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In this video, Fr. Barnabas Powell shows why modern culture’s obsession with hiding from death and failure makes us anxious, fragile, and self-absorbed. By confronting our mortality through the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we discover how to face broken relationships, lost dreams, and physical death with unshakable faith and ultimate victory.
Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. Follow his homilies on YouTube at Faith Encouraged TV.
This sermon was delivered on the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross, March 15th, 2026.
Watch the full video on Faith Encouraged TV: https://youtu.be/jvO20IWJs5k
Fr. Barnabas:
Great Lent is given to us to invite us to confront death. Now, I know this isn’t a a pleasant topic of discussion, but understand how we Americans, especially we moderns, have treated death, we hide from it as often as possible. And we even dress up those folks who have passed away. And we have the audacity to walk by the casket and say, “Doesn’t he look good?” No. No. He doesn’t look good.
And yet we have so sublimated our attention towards the reality of the inevitable that we have made our society psychotic when it comes to dealing with death. And I’m not just talking about physical death, folks. I’m talking about every way death shows up in our lives. “I’ll just die if they find this out about me. I’m going to die of embarrassment. He killed me with his comments.” It’s woven into the very way we think.
So that the very fact that we cannot deal with our own inevitable physical death has now seeped into every aspect of where death raises its ugly head and we’ve made our society psychotic and narcissistic and a society that says, “Boy, I better grab for all the gusto I can now because man, I may I may I may die one day.” Well, no, not may do it. It’s going to happen. So, how are you going to deal with that?
A dear priest friend of mine teaches in Scotland and he begins every year with his students with this pastorally questionable phrase: “You didn’t ask to be born and you’re going to die and that sucks.” And I asked him, I said, “Father, how do they take it?” That’s just exactly like you folks just took it right there. And yet the church offers us a Sunday where we think about the Holy Cross, the gruesome and painful and agonizing and embarrassing and shameful and disgraceful death of the man who we say is God in the flesh and we worship him and pray to him.
To the world, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ looked like the final nail in the coffin of this upstart guy who had caused all these problems. They thought they had beat him by killing him. And yet we all know the story. As painful and as horrible and as shameful and as disgraceful as the crucifixion was, the resurrection following it made it all fall into the perspective of God’s plan. And then Jesus ascends into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father.
The exaltation and the blessing of our Lord Jesus Christ after his willingness to face the cross enables us to face every place where death rears its ugly head in our lives. The death of a relationship, the death of a friendship, the death of a career, the dying of dreams. I had a young man sitting with me th this past week who was extremely concerned because he was having to deal with the fact that some of his dreams weren’t going to come true. I know that feeling. I know that feeling.
Well, here I am at 60 years of age and there are things that I’m going to not accomplish that I thought. I mean by now I thought I’d have a big TV ministry and selling cloths on television… No, I’m just teasing you. My life didn’t turn out like I thought it was. I didn’t expect to be dressed in a purple dress standing in as the pastor of a Greek Orthodox church. Some of my dreams had to die. Some of your dreams may have to die.
And if you don’t know how to handle death from the perspective of Jesus Christ, your life is going to be thrown off-kilter by that shocking moment. Can Can you handle death? Well, if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ and if you’re an Orthodox Christian, brothers and sisters, every time death rears its ugly head in your life, remind death of this one truth. “The grave is empty. The tomb is empty. The the stone is rolled back. And he who you thought you had defeated has now defeated every enemy of the human race and has ascended at the right hand of God the Father.”
This brothers and sisters is the message of the Orthodox. And if you’re going to have a mature and holy and sane life, you’re going to have to come to contact and stop trying to hide from death. Stop it. It’s killing you. If Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, brothers and sisters, there is nothing that you can face in your life that can ultimately destroy you unless you roll over. Hold fast to the faith.
venerate the cross, that instrument of torture and murder that we now hold up as a sign of victory. We’ve reclaimed it. And every time Satan tries to remind us of our physical mortality, we just grin at his face and say, “Yeah, so what? I’m not going to let a little thing like physical death get in my way.” Besides, it’s temporary. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
