Sunday before the Exaltation of the Cross; Commemoration of the Dedication of the Holy Church of the Resurrection of Christ our God; The Forefeast of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross; The Holy Hieromartyr Cornelius the Centurion.
Galatians 6:11-18; John 3:13-17.
Read Galatians 6:11-18
Perennial weeds keep coming back. Unlike annual plants that must be reseeded, perennials can’t be eradicated by the cut of a gardener’s hoe or the bite of winter’s frost. Their perennial nature is a feature, not a glitch. They can only be eradicated by means that address that feature – being pulled up by the roots.
The defining feature of humanity is that we are created in the “image” of God. When the image of every Ancient Near East mythological deity declared which “god” ruled in each place, the revelation of God through Israel declared that wherever a human being is, that is where God rules. That makes us dependant creatures. Our sin was to choose to “be like God”, not in dependence upon Him, but independently. Addressing our perennial spiritual problem must address this, our defining feature.
The urge to check the boxes of our accomplishments in life is a perennial problem for us. It is reflected here in how Paul’s opponents used Jewish circumcision. They had turned the rite of identification with God’s work in salvation history through the Jewish people into a spiritual accomplishment – “There. I’m circumcised. I’m good now.” Paul declares that God’s solution is to call us back to His original intention: “a new creation.”
All peoples everywhere are now called to “the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We are lovingly graced with the means of engaging in renewed dependence upon the one holy God. We are taught to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but that bread, like us, is spiritual as well as physical – “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” We are never to treat Christ as a box to be checked; he is our means of dependant re-creation.