as we give thanks to Him, are to provide for all those around us this same context of abundance, an abundance of love, so we can all learn to love.

Scripture readings referenced:

* Matthew 14:1-21

* Mark 6:31-44

* Luke 9:10-17

* John 6:1-13

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Jesus was misjudged as he healed the mute man and just went on healing. He told his disciples that if the world misjudged and treated him as terribly as it was about to, that they (and, by extension, we) should expect even worse.

Jesus’ injunctions not to judge imply that what he said to his disciples about not lording it over one another should probably apply to how we deal with one another, and this is exactly what we see spelled out in the writings of the Apostle Paul in Romans 14-15. I find it interesting, being myself someone who, like St. Paul, has been proved dramatically wrong, that it is Paul who spells out so clearly how we are to go about not judging one another:

* by respecting the dictates of both our own and others’ consciences,

* by being open about the freedoms we have in Christ without leading others to disobey the dictates of their consciences,

* by valuing our brothers above the exercise of our own freedoms,

* and, above all, by realizing: “Who are you to judge another man’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand, for God is able to make him stand.”

We are mostly not qualified to judge which is why, when the Church has to judge, it does so corporately, through the hierarchy. Our primary job is to do our best to ensure that, if we are misjudged, we are, like our Lord, misjudged for doing what is right—and then to keep right on doing what is right, and to keep focussing on loving one another and building one another up, just as we see Jesus doing.

Scripture readings referenced:

* John 15:17-16:2

* Romans 14:1-15:7

* Matthew 9:27-35

* Psalm 69:9

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We tend to forget that, if we are the people of God, the prophets are speaking to—and generally correcting—us. This is why Jesus reminds his hometown hearers, at the beginning of his public ministry, that the ones who received the word of the prophet and were fed and healed were not the people of God, but the Sidonite widow, who responded to Elijah’s word with faith, and Naaman the Syrian general, who ultimately responded to Elisha’s word with humility.

Scripture readings referenced:

* Luke 4:14-30

* Isaiah 61:1-2a

* I Kings 17:8-16

* II Kings 5:1-14

Inspired, in part, by my grandfather’s poem, “He Closed the Book”.

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The Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, very different people, set an example for us, in their disagreement, on the importance of and how we ought to respond to speaking the truth in love: Saint Paul illustrates for us the importance of speaking the truth, while Saint Peter illustrates for us the importance of humbly receiving a life-giving rebuke (Proverbs 15:31)—both are necessary for us to grow up into the unity to which we are called, as members of the body of Christ.

Scripture readings referenced:

Official lectionary:

* Matthew 16:13-19

* II Corinthians 11:21-12:9

Fr. Justin’s lectionary:

* Galatians 2:11-14

* II Peter 3:14-16

* Ephesians 4:11-16

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