Holy Cross Day
Two images are playing in my mind this morning. Two distinct
thoughts were at war in my head as I was writing this sermon for this Holy Cross
Day.
The first image: The church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem.
An ancient edifice supposed to have been built on the site of the tomb Jesus
rose from. In the construction of the basilica supposedly the original cross
was excavated. Now the church is shared by many different denominations. The
church is always a beehive of activity as all the various Christian groups that
share the property seek to conduct their various services and rituals. In my
minds eye I see the procession wending it’s way through the crowds and
over the stony floors that have been worn down by thousands of pilgrims. I see
the procession led by a huge gold cross carried by a black clad novitiate. The
cross gleams in the dimly lit building as if it is absorbing and reflecting
all the light to be had. There is no question that it is pure gold. On closer
inspection it is possible to see the fine jewels that are inlaid into the intricate
detail of the cross. A line of novitiates and patriarchs follow the cross. Callow
youth, intent on their trek and somber wise old men lost in their thoughts.
Each of the patriarchs wears a huge gold cross, resting on their black rough
made robes.
The cross stands out. The cross is beautiful, glorious, spectacular. I remember
thinking of the scene in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indiana
makes his way to the chamber of the Holy Grail by going through many trials.
The grail, the chalice that Jesus was to have used in the last supper is there.
It is surrounded by dozens of other chalices. The villain picks one, the most
beautiful, the most precious and drinks from it to his death. Then Indiana must
choose. He is torn, he is tormented; but then he thinks the chalice of a carpenter,
the chalice of an ordinary man and he picks a simple pottery chalice and drinks
the water of life.
My other image: I am a teenager at a youth retreat at a camp in Wisconsin. A
charismatic retreat leader named Josh who by his vitality and enthusiasm holds
us all in the palm of his hand. We listen to him, absorb what he says…and
what he’s talking about is the cross. Don’t we understand, he asks
us? Don’t we understand that the cross is a symbol of torture and death?
Don’t we understand that this is powerful testimony to the horror of Jesus’
death, to an execution of an innocent human being? The cross is our shame for
our part in denying Jesus for being the people who will not defend this innocent.
Why, he says, we might just as well be putting an electric chair or a rope and
a noose above our altars. The cross is a powerful reminder of Jesus suffering.
We should not, Josh says take wearing the cross lightly. For years after I disdained
those who would use the cross to decorate their ears as earrings or hold their
sleeves together with cross cufflinks. Such is the influence a dynamic leader
can have on impressionable minds.
The cross; is it a symbol of victory or defeat. Does it point to our shame or
our hope, or both at the same time? Clearly the cross is the most significant
powerful symbol of our faith. That is why we have this day, singled out, every
year to take note of the cross since perhaps as early as 629 a.d. The cross
demands our attention, our contemplation, our adoration because it points beyond
itself to the most powerful statement our faith can make.
As Paul says “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.”
Before the cross we all stand naked in our shame and our sinfulness. As our
old confession used to say, “We have sinned against you in thought word
and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” That kind
of covers it all doesn’t it. We’re all in the same boat drowning together
in what we’ve done and what we haven’t done. We cheated on that test
or that tax return. We wounded with a weapon or a word. We failed to stand against
that racial slur or to take responsibility for a public policy. We turned away
when we should have embraced. We hid when we should have been strong. There
is not one of us, not one, who can stand on our goodness before God. At the
foot of the cross there is no one who stands above anybody else, not the smart,
not the strong, not the politically connected, not the fashionable, the wealthy,
not the healthy or the wise ….No we have all, in our times, denied Jesus,
we’ve all hammered a nail and shouted an insult. So yes the cross is our
shame and my youth retreat leader Josh did have a point.
But he didn’t go far enough. As Jesus hung on the cross and breathed his
last he said “Father, forgive them.” The evangelist John proclaims,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever
believes in him will 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.” The cross is the sign of God’s forgiveness,
of God’s love. The cross is the sign of God’s victory and new life
that comes to us through the way of humility, pain and death.
Sacrificial love. The giving of oneself so that others might live and flourish.
That kind of love expresses itself in all kinds of ways. In how we give of ourselves
every day; in the way we spend our time, in the way we allocate our funds, in
the priorities and values that motivate us. Self sacrifice. Certainly
this past week we read again of those acts of love by those who stepped outside
of themselves and their own welfare. I opened Friday’s paper to see this
picture of a cross. A cross not of glistening gold, not of torture and death
but of self-giving love. And I read this story.
On Chicago’s west side, more than a thousand students from Hanson Park
Elementary School, including 225 disabled children gathered for a commemorative
assembly. Anna Winchell 14 recalled hearing about a disabled man who couldn’t
escape from one of the top floors of the World Trade Center. “Somebody
actually stayed up with the disabled man and he didn’t go down. He died
with him, she said, referring to Abraham Zelmanowitz who waited at the side
of his paraplegic friend Edward Beyea. “It’s good to remember these
kinds of things…” “It’s good to remember those kind of thngs,”
she said.
Amen.