The True Cross | A Sermon for Holy Cross Day
A Sermon by the Reverend Crystal Hardin for Holy Cross Day, September 15, 2024.
Isaiah 45:21-25; Psalm 98; Philippians 2:5-11; John 12:31-36a
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself; Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen (Collect for Feast of the Holy Cross).
The New York Times archives hold as many photographs of September 11, 2001, as you’d ever wish to see, more than I could bear to see when I revisited them this week. One is particularly striking.
Here’s what it captures. Where the World Trade Center stood only days before, a massive piece of the steel structure, once the backbone of the iconic towers, stood above the wreckage. It had toppled and split in half, landing straight up in the form of a perfectly symmetrical cross.
Chris Ryan, of the Fire Department’s Rescue 3, said, “It was pretty much miraculous. Without a doubt it is one of the few good things we have seen down here.” [1]
Of course, we must be wary of assigning meaning to the cross that does violence to its truth. We have seen, unfortunately, since September 11 an associated rise of Christian Nationalism, Xenophobia, religious intolerance, and military violence. The use of the cross for these ends, or for any ends that are ours alone, is an abomination that must be resisted. It is a sacred and powerful symbol and should be treated as such.
Fleming Rutledge, preaching on the first anniversary of September 11, remarks:
We must take care, because the symbol of the Cross is not self-interpreting; it takes on meaning according to the meaning assigned to it in each concrete situation. But a cross raised above the desolation at Ground Zero speaks to us of the One who “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.” [2]
This is the One who knows our pain, heartbreak, and struggles intimately.
Humans have an innate desire to mark places of significance, to preserve history, to insure that we do not forget those things that simply should not be forgotten. This week I visited the 9/11 Pentagon memorial quite by accident. The accompanying description of the memorial reads in part: “A nation is held together by its history. By a collective understanding of what has come before us, and what it has meant. This is how we are united together.” You might say the same of church.
Because for sure this is particularly true of scared spaces, holy spaces. Biblical examples are plentiful. Consider Jacob. We are told in Genesis that he wrestled with God, spoke with God, and was blessed by God in a place he then named Peniel, saying It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared (Gen. 32:30). The place itself was not particularly special until an encounter with God. And it was marked as significant by Jacob, who recognized that a holy encounter had taken place. Of course, there are many other such stories in Scripture and in our Christian history.
For example, Holy Cross Day dates back to the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the very place where Jesus was crucified. Part of the cross, referred to often as the True Cross, is said to be kept there. From the beginning and until this very day, this holy space served as a pilgrimage destination for those wishing to venerate the True Cross — to stoop and kiss the rough wood of the very cross upon which our Lord is believed to have bled, suffered, and died.
It is interesting, isn’t it, that veneration of the cross is, in the most direct sort of way, veneration of an instrument of torture and death. And yet, in the hands of our God, it is made sacred, an instrument of mercy, redemption, salvation, abundant grace.
Saint Paul speaks to this rather outrageous paradox in his letter to the Philippians. Urging us to let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus —
who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death —even death on a cross (2:5-11).
God made human. God, humbled. God, self-emptied.
But, of course, the story does not end there. Because we know that the cross —this instrument of brutality and of death —is made salvific in the hands of God. God who walked the way of death so that we might delight in life abundant.
The cross —the very place where death met life, sorry met joy, humility met majesty.
Perhaps that’s why the cross resonates so completely in times of heartbreak. Of the Cross at Ground Zero, the Times reported:
[It] became an inspiration to many workers and others at the site. An ironworker found it the third day after the attack, as he was pulling bodies from the rubble and dust. He looked up at the light, saw the cross, and wept. “I was overwhelmed by it really,” he said [3].
Physical, unimaginable pain. Social degradation. Total Exposure. Death. By our own hands. This was the Cross.
Deliverance. Perfect freedom. Protection. Salvation. By God’s hands this too is the Cross. An instrument of death upon which hung perfect love becomes the path of our ultimate redemption.
And Jesus said, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself (John 12:31).
Christ our Savior nailed to the hard wood of the cross, raised up, drawing all people —all people— to himself. What wondrous love is this! Hands that have been nailed down —imprisoned —are transformed into arms that reach out offering perfect freedom.
Those outstretched arms reach out as if to say: come home. Come home to me and bring everything with you —your suffering, your pain, your disappointment, your weariness, your hope, your love, your life. Come to me with the deepest longings of your heart, for I will bear them. No matter how bad things look, how hopeless things get, or how little your faith. Come to me all you who are weary and heaven laden and I will give you rest.
In the words of one preacher:
There is something about the intensity of this divine love, something about being confronted with the fierceness with which God loves us, with the brutality and violence of the cross and Jesus’ suffering that disarms us. It is not comfortable and it shouldn’t be. And so the temptation to avoid the cross is always present. We may attempt to speak of the love bound up in the cross as if it were a cheap, easy, or convenient thing. We can try to avoid the cost of love and the reality of the cross, but we cannot escape it. For the cross is the very heart of the Christian faith [4].
This is the cross that rests at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem —making it a sacred place of true significance and marking it as such. The True Cross. The one on which the paradox and power of that moment hung. And yet, we need not travel there to experience it. The glory of the Cross cannot be contained.
Because this is also the cross that many of us wear around our necks. The cross that was discovered at Ground Zero. The cross that marks the cover of our Books of Common Prayer, that marks the graves of our loved ones, that we use to mark holy places and holy people. The Cross that is the namesake of this sacred space —Church of the Holy Cross —and of this beloved community —the people of Holy Cross.
Perhaps most significantly, it is the cross with which we are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. The cross that is, in our tradition, made on our forehead by the hands of another with oil blessed by our Bishop, marking our significance to God as a people marked by God’s boundless, self-giving, love of us.
This is the Cross that we are called to take up as Christians; the very Cross whose assurance is that nothing and nowhere and no one is beyond the reach of God’s extravagant love and endless grace.
When I was a younger, Southern Baptist version of myself, there was a story about taking up the cross. It was pulled out often and usually told admonishingly when someone started complaining about something.
A man goes to Jesus and says, Jesus, I know I am meant to take up my cross and follow you, but the cross you have asked me to bear is just too heavy, just too much. I can’t do it. And Jesus would say, “Son, I hear you. Behind this door is a room with many crosses. Go in and choose the cross you feel you can bear. Behind the door, the man finds many crosses and, after carefully evaluating each one, chooses the smallest, exiting back through the door and thanking Jesus for the chance to lay down his many burdens. Jesus then says, “Son, that is the same cross you came in with.”
Often, we believe our burdens too much to bear until we see the burdens of others –that’s the moral of the story. And, it’s a fine one. And yet, there is not a room with many crosses, but one True Cross, and that is the Cross of Christ.
Because the Cross bears a truth like none other: that even in our deepest sorrow, we are not alone. Even when we feel others can’t reach us, understand us, comfort us or make us whole, God can. That even where evil lurks, even in places we might fear are God-forsaken, Christ has already and ultimately prevailed. The Cross bears the truth that we so desperately long for: that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, Almighty.
This is the Cross of which we just sang:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all (Hymnal 1982: 474).
This is the Cross that we are called to take up, not an individual cross, but His Cross. And we bear it, not as individuals, but together, as this church community. We bear it together, as the Body of Christ. We bear it with every cross-shaped, cross-inspired word and thought and deed, we bear it, and we share it.
May the Lord our God mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow Jesus. Amen.
*Photo in the public domain and courtesy of FEMA photo library.
[1] Jennifer Steinhauer, “A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE; A Symbol of Faith Marks A City’s Hallowed Ground,” The New York Times, 5 Oct. 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/nyregion/a-nation-challenged-the-site-a-symbol-of-faith-marks-a-city-s-hallowed-ground.html.
[2] Fleming Rutledge, “A Cross at Ground Zero,” in The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002), 227.
[3] A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE.
[4] Patrick Keyser, “Sermon for Holy Cross Day,” Christ Church, New Haven, 14 September 2018, http://www.christchurchnh.org/sermon/2018/9/14/holycross.
