St. Botolph’s Parish, Veneration of the Cross, 7 March 2010
“Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mark 8.35)
What would you give for a moment of perfect joy? I said joy, not pleasure. Pleasure is the reverse side of pain: how quickly pleasure turns into the bitter aftertaste of pain. Joy, I mean, not happiness. Happiness is a dream that disperses, as soon as you rub your eyes in the morning. Joy is an awakening. It pierces you, transfigures you – and, once you taste joy, that moment stretches into eternity. An aging philosopher once sold his soul to the devil for a moment of perfect joy. Sick and tired of everything, wanting to end his life, he sold his soul for the moment he could say: ‘Stay awhile, you are so beautiful’. The devil tried everything to satisfy him. Give him back his youth; dress him up; pour the oceans of money into his pocket; give him the love, and the virginal body, of a beautiful girl – it all left him with heartache. So the devil gave him magical powers, power to direct world affairs – but it left him bored and empty. The pearl of great price that he sold his soul to have, he could find nowhere on earth. Only in the foretaste of one, selfless act to benefit mankind – the act of giving what he alone could give – did the old philosopher find his moment of joy. It took him out of himself, out of the devil’s grasp, and so, saved his soul.
What would you give for a moment of perfect joy? Would you sell your soul? Your life? Or would you save your life – and never taste that perfect joy?
A stranger strolls into an Orthodox church. Maybe he has read a book about us or taken a course. Maybe heard from a friend or found us online. Maybe she is bored with a ‘nine to five’ lifestyle, tired of designer clothes and broken relationships and a pointless dash for money that falls through your fingers in an economic recession. The devil tempts him or her with all that the world has to offer but it’s not enough. Sooner or later, he wanders in. Catches a glimpse of joy, real joy, in a whiff of incense or the face of a holy icon. And before you know it, he is instructed, sealed with the oil of chrism: united to the Orthodox Church. ‘The pearl of great price, I’ve found it’, he thinks – and he’s right. But what will you give for it? What will you give up? For a pearl of such price, Christ says, a merchant went and sold everything he had. What are you ready to give up? There are ‘converts’ who never convert. A body enters the Church, a soul remains Anglican, Baptist, what have you. Sentimentally, they cling to another identity: familiar hymn tunes, quaint little country churches, red mailboxes and misty mornings that all spell ‘Queen and Country’. What will they give up for the moment of joy? They’re like immigrants who live in ghettos or in-laws who never meet the family. Squeaky-clean ‘Christians’ who fit too neatly into nice society to give it up. What will you give for that moment you saw? A pint of beer for a chalice of wine? A bar of chocolate for the Body of Christ? Joining the Church means more than giving up chocolate for Lent. It means giving up your life. Are you ready to be re-written? Re-made? Reborn? Are you ready for New Life, or will you cling to the old? Will you keep your old, familiar world – and lose your own soul?
‘To begin a new life’, Saint Basil teaches, ‘you must first put an end to the old’. To enter the dawn of Resurrection, you must pass through the night of the Cross.
This is a hard saying. Deny yourself! Take your cross. It goes against our instincts, to preserve our selves and everything familiar to us. It crucifies the consumer inside us. A squeaky-clean, middle-class Christian pulls back, for fear of soiling his hands. A learned Professor of Divinity reasons it away – ashamed to confess that the mangled, bleeding body, slowly dying on the Cross, is God before the ages. If you come to church only for comfort, shield your eyes from the Cross. It confronts us. It appals us. Who but a lunatic would take up his cross, freely? Pay such a price for a moment of joy? Who, but the one who has nothing left to lose? One whose hands are not clean. A girl who sells her body, or gives it away, for an angry fix. A man, no longer young, who stares at his dirty secrets through the bottom of a glass. A woman – alone, abused, abandoned – with no one left to trust but God. Foreign faces, scarred faces on council estates: anyone who doesn’t fit in. Those who are ready to lose everything, surrender everything, for the God who alone can breathe life into them. They are ready to throw themselves into the fire: uncreated fire, the fire of the Divine Liturgy. The moment of perfect joy.
Whoever will follow me, says Christ, let him deny himself more than chocolate. Let him take up his cross: all your dirty secrets, all your sorrows and wounds that never heal, all your bad memories. Whatever torments you is your cross – as every prostitute in a back alley, every drunkard alone in his room understands. Let him take up his cross, says our Crucified Lord, and follow me to mine. This is the Gospel preached to the poor: anyone, in any kind of need. It will never be tame. It will never be ‘respectable’. It will never fit so neatly into ‘nice’ society. Flee it, deny it, cling to your comfortable life and ignore it – the Cross will never go away. Our God came in the flesh, and we killed him. Then, through his death – only through his death, on an instrument of torture and shame – he lifted us up to heaven and bestowed on us his Kingdom, which is to come. This is the Gospel of Christ. You may ask, can’t we have a softer, more ‘nuanced’ Gospel, more positive, less harsh? But the girl who sells her body, the addict who sells his soul, the convict with the stain of blood on his hands – and your own broken heart – these have no use for a tame Gospel. Anyone who has lost his life will surrender everything for the slightest chance to live again. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
Beloved in Christ: what would you give for the Gospel? A bar of chocolate – or your life? What would you give for a moment of perfect joy? You glimpse it in the fire of the Divine Liturgy, maybe in a moment when the grace of God descends on your prayer. But don’t be deceived. Life costs. Love costs. Anyone who has ever loved a single human being, knows this perfectly well. On this Sunday of mid-Lent, this Sunday of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, we give what we alone can give: one selfless act to benefit mankind. This day, on the street, in the tube, you will see a face crying silently: ‘No one can help. No one cares’. Silently, look into the face and say: God cares. God dies, as we die; God is crucified, in everyone and everything that has nothing else. God, triumphant in glory, will be in agony until the end of time. God – is the pearl of great price, for which a man sells all his past – all his old familiar life – all that he has. God, crucified and risen: risen from the grave that is the only fountain of our resurrection.
For that moment of perfect joy, we bow down and worship a Life-Giving Cross, a tool of agony and shame; and the Holy Resurrection, we glorify.
