The Gospel of the Cross

Before we process with it to the tetrapod on for the Veneration, the Holy Cross is on the holy table in the place where the gospel usually rests. The typicon instructs us to place it there before Vespers the night before the Veneration of the Holy Cross. It rests on the holy table all night long in the place of the Holy Gospel. How can anything take the place of the Holy Gospel? Nothing can. But that Holy Cross contains within itself the whole gospel.

What is the gospel?

Christ is risen from the dead. By death, he tramples death and to those in the tombs, he grants life.

That’s the gospel.

We’re about halfway to the great day when we get to sing those words - halfway to Pascha. This week is the midpoint of the Great Fast. And here, in the middle of the fast, in the middle of the church, stands the cross.  

Only in and through the cross is the gospel of resurrection available to us. The only way to life is through death.

Jesus says today that whoever loses their life for his sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it. That sounds like the cross, doesn’t it? The way to the gospel is the way of the cross. The way to life in Christ is death in Christ. We are baptized into his death so that we might also rise with him.  

But then Jesus says that there are some who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power (Mark 9:1).

Most of us hear that and think that sounds pretty good. We think, "Hey, I hope I get to be one of those people who doesn't have to taste death." But, if we're saying that, it's like we haven't been listening to what Jesus is saying about the cross.

Are we following him, or aren’t we? To go after Jesus means to embrace the cross. Would we rather not taste death unless first we see the kingdom of God? Unless we have proof? Do we need to be impressed with power first? Must we see to believe?

Jesus says that if we want to come after him, we must lose our life  (Mark 8:35) and let him save it instead of trying to save ourselves. Those of us who try to save ourselves are lost. We fail as saviors. There is one savior, and his name is Jesus Christ.

Is anything in our life or even our whole life more precious to us than life in Christ? Are we afraid to lose it? Or even to lose worldly things or comfort, or position, or human respect, or power?

Are we ashamed of him or of the cross ? Do we care more for the esteem of our fellow humans than for being the beloved of God? Do we regard the opinions of this adulterous and sinful generation to be of some great weight (Mark 8:38)?

When Jesus calls a generation adulterous, it’s worth remembering that we are adulterous whenever we are unfaithful to God by failing to keep his commandments. Whenever we hold anything or anyone or our own lives higher than God in our hearts, that is adulterous.

It’s worth periodically examining our priorities so that we may repent when they get out of whack. So that we may return again to the Lord and renew our focus on him.  

The way of the cross is the way of repentance, which “is the beginning, middle, and end of the Christian way of life,” as St. Gregory Palamas says.

Fascinatingly, to be marked with the cross was a sign of repentance even before Christ. In the prophecy of Ezekiel, those who sigh and groan over the sins of Jerusalem are marked with this sign on their foreheads (Ezekiel 9:4; Jerome Commentary).

Let us be unashamed of Jesus Christ and of his cross. Wear a cross to remind others and yourself that you’re a Christian. Make the sign of the cross whenever you pass by a church or a cemetery or a funeral, whenever you hear a siren or pass by an accident, before you eat a meal. Fill your whole life with reminders of the cross.

And do not forget even for one day that your own true life was created upon that cross – your life in Christ was born there and, if you embrace that cross, it will continue with him forever. For that it is worth giving up everything.

The Bitter is made Sweet by the Cross

The Israelites were in the wilderness for three days with no water. And then, when they found a place with water, it was so bitter they could not drink it. So they named that place Marah, which means “bitter.” Dying of thirst, the Israelites then murmured against Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?" And so Moses cried to the Lord and the Lord showed him a tree. Moses took the wood of this tree and threw it into the water – and the water became sweet (Exodus 15:22-25).

We heard this story in the first reading of Vespers last night. This is because it is a prefiguration of the cross, which we exalt today. The tree shown to Moses by the Lord is a type of the cross. The bitter water that the Israelites find after three days with no water is like the bitterness of our lives of sin and suffering and death. When Moses throws the wood into the bitter water, it becomes sweet. And when we accept the cross into our sinful lives, which lead to death, our lives become sweet and our deaths lead to everlasting life in Christ.

Apart from our sweet Lord Jesus, life is surely bitter. It is a place like Marah.

Interestingly, the name of Mary may have the same root as Marah. We're not actually sure what the name Mary means. It may mean “longed-for-child” or “beloved.” Unfortunately, I don’t know any Hebrew, so I can only tell you what other people think it might mean. But, in any case, it may also mean “sea of bitterness.” This is a rather shocking possible meaning for the name Mary – at least for us Christians who love and venerate Mary. I was shocked when I first heard it suggested that Mary means “bitter.”

But that meaning begins to make a great deal of sense in the context of this story from Exodus. Mary was conceived and born in the ordinary way – and she was conceived and born into a world before the incarnation of her son. So, her human nature did not yet know that it was to be personally joined with the divine nature in her son, Jesus Christ. Mary is the bitter water of fallen humanity made sweet by the entrance of divinity inside her. The bitterness of the human nature that Mary is born into is made sweet by the son she bears, who enters into that humanity through her. Through her, God takes on our flesh and even its mortality, first embracing death, even a bitter death on a cross, and then conquering it in his sweet resurrection.

Death, without the cross, is everlasting, and that is a bitter pill to swallow. But today, on the cross, and nowhere else does Christ enter into death, and, by his death, he tramples death. And that is sweet. Now, in paradox of the cross, death has become the way to life.

This is fully accomplished only in and through the cross. And if we will partake of that sweetness, we must follow the way of the cross. We must drink the water we thought was bitter – the water of self-sacrificial love – and we will find that it has been made sweet by the wood of the cross.

The Cross Unifies Opposites

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” These must be the most recognized words of the gospel in the United States. We see John 3:16 everywhere: on bumper stickers, t-shirts, in cartoons. I recently saw a coupon that offered $15 dollars off a full-service oil change if the customer could quote John 3:16.

At some point, almost everyone in America has probably looked up this verse. I once heard a priest quip that maybe it’s time we start writing John 3:17 everywhere. Then, after a while, we could move on to John 3:18, and so on. That way, maybe, before they die, people would make it through a whole chapter of scripture.

We quote John 3:16 in our Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom just after the “Holy, Holy, Holy….” These words have been popular among us Byzantines since before there were chapters and verses to cite.  

And they tell us that God loves the world. We hear these words so often that maybe they go in one ear and out the other. We might begin to lose a sense of their significance, even of their scandal. 

The word for world here in Greek is κόσμος. God so loved the cosmos. This word is potent and loaded in the Christian tradition, and particularly in John, who uses it more than anyone. Its meanings are complex and varied and seemingly contradictory. The lexicon gives it no less than eight definitions.

Today we hear from Jesus that God loves the world. But John tells us in another place “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” And, “If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). This is confusing. We’ve just heard that the Father loves the world, but now we hear if we love the world we do not love the Father?

And anyway, how can God love this world? In this world, children are abused. In this world, men crash airplanes into skyscrapers. In this world, we drop nuclear bombs. The ruler of this world is the devil. We see this wickedness all around us and we don’t love it.

At the root of all these evils is our passions. St. Isaac the Syrian writes that “The world is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world.” The passions, you know, are like greed and sloth, lust and vainglory, envy and resentment, and so on. So, when we say that God loves the world are we saying that he loves these things? That he loves the passions and the horrors that impassioned people carry out? God forbid the thought. The word “world” carries many senses. And we must carefully consider what is meant. 

Jesus is not of the world but is above the world (John 8:23). He creates the world and yet becomes of the world to save the world. We are taught both to love the world and to hate our lives in the world (John 12:25). The devil is the ruler of the world but Jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords. The world brings up these parallels and opposites. And only Jesus Christ and his cross can reconcile opposites. 

It’s like we have two worlds here. And I think that’s it really. We live in two worlds at the same time. There’s the world as God creates it and there is the fallen world, enslaved to sin. We must be aware of both worlds – both the cosmos and the chaos – both the way of life and the way of death.

God enters into the midst of both of these by becoming man. By his humanity, he saves, redeems, glorifies, and brings us humans into unity with God - us and also the cosmos. By his incarnation, Christ is cosmically present to the universe. And the whole universe stands in need of his salvific presence, because the whole universe is disordered and suffering from destruction and death of many kinds.

Death is what we’re being saved from. God gave his only Son so that we would not perish but have eternal life. Death is an evil. Some of us are accustomed to thinking about moral evil only and we forget about physical evil. We fail to understand physical evil as evil. We even call it good.

And it has been made good in Christ and in his cross. But we must not forget that this is a paradox, lest we forget all our Lord has done for us. In Christ, all things are new. In Christ, death becomes the means of life, because in him, life goes into the place of the dead, into Hades, so that there is nowhere God is not. God is even where God is not.

God is impassible, yet in his humanity he suffers the passion. God is immortal, yet in his humanity he dies. God creates the cosmos, yet in his humanity he is created in the cosmos. God loves the world.

The world is the whole cosmos that God creates. Yet the world is also the passions, the sins, the suffering, and the death. So it gets convoluted sometimes when we’re talking about the world. We see the passions and the weakness, the suffering and the death, all of which is evil, and it gets hard to see what’s good about the world. 

All of this is reconciled only in the cross. We exalt the cross when we say that we love the world. When we say that God loves the world – that can only make any sense in the context of exalting the cross. God is making the sign of the cross over the whole world. He is blessing us with the cross.

The cross unifies opposites. There’s a vertical bar and there’s a horizontal bar, intersected. The divine intersects the human, in Jesus Christ. Heaven comes down to earth. Life enters into death. Unified, death becomes the way to life through resurrection. The cross is the cosmos as it really is. All of it, in all of its senses, unified.  Opposites are made one in the cross, this wonderful and holy sign. 

What return can I make to the Lord?

Our Lord has given himself to us. Have we given ourselves to the Lord? 

Just four days ago, it was Annunciation – God became man, taking flesh from the Virgin. God became man. Have we become God? Not yet, right? Yet, that is why he joined our human nature – so that we may become partakers of his divine nature because he loves us and wants to be with us.

To love someone you have to go out to meet them where they are – like the father who ran out to meet his prodigal son returning home to him at last. To love someone you have to see yourself in them – to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Now, when God looks at humanity, he does see himself – because now he is also human. He has run out to meet us where we are. He has given himself to us completely. He offers us actual union with himself if we will but take the first few steps toward home. Tonight he prays to his Father for us who believe in him: that we may all be one, as he and his Father are one, and that we may be one in them (John 17:21).

Do we take up this offer? Do we do our small part of showing up, of turning to him, of cooperating with his grace? This is called synergy. As Paul says, “We are fellow-workers (synergoi) with God' (1 Cor 3:9a). It’s really all the work of the Lord because we are the work of the Lord. We are “God’s field [and] God’s building” (1 Cor 3:9b).

But he’s given us freedom. Without freedom, there is no love and no repentance (and the Lord is in love with the beauty of repentance). So, if we will join with God, we must freely work with God rather than vainly strive against him. Tonight, he shows us how to work with him. Tonight, he freely gives himself to us and in so doing shows us how to freely give ourselves to him.

Cathedral of Monreale

Tonight, he washes his apostles’ feet. Do we wash each other's feet? This becomes a way for us to give ourselves to our creator and our God.

Behold: the creator washes the feet of his creatures. It is clear at this moment, that the creator of all things has emptied himself completely for the love of his creatures. He washes even the feet of Judas, whom he knows will betray him. Are we selective about who we will serve and humble ourselves before? Jesus is not.

“He who made the lakes, the springs, and the seas… washes the feet of his disciples; in his infinite mercy, he lowers himself, and he draws us up.”* The maker of water shows why he truly made it. “The Wisdom of God, who holds back the great waters… today pours water into a basin.”† He lowers himself and serves those whom he loves with water. He makes all things for love.

Jesus’s example of emptying himself and lowering himself is nothing less than a path to theosis for us. To become one with God above, we must lower ourselves as he did. He “humbled [himself] and washed the feet of [his] disciples, thus preparing them to walk in the divine footsteps.”‡ To walk this path is to walk “the most excellent way of humility”§ in imitation of the one “who wraps the heavens with the clouds [and yet] now wraps himself with a towel.”** This is truly “the model of humility,” which any who would follow Christ must imitate.†† If we would imitate Christ Jesus, we must have in us “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” and then we will truly become the body of Christ (Phil 2:5).

Tonight, he gives us his body and blood to eat and drink. Have we become the body of Christ?

With Eucharist, Jesus radically breaks down our perceived barriers and divisions and fills all creation with his grace. He comes like a bridegroom in the middle of the night. Unexpectedly, in the midst of the darkness of this Holy Week, there shines the brightness of this Great and Holy Thursday. The “bridal chamber” is “completely engulfed with light.”‡‡ Though until this day we have been wearing dark garments – not wedding garments – in penitence, now, tonight, at his last supper, the Lord gives us the Eucharist, which is – in no small way – a consummation of God’s marital union with humanity.

 “The true Wisdom of God initiates his friends into the mysteries. He prepares a table filled with spiritual food, and, for the faithful, He fills the cup of immortality.”§§ The mystery of the Eucharist is nothing less than the bread of eternal life, given to us today. This is the very means of union with God.

Jesus says,

“Take and eat, this is my Body; you shall find food for your faith;”

“Take and drink, this is my Blood; you shall find food for your faith;”

“Dwell in me, and you shall find food for your faith.”***

We eat and drink the body and the blood of Christ so that we may come to dwell in him. Jesus gives us the Eucharist in order to bring his people into himself.

He gives us himself in this way. We take of him and eat and drink. By this means and by the descent of the holy spirit upon us, we become the body of Christ. As the body of Christ, we may give ourselves completely to God, as he does upon the cross.

Tomorrow, he dies for us. Can we even stay awake to watch and pray with him for one hour?

He gives us everything and gives us himself completely. Do we give him anything? Do we accept even inconvenience for him, let alone death? Is it too much to ask that we spend time with him? Can we be bothered at all? Or, are we like the disciples who keep nodding off in the midst of his agony as he awaits his betrayal?

He delights even in a small movement toward him on our part. If we but begin to move toward him, he runs out to meet us. We must cooperate with his grace, but there is nothing symmetrical about this relationship. Even our cooperation is enabled by his grace. His grace is everything and is altogether trustworthy.

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[*] Sessional Hymns at Matins, Triodion 565

[†] The fifth ode, Triodion 566

[‡] Triodion 565

[§] From the dismissal at every service for Holy Thursday, e.g. Triodion 572

[**] Triodion 566

[††] Triodion 566

[‡‡] Hymn of Light

[§§] The first Ode of Matins, Triodion 564

[***] From the third ode, Triodion 565

Weeding our own Garden - or - Don't Garden Drunk

To be honest, most of us have had the experience of having too much to drink. Many people have experienced this, of course. It's a rather common phenomenon for a person who has never had alcohol before – and who doesn't yet understand how it affects people – to drink a bit too much at first and to become drunk.

Well, Noah was apparently the first person to ever drink wine. He was the first to plant a vineyard (Gen 9:20) and when he drank the wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent (9:21). Given his inexperience and the inexperience of the whole human race at this point, this is really an unsurprising and predictable result.

Nonetheless, it is a shameful and embarrassing situation for a father to be discovered drunk and naked by his son and this is what happened to Noah when Ham walks in (9:22). Further unspeakable indecencies may be hinted at by some Hebrew euphemisms in the text but the situation is difficult enough without all that. And, regardless, if we have ears to hear, I think this story teaches us both the importance of sobriety and the proper way to regard others in their sins.

Deliberately getting drunk is a sin. As Catholics, and therefore as adversaries of teetotalers and Puritans, we may not say this often enough for fear of being lumped in with them, so I'll say it again: deliberately getting drunk is a sin. Alcoholism is a disease. Accidentally getting drunk is an involuntary sin or an infirmity.

In each case, we stand in need of healing. Our Lord, who alone can heal us, offers us this healing both directly and through one another, through our prayer and support for one another, through the Holy Mysteries of repentance, of anointing, and of communion in his holy body and blood.

Sobriety, however, does not only refer to the moderation of our use of alcohol. First of all, there are many other addictions. I think almost everyone is addicted to something: to alcohol or drugs, to pornography or sex, to food or sugar, to video games or social media, or to our countless passions. All these things offer us a momentary release or escape from our pain. Those who suffer less are less susceptible to addictions, by the way. There's always a pain at the root of an addiction. So, we addicts stand in need of a healing of the root.

Yet, the way to healing and to life shown to us by Jesus Christ is counterintuitive – it is the way of the cross. We're more inclined to run to our addictions and away from our pain, but the way out is through. This is the only real way out to where we want to go – to "a place of light, joy, and peace where there is no pain, sorrow, nor mourning" – through the cross. We must deny ourselves and embrace the very thing that hurts us – as Jesus embraces his cross (Mark 8:34). Usually, this means loving and forgiving an enemy, just as Jesus forgave those who were crucifying him, even as they were driving the nails into his hands and feet (Matt 5:44; Luke 23:34). He did not wait for them to apologize. This is the way of the cross – the way to healing and everlasting life. Unforgiveness, on the other hand, is a kind of drunkenness of the soul.

Sobriety is a spiritual condition. In the spiritual life, sobriety is also known as "watchfulness" or "νῆψις". This is the opposite of a drunken stupor. We must stay awake, be alert, vigilant, and watchful over our own hearts, lest we get drunk on our passions.

When the weed of unforgiveness or resentment, or anger (like the anger of Noah when he knew what his youngest son had done to him) begins to take root in our hearts, we must pluck it out before it has time to grow deep roots (Gen 9:24-27). If, for example, we wait for someone to apologize before we will forgive them, we may find that, even if they do eventually apologize, our resentment will have by then grown too strong for us to overcome – its roots too deep for us to dig up. If we are drunk like Noah was drunk – that is, if we are deeply imbued in our passions and addictions – we will lack the careful attention needed to weed the garden of our hearts without uprooting the herbs and vegetables and flowers of holiness and virtue and goodness which the Lord has planted in us.

We must always keep careful watch over our own gardens, but it is not our business to go rooting around in someone else's garden. "Yes, O Lord and King, let me see my own sins and not judge my brothers and sisters" (The Prayer of St. Ephrem). Ham looked upon the nakedness and drunkenness of his father and he told his two brothers about it – instead of keeping his mouth shut (Gen 9:22).

"A prudent man conceals his knowledge,

           but fools proclaim their folly...

He who guards his mouth preserves his life;

            he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin" (Prov 12:23;13:3).

"Lord and Master of my life, spare me from... idle chatter" (The Prayer of St. Ephrem).

Shem and Japheth, on the other hand, acted rightly and with respect for their father. They "took a garment, laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness" (Gen 9:23). We must never look greedily upon the sins or weaknesses or infirmities of others, whether it is to laugh at them or to puff ourselves up – saying like the Pharisee "Thank God I am not like this sinner" (Luke 18:11). Rather, like Shem and Japheth, let us avert our eyes from the sins of others and focus on repenting for our own sins.

This is not to say that there is never a time to lovingly admonish the sinner or correct the wayward, but these actions are always taken for the good of the other and never for exalting the self by comparison. That is how we can discern whether or not we should say something.   

Lifted Up in the Tree

Tree of Zacchaeus
Jericho

Jesus was certainly able to draw crowds, as the story of Zacchaeus illustrates (Luke 19:1-10). 

There are people today with that same sort of popular draw. For example, whenever Pope Francis is announced as the celebrant of a Liturgy, the place is packed. The crowds often spill into the street. And anyone short of stature, like Zacchaeus, likely has difficulty even getting a glimpse of the pontiff – unless they put up those big screens all over the place, as they usually do.

But, you know, at every Divine Liturgy, there’s someone who’s even better than the pope. The great high priest is not the pope but is our Lord Jesus Christ, who is personally present among us and in the Eucharist. This should draw more crowds than it does. If we only realized in whose presence we are standing in the midst of the Church.

If we really believe the Lord is present in the Church, we will demonstrate that faith by how we live and behave. Maybe there are usually no great crowds in our parishes because it doesn’t seem to the world that we ourselves even believe he is present there.

Yet in the world as it is, it is movie stars and singers, presidents and kings who are able to attract large numbers, anyway.

After World War II, King George personally visited the damaged cities to oversee the reconstruction efforts. When he would come into town, as you can imagine, the crowds would gather. The shops would close, the schools would close, and the people would line the streets hoping for a glimpse of their king as he went by. Well, in one of these cities, a young schoolboy, excited to be freed from school and excited to see the king, stood in the crowd and excitedly waved his flag as energetically as he could. But after the fanfare had died down, his teacher found him crying inconsolably. She asked him “what’s the matter, didn’t you get to see the king?” He replied, “Oh yes, I saw the king, but he didn’t see me.”[i]

This is how it goes, ordinarily, when a great and powerful person passes briefly in our midst. At first, it is exciting just to be near someone so famous. Years later, we may tell of the time we saw the president or the singer or the movie star, but really the experience will probably be a letdown if we enter into it hoping for any kind of real human connection with the person we so admire, as did the English schoolboy in his innocence.

And yet, Zacchaeus found that this is not what it is like with the Lord Jesus. I have no idea what was going through Zacchaeus’ mind when he decided to climb up that tree – whether he, like the schoolboy, was hoping to make himself conspicuous to the King, or whether he was merely curious. The gospel only tells us that he desired to see who Jesus was. It doesn’t say whether he also desired to be seen.

In any case, seen he was. And known. And called to. And loved. Jesus didn’t pass by Zacchaeus, leaving him unfulfilled, but rather called him down and fulfilled him ultimately, bringing salvation to his house.

He calls out, “Zacchaeus, you hurry down here for I need to stay at your house today.” Now, our etiquette might insist that one shouldn’t invite himself over, but remember that this is not a conversation between peers. Even an ordinary king may speak thus to his subjects, but here is the peerless One and Lord of all calling out to a simple sinner like us.

And listen to his insistence: Jesus says “I need” (δεῖ με – it behooves me) “to stay at your house today.” Now, in his humanity, of course Jesus needs food and shelter like all humans do, and Zacchaeus, being a rich man, had plenty of this to provide. But let’s not forget that this is God become man telling a sinner that he needs him. What love! What kenosis! God empties himself. Becomes nothing. Takes the form a slave. Makes himself dependent on a sinner like Zacchaeus. Like us. So if Jesus seems a little forward here, a little insistent, let him! It is all grace. He is knocking at our doors, inviting himself into our houses, and it is all for us and for our salvation, because when Jesus the Savior enters our house, it is salvation coming to our house. “For where Christ enters,” as St. Cyril writes, “there necessarily is also salvation” (Commentary on Luke, 507). The name Jesus means “God saves.” 

This isn’t the first time that God has called out to one of us. God always initiates the conversation that leads to our salvation. He always is the one to invite us to accept him into our homes and hearts.

He called down Zacchaeus, who, thanks be to God, joyfully accepted him into his house.

He called out to some fishermen, “Come, follow me.” And they left behind their nets and followed him.

He called out to Adam in the garden “Where are you?”

God has been looking for us and inviting us to reunite with him from the moment we departed from him in our sins. And his invitation demands a response on our part. We must repent as Zacchaeus did. We must follow Christ, as the fishermen did. We must put our faith in Christ and make room for him to come and stay in our houses – in the house of our heart – in our inmost being.  St. Cyril also writes, “Christ… is in us when we believe; for he dwells in our hearts by faith, and we are His abode” (507).

This divine condescension to dwell in and with our fallen humanity is consummated in Jesus, our Savior, in his incarnation, in his ministry to Zacchaeus and to all of us, and in his cross.

Here is a strikingly inverted image for us to contemplate:

Jesus, our Savior, is standing at the foot of a tree looking up. In the tree is Zacchaeus – a sinful man – and the Savior calls him down and saves him.

Later, Jesus, the sinless One, will hang on a tree. And we, a sinful people, will stand at the foot of that tree, looking up at him and mocking him, telling him to come down and save himself.

Zacchaeus, being short, was lifted up from the earth by a tree, the better to see Jesus – and quite rightly, for Jesus, too, will be lifted up from the earth by the tree of the cross. Like Zacchaeus, we cannot see Christ unless we climb the tree – that is, unless we embrace the cross. Because of our sins, we all come up short, like Zacchaeus, and only the cross can lift us up to see Christ.

Ultimately, Jesus saves us from suffering and death, from ignominy and punishment, from every evil that our sins have brought into the world, and from all that the tree of the cross represents – by going up onto the tree himself. Seeing Zacchaeus in the tree, Jesus freely identifies with him. He trades places with Zacchaeus. He calls down Zacchaeus, and all of us together with him, and goes up himself in our place. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,” as Peter writes, “that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

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[i] Fr. Anthony Coniaris connected this story with the story of Zacchaeus. Anthony Coniaris, Gems from the Sunday Gospels in the Orthodox Church(Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing Co., 1975), 1:24.

Pour out your complaints before the cross.

painting by William Blake

"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" (John 3: 14).

What a strange thing to say! – if we don't have context. If we are not deeply grounded in the Old Testament, much of the New Testament loses its meaning for us. It becomes decontextualized – because the context of the New Testament is the Old Testament

Perhaps many of us already know of the serpent here referred to by Jesus – the one that Moses lifts up in the wilderness – and that's good. But perhaps many of us don't know what he's talking about – and then this sounds very strange. What does lifting up a serpent have to do with life? And how can Jesus be lifted up like a serpent?

How can we identify Jesus our Lord with a serpent? The serpent reminds us more of the devil, doesn't it? Even those of us less familiar with the Old Testament probably know the beginning of Genesis better than we do the middle of Numbers. Who wants to read a book called Numbers? Could we have given this a duller name? So we know Genesis better and we know the snake in Genesis better. Anyway, that snake and this snake are not unrelated, in my opinion, so hold on to that thought.

But I promise the Book of Numbers is not all lists of numbers - though that's in there, too. It also has some pretty good stories. Here's one:

"The people spoke against God and against Moses, 'Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread and no water and we loathe this worthless bread" (Num 21:5)

By the way, I just have to interject here, I just love the way they say there is no bread and then they say the bread is worthless. Really, there is bread – but they don't like it - and so they say at first there is no bread. Maybe they felt like that was true but they knew it wasn't really true and so then they adjusted their complaint a little bit. Because remember the Lord had given them manna to eat, so they couldn't honestly say there was no bread.

Manna was not a gourmet dish – “[it] was like coriander seed, it looked like gum resin… and it tasted like cakes baked with oil" (Num 11:7-8). Sounds like it was not bad but pretty plain and something that maybe people would get sick of after decades of eating little else. It was nothing as good as the fleshpots of Egypt, for example. Yet it is better to eat bread in freedom with the Lord than pots of meat while in slavery to our passions.

But we often forget this and long to again indulge our passions even at the price of enslaving ourselves to them – all for the brief taste of something that seems good to us in the moment. And while we are deprived of some seemingly good thing, we complain about the truly good things we do have and we even deny that we have them. Well-fed with food we've lost our taste for, we complain that we have no food.

This is the way we complain. It's not that we don't have something to complain about legitimately – maybe we do – but when we complain it's like we want to make it seem even worse than it is, don't we? And so we exaggerate the difficulty of our situation. It's bad, but we say it's worse than it really is. When something's difficult, we say it's impossible. When something hurts, we say it's killing us. When we don't like the food, we say there's nothing to eat. This doesn't really help, by the way. It's okay to complain to the Lord. The Psalms are full of complaint. Be honest with God and with your neighbor and your family and your friends about what you suffer. But be honest. Be truthful. And never lose sight of the good that is also there. Never be ungrateful for the good you've been given while you honestly complain about the bad. When we begin with gratitude for the good I promise our honest complaint about the bad will be more readily heard and answered.

Anyway, the people were complaining, "'There is no food and we loathe this worthless food.' And so then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people so that many sons of Israel died. And the people came to Moses, and said, 'We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.' So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, 'Make a fiery serpent, and set it up as a sign; and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.' So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it up as a sign: And if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live" (Num 21:5-9).

So, you see, the Lord hears this second complaint of the people. It's different than the first because instead of beginning with a distortion of the truth, it begins with honesty and humility. The people say in repentance, "We have sinned. We have spoken against the Lord and against Moses." This is the truth. They're beginning with the truth this time - instead of with the lie - "we have no food." The complaint that was founded in dishonesty and ingratitude was not heard by the Lord. Instead, they were given something to complain about. And complain they did, but this time with humility and honesty, and so the Lord does hear them and does give them a way to healing.

It's interesting though. They ask for the Lord to send the serpents away. "Take away the serpents from us," they say. I'm reminded of St Patrick chasing the snakes out of Ireland. Anyway, this is not what the Lord does. He doesn't send the serpents away. Instead, he instructs Moses to make another serpent and to lift it up on high. The people still get bitten by the serpents. But now, when they are bitten, they can look at the bronze serpent that Moses has made and lifted up and looking upon it they are healed. The venom does not kill them anymore. The Lord delivers them from the venom of the serpents, through another serpent, a bronze serpent.

Well, it is helpful to know all of this when we hear Jesus say, "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" (John 3: 14).

Those infected with the venom of the serpent who looked upon the bronze serpent lifted up by Moses were healed and did not die. Now, all of us infected with the venom of death due to sin who look with faith upon Jesus Christ whom we have pierced upon the cross will have eternal life. And so the bronze serpent is a type of the cross – a prophecy of the way the Lord delivers us from death.

We may cry out to the Lord to simply eradicate death just as the Israelites in the wilderness before us cried out to the Lord to simply drive away all the snakes. But instead of driving away all the snakes, the Lord instructs Moses to make another snake and through that snake to heal the people suffering from snake bites. By a snake, he heals snake bites. Likewise, the Lord does not simply eradicate death, but rather he becomes a man like us and dies himself and through his death (and our own deaths united to his death) we are healed of death and brought to everlasting life. By death, he tramples death.

Now remember that first snake in Genesis. By listening to him, Adam and Eve bring death into the world. So a snake here is a source of death, yet later through Moses a snake becomes a means of healing. This is like the cross – a means and symbol of death that through Jesus Christ gives us eternal life.

It's okay and even good for us to complain about all our sufferings and injustices to the Lord. Let us just make sure that we address all our complaints to Jesus Christ crucified. The cross gives perspective to every suffering and injustice. Because it is in the mystery and the paradox of the cross that every suffering is healed and every injustice righted.  

God loves the world.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” These must be the most recognized words of the gospel in the United States. We see John 3:16 everywhere: on bumper stickers, t-shirts, in the eye black under Tim Tebow’s eyes. At some point, everyone in America has probably looked up this verse.

I once heard a priest quip that maybe it’s time we start writing John 3:17 everywhere. Then, after a while, we could move on to John 3:18, and so on. That way, maybe, before they die, people would make it through at least one chapter of scripture.

We quote John 3:16 in our Divine Liturgy in the anaphora of St. John Chrysostom just after the “Holy, Holy, Holy….” These words have been popular among us Byzantines since before there were chapters and verses to cite.  

And they tell us that God loves the world. We hear these words so often that maybe they go in one ear and out the other. We might begin to lose a sense of their significance – even of their scandal.  

The word for world here in Greek is κόσμος. God so loved the cosmos. This word is potent and loaded in the Christian tradition, and particularly in John, who uses it more than anyone. Its meanings are complex and varied and seemingly contradictory. The lexicon gives it no less than eight definitions.

We hear from Jesus that God loves the world. But John tells us in another place “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). This is confusing. We’ve just heard that the Father loves the world, but now we hear if we love the world we do not love the Father? 

And anyway, how can God love this world? In this world, we let children starve to death. We slaughter them before they’re born. In this world, men crash airplanes into skyscrapers, killing thousands. In this world, we drop nuclear bombs. The ruler of this world is the devil (cf. John 12:31, 14:30; 2 Cor 4:4). We see this wickedness all around us and we don’t love it.

St. Isaac the Syrian writes that “The world is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world.” The passions, you know, are like greed and sloth, lust and vainglory, envy and resentment, and so on. So, when we say that God loves the world are we saying that he loves these things? That he loves the passions and the horrors that impassioned people carry out? God forbid the thought. The word “world” carries many senses. And we must carefully consider what is meant.  

Jesus is not of the world but is above the world (John 8:23). He creates the world and yet becomes of the world to save the world. We are taught both to love the world and to hate our lives in the world (John 12:25). The devil is the ruler of the world but Jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords. The world brings up these parallels and opposites. And only Jesus Christ and his cross can reconcile opposites. 

It’s like we have two worlds here. And I think that’s it really. We live in two worlds at the same time. There’s the world as God creates it and there is the fallen world, enslaved to sin. We must be aware of both worlds – both the cosmos and the chaos.

Cosmos means order – and in this order, there’s a union and not an opposition between spirit and matter. It is a disordered world, a fallen world, which rends the spiritual and the physical asunder. The cosmos as God creates it is both at the same time.

The Lord creates and loves the cosmos. The cosmos is all people and it is also all creation. It is the whole universe. Certainly we human beings have a primary place in the created universe but there’s more to it than just us. When we were created in the order of things, we were put in the garden as the gardeners. We were put in the cosmos as the stewards of that order.

But we have disordered this order. Not only do our sins cause personal harm but also cosmological harm. Our disordered acts hurt us, hurt each other and even hurt the cosmos. Our sins break our lives apart in ways that we can see and in ways that we can’t see.  I think entropy itself, like death itself, has its ultimate origin in sin.

Now, in the way that we experience things, death has become so much a part of the order of things that it seems necessary and even good.

A naturalist can well observe all the good that comes out of death. The dead bodies of animals fertilize the plants. Growth comes out of decay. Good comes out of evil. Things cannot live, in the order that we know, unless there is death. We ourselves live and feed on the death of other living things – plants and animals. How can I say that it is not a part of the created order – that death is unnatural?

Death is a part of the cosmos that we know and experience, but we know and experience the cosmos in fallenness. Yes, good comes out of death. The greatest good comes out of the greatest death – the death of Jesus. God enters into this cosmos, which he loves, which is fallen and wounded, and he becomes a part of it himself, and it wounds him.

We often repeat that God becomes man, which is the whole basis of our salvation. A corollary of this is that the creator becomes the creation. Here is a surprise and a paradox – two things being at once while seeming to contradict. Divinity by nature is uncreated, humanity created, and so Jesus, both divine and human, is both creator and creation.  

So not only is humanity saved, redeemed, glorified, brought into unity with God by this, but so is the cosmos. By his incarnation, Christ is cosmically present to the universe. And the whole universe stands in need of his salvific presence, because the whole universe is disordered and suffering from destruction and death of many kinds.

Death is what we’re being saved from. God gave his only Son so that we would not perish but have eternal life. Death is an evil. Some of us are accustomed to thinking about moral evil only and we forget about physical evil. We fail to understand physical evil as evil. We even call it good.

And it has been made good in Christ and in his cross. But we must not forget that this is a paradox, lest we forget all our Lord has done for us. In Christ, all things are new. In Christ, death becomes the means of life, because in him, life goes into the place of the dead, into Hades, so that there is nowhere God is not. God is even where God is not.

God is impassible, yet in his humanity he suffers the passion. God is immortal, yet in his humanity he dies. God creates the cosmos, yet in his humanity he is of the cosmos. God loves the world.

The world is the whole cosmos that God creates. Yet the world is also the passions, the sins, the suffering, and the death. So it gets convoluted sometimes when we’re talking about the world. We see the passions and the weakness, the suffering and the death, all of which is evil, and it gets hard to see what’s good about the world. 

All of this is reconciled only in the cross. We exalt the cross when we say that we love the world. When we say that God loves the world – that can only make any sense in the context of exalting the cross. God is making the sign of the cross over the whole world. He is blessing us with the cross.

The cross unifies opposites. There’s a vertical bar and there’s a horizontal bar. The divine and the human intersected and made one. Heaven is brought down to earth. The cross is the cosmos as it really is. All of it, unified. Life enters into death. Unified, death becomes the way to life through resurrection. Opposites are made one in the cross, this wonderful and holy sign.

O Mors Ero Mors Tua,Morsus Tua Ero Inferne

by John Russell, 2007

acrylic and charcoal on canvas

A version of this article appears on Catholic Exchange.