Sermon for the 10th of September - Feast of the Holy Cross

Numbers 21: 4-9
From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.’ Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’ So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

John 3: 13-17
No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order
that the world might be saved through him.

Meditation for the Festival of the Holy Cross
This evening we pause to contemplate the meaning of the symbol of the Cross, which, over the course of time, has emerged as the central symbol of our Christian faith. It was not the first, or earliest, symbol to emerge among the community of the Jesus-followers, the disciples of his Way. It was, rather, the image of the Good Shepherd, a male figure carrying on his shoulders a small and vulnerable lamb, that was the most common of all those scratched graffiti of Jesus found in the Roman catacombs. This visual image immediately evoked one of the simplest and most memorable of Jesus's teachings: The Parable of the Lost Sheep.

Here is the parable, in Luke 15: Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”

It seems obvious why this symbol of the Good Shepherd would come into wide use to represent the Christ. There were other symbols of Christ in that first period, of course---the fish, the anchor, the dove, the pelican, the peacock. But sometime quite early on--perhaps as early as the 2nd century, the cross came to be more widely used than the Good Shepherd.

Why was this? Why would a gentle shepherd come to be replaced by an image of a terrible kind of death? One of the early church fathers, Tertullian, who died in 220, rejects the accusation that Christians are crucis religiosi, "adorers of the gibbet." It is in this book of Tertullian, De Corona, of 204, that we have the attestation that it was already by then a tradition for Christians to trace the sign of the cross on their foreheads. But if the early Christians were not adorers of the gibbet, what were they? Why did they hold up this cross-symbol as the most powerful of all the representations of what Jesus meant to them?

Perhaps it was that they looked at Jesus's arms, outstretched there, for them, and understood to what lengths this kind of love would go. Perhaps those outstretched arms reminded them of what would be required of them, also, if they were to take the path of Jesus seriously. That those outstretched arms were both a declaration and an invitation: a declaration of love and an invitation to love, even to that degree.

Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, written in about the year 54, writes about his understanding of what the cross means: For Christ did not send me to baptise but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God....we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

The dominant culture in which we live is now, once again, as in the earliest days, hostile to the Christian faith. As Paul said, it doesn't understand what it is. None of the symbols of the Faith have any meaning, especially the symbol of the cross. It would see a cross hanging on a chain around the neck of a follower of the Way and it stands for nothing--it is mere self-decoration. It is much easier to go along with what the culture says is normal----to live as a "good person," or just to live for one's self, not taking as a model the life of Jesus or taking seriously the way of the cross that is everything the Christian faith stands for.

But here is one Christian's recent musing upon the meaning of the cross: (this is taken from the writer Frederick Buechner, in his book, The Hungering Dark) Jesus says to ask and it will be given you, to seek and you will find. In other words, he says that if you pray for him, he will come to you, and as far as I know, there is only one way to find out whether that is true, and that is to try it. Pray for him and see if he comes, in ways that only you will recognise. He says to follow him, to walk as he did into the world's darkness, to throw yourself away as he threw himself away for the love of the dark world. And he says that if you follow him, you will end up on some kind of cross but that beyond your cross and even on your cross you will also find your heart's desire, the peace that passes all understanding. And again, as far as I know there is only one way to find out whether that is true, and that is to try it. Follow him and see. And if the going gets too tough, you can always back out. Maybe you can always back out. (p. 55, The Hungering Dark, 1985)

To follow Christ's way of loving compassion, of self-giving love, of love that sacrifices everything and is content to have emptied itself out, this is a hard path to choose. It is not certain that we can stay on this path, once we choose it. As Buechner comments, you can always back out. If you look up toward the high altar at the screen dividing the nave from the chancel, if you look very high up, you see the carved image of Christ on the cross. As we, along with Mary and the disciple John, look up toward Christ on the cross, it is his outstretched arms that seem to me to be most prominent. In these stretched-out arms
is embodied the invitation to join him, the invitation to love as He loved. Suffering, that comes to all of us in various forms in the course of our human lives, is not something to be avoided at all costs, but to be embraced as we share it with others. Because suffering is redeemed by love. This is the message of the cross. May we continue on the path of self-giving love, in answer to the culture of our day. May all our acts be to honour the One who gave himself up in love for us so long ago.

As Buechner said, may we follow him to find, even on our own cross, our heart's desire, which is the peace that passeth all understanding. The peace that only love makes possible.
Amen