Jesus Christ is the Cornerstone. This is one of his names.

Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians that we are the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and that Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone (Eph 2:19-20). This is the corner foundation stone – the foundation stone placed at the extreme corner where two walls of a structure meet – the stone that both supports and unites both walls. This is an important piece. Were it to crumble, the whole structure would be compromised and would likely collapse.

It is clear that Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which the house of God is built and that if we try to build our churches, our families, or our lives on any other stone, they will be compromised and will likely collapse. Any other stone is too weak to support such weight and it will crumble.

And yet we often seek to do just that. We make central to our lives concerns that really are secondary. Instead of eating to live, we live to eat. We pursue not almighty God so much as the almighty dollar. We care more for the crumbling stones of our church buildings than for the living stones which comprise the true Church.

Jesus Christ is the stone that matters. Sometimes we care too much for church buildings and not enough for the body of Christ, which is his people. The body of Christ is risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father. This is the everlasting temple in which we worship God: the temple of his body. We are members of his body and living stone of his temple. If Christ lives in us, we are his holy place more so than this church building, even more so than Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, yes, even more so than the Church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem, which houses both Golgotha and the tomb of Christ and which, for the first time since 1349 during the Black Death, was closed for services this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The temples of our bodies, I tell you, were not closed.

St. Gregory of Nyssa writes, “Change of place does not effect any drawing nearer unto God, but wherever you may be, God will come to you, if the chambers of your soul be found of such a sort that He can dwell in you and walk in you. But if you keep your inner man full of wicked thoughts, even if you were on Golgotha, even if you were on the Mount of Olives, even if you stood on the memorial-rock of the Resurrection, you will be as far away from receiving Christ into yourself, as one who has not even begun to confess Him.”

Let us remember what our patron, St. Stephen clearly said, “Solomon built a house for him, but the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands” (Acts 7:47-48). Jesus said of the temple buildings, “There will not be left one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down” (Matt 24:2). The same is likely true of this building in which we now worship. Let’s not forget that. It is Christ whom we worship here who is the eternal stone, not this brick and mortar. He is who matters. All this is passing away.

Jesus is the cornerstone upon which we would build if we were wise. Though he is often rejected by worldly builders, he is the only one who can really hold it all together. If we’ve been building our lives on other things: on money, on comfort, on our own pride, let’s go ahead and let the shanties we’ve assembled collapse. Just let it go. And start rebuilding on Christ an edifice that will stand for ages.

Today Jesus shows us that the scripture is speaking of him when it says, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the work of the Lord, a marvel in our eyes.” We chant this together with other verses from Psalm 117 every Sunday morning at Matins. If we pray the whole divine office, we chant this every single morning, except on days of alleluia. This is clearly an important image for us, which the Church presents to us almost every day for our consideration and meditation.

This verse is also quoted five times in the New Testament – by Jesus himself in all three synoptic gospels, by Peter when filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts, and again in 1 Peter (Acts 4:8,11; 1 Pet 2:7). This has been a central piece of apostolic preaching from the very beginning.

The phrase repeatedly quoted by the apostles is an exact quote from the Septuagint – that’s the purportedly inspired Greek translation of the Old Testament that was used by the apostles, by the Jews of Jesus’ time and place, and by the early Church. The phrase is actually a little different from that which appears in Ephesians and may be more literally rendered, “the head of the corner.”

These terms can refer to the cornerstone as I’ve described, but they can also refer to the keystone or the capstone of an arch. This is the stone that supports the arch from above – the last stone placed while building the arch – the stone that holds the whole thing together. If you’ve got some building blocks of the right shape, it’s fun to build an arch with them with your children or grandchildren.  And it’s a good physics lesson. You can build the arch and see how strong it is – but then pull out the keystone and watch the whole thing collapse.

This sense of the term may make more sense with the timing of the verse: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” If the builders rejected a stone and started building, but then returned to it when they needed it, it may make sense that this would be the keystone of an arch, which is the last stone placed when building an arch, rather than the cornerstone of two walls, which may be the first stone one would lay.

I think the multivalence of this image is actually a good thing. Jesus is both our cornerstone and our keystone, I would suggest. He is both the one who supports us and also the one who unites us. He is both the first stone upon which we build and the last stone which completes us. He is the beginning and the end – the alpha and the omega.

Also, if we rejected him when we began building our lives, or at any point along the way, if our priorities have gotten out of whack, it’s not too late to return to him and place him as the keystone which holds our lives together.

If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments (Matt 19:17). This is what Jesus says to a rich young man today asking how to live forever. The commandments are the way to life. To which the rich young man responds, “Which ones?”

This is quite a question really. Our Jewish friends may tell us that there are 613 Commandments in the Torah. Some people might observe they these are all worth keeping – seeing as how they all come from God.

God is good and altogether good. Jesus has just pointed this out to the rich man saying, “There is only one who is good” (19:17). To keep God’s commandments cannot but be good. Perhaps we could look at his commandments at being a recipe for goodness.

But Jesus does not say, “All of them!” Nor does he list 613 commandments. Surely, Jesus knows all the commandments. He is the commander! But he seems quite willing to entertain the rich man’s question at first.

Others might have observed that the commandments that we do not even understand are just as important as those we do. For example, there is the commandment about not wearing cloth made of two kinds of stuff (Deut 22:11). We might ask, what purpose does this serve? Surely this commandment cannot be on equal par with “thou shalt not kill,” for example. Yet, someone might point out to us that God is totally beyond our comprehension and so it only stands to reason that some of his commandments will also be. And if we love God, don’t we trust him and follow him even when we do not understand?

Some children are like this and some are not. Almost from infancy, some children seem to trust their mother and father no matter what and they are compliant with their parents’ commands, even if they do not understand. Other children, again almost from infancy, tend to go their own way and pay little mind to the instructions their parents give. If a child has good parents, the compliant children have an easier life. The headstrong ones get hurt a lot.

Now, on the human level of course, not all parents are good. And in such situations, the compliant children may get hurt even more. God, however, is good and all good and the only good one. So those of us who comply to him, like trusting children, will have a better life. Because he knows us even better than we know ourselves. So, even if we do not understand, if we trust him and follow him, it will make our lives better and it will lead us into everlasting life in union with him.

Some of us, however, almost from infancy, are not so compliant but are headstrong and intent on going our own way. As a result, we have harder lives when it comes to our relationships with God. Still, he will not abandon us.

Yet, despite all of this, Jesus entertains the rich young man’s question and he gives a short list of easily understandable commandments that lead to life.

It is interesting what is on this list and it is interesting what is missing. He gives only six commandments, first of all, not 10, and certainly not 613. And, of the six, only five are from the 10. He does not even include in this list the commandment that elsewhere he calls the greatest commandment! What is the greatest commandment? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt 22:37). Surely this is a Commandment that leads to life!

Now, after identifying the greatest commandment, Jesus does go on to say, “A second is like it, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (22:39). And this latter half or addendum to the greatest commandment, he does now here include in his list of commandments that lead to life.

He includes here the human rather than the divine side of this commandment. That is fascinating! One might presume the divine side to be the more essential of the two sides. And yet here he includes the human but not the divine side.

Noting this, we can then look at the other five commandments in his list, each of which is part of the Ten Commandments, and we can now notice that these five also all deal with the human side of God’s commandments. He does not include the first three or four of the ten commandments, (depending on how you enumerate them).

“I am the Lord your God…. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image… you shall not bow down to them and serve them…. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain…. Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy” (Exodus 20:2-8)

None of these commandments, which have to do with our relationship with God, appear in Jesus’ list of commandments that lead to life. I don’t know about you, but I am flabbergasted by that.

When Jesus elsewhere describes the greatest commandments, he says, “On these two commandments depend the whole law” (Matt 22:40). Similarly, I would suggest that first five commandments Jesus gives the rich man today depend on the final commandment he gives: “love your neighbor as yourself.”

If you love others, you surely will not kill them, nor commit adultery with them, (which is not loving despite popular sentiment to the contrary – let us not call that “love”), nor steal from them, nor bear false witness against them, and, of course, you will honor your father and your mother if you love them. The sixth, you see, contains the first five.

It is striking that these commandments regarding love for one another are apparently all that is needed to enter into life. The whole law is seamlessly interwoven. When we love one another, we are in fact loving God, just as, if we love God, we will of course love one another as fellow creatures and images of God.

Do you know how good it feels when someone praises your work? When they look at what you have done and they love what you have made, it can feel like love for you. Even more so, when someone admires our children, sometimes we take it as a compliment to ourselves. And it is, in a way. Our children are made out of the stuff that we are made out of. And they have been deeply shaped by how we have reared them. Loving my child is loving me, to some extent. At least it can feel this way.

This is so much more true of God. When we truly love his creation (not idolatrously – but truly), we love him. He made us in His image and his likeness. To love one another and to love ourselves is to love the image of God. Because we are finite creatures, we cannot love God without loving his image. Without the icon, we cannot reach the prototype. We must love God through his image – that is, through each other.  And, furthermore, we cannot love his image, that is each other, without growing in our love for God. If we really love each other, this love will lead us to the love of God. If we really and truly love each other, that will be enough. It will be the seed that grows into a great tree. Without the seed there will be no tree and the seed already contains the tree in potentiality. The seed, then, is enough. Provided we nurture it and allow it to grow.

Now, growth will be necessary. The rich young man claims to already have the seed – to keep the commandments and to love his neighbor (19:20). Many of us are not there yet. Many of us are unloving in various ways. And therefore we have yet to acquire even the seed that will give us life. But this rich man is loving of others and he keeps the commandments of God regarding other people – or so he thought.

Jesus, I think, reveals that the rich young man is perhaps not so loving as he imagines himself. Because what Jesus proposes to him, when he seeks perfection, is that he sell his possessions and give to the poor (19:21). Now, that would be a loving thing to do. Indeed, that is just the sort of way in which of the rich young man loves himself. He loves himself by allowing himself to have many possessions. If he loved others as he loved himself, he would then give these possessions to them! Furthermore, if he really loved himself, he would give these possessions away because then, as Jesus tells him, he would have treasure in heaven (19:21). The act would be loving of both others and self.

But that was sadly more loving than the rich young man was willing to be. If we think we are loving, Jesus will show us a way to deepen our love. Our love must grow if it is to be alive. The way to life is a love that grows, a love that deepens, a living love,  not a static artifice of love. The way to life is living growing love. If we want to live, we will follow Jesus, and he will show us the way to grow our love. And then to grow it again and again. Eternal life is eternal growth. That which does not grow is dead. That which is living is growing.

There is a difference, illustrated for us by Jesus in this parable about debt and forgiveness, between our sins against God and our sins against one another.

Our sin against God is represented by the servant’s debt to the king – a debt of 10,000 talents – a single talent being roughly equal to 16 years wages. This is an absurdly, ridiculously, hugely large sum. When the servant says he’ll pay the king back in full (18:26), that is a farcical. It is impossible, even with a whole lifetime of work – and such is the nature of our relationship with God. What he has forgiven us, we cannot repay.

Meanwhile, the debt that the one servant owes the other represents our sins against one another. It is a hundred denarii. That’s about one hundred day’s wages – it’s nothing to sneeze at. It’s enough to hurt. On the other hand, just one talent is worth roughly 6,000 denarii. The difference is massive to the point of absurdity.

St. John Chrysostom says,

Do you see how great a difference there is between sins against humanity and sins against God? As much a difference as between ten thousand tal­ents and a hundred denarii; no, much greater in fact. This comes about from the difference of the persons and from the frequency of the sins. For when someone is watching, we hold off and do not dare to sin. But God is watching all the time, and yet we are not afraid; in fact, we even say and do everything quite brazenly (The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 61.1).

Perhaps another analogy could also help us to understand. It is of course a sin and a crime to strike someone unprovoked, as an example. But isn’t it intuitively clear that the same action is far worse if the person we’re striking is our mother? That is far worse for many reasons. We owe our very lives to our mothers as to no one else. Our mothers conceived us and carried us and gave us birth. And if we were blessed with good mothers, they also continued to nurture us and provide for us for many years beyond that. In a way, they participated in our being brought into being and sustained in being.

How much more this is so of God! This is so of God not just in a way, but absolutely. He is our creator and sustainer. He has his hand in every good we experience. We owe him love and gratitude for every good thing. Above all, for his love of us, despite our unfaithfulness.

Maybe we do not imagine ourselves to be so very unfaithful. Perhaps we do not think our sins very great. Perhaps we look at the sins of others and think, well, at least I am not like this publican.

If that is what we imagine, it is an especially good thing that we pray so frequently in every liturgy for the forgiveness of all of our voluntary and involuntary sins. There is a kind of sin that is not voluntary. And there is a kind of sin that is done in ignorance. Thank Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins done in ignorance as he was nailed to the cross, when he prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

I think the immense debt of the servant is an especially effective image of this kind of sin. After all, enormous debt is usually incurred due to ignorance. Often it grows while we are not looking. It grows because we are not looking. Because we are not paying attention responsibly to our finances

But it is a debt nonetheless. Our involuntary sins and our sins done in ignorance are sins. They are forgiven sins, but they are sins. For them, as well as those done knowingly and deliberately, let us repent our whole lives long.

Unwillingness to forgive our fellow servants is partly symptomatic of ingratitude for the forgiveness we have received. (That’s what we all are to one another, by the way, co-workers and fellow servants of the Lord – syndouloi).

To help us increase our gratitude for the Lord’s forgiveness, let us try to remember that we are sinners. If, for example, while preparing for confession, we cannot see our own sins, we can rest assured that this is not due to our sinlessness, but rather to a problem with our vision.

Here is a place where it can be helpful to be married. If you imagine yourself to be sinless, ask your spouse if they agree. They will likely be able to help you remember some things you’ve forgotten.

A close and intimate friend may also be able to illuminate our darkness on this subject. Because, I reiterate, if we do not see our sins, it is because, in addition to being sinners, we are also blind to our sins. It is a not because we are not sinners. Let’s put away that prelest, that self-delusion, right now.

If your spouse or your close friend are true followers of Jesus Christ, you will not need to worry about asking them to expose to you your own sins and failings, because they will have already forgiven you. That is how we syndouloi of Christ are to treat one another.

When I once asked a former pastor of mine for forgiveness, he reminded me that he was in the forgiveness business. We are all in the forgiveness business inasmuch as we follow Christ. I have heard some Christians claim that it is not necessary for us to forgive those who have not repented. Such Christians have confused themselves with God when it comes to judgment and then forgotten to be God like when it comes to forgiveness.

Remember the smallness of the debt our fellow servants have been cured against us when compared to the greatness of the debt we have incurred against the king. Remember that our great debt has been forgiven and that this obligates us to forgive the debts against us.

If there is someone you have not forgiven from your heart, if there is anyone you do not love, do not dare to approach for holy communion. If you do so, you will eat and drink condemnation upon your own head. You will be eating the body of the Lord while failing to discern his body – that is, while failing to recognize another member of his body – while failing to see Christ in your brother or sister.

In his great mercy, the King forgave the servant his debt. He did not throw the servant into prison as his debt warranted. The servant remained a servant and not a prisoner. Until the servant failed to forgive his fellow servant – his syndoulos. Likewise, if we do not forgive others as we are forgiven, we will be imprisoned by our unforgiveness. We will be thereby exile ourselves from the kingdom and cut ourselves off from the body.

Such is our Lord’s love for us, however, that even still hope is not lost. From my perspective, the parable does end with some hope even for the unforgiving servant. We hear that he is imprisoned until he pays the debt (18:34). So, we’re back to that impossible task. The servant’s debt works out to about 2,000 lifetimes worth of work. Still, two thousand lifetimes is infinitely shorter than eternity.

Let us not neglect to pray for the dead. Some of them may still be lifetimes away from forgiveness, but even for them not all hope is lost.

In the meantime, let us forgive one another everything in this lifetime and rejoice in the forgiveness of our king.