This is a translation of the homily for the Fourteenth Sunday of Trinity (year III), in Holmedal Church, Kvinnherad, Norway, Sunday 14th August, 2025. The readings are as follows: Jeremiah 9:23-24; Philippians 3:7-14; and Matthew 19:27-30. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.
Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):
Let us Pray:
God of Life, Lord of the Church, you have called us to be workers in your vineyard We pray: Build your Church and strengthen us in our service, so that we work for you and for our neighbour with joy, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.
In today’s Gospel, paradox is at the center. We see a conversation between Jesus and St. Peter, who represents the disciples. This comes in the wake of Jesus’ encounter with a rich young man, who asked Jesus: “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” Jesus answered: “Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” And the commandments in question were the ones found in the Decalogue. The man answered: “All these I have observed; what do I still lack?” Jesus said: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The evangelist then concludes his retelling of the encounter with these words: “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.”
This man is often portrayed as the “villain,” but this was a man who had done pretty much everything he was supposed to do. He had been obedient to his parents, he had been a faithful husband, he had not been a violent man, he had not stolen or borne false witness, at least if we are to take his word for it. This was, by all accounts, a respectable man. A man who would certainly not have hesitated to trust. But he would not sell everything he owned, even if Jesus asked him to. And that is why he is the villain, right? Well, is he? Yes, but he is also you and me, he is all of us. We, who live in one of the richest countries in the world. After the conversation with the rich young man, Jesus turns to the disciples and says: “Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples then asked: “Who then can be saved?” Yes, that is an important question. For what is the gospel for the rich man? What is the gospel for us today, in one of the richest countries in the world? It is this simple sentence that Jesus gave in response to the disciples: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
But then we come to today’s gospel, where St. Peter speaks up: “Behold, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” Jesus then brings the promises we have heard about in today’s gospel. He presents everything that these people will be able to share in when they are lifted up. “But,” says Jesus, “many that are first will be last, and the last first.” That is the paradox here. Yes, those who have actually left everything and followed Jesus will receive their reward. One will not lose out by sacrificing everything for Jesus. And this is a current reality. Around the world, many Christians truly suffer for Christ. They are persecuted. They are chased and killed. But they endure. What about them? What will they receive? They “will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.” But this is not about self-assertion. It is about them, like Jesus, walking the way of the cross, that they paradoxically win by losing. For, as Jesus says: “many that are first will be last, and the last first.”
This began in baptism. There, we became partakers of Christ precisely by dying to evil and rising again with Christ to new life. Our goal, our perfection, is to receive every blessing from God and become one with Him. In Romans 6:3 St. Paul says that “all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death.” But there we find, paradoxically, life, as St. Paul continues in v. 4: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Through baptism we are made partakers of Christ’s death, so that all the evil in us is destroyed once and for all and given to Christ, and we are made partakers of Christ’s resurrection and receive a new life, an abundant life, but first and foremost Christ’s life, as St. Paul says in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
And this is a good fit today, because today Christians all over the world celebrate the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. It is always celebrated on the 14th of September or the nearest Sunday, and today is probably the closest we can get to a Sunday. The day is celebrated in both the East and the West, and the date was chosen because it is the day on which St. Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, is said to have found the cross of Christ in Jerusalem in the year 326. We do not know much about this historically, but that is not really the point. The point is that we point to the cross and see the power that lies there. In 1 Corinthians 1:17, St. Paul says that Christ sent him “to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” So the cross has power, and we should not try to surpass this with our own cleverness or wisdom. For, as he says further in v.18: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” This does not mean that the cross is foolish, but it means that we cannot understand it. For the death on the cross surpasses everything we can imagine. Here we see the paradox of all paradoxes. By dying on the cross, by losing, Jesus wins. And Jesus is a paradox in Himself, as St. Paul says in Colossians 2. In v.9-10 he writes that “in him [in Christ] the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” The divine and uncreated manifests itself in the created. And this, says St. Paul in vv.11-12, was given to us in baptism, which is a participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. And then he continues, in v.13-15:
And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.
Jesus showed himself victorious on the cross. It is as paradoxical as it can be. For at the top of the cosmos stands the symbol of power above all symbols of power – not the throne, not the scepter, not the crown, not the crown, not the fasces that were used by the fascists, and which can be found in the coat of arms of the Norwegian police, but the cross, that place where God showed His power by being humiliated and by dying as a human being, for our sake. God’s power is primarily manifested in what to us seems completely opposite. But that is actually how God reveals Himself to us. God is completely beyond being, completely beyond our categories, and He lies hidden under what appears to be the complete opposite. Paradoxically, God shows Himself in that which is hidden.1 He conceals Himself in a man, Jesus, in the waters of baptism, under the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in suffering and death. Where we would not believe that God would come to us, in the physical, the degrading, even in death, there He comes, in all his glory. And this is also how it is to share in salvation. Getting eternal life is about dying away from sins and what shuts us out from God. God’s power is not about what He can take out of us, but what He gives us. And then it is also, paradoxically, about God’s humility. You will never find an ancient text, in Greek, Latin or Norse, which says Zeus, Jupiter, or Odin are humble. That would be scandalous. But in the Bible, in Philippians 2:6-8, this is exactly how Christ is described:
Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
This is the very radical message that we are carrying forward today. We proclaim the God who reveals Himself to us in Jesus, revealed in the hidden and paradoxical, in a man who first came as a little poor child, who died on the cross as a criminal, but who precisely there revealed Himself as the Lord of all lords and the King of all kings. And when he who is above everything and everyone is humble, we should not be surprised if He call us to the same.
Raised in Christ, we can live for others, not just for ourselves, and that is the exact opposite of sin. Martin Luther followed St. Augustine and said that as sinners, we are curved inwards on ourselves. We look inward and always ask first what benefit we can get from each thing or situation. But in Christ, we are called to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. In Him, our calling is paradoxically to live for others, and from that we can find ourselves. The logic behind salvation and justification is that instead of being curved inwards on yourself, which is the definition of sin, you are directed outward, first towards the One, towards God, then towards the Other, towards creation and other people, in humility. As Jesus says in Mark 12:30-31, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and you “shall love your neighbour as yourself.” We must learn this every day, as we struggle with sin. Here and now we have a share in the life of Christ, in Him who united the divine and the human, but it is gradual.
In today’s second reading, from the Letter to the Philippians, St. Paul says that our goal is to know Christ Jesus our Lord. We shall “be found in him, not having a righteousness of [our] own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” And yes, he goes on to say that he does not think he has fully achieved this: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
That is what we are all called to, no matter how far or short we have come. As he says in v.16: “Only let us hold true to what we have attained.” It is gradual, then. We shall live out from the stage to which we have arrived, but the basis is not us but Christ, who sacrificed Himself for us, and who gives us union with Himself in baptism and by faith. And it was precisely by offering Himself that He conquered everything. That is the paradoxical message we proclaim today, that in Christ everything is turned upside down.
We do not preach abundant riches here, which is only emptiness, but abundant life there, which, nevertheless, can be manifested here, to a certain extent, when we live the life to which Jesus has called is, when we are straining forward to what lies ahead. But remember: this is God’s work, not ours. So follow Christ wherever He leads you, and know that in Him we win everything, even if it happens that we lose. Yes, as Jesus says, we will receive a reward according to how we follow Him, but then not based on how much we exert ourselves over others, but on how much focus we have on God, as our creator, and on our fellow human beings, as creatures we are called to love and show God’s love to.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.
Martin Luther expressed it thus, that God reveals Himself “under his contrary or opposite” (Lt. sub contrario). See Marius Timmann Mjaaland, The Hidden God: Luther, Philosophy, and Political Theology (Bloomington/Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016), 41-45.