Sermonette: Holy Cross Day
Thursday, 16 September 2021 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjbanningAs preached at the midweek outdoor Eucharist at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Glassboro, NJ on the evening of Wednesday, May 12, 2021.
Isaiah 45:21-25
Psalm 47
Philippians 2:5-11
Psalm 98
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world. Amen.
While the cross was not the only, or even the primary, symbol used by the early Christians to represent their faith, it has emerged across the millennia of sacred tradition as the central image.
The Cross stands as a triumphant symbol of victory: of Christ’s victory over sin, death, and hell. Constantine infamously had a vision of the Cross accompanied by the words “by this sign, conquer,” and Christians have regrettably often throughout our history drawn on this triumphalist understanding of the Cross in order to pursue conquest and holy war.
But the Cross also, and paradoxically, stands as a symbol of submission, humility, and weakness: of Christ’s submission to the temporal power of the secular and religious authorities, to the outrage and anger of the mob, and ultimately to the power of death itself. It represents the culmination of the kenosis, the self-emptying, which Christ undertook in the Incarnation. It is the final and irrefutable proof of Christ’s true and full humanity, that in Jesus, God truly became one of us, sharing in our mortal frailty and weakness in divine solidarity. We venerate the Cross to identify with Christ and Christ's suffering, but the Cross's significance comes from his identification with our suffering.
To us as Christians, the Cross represents our calling to model the sacrificial love demonstrated by our Lord and Savior. All three synoptic gospels quote Jesus as saying that a crucial (pun intended) element of Christian discipleship is denying ourselves, picking up our own crosses, and following him. The Cross calls us to compassion, obedience, and nonviolence, even and especially in the face of persecution
The Cross, a terrible instrument of capital punishment, is a symbol of death: not only Jesus’ physical death, but our own death to sin which we share with and in him through our baptism. St. Paul in his letter to the church in Galatia tells us that by the Cross the “world”--the system of powers which seek to distort the goodness of the created order and separate us from God--is crucified to us, and we are crucified to the world.
It is the paradoxical character of the Cross as a symbol of death and weakness which led St. Paul to remark in his second letter to the church in Corinth that the message of the Cross was "foolishness to those who are perishing"--but also to those being saved it is the very power of God. By Christ's holy Cross, he redeemed the world, and may we be called by that symbol of redemption to participate in it as agents of God's wondrous grace.
Amen.
Isaiah 45:21-25
Psalm 47
Philippians 2:5-11
Psalm 98
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world. Amen.
While the cross was not the only, or even the primary, symbol used by the early Christians to represent their faith, it has emerged across the millennia of sacred tradition as the central image.
The Cross stands as a triumphant symbol of victory: of Christ’s victory over sin, death, and hell. Constantine infamously had a vision of the Cross accompanied by the words “by this sign, conquer,” and Christians have regrettably often throughout our history drawn on this triumphalist understanding of the Cross in order to pursue conquest and holy war.
But the Cross also, and paradoxically, stands as a symbol of submission, humility, and weakness: of Christ’s submission to the temporal power of the secular and religious authorities, to the outrage and anger of the mob, and ultimately to the power of death itself. It represents the culmination of the kenosis, the self-emptying, which Christ undertook in the Incarnation. It is the final and irrefutable proof of Christ’s true and full humanity, that in Jesus, God truly became one of us, sharing in our mortal frailty and weakness in divine solidarity. We venerate the Cross to identify with Christ and Christ's suffering, but the Cross's significance comes from his identification with our suffering.
To us as Christians, the Cross represents our calling to model the sacrificial love demonstrated by our Lord and Savior. All three synoptic gospels quote Jesus as saying that a crucial (pun intended) element of Christian discipleship is denying ourselves, picking up our own crosses, and following him. The Cross calls us to compassion, obedience, and nonviolence, even and especially in the face of persecution
The Cross, a terrible instrument of capital punishment, is a symbol of death: not only Jesus’ physical death, but our own death to sin which we share with and in him through our baptism. St. Paul in his letter to the church in Galatia tells us that by the Cross the “world”--the system of powers which seek to distort the goodness of the created order and separate us from God--is crucified to us, and we are crucified to the world.
It is the paradoxical character of the Cross as a symbol of death and weakness which led St. Paul to remark in his second letter to the church in Corinth that the message of the Cross was "foolishness to those who are perishing"--but also to those being saved it is the very power of God. By Christ's holy Cross, he redeemed the world, and may we be called by that symbol of redemption to participate in it as agents of God's wondrous grace.
Amen.