Sermon for the second Sunday in Lent – 28th Marach 2021: Romans 4, 13 – end; Mark 8, 31 – end

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

Lent 2021.  Readings: Romans 4, 13-end; Mark 8, 31-end

We begin by recognizing a few current factors. First of all, congratulations to the Greek nation and people on the 200^th Anniversary of Independence from Ottoman rule. Καλή Επανάσταση – Happy Revolution. I notice that part of that second word ‘epanastasi’ incorporates the word Greek uses for  resurrection.

We note also that in the Latin, or Western Calendar, today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week – even though Anglicans in Greece are observing the Orthodox date for this year only, so our Holy Week is some time off yet.

Thirdly we offer our prayerful solidarity with our Jewish friends, in particular the Jewish Community here in Athens. This week is the Passover Week. The Chief Rabbi, Gabriel Negron, preached in St. Paul’s Church in January 2020, and he preached so well, and was so popular that I will make sure he does NOT get a second invitation! I spoke with him last week, and he reminded me that we have an outstanding invitation for me to preach at the Athens Synagogue, and that we agreed our congregation would have a visit to the Synagogue when the lifting of restrictions will permit it.  Kosher and joyous Passover.

So, he was first called ‘High Father’, but because of his faith, he is renamed as ‘Father of Many Nations’. From our scriptures we know him better as Abram, or even better by his ‘God-name’ Abraham, and his wife Sarai, we know better by her ‘God-name’ Sarah. Not only Father of many nations, but Father of the main monotheistic religions in our world – those in the Abrahamic tradition, Jew, Christian and Muslim.

It is to this Abraham and Sarah that St. Paul refers in his letter to the Romans, which we heard in our first reading this morning, extolling how they are justified by their faith.

Paul the Jew, Paul the Roman citizen, Paul the expert in the Jewish law, this Paul is formed and fashioned on the faith first shown in and through Abraham. St. Paul’s message at this point in his letter is about justification by faith, and how it is through faith that we receive the blessings of God. Endless pages have been written by scholars about Paul’s theology of ‘Justification by faith’ especially among the Reformed churches, so I will simply render it as being ‘authentically human in an active relationship with God’.

As a reciprocal sign of this faith God proclaims a special relationship, a covenant as we call it, whose outward sign is physical circumcision, but whose inward reality is faith.

This faith is sorely tested for Abraham in the vivid Old Testament episode in which Abraham comes to within a centimetre of sacrificing his own son’s life. Isaac’s is the sacrifice that never was, yet it is exemplary of faith stretched to its utmost. Paul’s conclusion is that this sacrifice is fulfilled, or completed in Jesus who ‘was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.’ (Romans 4, 25).

In this phrase of Paul’s we are immediately taken to the cross, not just in a Good Friday way, but also to its reference in the gospel reading for this Sunday. On several occasions Jesus makes reference to his future crucifixion and direct reference to the cross.

 

The irony is that we, as Christians, understand the cross in a way that those who hear the words ‘’take up their cross and follow me’ (Mark 8, 34) would not fully appreciate. We look backwards to the scriptures in the light of the cross, Good Friday and Easter, but for the followers of Jesus ‘taking up a cross’ must have seemed obscure – even offensive. All they knew about a cross was that it was used as a method of killing exercised by the oppressive Roman Empire.

When Jesus says to them, and to us, ‘take up your cross’ we are left with a bit of a dilemma. We can understand the demand, the challenge; but what do we do? Should it be taken literally – in some early Christian generations it was considered the highest goal in life; to die for the faith.  So much so that rather wise provincial pagan judges would deny the death penalty to followers of Christ, as this was the most severe punishment that could be inflicted!

We can’t so effectively work for the kingdom of God if all we desire is to die for the faith, so what might this ‘taking up your cross’ say to us. I would say something along the lines of ‘take on the cross’ in other words understand what is happening in and through the cross; absorb what faith means for each of us in the light (or even shadow) of the cross; be shaped by what is revealed about God in Jesus through the mystery of the cross. Be ‘cross-shaped’, ‘cross-formed’,’ cross-influenced’ followers because to place the cross at the centre is to place God at the centre, as revealed in Jesus.

Words that we more normally associate with Good Friday come to our aid. In St. John’s version of the Crucifixion Jesus says from the cross ‘It is finished’ (John 19,30).

Here the nuance of words makes all the difference. In Greek translation Jesus says, ‘tetelestai’. It can of course be translated as ‘it is finished’ but also ‘it is completed’ or accomplished – even perfected. However we can expend further effort and still not come to a final conclusion of what this really means. ‘What is finished, what is accomplished, what is perfected?’,  so again, I am going to read it as Jesus saying from the cross, ‘this is how it is’, ‘this is what it is like’ ‘if you want a relationship or covenant with God, this is what it looks like.’

If we believe, as we do, that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever, then it means the implication of my interpretation is that the cross is there,’ yesterday, today and for ever’. The cross is always present in God’s foreknowledge in Christ. The crucifixion is not just an isolated event in time and place and history – it is there from the beginnings of Creation, it is part of the on-going eternal life of the Trinity, imprinted in the essence of God, and, dare we say it? – in the DNA of Jesus. If course we dare to say it, because as Christians we believe in the ‘incarnate Lord’.

St. Paul, a child of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of Moses, rightly says in 1 Corinthians 1, 23 that this Jesus hanging on a cross is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the gentiles, but to those who believe it is the power of God, the wisdom of God.

So my interpretation of the cross of Jesus as ‘this is how it is’ ‘this is it folks’, ‘to see this is to have seen God’ is, I believe, what the Blessed Apostle is saying to the infant church in Corinth – the mystery of this cross is the power of God, the wisdom of God’. This resonates with a phrase I have used from time to time, though it is not my own phrase, the cross is a sign to us of ‘the power of power we are to exercise and witness to faith within God’s world and among God’s peoples. not exercised’ – and this sums up the life, death, and consequent resurrection of Jesus – so that we may know how, and in what way,

So the cross may, as St. Paul says, be a stumbling block to Jews and a folly to gentiles, but in fact it is a stumbling block to many, even among those who are Christian. This is still a thorny question for us in the Christian household of faith, and it is challenging to try and answer those who quiz us on all this Good Friday stuff. ‘Why did Jesus have to die?’

It is not just a Good Friday question, though no doubt we will return to it in a few weeks’ time, but I hope I have just begun to give some helpful insight into the theological environment, the habitat, within which the reality of the cross exists.

I hope we will all think further on this – today in Mark’s gospel Jesus says ‘take up your cross and follow me’. The cross is not an optional extra, but at the very heart of God’s being.

Maybe before we try, however we fumble about, to struggle with this question, ‘why did Jesus have to die?’, we should first ask the question, ‘Why did God have to become man?’ ‘Why did the Word have to become flesh?’ (John 1, 14).

You see, you can’t begin to answer the mystery of the cross, until you reflect on the mystery of the incarnation.