ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Bishop Basil of Amphipolis

Third Sunday of Lent: Adoration of the Precious and Life-giving Cross

Church of the Holy Trinity and the Annunciation, Oxford

Mark 8:34- 9:1

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

Today we have reached the Sunday of the Cross, the Sunday of the Adoration of the Precious and Life-giving Cross. The services today have been outwardly very similar to another feast of the Church’s year, the Exaltation of the Cross, which takes place on 14 September. There are different hymns to be sung, however, and there are no Old Testament readings in Vespers, just as there is no blessing of the five loaves. And the Gospels are different as well.

The Gospel for today’s Feast begins with Christ calling the people and disciples to him, at which point he begins to teach. What follows is, in other words, the public teaching of Christ, open to all. If you look at the Gospels closely, however, you will see that a distinction must be drawn between different levels of Christ’s teaching. There is a public proclamation of the Gospel for everyone who might want to follow him. Then he has a group of twelve disciples, an inner circle, whom he takes apart and instructs particularly. And then, even among this twelve, there are three – Peter, James and John – who are called apart to be with him at some very important moments in his earthly life.
But today’s teaching is for everybody. And it begins – and this is why the passage is chosen for this Sunday – ‘Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’.

‘Deny himself’ – a very important saying in this period of Lent – a time when one is trying to pull oneself together in such a way as to be in a position to receive and to enter in to the Resurrection of Christ.

‘Let him take up his cross’ – the meaning of the Cross for each of us is something which is so particular, so unique to each one of us, that it could almost be defined as the burden of our personal freedom in this created world, the burden of the freedom each one of us carries within ourselves: freedom for God, freedom for others. What we do with this freedom, how we experience it – how we live that freedom – will in the end prove to be our cross.

But these words are not the ones I wish to concentrate on this morning, but rather the first part of this verse, where Christ says ‘He who would come after me, -who wishes to come after me - let him take up his cross and follow me.’
What does this mean? In the first place it gives us a direction. It tells us that in taking up our cross, we will be following Christ. But the question is, what is the goal of that following? And for that I think we really need to go to the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is traditionally thought to have been written by that John who was one of three who was closest to Christ and who is depicted in icons of the Crucifixion as standing at the foot of the Cross with the Mother of God. Thus we have in the Gospel of John the teaching of Christ that is, if you like, his innermost teaching. And in the Gospel of John, in the twelfth chapter, Christ says to his disciples: ‘If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be’ (Jn 12:26). In other words, to follow Christ is also to move towards him, towards where he is: ‘Where I am there shall my servant be also’.

John comes back to this on two other occasions. In the fourteenth chapter Christ says: ‘And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also’ (Jn 14: 3). It is clear: Christ wishes us to be where he is.

And later, in the seventeenth chapter of John, Christ addresses his Father: ‘Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them’ (Jn 17: 24-26).

Very early in the Gospel John has already introduced – he is an extraordinary writer – the first instance of this notion of being where Christ is. It is not addressed to the disciples at all. It is addressed to the Jews, who quite clearly do not understand what he is talking about. He says, quite simply: ‘Where I am, thither ye cannot come’ (Jn 7:34). You cannot do this, because you do not understand. Because you do not understand what I am saying, you cannot be where I am.
The question that arises at this point is: where is Christ when he speaks in this way? I think we are given a glimpse of this in the Gospel of John as well. In the same passage in which Christ says to the Father that he wishes his disciples to ‘be one, even as we are one’ (Jn 17:22), he goes on to say ‘Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world’ (Jn 17:24).

‘That they may behold my glory which thou hast given me.’ Christ wants us to see his glory. And what and where is his glory? It is the glory that God gave him before the foundation of the world. It is the glory that Stephen the First Martyr beheld when, as he was being stoned, he saw the heavens open and Christ standing in glory at the right hand of God. We can ask ourselves: Is Christ always with the Father? He does say, after all: ‘I am in the Father, and the Father is in me’. And if we look at the prayer that is said as the deacon or priest censes the altar before the beginning of the Liturgy, we read:

In the tomb with the body, in hell with the soul as God, in paradise with the thief, and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, thou fillest all things, O Christ, thyself uncircumscribed.

This prayer tells us that Christ is everywhere at once.
But if we return to today’s Gospel, we will see that into it is introduced a reference to the Second Coming. In the penultimate verse Christ says to those who are standing around him: ‘Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels’ (Mk 8:38). There is a change of gear here, and we are now talking about the future glory But he immediately moves back again to the present, and in the next verse he says:
‘Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.’ In other words, the power and glory of that Second Coming will be perceptible to some at least of those standing with Christ at that moment.

We are entitled to ask ourselves who these people are. The Gospel of Mark itself lets us know, when immediately after the passage we heard this morning, we hear of how Christ was transfigured on Mount Tabor. The three chosen disciples, Peter, James and John, now see Christ where he is and as he is – in glory – standing in the heavens with Moses and Elijah beside him, both of them sharing in his glory. They speak together. And when we see where Moses and Elijah are and how they are, we know that that is where Christ wants us to be. He wants us to be present with him, sharing his life with him in the glory of the Father. That is the goal to which today’s Gospel calls us when it urges us to follow Christ.

Finally, a last point. If we look at today’s Gospel from a literary point of view, we see that it begins at the end of Chapter 8 and ends in the beginning of Chapter 9.  How many chapters are there in the Gospel of Mark? Sixteen. In other words, this passage is exactly in the middle of the Gospel of Mark. Anyone who has studied the composition of the Gospels and their use of chiastic structure knows that these verses are the heart of that Gospel.

The heart of the Gospel is Christ’s invitation to be with him where he is. It is a declaration that the power of the Kingdom, the power of the Second Coming of Christ – is available now. And it offers to us an understanding and immediate access to the whole of history, to the glory that was with Christ in the beginning, and to the glory that will come with Christ at the end.

Christ wishes us to see the whole of this world – the whole of history and the whole of our lives – in terms of progress into that glory. But that progress, that forward movement, is available only through the Cross. Christ shows us through his life, how he experienced that destiny himself, and then he says: ‘Follow me; join me and be with me where I am.’ It is because of this, because of the relationship between the Cross and the glory of God, that Maximus the Confessor can say: ‘He who understands the mystery of the Cross, understands all things.’ Amen.