Sermon: Holy Cross Day

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

You may have noticed on the bulletin or perhaps through our readings or opening hymns that today is the feast of the Holy Cross or Holy Cross Day.

It is a holy day on the other side of the church calendar from Good Friday on which we also are asked to think about the cross.

St.

Paul will boast in nothing but the cross.

We’re told in his letter to the Galatians and this feast day is the church calendar’s way of ensuring that you and I grow in our ability to do the same each year even outside the context of Holy Week.

I am very aware as I was this week while reflecting on these scripture readings that Holy Cross Day falls this year on a very poignant and tragic moment in the life of our country.

The same thing happened 24 years ago in the days following the 9-11 attacks.

And so here we are, asked by the church to reflect on the assassination of Jesus on a Roman cross at the end of a week in which political assassination has taken center stage not just in our private thoughts but in our public discourse.

So with all of that, here is our task this morning.

To lift high the cross in light of what we have experienced this week and in some ways in spite of what we have experienced this week.

To allow our crucified Lord to enter our world wherever it is that we find ourselves while also not forgetting that through the cross we must evermore enter into his world.

Our task this morning is to notice this dual movement in the crucifixion itself.

Jesus moving towards us while simultaneously drawing us to conform our lives to his.

We are right when we say, perhaps never more clearly than we do during Holy Week, that all this, the cross, was for you.

It is for us and for our salvation we are about to recite that Jesus came down from heaven.

I never grow tired of hearing the words of a beautiful Church of Scotland baptismal prayer.

It goes like this.

For you, Jesus Christ, came into the world.

For you, he lived and showed God’s love.

For you, he suffered the darkness of Calvary and cried at the last, it is accomplished.

For you, he triumphed over death and rose in newness of life.

For you, he ascended to reign at God’s right hand.

All this he did for you, little one, though you do not know it yet.

But we are just as right about the cross when we heed the wisdom of Jesus and the apostles to take up our cross and follow Jesus, to be buried with him in a death like his, to become like him.

So the cross of Jesus is something that was done for us.

But the cross of Jesus is also something that is done to us.

A decisive act in human history that beckons us to respond and to follow.

The cross not only saved us, the cross is even at this moment shaping us into who we will be.

So it becomes important in the Christian life to keep the cross front and center and to increasingly see it in a more holistic light.

Now the church throughout the ages has tried to keep the cross visible.

The architecture of this church, for example, does just that.

Look up, at least from where I’m standing, and you will see a cross.

Look down, at least from where I’m standing, and you will see a cross.

These transepts, that’s the fancy name for the seating off to the side.

These transepts make zero sense.

I have to put notes in my sermon to turn and look at the people sitting in them so that they don’t feel alone.

It’s usually my family sitting there, right?

These buck every trend of modern design and wisdom when it comes to seating arrangements.

But these transepts are here so that this parish, this church will always be shaped like a cross.

So there would not be a service we would enter in which we were not being told by the building itself that we are to be a cross-shaped community.

When we process in, we hold up a cross, placing the cross between us and a holy God that we’re approaching.

When we process out, it is the cross itself that leads us out into the world.

There’s a cross here next to the pulpit, just in case the preacher forgets that the preacher is a preacher of the cross.

And there’s a cross on the altar so that when we kneel to offer our own spiritual sacrifice, we remember that that is only possible through the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus.

Bottom line, this place is littered with crosses.

Now there’s a clear line of reasoning in which the cross itself is the worst thing that could have happened in human history.

We killed the only one capable of saving us while he was trying to save us.

It is tragedy beyond compare.

All of that is true.

And yet, the cross was also a desperate attempt from our three great enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, to defeat the one whose victory was never in doubt.

The cross, as much as it is a sign of suffering and sacrifice, is also a symbol of the victory of God, the victory of God over the very darkest of forces.

The cross was death’s last stand against God, and death lost.

This is why we lift high the cross in a way that we don’t lift high other means of public execution.

So while a sense of remorse for our own sins and the various ways that we run astray is certainly appropriate, especially on a day like Good Friday, days like today are here to remind us that the cross is not, it cannot, become merely a symbol of suffering, of injustice in our lives.

Paul tells us that the cross itself can become for us a boast, not a shame, a sign that we are in communion with a God that does not lose.

The cross is a sign to us that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor anything in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

This week I helped fill in for a class, and so I read portions of The Magician’s Nephew with some students.

Magician’s Nephew is the sixth book out of seven in the Chronicles of Narnia.

Now that is, unless you are an unbridled heathen and you choose to follow the HarperCollins publication order and read it first before Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is an utter shame on all counts.

Don’t ever do it.

If you’ve done it, you are forgiven.

If you have a chance to read Narnia again, do not read The Magician’s Nephew first.

Okay, where are we?

Magician’s Nephew.

There is this very subtle but beautiful scene in the middle of the book that was extra poignant this week, in a week in which both the cross and human evil were front of mind in preparation for today.

Whether you’ve read the book or the Narnia series or not, just walk with me for a moment here.

A handful of human beings and a witch have been transported back in time, back in time to the very creation of Narnia itself.

As Aslan the lion sings Narnia into existence, as he sings creation into being, the witch watches and she’s growing increasingly irritated.

She knows what’s happening and she wants to stop it.

You see, we read earlier in the series that the witch’s desire is to control every world she encounters, to take a world and make it her own, to oppress and to crush and to kill whatever it takes.

She has already by this point become the great enemy of the series.

She wants to rule worlds, so it is unbearable for her to be in the presence of this lion who can breathe them into existence.

At one point, her anger boils over and she prepares to launch an assault on the lion.

Now I’m just going to read from the book, and I have the microphone so you can’t stop me.

Here we go.

Suddenly, the witch stepped boldly out towards the lion.

It was coming on, always singing with a slow, heavy pace.

It was only 12 yards away.

She raised her arm and flung the iron bar straight at its head.

Nobody, least of all the witch, could have missed at that range.

The bar struck the lion fair between the eyes.

Then it glanced off and fell with a thud in the grass.

The lion continued.

Its walk was neither slower nor faster than before.

You could not tell whether it even knew it had been hit.

Though its soft pads made no noise, you could feel the earth shake beneath their weight.

The lion’s greatest enemy, tragically, also happens to be the being with the greatest aim.

And she is within 12 yards of making the kill.

A moment in which everything could have crumbled.

It was an opportunity for the witch to prevent the creation of Narnia in the first place, or to remake Narnia in her own image.

That feeling she has had her entire life of being second best would finally go away by destroying the only one that could even claim to have more power than her.

So she took aim.

She threw it with all her might.

And it bounced right off of Aslan’s head.

It fell into the ground with a thud.

He didn’t even notice.

Jesus Christ was victorious.

He was not a mere victim on the cross.

The crucifixion was the last great enemy’s last great assault.

And it failed.

It utterly failed.

Now you know in your bones that it failed.

Because I see you week by week at the altar rail.

And I can tell that you know that the assault of Satan’s sin and death against our Lord failed.

Because week after week you come to hold him alive and well in your hands.

You come to commune with him.

He has been with you this past week.

And you leave here knowing he will be with you next week.

And the