We are coming to the end of the story.  Jesus takes His followers aside to tell them what is going to happen.  He has not done this much, but as the time of his death is drawing near, he must tell them in plain language what is going to happen.  Soon, He will travel to Jerusalem for the last time.  They will stand on the streets with Palm Branches, as we will next week, and sing songs of praise to Him, then a few short days later, they will be calling for His death.  It is all part of the plan and Jesus does this willingly.

We read, in today’s Gospel from St. Mark, “Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.”  Jesus was reacting to the question of the brothers, James and John about who shall sit where.  They wanted to sit in the place of honor, but by all appearances, they did not know what that would mean for them.  Jesus tells them simply that in order to sit with Him in paradise they must be willing to face the same trials that He is about to face, and indeed they do.

In Jesus day, as he makes reference in the Gospel today, those placed in leadership would lord it over those that they were appointed to lead.  This was pointed out by Jesus as a warning to His followers of the day, but also as a warning to His followers today.  When we, as followers of Christ, are placed in leadership, be it lay leadership or clergy leadership, we are not to lord it over those we lead.  We are to set the example of those we lead and we are to lead in humility and love, as Jesus did.  We are to be servants of those we lead not the other way around.  What the word needs, and what the church needs, is more servant leaders, not more leaders with servants!

This past week, we experienced some of the most horrific things the human mind can comprehend.  I will never understand evil and the power it has over people.  The seduction of the evil is so powerful, so great, and it sneaks up on us in the most unsuspecting places.  People are not born evil, evil is taught, evil is fostered.  Human beings are born with a propensity to sin and we have to work hard to throw off the vices and hang on to the virtues, that is what Lent is all about, but we have to be ever vigilant against the evil one who will seduce us if we are not watchful.

In each Presanctified Liturgy, after the readings from the Old Testament, I sing, “Let my prayer arise in thy sight as incense, and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice.”  This is then repeated by the cantor.  As I incense the four sides of the Holy Altar I ask God to “Set a guard at my mouth and to keep watch at the door of my lips.  I then ask “Let not my heart turn to wrong, to making excuses for sinning with the wicked.”  I am asking for the help and protection of God not just during Lent, but at all times.  We need his help to guard what we say and what we do so as not to fall prey to the evil one.

But what of this idea of being servants?

Not only did we see atrocious acts of violence and hatred last week we saw genuine acts of being a servant and in many cases laying down of one’s life.  While the smoke was rising, police, fire, and EMS personnel were rushing in to save lives.  Volunteer doctors and nurses, ignoring the potential harm to themselves, rushed in and by all accounts saved countless lives by doing so.  Everyday citizens, seeing their fellow citizens in danger, stepped up and helped out in many ways.  Some along the marathon route, opened their doors and provided food and water to complete strangers, some allowed runners to use their cell phones to contact loved ones to alert them know they were alright, and others just hugged people to let them know that it was going to be okay.

On Friday, like many, I was captivated by what was unfolding on television.  A man hunt had begun.  One suspect was dead and the other one was on the run.  Thousands of uniformed and non-uniformed police were placing their lives at risk for you and for me.  I can only imagine the numbers of people praying for their safety and I have to imagine that they were joined by a company of angels as they risked their lives to keep all of us safe, they were truly servants on that day, they were serving all of us by protecting our lives by placing theirs at risk.  This is what it means to be a servant.  We have to be willing to lay down our lives if that is what it is going to take.

Scripture often uses the image of the shepherd when speaking of leaders in the Church.  The shepherd has to be willing to guard his flock, day or night, sometimes risking his own life to protect them because they cannot protect themselves.  Church leaders must be willing to do this, we must be willing not only to guard the people we have been entrusted with, but we must be willing to guard the very idea of the Church, even if it means giving up our lives in the process.

The shepherd is called upon to keep those who seek the lives of his flock away; he is called to protect them at all times and in all places.  He keeps constant watch over the flock providing food and water and yes, when one goes astray he leaves the others to go after that one and bring it back to the fold.  In a few moments we will pray for those who have strayed from the faith, that is the one who has been lost and those are the ones who need to be brought back.

We are drawing close to the end of the story.  In the coming weeks we will experience the entire range of emotions from Palm Sunday to the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. We will follow Jesus as He takes His final steps, we will be right there with Him as he is humiliated and nailed to the cross, not for what He did, but for what we did!  We will see, played out right before us, the ultimate act of leadership, we will see what it truly means to be a servant leader in the drama of Holy Week.

There is an ancient ceremony that has fallen out of use in the Orthodox Church that will be restored this year here at St. Michael and other places.  On Great and Holy Thursday the washing of the feet with be reintroduced into the Liturgical cycle of the Church.  I will be asking the leaders of the Church, the parish council, to come forward on that night for me to wash their feet.  This service is a reminder to all of us that if we want to be in a place of honor we have to be a servant of all.  The person who washed the feet of guests in someone’s home was the lowliest of servants and Jesus did this as a reminder to all of us.

We saw evil unleashed on us this past week, and I am sure it will be a long time, if ever, before we get over the images that we saw.  But we also so great acts of love and it is that love that will make us strong, love and service to others is at the very core of our Christian life and it is what will, and has, sustained us when times get difficult.

“but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.”

We have now passed the midway point of our Lenten Journey.  This year I have tried to focus us on listening to God.  This past Wednesday, at the Presanctified, Fr. Ephraim talked about listening to birds and how we do not always hear them because of the noise in our lives, in order for us to listen to God, he said, we need to quiet down our lives.  We are very busy people, but our spiritual life requires us to slow down, even for a few moments a day, and listen to what God has to say to us.

This is the 4^th Sunday of our Lenten Journey and this week we focus on St. John Climacus and his book the Ladder of Divine Ascent.  St. John uses the image of the ladder for our spiritual life and the fact that we have to ascend the ladder one rung at a time.

All of our Lenten journey is taking one step at a time.  It has been said that a journey of a million miles begins with that first step.  Again, in our 900 mph lives we live we sometimes like to take the steps 2 at a time.  While that might work when going up a set of stairs, but it does not always work in the spiritual life.  Each step is important along the journey and we need to slow down and take them one step at a time.

The first Sunday of Great Lent focuses on the triumph of the theology of the Icon over those who would destroy it.  We were reminded about Icons and their importance in our prayer life as tools that we can use that help us focus.  We do not worship the wood and the paint, but it is the prototype that we worship.  Not the image, but what is beyond that image that we must focus on.

St. Gregory Palamas was the focus of the second Sunday of Great Lent.  St. Gregory clarified much of what we now believe as Orthodox Christians and we pause on that Sunday to recall his life and the entire body of work that he left for us in order for us to understand the faith.  It is not enough for us just to participate on the surface of the faith, we need a deeper understanding of what the faith is all about.  Orthodox calls us to a deeper interior life that we only get through a lifetime of study of the faith and what it really means.  It has to be more than just the outward appearance of the faith and how we cross ourselves and whether we stand or sit at the right time during Liturgy, we are called to a deeper journey, and St. Gregory points the way for us to follow.

Last Sunday we turned our gaze towards the Holy Cross, the reason for everything else that we do.  We are reminded that we have to crucify ourselves each day on the Cross of Christ.  We need to Crucify our will and exchange it for God’s will in our lives.  The Cross reminds us of the crucifixion of the passions and the reason for this Lenten season.

And today we come to the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the life of St. John Climacus.  The book was originally written for monastics, and is still read during the Lenten season in many monasteries today, but it is now available for all to read.  If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it, but I will caution you, it is difficult in places and I would suggest not reading it without someone to guide you.

The entire aim of the book, is the entire aim of the Lenten season and our lives, avoiding vice and practicing virtue.  The avoidance of vice and the practice of virtue is what will bring us salvation in our lives.  When we turn from the passions and turn towards the virtues, we are on the road to the spiritual life which is the ultimate goal of our lives.

The ascetical life is not just for monastics, the ascetical life is the life that all of us are called to live.  You have heard it said that we are live in the world but we are not of the world.  This is true on some levels.  We do have to live in this world and we have to face the daily struggles of our lives.  But we do not have to participate in the world and its fallen nature.  As humans we have been created in the image and likeness of God, but because of the sin of our first parents that image has been tarnished and we have been forced to live this life of pain and toil.  However, we do not have to participate in the fallen world, and we accomplish that by turning from the vices and towards the virtues.  It is not easy, but it is something we must do.

I believe we are lucky in Orthodoxy.  We do not claim that one a certain day at a certain we are saved.  We cannot point to a time in history, unless of course it is our baptism, that we were born again.  We are reborn each day that we decide to follow Christ!  In Orthodoxy we do not just say go forth and sin no more, we give you tools to help you along the way, you are not alone in your struggle and we have the Church and her Sacraments to guide us.

Yesterday I spoke to a group of Orthodox women who have been on retreat all weekend.  They have taken time out of their busy lives during Lent, to slow down, even for a few days, and to take a journey of depth and understanding.  I spoke on forgiveness and confession.  I did not say anything that you have not heard me say in the past, but I told them how lucky we are to have Sacramental Confession available to us and how sad I am that more people do not avail themselves of this more often than they do, myself included.

Many of you sitting here right now, have not been to confession in years, more years than you can probably remember, and some of us when we do come it is a very superficial confession almost as if we are just checking off the boxes.  Confession needs to be more than just checking off the box during Holy Week.  By the way no matter how old you are you need confession and the Church requires confession before communion.  This is the time, I have made a commitment in my own life to go to confession at least monthly.  My confessor and I have decided to hold each other accountable on this and we have made a promise to each other, and to God, that this will be a priority this year for us.

Our Orthodox spirituality is so deep, so deep that I am constantly amazed at how much I still have to learn about the spiritual life.  I have read, the Ladder on several occasions in my life, but I am always picking up something new, always finding a new nugget of wisdom about life.  We have such depth in our Spirituality and most people never seem to break the surface.

The time is now for us to take that first step on the ladder.  We may hang out there for a while but we must make that first step.

Tomorrow several thousand people will run the Boston Marathon.  Marathons take a lot of preparation to run, you cannot decide today to run the marathon tomorrow, I am not even sure I could walk 26 miles and I know I cannot run that far.  And our spiritual life is the same.  It takes much preparation and practice but we cannot run the marathon until we start to train.

The entire goal of our Lenten Journey this year has been focused on this training.  Let us spend the next year in training so next Lent we can run the marathon, not at a sprint, but at a slow steady pace, that will bring us to that finish line.  Let’s decide today and start training together.

The Gospel of Mark 8:34-38; 9:1

The Lord said: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.”

We have reached the mid-way point in Great Lent.  We have ascended to the top of the mountain and now that we have had a look around, it is time to continue the journey.  We pause today to meditate on the Holy Cross of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

It has become unfashionable is some circles to not speak about the suffering of Jesus on the Cross but, as I like to remind people, if it was not for the Cross we could have the resurrection.  You see suffering was part of the journey of Jesus and suffering is part of our journey as Christians and we hear that clearly stated in the Gospel chosen for today.

This commemoration today not only reminds us of the coming Crucifixion of Christ but it also stands as a reminder that during the entirety of Great Lent we are crucified with Christ.  You have heard me say before, that this time of the year is supposed to be different than the rest of the year.  This is not a time for celebrations, for example in the Orthodox Church weddings are not performed during the time of Great Lent.  For the most part, major feast days are transferred on the calendar until after the Season.  I mean to say that as Christians we are supposed to live our lives different from the non-Christian but we are especially called to live differently during these weeks.

All during this season we are called to Crucify our flesh and our passions and we come to this mid-point and see the Cross of Jesus here before us, bedecked in flowers, to remind us of what waits at the end of the road.  We have made it half way, and the cross is placed here as an encouragement to make it the rest of the way.

I have told you Army stories before, but I can recall a time during basic training, I guess it was about half way through, and I did not think I was going to make it.  I was away from home for the first time, I was sore, I was tired, and I just wanted to give up.  Then I got a letter from my father.  I really cannot recall everything that was in it, I do remember something about buying a new lawn mower, but near the end of the letter he told me he was proud of me and all that I had accomplished, that was the shot in the arm that I needed and I got through the rest of basic training.  I am sure we all have stories like that, and today is a shot in the arm for us.  It is not time to look back, but it is a time to look forward.

During this time of the year we read mostly from the Hebrew Scriptures.  We read in Genesis about the creation of the world and the fall of our first parents.  Adam and Eve were created to live in paradise with God, Scripture tells us they walked with God.  But, as we hear in the Liturgy, through man sin entered the world and with sin death.  The Genesis account of the fall of humanity has a tree as a central feature of the story.  Sure Eve eats from the tree and gets Adam to do the same, but it is through the tree that we, humanity, allowed sin to enter the world.  It was the tree that requires us to carry this heavy burden of sin that we all have to carry.

But we also read in Genesis the story of Noah.  With the wood of the tree he builds and ark, the ark that saves a portion of humanity.  Not all of it mind you, only a part of creation is spared the flood waters that come.  Noah is called by God to take the wood of the tree and to fashion a vessel that will save humanity from itself.

A little further on we read of Abram.  Abram is called by God and given a son Isaac from his wife Sara.  We also know of Ishmael but that is a story for another day.  Abram, who will be called Abraham, is called by God to take his son to a mountain that God will show him, and on that mountain, he is to sacrifice Isaac on the fire.  Abraham and Isaac set out on the journey, and Scripture tells us, that Isaac is carrying the wood, the wood of the tree, that will be used for the sacrifice.  Sacrifice and burnt offerings were necessary for our ancestors in the faith, and Abraham was only fulfilling what God had asked him to do.  We know the end of the story and Abraham is spared sacrificing his son, but soon we will see this acted out in the Person of Jesus Christ and God will, indeed, sacrifice His only Son.

So now we see Jesus, the Son of God, the Logos, the Word made Flesh, all alone, being spit on and having insults hurled at Him, and across his shoulders is a piece of wood, the wood that will lead to His death.  You see, the tree brought death and destruction into this world and it will be that same tree that will bring everlasting life! What was started by the first Eve in garden, will culminate with the Son of the Second Eve, on the Cross at Calvary.

Scripture tells us today that whoever loses his life for the sake of the Gospel will indeed save his life.  We are to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and go boldly into the world.  We cannot carry the weight of the Cross on our shoulders if we are already burdened down with sin.  We may think our shoulders are broad enough to do it all but we cannot do it all and we cannot do it alone.  Jesus needed help to carry His cross and we need help to carry ours, that is what this season is all about, giving us the help we need to carry our cross.  If we do not take the time during these days of Great Lent to prepare ourselves then when the time of tribulation comes we will not be ready.

How do we do this?  How do we prepare ourselves?  Scripture tells us in a very clear way today, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  We must deny ourselves and focus on what God wants of us.  We must fast and pray, attend the church services, understand our faith, stand up for injustice, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give voice to those who have no voice, we must carry the Cross that each one of us has to carry and we need to do it with the boldness of faith and we must be willing to face whatever comes our way when we stand up and say I am a follower of Jesus Christ!  This is not an easy thing to do today, but it is something we must do!

At the end of Liturgy this morning we will come forward, we will make three prostrations in front of the Holy Cross and venerate it.  We do not simply kiss this Cross made of gold but through it we venerate what it represents in our lives, salvation and freedom from our sins.  Jesus did the work that He had to do; now it is time for us to do the work that we have to do.  We are at the mid-point in Great Lent.  If you have not engaged there is still time, do not be caught outside of the bridal chamber when the bridegroom comes, now is the time for preparation.