Church of The Holy Cross Dallas

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we come, as Romano Guardini said, to the “highest, thinnest pinnacle of creation,” to the “axis mundi,” the center of the universe, where the most important and unthinkable unfolds. We come to the place where what Jacques Derrida called “the most impossible possible,” becomes the horizon-filling actual.

There is a special place in my heart for infidel philosophers. Sometimes it takes such an unbelieving outsider as Derrida or Nietzsche to illuminate for us the faith we proclaim. Sometimes their rejection of our faith is more carefully considered than is our affirmation of it. Therefore listen to famous unbelieving philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche’s “parable of the madman” –

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”—As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?—Thus they yelled and laughed

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? [Are we moving] Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.

Mark’s Gospel says, “they all condemned him as deserving death,” (14.64). “And they crucified him…” (15.24). “And those who passed by derided him,” (15.29). “And…Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, la’ma sabach-tha’ni?’ which means, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (15.34). And [he] uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last,” (15.37).

“This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightening and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard.” The fact of the matter remains: “We have killed God – you and I. All of us are his murderers.” The Gospels make clear that the Jews and the Gentiles were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Another way of putting it: the whole world unanimously condemns Jesus and crucifies him. The great contemporary thinker Rene Girard points out that even the world’s downtrodden, those condemned together with Jesus, the thieves crucified with him, even they join with the unanimous multitude in the condemnation of Jesus. Girard says:

…they too imitate the crowd; like [the crowd] they shout insults at Jesus. The most humiliated persons, the most crushed, behave in the same fashion as the princes of this world. They howl with the wolves. The more one is crucified, the more one burns to participate in the crucifixion of someone more crucified than oneself.

But “this tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering…. Lightening and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires times; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard.”

One dimension of this requirement of time is personal and individual, because each of us has to be transformed by the power of the cross, the dynamism of Jesus, which must enter into us, and transform us from the inside. In this connection, on Palm Sunday I mentioned the riddle of Samson: “out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet,” (Judges 14.14). And the next sentence says: “And [the Philisitines] could not in THREE DAYS tell what the riddle was.” This passage is from the Old Testament was written many centuries before Jesus was born. But perhaps its truest sense is in reference to his disciples, in reference to US: “they could not in three days tell what the riddle was,” because he had not yet risen from the dead. “…deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard.”

“Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?” How then do we handle this thing we have done? What do we do now? Do we need, as Nietzsche’s madman insinuated, to invent new rites of atonement to wipe this blood off our hands? I think not. Luke says:

Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, and said, “Certainly this man was innocent!” And all the multitudes who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance and saw these things. (Luke 23.47ff)

Jesus, in addition to being conspicuously murdered, is conspicuously innocent. And this event, the collective murder of this innocent man, is God’s most eloquent and tender word to us – which he speaks, in the end, in silence. And the centurion SAW what had taken place. And all the multitudes who assembled to see the sight… SAW what had taken place. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance and SAW these things.

Here is the key to understanding the cross of Jesus – this thing that we have done, this most eloquent of God’s utterances – the key to understanding it is to shut up, and LOOK, supine, at the foot of the cross, in a mode of humble, agenda-free reception, to plead guilty before this thing, to LOOK at this convergence of our most egregious sin and God’s most extravagant mercy, in the transfixed body of our Lord.

In the words of the great Passion hymn:

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon Thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee.

’Twas I, Lord, Jesus, I it was denied Thee!

I crucified Thee.

 

[Yet] For me, kind Jesus, was Thy incarnation,

Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life’s oblation;

Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion,

For my salvation.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This is Maundy Thursday. The word “maundy” comes from the Latin phrase, “mandatum novum da vobis,” – “a new commandment I give to you,” which we just heard the Lord say in the Gospel appointed for this evening. So the whole character of the liturgy for this evening is from this “mandatum novum” – this New Commandment, which is, of course, as Jesus said, “that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

Earlier in this narrative, as we heard, and by way of illustration, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, and declares himself to be not only his disciples’ Lord and Teacher, but also their great exemplar:

I have given you an example that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

This saying of the Lords drives at the heart of a false dichotomy that we might be tempted to detect in Christianity: as to whether our religion is all about Jesus doing stuff for us, or whether it is about his giving us stuff to do. The answer is, “both.” He washes his disciples’ feet, and so his disciples are to wash his disciples’ feet. He loves his disciples, and so his disciples are to love his disciples – to love one another. He is sent to the world, and so they are sent to the world. He humbles himself; and they are to humble themselves. He takes up his cross and proceeds to Golgotha; and they are to take up their crosses and follow him.

The liturgy tonight has a dual character. We have really reached the climax of Lent, with the great “Triduum” – the Great Three Days – which begin with Maundy Thursday, this evening. Hopefully Lent has been a time of penance and self-reflection. The liturgy has had a more austere feel to it, or it should have done. And yet here we are, close to the pinnacle of it all, and the vestments are white, the Golria in Excelsis is sung as bells are rung, and so on. And yet, as we shall soon see, from this almost festive mood, we descend very quickly into the darkness, because the Lord’s suffering commences this night as well.

This dual character of the liturgy is rooted in the dual character of the Gospel itself, of Jesus as at one and the same time the one who does these things on our behalf, as well as the one who commands us to do them. He is “the bread of God… which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world,” (John 6.33), but he is also the one who looks on the hungry crowds and says to his disciples, “YOU give them something to eat,” (cf. Mark 6.37).

So, as is often the case with the mysteries of our faith, tonight we are commemorating two sides of a coin. We rejoice because this night we receive a gift of inestimable value, for this is the night on which the Lord gives us the Holy Eucharist, the chief means by which he perpetuates his presence among us – he gives us a way to COMMUNION with him. But he gives us this gift tonight because tonight he will himself be taken away, dragged before Pilate, bruised, derided, cursed, defiled; and tomorrow he will be nailed to a tree, and laid in a tomb.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Notice what Jesus says – that “all men” should be able to see our love for one another, and from seeing it, reach the conclusion that we must be disciples of Jesus. We do well to check in with ourselves from time to time and see if this is so. Can the unbelieving world tell by our love for one another that we are disciples of Jesus? Do we even love one another, let alone conspicuously? More generally: when people see the way we live, knowing that we claim to be Christians, what will they think of Jesus and of the faith that we profess?

Jesus is our exemplar. His time in this world is running very short, and he gives us a new commandment. We are to love one another the way that he loved us. And how is that? Tonight’s gospel reading says that, “when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end,” (John 13.1); and then, “at supper with them he took bread, and when he had given thanks… he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you.’”

The body of Jesus – crucified, risen, coming again with power – the body of Jesus, his PERSON, must become the bedrock of our life, not merely “as Christians,” but as human beings. In his power and by his Spirit, we must obey his commandments – and not least this “new commandment” he gives us tonight, to love one another CONSPICUOUSLY, as he has loved us. And the Holy Eucharist, the mass, is the means by which we become empowered to do that.

If we could only see with unveiled faces the reality of what goes on at every mass! Our attitude toward it would be considerably different. There would be no more negligence in preparation; we would never waltz in casually, halfway through; but we would fall down and WORSHIP, in fear and trembling, if we could only see with the eyes of our spirit through the veils of our flesh and our sinfulness. I have often been tempted to put signs up on the doors of this church: “be quiet / turn off your cellphone: you are coming into the presence of the Creator of the universe. HE IS REALLY HERE.”

I did not make this up. To make up something like that is far above my pay-grade. Jesus is the one who claimed to be the Son of God. Jesus is the one who commanded us to do this thing. Jesus is the one who said that this bread and this wine become his body and his blood. It may be difficult to believe, but take it up with him; not with me.

And this is why Catholic-minded Christians place such a heavy emphasis on the mass, on this thing that we do day-by-day in memory of Jesus: because it is the foundation of EVERYTHING else – the ground of our humanity, of our very BEING. It makes everything else possible. Jesus said, “apart from me you can do nothing,” (John 15.5); and without the mass, without this means to him, we remain apart from him. Jesus said, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him,” (John 6.56).

At the end of the day, ours is not a religion of abstractions, of dogmas, or of emotional experiences. All of these things may be a part of our religion and of our religious experience, but they are really subsidiary to this main point – namely the objective reality that is the living person of Jesus Christ: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” And “He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

Tonight we have an opportunity to look through the veil with spiritual eyes. Jesus speaks to us tonight so to empower us to do just that, to penetrate the veil by searching for him with an informed understanding. Search for him and you will find him. Search for him in the mass, in this last supper before his passion. Watch and pray with him in the garden, that you might not come into temptation. Take and eat him, and so be empowered to love your fellow disciples with his own conspicuous and transcendent love.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Gospel reading speaks of the time just before Jesus came onto the scene of salvation history. There are two great figures of this brief period, as the Old Testament closes and the New Testament opens. These two great figures are Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and St. John the Baptist. Today we hear about the ministry of John the Baptist.

John is held before our consciousness in the liturgy today because the Lord is about to come among us liturgically, on the feast of his nativity (Christmas), just as he was about to come among the people of the 1^st century, to whom John was speaking. Thus the choice of this Gospel reading is meant to shake things up temporally, to suggest to us that there is a mystical analogue between John’s situation and our own. And this analogue is not merely a liturgical fact, because we are again waiting for Christ to manifest himself in our world, to come again in glory.

The first epistle of John says, “Children, it is the last hour.” But, as we heard today, “among you stands one whom you do not know.” We stand in the world like new John-the-Baptists, voices crying in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” because he is coming soon, as Scripture bears witness.

He is coming to us at Christmas, and he is among us even now, though perhaps he stands yet “as one whom you do not know.” But he is coming again with power and great glory to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire. And whether he comes again today, or tomorrow, or in another two thousand years, he is in fact coming soon, for this is “the last hour,” the final chapter of the world’s history and the fulfillment of time. And his second advent will contrast starkly with the humility and abnegation of the manger, as well as with the anonymity with which he stands among us even now. The book of Revelation says: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, every one who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen,” (Rev. 1.7).

So now, “We remember his death. We proclaim his resurrection. [And] We await his coming in glory.” And as we await his coming in glory, today’s Gospel holds before us the example of John the Baptist, whose vocation likewise was to await the coming of the Lord, who stood among God’s people then as one they did not know. In order to consider how John the Baptist’s vocation can illuminate our own, we might first consider why it is that the Lord stands among us unknown. What obscures our vision?

The Lord stands among us as one we do not know, because our vision is obscured by the twofold and interrelated realities of the world, with its power structures and its priorities, and our sins. (And, by the way, what better way is there to prepare for the coming of the Lord at Christmas, than by making our confession?) Every year at Christmas, Christians complain about the materialism of our culture, and how it corrupts the “true meaning of Christmas.” But if you are at all like me, every year you nevertheless, to some extent, buy into that materialism. More than either receiving or giving fits, Christmas has become a time to BUY gifts. The fact that I still have sitting around my house some things that I bought LAST year and meant to give as gifts but didn’t, is a convicting reminder of this.

Our world lives and breathes by the flow of money. In answer to the question of how Americans could help fight terrorism, not long ago, our government’s answer was that we should go shopping. The dominant narrative today is all about liquidity, the flow of money, the ease of borrowing, the valuation of debt; and the message of the government and the media seems to be that if money does not change hands rapidly, and on a massive scale, Europe might well sink into the ocean, and the world as we know it might come to an end. Money can save us, we are told; and money can destroy us. The first book of Kings says that in order to prevent the people of Israel from returning to the House of David, Jeroboam “made two calves of gold,” and showed them to the people, and said, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt,” (1 Kings 12.28).

“Among you stands one whom you do not know.” Our job is to become little John-the-Baptists, to be voices crying in this wilderness of falsehood, idolatry, and materialism, making the Lord known here, making straight what has become crooked, and building up what has been cast down. Concretely, this means that we must affirm and inhabit the truth, standing as witnesses against our world’s crookednesses and perversions. And this must mean, for each of us, reacquainting ourselves with Jesus. “Among you stands one whom you do not know.” In order to make him known, to bear witness to the justice and peace and truth that he embodies, each of us must first get to know HIM.

We know the straight way – what I often call the “economy of salvation” – set forth in the Gospel, and kept by the Catholic Church – the way of repentance and prayer, the way of the sacraments, the way of ascetical struggle, of lifelong fidelity in marriage, the way of selflessness and generosity, the way that affirms life and the dignity of the human person at every stage of development from conception to natural death, the way of solicitude for the poor, for immigrants, and for criminals. The “way of the Lord” commended by John the Baptist has been manifest to us, and now we must walk in it, and proclaim it to others.

The way of the world runs counter to the way of the Lord, and we have to purge our consciousness of its influence. The Greek word for “repentance” is “metanoia” – and it means a transformation of one’s mind. It is not enough to be well-behaved, but our whole way of thinking must be turned around and our perspective transformed; our priorities have to be reversed in order for us to become agents of the world’s renewal and the salvation of souls. This is the work to which the Lord calls each of us, and to which he calls every Christian. And it is of such workers that the prophet Isaiah speaks in today’s OT reading: “they [will] be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.”

The world’s future is written, and it is a future of deliverance from every corruption, from loneliness, sickness, brokenness of every sort, and from death itself. This is the work that Jesus has already set loose within the world by being born into poverty, by dying and rising again; and it is the work to which each of us is called in virtue of our having been baptized into that, his death and resurrection. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22.20).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It is difficult to believe, but here we are at the first Sunday of Advent. As I mentioned last Sunday, during Advent we prepare for the coming of the Lord at Christmas. And the relevant passages of scripture that treat this theme are pretty ominous. Today, Jesus says to his disciples:

…in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. (Mark 13.24-25)

The Venerable Bede says that “…the stars in the day of judgment shall appear obscure, not by any lessening of their own light, but because of the brightness of the true light, that is, of the most high Judge coming upon them…” This could of course be taken literally – to mean that celestial bodies will literally grow dim as the end of the world draws near. But reading between the lines, and drawing on St. Bede’s interpretation, we might say that Jesus means us to understand that the more we allow him to be the one who illuminates our lives, that is to say, the more we allow him to give us direction, to illuminate the pathways of our lives, the more we orient ourselves within the world by his teaching and example, the less influence “the powers that be” within the world will hold sway over us – the less will we heed them with respect to our decision-making.

It is like when you are in your house and the power goes out. You light candles in the darkness, and after awhile, your eyes become accustomed to the darkness, and the dim light of the candles enables you to get around. But when suddenly the power is restored and all the lights in the house come back on, everything is brightly illuminated, and although the candles are still burning, you do not notice their light. The light that they cast is inconsequential as compared with the brightness of the restored power.

The closer we get to the Lord’s coming, the less do the world’s powers and priorities have any influence in our lives. This is true not just considered historically – that is to say, not merely as the world grows ever more weary and lawless – but in our personal lives as well, as we come ever closer to seeing the king in his majesty and his beauty. And on this score, we do well to remember that however long this world lasts, every one of us will comparatively soon stand before our Savior and Judge. If this world lasts another million years, nevertheless each of our own personal worlds will end in a relatively little while, when we die; and so it behooves us to spend our energy in learning to be guided by the light of the Son of Glory.

Blessed Johhn Henry Newman once said:

O my brethren, pray [to Jesus] to give you the heart to seek him in sincerity. Pray him to make you… earnest. You have one work only, to bear your cross after him. Resolve in his strength to do so. Resolve to be no longer beguiled by “shadows of religion”, by words, or by disputings, or by notions, or by high professions, or by excuses, or by the world’s promises or threats. Pray him to give you what Scripture calls “an honest and good heart”, or “a perfect heart”, and, without waiting, begin at once to obey him with the best heart you have. Any obedience is better than none, — any profession which is disjoined from obedience, is a mere pretence and deceit. Any religion which does not bring you nearer to God is of the world. You have to seek his face; [and] obedience is the only way of seeking him. All your duties are obediences.

We must learn to be children of the apocalypse (which means “revelation”) – we must be offspring of God’s self-disclosure, born of the water and the blood flowing from the heart of Jesus, learning to recognize him easily as we go about our lives, and allowing his teaching and example to direct our decisions, as for us the world’s influence wanes, and we cease to walk by its light.

But what are we to make of Jesus’ words when he says, “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father,” (Mark 13.32)? Isn’t he supposed to know everything? Indeed, he is supposed to know everything, and he does. St. Hilary of Poitiers said that Jesus’ supposed ignorance of “that day” and “that hour,” is a “sacrament of his silence,” that it is related to the occlusion of all wisdom and knowledge in him – just as St. Paul says that believers in Jesus “have all the riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” (Colossians 2.2-3).

Today’s Gospel reading concludes with Jesus’ exhortation for his disciples to watch for his advent, his coming. Four times in the last five verses of this reading Jesus uses the word “watch.”

Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Watch therefore — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning — lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch. (Mark 13.33ff)

Watchfulness and attentiveness – these are the hallmarks of the disciples of the Lord until he returns. But to what kind of attention are we being exhorted? St. Gregory of Nyssa commented on the “wakeful sleep” of the Beloved in the Song of Songs, who said that she “slept while my heart was awake.” Gregory says, “When all of these [outward senses] have been lulled into inactivity by a kind of sleep, the heart’s functioning becomes pure, the reason looks up to heaven, unshaken and unperturbed by the motion of the senses.”

This means nothing other than that in order for us to understand things from the treasures of knowledge and wisdom veiled in Christ, we must enter the darkness of sleep with respect to the world. For us, the world’s sources of light must become darkened, so that “the brightness of the true light” may flood our lives, enabling us go out to meet the Bridegroom when he comes, but also in the meantime, to negotiate our lives in this world without stumbling.

St. Paul speaks of this dynamic in today’s epistle reading, and exhorts his hearers to rely on God, to a greater trust in the power of God working in our lives, which is the fruit of prayer. St. Paul says:

in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge — even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you — so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Our primary job, as disciples of Jesus, is to wait and to watch for his coming, his advent. But this kind of waiting and watching is not passive, because it is undertaken in FAITH – understanding and believing that God has indeed enriched us with his grace and his power; and that therefore we need not be afraid as this world’s sun is darkened, and its stars fall from heaven; it only means that our King and Savior now draws near. Come, let us adore him.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Gospel contains Jesus’ injunction to “call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven,” (Matthew 23.9). This verse has been used by some Christians to criticize the Catholic practice of calling priests, “Father.” It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I don’t regard this criticism as legitimate.

Firstly, we might note that Jesus wasn’t speaking English. He was probably speaking Aramaic or Hebrew, and the language of the New Testament, in which this injunction has come down to us, is Greek. So the English word, “Father,” with reference to human beings hasn’t been proscribed.

But those who say we can’t call priests “Father” might retort that the spirit of the law is what’s important here. That Jesus obviously didn’t mean only to proscribe the Hebrew or Greek words for “father,” but he was saying that we must not call people “father” or any equivalent words in any language.

But if that is so, then we can’t call our own fathers “Father,” or “dad” or anything else. After all, Jesus doesn’t say “don’t call priests ‘Father,’”. He says call “no man… on earth” “father.” So if the critics are right, we will have to come up with new words for our fathers, like maybe “living male relation who is married to my mother.” But while I know of many Christians who object to calling priests “father,” I’ve never heard of any who objected to calling biological fathers “father.”

Moreover, following this logic, we should note that the words “rabbi” and “master” are prohibited to us. The Greek word here translated “master” means “teacher” – as does the Latin word, magister, from which the English word “master” is derived. So if we are to be consistent, we will have to come up with new words for schoolmasters, teachers, instructors, doctors (which is another Latin word meaning “teacher”), and so forth.

I am only following this logic to demonstrate how very tedious it is, and by way of suggesting that those who use this passage to criticize the practice of calling priests “father” are probably motivated more by anti-Catholic sentiment than by a concern to be disciples of Jesus.

The truth is that Jesus was not concerned with setting up a system of rules with respect to nomenclature, morals, or anything else, the following of which would constitute the true body of his disciples. Rather, the opposite is the case. As Jesus said, “no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit,” (Luke 6.43). The badness or goodness of the tree determines how it behaves, not vice versa.

And so it is with Jesus and his disciples. There are, in fact, Gospel rules. There are precepts that must be followed. But keeping them is the fruit of the goodness, the LOVE, with which God fills us as we draw closer to him. “No good tree bears bad fruit.” If we bear bad fruit from time to time, it is only proof that God is not finished with us yet, and that we should continue to seek him when and where he wills to be found so that he can continue the process of transforming us into faithful sons and daughters.

So what IS Jesus saying in today’s Gospel reading? He is concerned with authority: “…you have one Father, who is in heaven,” “you have one master, the Christ.” The great exposition of Jesus’ teaching in this verse is 1 John 5.2-4:

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.

Love, faith, obedience. This is the dynamic Jesus is concerned with getting us to understand. We are to abide in the love of God, which means living in the relationship that Jesus has with his Father. As with every relationship, the way to foster it is by closeness and communication. And this means prayer and the sacraments. By these means, if we engage them with open hearts, we will gradually come to a better and better acquaintance with Jesus himself, we will learn that he is supremely lovely, supremely powerful, and therefore supremely trustworthy. We will come to understand from the heart that he cares for us, and that he is actively bringing about good in our lives, even in the middle of – and BY MEANS OF – circumstances that we find frightening or painful.

And this realization will lead to an increasing desire to remain with Jesus, to follow him, to listen for his voice, and to do what he says.

Why then does Jesus say all that stuff about calling no man father, etc.? Because he wants us to recognize the supremacy of God’s authority. “You have one Father, who is in heaven… you have one teacher, the Christ.” Every earthly authority, every earthly voice, is subordinate to that of God. And our ALLEGIANCE to every earthly voice, authority, ideology, or whatever, must be subordinate to our allegiance – from the heart – to God, to his plan, to his Kingdom.

This is why Jesus tells his hearers that they are, in fact, to do what the Scribes and Pharisees say, but that they are not to be like them. Because the Scribes and the Pharisees urged the people to be faithful to God; their voice harmonized with his. But they had forgotten the point of God’s plan from the beginning: to be united with all mankind in a communion of love. The special relationship that God established with the Jews was to that end, as God spoke to Abraham: “by your descendants shall ALL THE NATIONS of the earth bless themselves, because YOU have obeyed my voice,” (Genesis 22.18).

Blessing and life is God’s plan for us. It is what we attain through love, faith, and obedience. And not only that, but God’s will is to turn us into instruments of blessing and life for others, who have never known God. We are the descendents of Abraham because we share his faith in the living God, and by our love for him, our trust in him, and our putting that love and trust into action, we are supposed to be beacons of life and blessing and transformation for people in the world around us. They should be able to see us – the way we live our lives as individuals and as a community –  and thereby come to know that God loves them, and be brought out of their bondage to destruction and come into the same transformative pattern of life that we live as members of Christ’s Body.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It is, of course, our “name day” or “feast of title” at the Church of the Holy Cross. This year’s feast marks the 1,676^th anniversary of the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem by Bishop Maximus, at the command of Emperor Constantine – a three day festival from September 13^th to September 15^th in the year 335 AD. In that year, the rebuilt church, which had been destroyed and had a temple to Aphrodite built on its ruins, was dedicated, and the true cross, discovered during the rebuilding, was brought out for the faithful to venerate; and pieces of it were subsequently sent to churches all over the world, by St. Helena, the emperor’s mother. We know of these things because they were monumental events in their time, and the written records of contemporary witnesses – like Egeria of Bordeaux and St. Cyril of Jerusalem – survive.

St. Cyril, the bishop of Jerusalem in the years just after these events, delivered a series of instructions to catechumens inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher – a kind of “newcomers’ class” –  not unlike the series we are about to commence, on Tuesday, here at Holy Cross. In these discourses, St. Cyril speaks of the cross to the faithful in the city of Jerusalem, assembled in the church built over the place where Jesus was crucified and buried. Cyril says: “[Jesus] was truly crucified for our sins. If you would deny it, this very place refutes you visibly, this blessed Golgotha, in which we are now assembled for the sake of Him who was crucified here, and the whole world has since been filled with pieces of the wood of the Cross,” (Lecture IV.10).

One such piece, after a long journey through the centuries, from Jerusalem, to Rome, and eventually to Dallas, Texas, now sits on the altar of repose at the back of this church this morning, where we faithful are again invited to venerate it, and to pray to God in its presence.

But the story of the wood of the cross is of more than merely historical interest. It is not even PRIMARILY of historical interest – because it is the story of the “tree of life,” the instrument of our salvation, on which the Son of God died so that we might be set free from the domination of sin and death and hell – it is the means by which mankind regains access again to the Garden of Eden, from which we had been cast out from the beginning. The wood of the cross was the instrument of this work that has set us free and made life and joy and peace possible. It means the end of our striving, the end of our loneliness, the end of sickness and confusion and chaos, the death of death, and a doorway opening on everlasting life. The cross of Jesus is indeed the tree of life.

We contemporary people have a propensity of thinking of salvation, and the DYNAMIC of salvation, as a psychological phenomenon. So “spirituality,” we think, takes place in the mind – its all about feelings and beliefs and motivations and dispositions and such. But the veneration of relics in general, and of the true cross in particular, remind us that salvation is intensely material. As much as it is about faith, its also about wood and nails and blood and bones and water and bread and wine. Why should this be? It is, in essence, because there is a seamless fluidity running between God’s proclamation and the enactment of his proclamation. We can see this in Genesis: ‘God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light,’ (Gen. 1.3). ‘And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters,”… and it was so,’ (Gen. 1.6-7). “God said… and it was so.”

Throughout history, the words and actions that package God’s proclamation become efficacious signs and enactments of that proclamation, until, in the fullness of time, the whole divine narrative reaches a climax with the incarnation, and God’s word becomes FLESH and dwells among us, full of grace and truth. And the Word Made Flesh is, of course, Jesus Christ.

This factuality of the divine Word should not surprise us – though it will take some effort for us to step back from the attempt to separate word and flesh that has become a hallmark of contemporaneity – and enlightenment modes of thought. But we may rest assured, this is God’s way, the way of life and light and truth. St. Gregory of Nyssa, who was born around the same time that the true cross was discovered at Jerusalem, wrote about this intimacy that, in God’s plan, connects salvation with its material instruments. In a book on baptism, Gregory answers an objection to the idea that water could have anything to do with rebirth in the sprit. He rehearses a long list of material objects that, in Scripture, were instruments of God’s salvation:

Moses’ rod was a hazel stick. And what is that, but common wood that every hand cuts and carries, and fashions to what use it chooses, and casts as it will into the fire? But when God was pleased to accomplish by that rod those wonders, lofty, and passing the power of language to express, the wood was changed into a serpent. And again, at another time, he smote the waters, and now made the water blood, now made to issue forth a countless brood of frogs: and again he divided the sea, severed to its depths without flowing together again. Likewise the mantle of one of the prophets, though it was but a goat’s skin, made Elisha renowned in the whole world…. So a bramble bush showed to Moses the manifestation of the presence of God: so the remains of Elisha raised a dead man to life; so clay gave sight to him that was blind from birth. And all these things, though they were matter without soul or sense, were made the means for the performance of the great marvels wrought by them, when they received the power of God.

“And,” Nyssa adds, “the wood of the Cross is of saving efficacy for all men, though it is, as I am informed, a piece of a poor tree, less valuable than most trees are.”

I have heard people object to the Christian veneration of the cross – even as a symbol, to say nothing of the cross itself – as something morbid, as though Christianity has a grim fascination with torture and death. But the truth is that the cross is the instrument of God’s victory over all morbidity, over all that is evil in the world: suffering, disease, insanity, oppression, selfishness, hunger, alienation, and death itself. As a versicle from the Breviary office for this feast puts it: “Lo, the Church with solemn gladness, haileth the day for ever glorious when in Kingly pomp was lifted up that dread tree of mystic triumph  * On whose boughs her dying Saviour shattered death and crushed the serpent.”

This is God’s way. This was his plan from the beginning, because he loved us from the beginning. Saint Paul says: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God,” (1 Corinthians 1.27-29).

And so: “O Cross, * surpassing all the stars in splendour, exceeding dear to all Christian people and world-renowned, holiest of earth’s treasures: which only wast counted worthy to hold aloft the Price of our Redemption: sweet is thy wood and sweet thine iron, but sweetest of all the burden that hung on thee!  O that all who come this day to celebrate thy praises may find in thee salvation,” (antiphon on Magnificat for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.