Disclaimer: I have written this quickly during a gut-wrenching week. I did some study of course as I prepared this, but at present, I cannot recall which words are mine and which may (or may not be) someone else's. So I must credit the good folks at Luther Seminary for an exceptional podcast this week. And thanks to all the staff and faculty and students there for as I wrote, I heard the voices of dozens who have taught me by word, by action, and by faith.
John 3:13-17
A
sermon for the people of Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Please
pray with me as we begin: May the words
of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Happy
Holy Cross Sunday! This is our day here at Holy Cross Lutheran
Church. This is a day which is set aside
by the church to celebrate our most visible symbol as a Christian community...especially
here in this place where we have adopted this symbol as our name. Holy Cross.
A symbol so central to our identity as Christians in the world that we
have placed it all over our sanctuary, our books, some of us wear them as a
statement of public proclamation…or maybe just as a personal reminder.
The
cross itself has become a public symbol and because of its widespread reach and
accessibility, it has actually lost its meaning. In this society where pop stars writhe on
stage wearing crosses with the image of Jesus on them, where you are supposed
to use it to help select your window washer (right? that’s how you pick? the guy who has a cross emblazoned on the
tailgate of his pickup truck?) In today’s culture, the cross has NO
meaning. Except that which we assign
it.
So I
wonder…what does the cross mean to you?
Not what did they teach you in confirmation last year or sixty years ago…not
what does it mean to Pastor Susan…not what does the church say, but what does
it mean to YOU??
When
you look at the cross how do you feel? sad?
repentant? loved? victorious? right?
Take
a minute or two. Turn to your neighbor
and talk about that…what does the cross mean to YOU? Pretty sure there’s no right or wrong answer
here. There is certainly no test as you
exit the sanctuary…what does the cross mean to you?
The
cross is a really weird symbol for a people who proclaim love, isn’t it? Because the cross is an instrument of
torture. It involves death. It involves the very worst humanity has come up
with to destroy one another in body and in spirit. In the time of Jesus of Nazareth, the cross
was reserved for insurrectionists…traitors to Rome…and was set aside for the
most despised criminals. The cross was a
means of public execution. To modernize the
imagery for you, if Jesus was executed within the last century, we might be
wearing electric chairs or hypodermic needles on our gold chains or screen
printed across the back of our tshirts.
A grim and grotesque symbol indeed.
Our
Savior was hung upon that cross. And as
we look at it, we as Christians, continue to hang upon that symbol all of the
things we do all of the time to Christ…all of the ways we continue to hurt God…not
by failing to believe in God’s presence enough
but by how we deal with our relationships...by how we deal with one another…especially
in the name of Jesus Christ. By ignoring
the needs of one another. Or by the
words we choose…or by the words we choose not to speak.
The
cross shows us what it is for God to be involved in the world. This is a counter-cultural thing really. In today’s world, we are told that if we believe
hard enough, pray hard enough, study the Bible hard enough, we will be
redeemed. In the culture which holds up
the theology of Glory, we hear that God is with those who help themselves, who
think positively, who bear the heartaches quietly understanding that the bad
stuff is just “a test” that there will
be great reward if we just keep going…believing hard enough…praying hard enough…working
hard enough. But this theology of Glory
says that God is present with those who are “worthy”, and so if you are poor,
oppressed, marginalized, grief-stricken…you haven’t believed enough for God to
be with you.
Here’s
the Good News: God is with you. In your
worry about paying the bills, in your worry over the injustices in the work
place…in your worry over having a
work place, in the ways society says you aren’t welcome because your grammar is
less than perfect, because you don’t have a PhD, because your car is falling
apart; God is with you in your
heartbreaking realization that your parents are broken people and can’t love
you in the ways you need to be loved, in the miserable space where you are so shattered
over the death of a beloved that you can’t speak without breaking down…silenced
by grief.
And
rest assured, for all of the ways and times that you feel less than…there are
dozens of other people who feel the same way…who are told by society and by Joel
Osteen that if you pull yourself up, sprinkle yourself with fairy dust (“I
believe Peter Pan! I believe I can fly!”),
and just think the right way (Happy
thoughts, right?)…God will bless you and things will be great.
Heh. God blesses
you anyway. In the times you are
unworthy, too poor, too sick, too tired, too heartbroken. God blesses all those other people anyway.
God is with you, and God is with them, too. God wants to rescue those people…the
marginalized, the homeless, the poor, the oppressed, the unloved and unlovable…and
guess who does the doing…who does the rescuing?
We do. By the grace and power of
God, we rescue one another.
“Your
heart, my hands, O God. Your words, my
lips, O God.”
We
are the hands and feet of Christ in this world, and the call to honor the cross
is a call to participate in God’s mission in this world.
God
is with those people. And God is with
you.
God
is in the dark and the scary and the suffering.
And the promise of the cross is not
the promise of glory. It is the promise
of despair. That to wear the cross is to
bear it…to resume the work of the kingdom of God right here, right now.
The
promise of the cross is that this world and all of its misery is simply unavoidable. But also, the promise of the cross is that we
do not dwell in it alone. That death
does not have the final word. The cross points
beyond itself to life with God both in this hard, hard world and in the world
to come.
The
promise of the cross is that we do not walk alone. We have God.
And God gives us one another.
That we do not shoulder the burdens of this world in solitude. The promise of the cross is that Jesus was
and is and will be here on this earth.
Indwelling with us in our suffering, in our joy, in our life, and in our
death. In things past, in things
present, and in things to come.
Amen.
