We hear in today’s Gospel for the Sunday before the Elevation of the Cross—the major feast coming this Wednesday– the Good News that God loves us to such a tremendous extent that He sent Himself, His Logos, into the world to enter into human nature to make it new again, fit for life with Him who is the Life. We hear today this oft-quoted verse that everyone used to learn in Sunday School, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
This verse is heard so often that it’s almost become a cliché for some. Most often it’s used in the context of certain Protestant groups where belief is reduced to ‘ascent’, an acknowledging of Christ—‘believe’ and, well, you’re already ‘saved.’ But as we can see plainly throughout the Gospel of John, belief involves much more than mere ascent or acknowledgement.
Belief is always accompanied by action, by following through with a life that becomes grafted into the Life that God the Holy Trinity is as a perpetual relationship and movement of love. It’s not enough to simply say, “I believe in God. There, I’ve said it, I have salvation,” for we know that the “demons believe and shudder” (James 2:19). Because of the demands of this ongoing struggle and pilgrimage, Orthodox Christians resist any efforts to the “once saved, always saved” movement of some Protestant circles.
In today’s Gospel for the Cross the example is put before us of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness—a reference to the poisonous snakes that God sent to humble the Israelites as they grumbled against Him. Moses prayed for God’s mercy on the people and so God instructed Moses to make from copper the image of a serpent and lift it high on a pole so that anyone who was bit by the poisonous snakes and looked upon the snake that Moses lifted, would be healed.
What a great mystery’s here: As God would have it, the image of the cause of their death became the remedy for that death—and, as with all the great signs of the Old Testament, it points to something greater to be fulfilled in the New Testament with the coming of the Messiah, God incarnate, and His defeat of sin and death on the cross.
Whereas the copper snake miraculously saved the people of Israel from a temporal death by snakes, they still eventually died a mortal death. But Christ’s death on the cross is no temporal victory. Here too, the instrument of healing is itself an instrument of death—just like the snakes that killed the Israelites. Greater is the death caused by sin, if left unhealed and undefeated: a snake can kill the temporal body, but sin can ‘kill’ the immortal soul so how much greater is Christ’s victory, the fulfillment of all that God promised His people Israel and, indeed, the world.
Christ entered death as man and defeated it as God. The very Logos of God who made all life and sustains all life, entered death and vanquished it. So, when we speak of belief and God’s
love, we must be speaking of something deeper than the intellectual or even spiritual ‘acknowledgement’ of God. Rather, we must be speaking of participation in His divine life—what we call deification or theosis in the Church—what St. Peter refers to in his second Epistle as becoming “partakers of the divine nature.” (II Peter 1:4).
Jesus Christ Himself unpacks for us His meaning when He speaks of belief, saying emphatically to Nicodemus in the same chapter of St. John’s Gospel, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit” (Baptism and Chrismation), he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5). And elsewhere in relation to belief, “He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” And He says this just before proclaiming, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:54).
In other words, ‘belief is much more than mere assent; Instead, it is communion with God through the Sacramental life that He Himself has ordained and through which we are united with Him, further up and further in. It is submission to the demands of the cross, the denial of self and worldly-pleasure, yes, but also of worldly thinking too. Our Lord says, “whoever would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34).
Of this participation in Christ’s saving work, St. Paul also says, “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). Through baptism, and then the ‘living out’ of our baptism throughout our lives, participating in the Sacraments, receiving Christ’s precious and holy Body and Blood, praying and communing with Him, we practice true belief; we know what true belief entails—that same fullness of the life in Christ that He has entrusted to His disciples, the Apostles, who have, in turn, passed it down to others (paradosis), and so on.
For this reason, the cross is so important to us as Orthodox Christians. It is a call to remembrance and action, to remember and practice all that ‘belief’ entails—not just for one day, but throughout our lives until we attain to the Kingdom of God. We wear the cross, we sign ourselves with the cross, we put the cross up in our houses and dorms, and, on Wednesday, the Feast of the cross, we venerate the icon of the Exaltation, glorifying God for His love outpoured upon us through His self-sacrificial death (kenosis) on behalf of us sinners.
The cross is also referred to in the language of the Church as the “trophy invincible.” If we boast in anything, we boast in the cross. Because we ‘believe’ in Christ, we follow Him, we live in Him, we submit ourselves to Him and His holy Church, His Body. We prioritize the life that He alone is over all the temporal and passing things of this world. We say, “Amen!” to the words of St. Paul, who proclaims, “God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).
Examine your life—in what or in whom do you believe? Does your belief penetrate beyond assent and recognition? Are you our ready to take up your cross to follow Christ, denying yourself, and growing in your communion with Him who is the life of all? “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Glory to Jesus Christ!
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday, 10 September 2017
Epistle: Galatians 6:11-16 (Cross); 2 Corinthians 1:21-2:4
Gospel: John 3:13-17 (Cross); Matthew 22:1-14
