Author: John Drymon

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Tradition holds that on this day 1,699 years ago Saint Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, found the spot on which our Lord was crucified in Jerusalem and identified the relics of the True Cross, the very instrument of his saving death. I’ll leave it to the historians to debate the veracity of this account. There is good historical and archaeological evidence to back up the claim that the place she found, on which now stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is the true location of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. But as for the True Cross itself, the jury is out and I have no idea.

Within a generation the cross was divided and fragments distributed to churches throughout the known world. Medieval forgeries make matters even more difficult. While Calvin claimed that enough purported fragments of the original were to be found that they could build a ship out of them, this is calumny. Forgery was never that bad, but provenance does remain something of an issue.

I’m not Puritan, so I’m not going to claim that these issues are neither here nor there. An object relating to Christ, his Blessed Mother, or the saints can be a powerful aid to devotion, so long as we avoid worshiping the object itself like an idol or engaging in some other superstition. Nor do I believe in some sort of post-modern way that an object of devotion gets its power from whatever we project onto it, like our good “juju” somehow makes something holy. The facts of the matter matter.

All that said, these concerns are secondary. Primary for Christians is not the object or the location, but the reality of Christ’s saving work, which today he accomplishes in a secret place–the soul of the believer. I am not going to defend the Crusades this morning, which seem an exception which proves the rule, except to say that they began as an attempt to secure safe passage for pilgrims to holy sites before sadly evolving into bloody conquest to the end of controlling sites and states. We should, as Christians, at least theoretically be less concerned than say Jews and Muslims fighting over whether a particular mountain should have a rebuilt Jewish temple or the Al-Aqsa mosque on top. I’m grateful that many years ago I was able to go to Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Galilee and visit the sites associated with Our Lord. But more important than Christ being born on a particular spot rather than another, is that he was born in my heart. More important than the fact that GPS can guide me to where loaves and fishes were distributed to the multitude is that Jesus still feeds me with his Word and with his very Body and Blood. I am grateful that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is still in Christian hands instead of it being a Temple of Venus, as it was before Constantine and Helena—don’t get me wrong—but the more important thing, indeed the infinitely important thing, is that he died for each and every one of us and he rose again that we might be justified and live forever with him and each other in the Resurrection.

Holy Cross Day is the good and proper counterpoint to Good Friday. On that day we appropriately mourn. We grieve what our sin made necessary in the perfect Will’s response of love over wrath. Today we glory in the majesty of that horrific implement of torture and death which has been transformed into a beautiful , life-giving token for the salvation of the world. For we, like St. Paul, bear the marks of our Lord, invisibly but indelibly inscribed at our baptisms. Christ has accomplished what he foretold, that when he was lifted up he would draw all sorts and conditions of people to himself. We still flee to that cross to find the life which radiates from its luminous arms.

I recently reread the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola for the first time since seminary. Some hardcore spiritual athletes might say that just reading the book isn’t as useful as practicing the exercises Ignatius described just as he described them isn’t terribly useful, but not currently having five hours available for daily meditation over thirty straight days, I had to pick up what I could reasonably apply considering present obligations.

Anyway, he suggests several dialectical practices where we imagine ourselves in the biblical scene and have a conversation with its subject, and he begins with the crucifixion. Such a conversation is appropriately uncomfortable, considering the pain and sorrow our Lord endured and our part in necessitating it, but perhaps we shouldn’t shrink so quickly from such a task. One may counter that Christ is no longer dying nor dead, that he is risen and the cross now stands empty; they have a point, but that argument strikes me a little bit as “being so right it’s wrong.” Yes, the crucifixion is an historical moment which has been accomplished, but along with the Resurrection, it’s a transhistorical or metahistorical event, which is just a perhaps pretentious way of saying that it stands above and beyond time and transforms it from beginning to end. It is, as I’ve heard it called, the hinge-point of history and so we have access to it in the here and now in a powerful, mystical way.

So my suggestion today, like that of St. Ignatius, is to consider taking a sort of spiritual pilgrimage to Golgotha. No airfare or passport is required. Do it in whatever physical space you find conducive to prayer and meditation. Approach the tree of life and see hanging from it the fruit which even the boughs of Eden could not bear. Speak to our Lord and listen for his response to your deepest questions, your most profound pains, the hopes you dare not even hope. And then see that cross transformed in your seeing to brightness beyond compare and comprehension. Behold your Lord reigning from that tree, sovereign of all creation and of your heart, and commit all that grieves your heart to him, knowing that he is accomplishing for us his perfect will and will finally welcome us into the kingdom which has no end.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

With a Gospel like the one we have this morning, it’s wise to address the elephant in the living room first. I hope you’ll take the following in the context of having heard me preach for nearly a decade here and knowing reasonably well that I’m not in the habit of smoothing out scripture to make it more palatable and will trust that I’m doing that this time …

When Jesus says that we cannot be his disciples without hating family and even our own lives, he uses the Greek word μισεῖ which is the closest equivalent to the Aramaic word he almost certainly used, identical to its biblical Hebrew equivalent, and which Luke translated: שנא. Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic lack alternatives for this word to indicate degree, and so what is translated here as “hate” could mean anything from “utterly detest” to “prioritize slightly less.” Matthew opts to translate this saying of Jesus differently—we mustn’t love God less than these others. Translation is always interpretation, but I suspect Matthew gets technically closer to the meaning, considering everything else Jesus said about loving others. That said, this teaching, however it was taken would have been uncomfortable, perhaps even shocking, to the crowd, so we shouldn’t spend inordinate time this morning interrogating precisely how strong Jesus’ tone might have been in the moment. It was strong enough.

It must be noted that how we love our friends and relations is a reflection of God’s love. If we love God less, we’ll be less capable of being loving to wife, husband, sister, brother, &c. And the less we love God, the harder we’ll find it to love this life, which is a gift he has given us. The great irony is that in loving God more than these, we come to love them better, to enjoy them more. The kind of love which is God, finds its visible expression in self-sacrifice–the other great irony of the Christian faith being that it is only in giving it all away that we truly receive grace upon grace.

The question Jesus asks us today is whether or not we’re willing to prioritize God and thus be enabled to have well-ordered affections.

Whatever else you might say about Jesus, you cannot accuse him of burying the lede. Signing up to be a disciple is not a bait-and-switch affair. You don’t have to give away all your money and your freedom first and then discover years down the line that it’s really about how you’ve got alien ghosties attached to your soul because Lord Xenu blew up the earth with hydrogen bombs (that’s what Scientologist believe, but they won’t tell you until after they’ve trapped you, like any good cult).

Not being a cult leader, Jesus tells us right up front what we need to know, namely that this isn’t an easy road to hoe. I wonder how many parents in pre-Baptismal preparation are warned that what they’re signing junior up for is a life which demands dying every day to self. I know there are other concerns (how quickly can the seamstress get the gown ready, what kind of petits fours to have at the reception), but perhaps a brief disclaimer woulnd’t go amiss.

I think that the two metaphors in this morning’s Gospel, those of the landowner and the king, are simply an honest disclosure about the life of the Christian demanding more of us than we might be willing to give. Before you choose this life, the life of a disciple, be fully informed. Know what you’ve got to lose. You may lose much, because the demands of the Gospel are great. Depending on the particular call God has placed on your life you may lose relationships. You may lose reputation. You may lose your life, at least your life as you know it.

And there are some things I believe that you are sure to lose. You’ll lose your self-obsession. You’ll lose your need to always be right. You’ll lose your need for radical self-reliance. You’ll lose your grasping desire for wealth and honor. You’ll lose the gnawing worm of conscience. You’ll lose your fear of losing all those things and you’ll lose your fear of death itself.

Now, I think that’s a pretty good deal.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One always needs to be careful when talking about “happiness” and what makes for it, because we have so many definitions of that term. I’m sure I’ve said before that whatever the world defines as happiness, Christians have to remember that Jesus’ promise is for what he calls makarios, which is alternately translated as blessed, and which we may know best from the beatitudes. When Jesus says “happy are the poor”, he doesn’t necessarily mean they are “jolly and cheerful.” It is a deeper sort of joy. One might say that we are not promised, but serenity.

Even setting aside the complex interactions between our competing definitions, it has become almost commonplace to say that money cannot make a person happy. However, at the risk of smashing a sacred cow of well-meaning, popular spirituality, absolute penury (unless one is gifted with a saintly disposition) is probably the recipe for unhappiness. You’ll sometimes hear folks say that they know or have known people suffering from crushing poverty who were nevertheless happy. Sometimes this happens, sometimes not, though I worry that this sort of statement can both fetishize poverty and serve as an easy excuse not to do anything practical to help alleviate its effects on people.

All that said, even granting that having enough money so as not to starve or live on the streets or go without medication is likely to make for a happier life in at least the most basic sense of the word “happy” I think it’s undeniable that beyond a certain level of wealth, well-being (spiritual and emotional) plateaus and then, eventually begins to fall. There have been studies along these lines. They’re not perfect. They’re all about self-reported happiness, so (again) there are probably as many definitions of happiness there as there are survey respondents, but they give us an insight, I think.

I quoted one of these studies a few years ago at a Rotary Club meeting in a question I asked a school psychologist, who seemed to me to be suggesting that the job of education was to prepare students to have good careers making good money “so they could be happy.” I don’t agree that that’s the point of education to begin with, but I recognize I’m saying that from a rather privileged vantage point. Anyway, I referred to a study that found that self-reported happiness “peaked” for people when their salaries hit somewhere between $60,000 and $70,000 per year. As soon as those words left my mouth, there was and audible laugh across the room whose meaning was undeniable. This person could not fathom how somebody could be happy making “only” that much. I thought about going up to him at the next meeting with a big grin on my face and my W-2 in my hand, but I decided that would not be very kind.

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher. Granted, I don’t hate my toil, as apparently the writer of Ecclesiastes hated his; in fact, most of the time I rather enjoy my work. Even so, the Preacher makes a point which we could all stand to hear- viz., a life whose chief goal is the accumulation of wealth is a life wasted. It’s vanity, a puff of wind, nothingness.

Likewise, in this morning’s Gospel Jesus tells a parable of a man who had done well for himself and secured enough wealth to live comfortably indefinitely. Just as the man sits back to enjoy the fruit of his labors he has a bit of bad luck. Not to put to fine a point on it, he kicks the bucket then and there. All work and no play doesn’t just make Jack a dull boy. In this instance, it made Jack a rather dumb boy.

Back to wealth and happiness, it’s easy to make assumptions that may not be fair, so take this with a grain of salt–there is a public figure who owns literal rocket ships, whose wedding shut down the city of Venice for three days straight, and whose super-yacht has its own secondary yacht for its helicopter. Yes, a man with a yacht with a yacht with a helicopter. Is he happy? I worry my bad habit of getting whatever I think I need with 48-hour free shipping is harming rather than helping this poor man.

How do we define ourselves? How does society define each of us? Well, what’s the first question we ask upon meeting a stranger? Usually it’s “what do you do?” and the implicit predicate to that question is “for money.” It’s not a bad question to ask, necessarily, but it’s symptomatic of what our culture values above all else, namely work and compensation. It’s how we define ourselves because it’s what we spend the vast majority of our time doing.

But endless striving to the end of wealth accumulation is not the key to happiness. I hope this is not a surprise to anybody. We just heard the preacher of Ecclesiastes and Jesus himself say as much.

So how do we address this as individuals and as a community? At the end of this morning’s Gospel, Jesus says “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” But what does it mean to be rich toward God?

I don’t think that it just means giving of our wealth to charity and to the church, though that is certainly part of it. I think it’s also about spending our time in pursuits which are godly. It’s about not being so caught up in work that we fail to support our families with our loving presence. It’s taking time out of our day to pray. It might even be recognizing when that lucrative career is getting in the way of our other obligations so much that we’ve got to make a change, and maybe make a little less money.

I don’t mean to be grim or trite, but I can’t imagine many people on their deathbed thinking back and saying “thank God I spent all that extra time in the office and made a bundle.” When we get to that point, we’re more likely to be grateful for the relationships we nurtured and the difference, however small, we might have made in the lives of our fellow pilgrims. In other words, we’ll never regret the time we spent being rich toward God, because while everything else is vanity, a puff of wind, a passing thing, it is our love and generosity which will endure into the ages of ages.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.