The Holy Cross (Transferred from September 14) 11 September 2016
The Rev. Maurice C. Frontz III STS St Stephen Lutheran Church,
Pittsburgh PA
In
the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
It
confronts us, lying on its side, when we come through the door for worship on
Thursday night. After most of us leave, some of us haul it to the front of the
church and set it upright in front of the altar. When we come back the next
day, it is the only furnishing in the room. We cannot escape from it. It draws
our attention, commands our eyes to look upon that which we would rather avoid,
the sign of our rebellion and the suffering that rebellion caused God.
But,
for all of that, the Good Friday service is not a service of despair. The focus
is not upon the wrath of God against the sinners who put him to death. Instead,
even as we intone ‘Lord, have mercy;’ even as we hear and chant and sing of the
death of the Lord at the hands of sinners, we hear and chant and sing of the
love of God, who made that awful Friday ‘Good.’
We
hear of the suffering servant of Isaiah 52 and 53, who is not acclaimed but rather
rejected, and yet by his suffering redeems those for whom he suffered.
We
celebrate the victorious Lord of John 18 and 19, who turns Pilate’s questioning
on its head, who carries his own burden to the Place of the Skull, who cries ‘It
is accomplished,’ with his dying breath.
We
sing of the Tree of Death which becomes, by God’s grace, the Tree of Life: ‘Behold
the life-giving cross on which was hung the Savior of the whole world; O come,
let us worship him.’
And,
in the words of Hymn 118,
Faithful cross, true sign of
triumph,
Be for all the noblest tree;
None in foliage, none in
blossom,
None in fruit your equal be;
Symbol of the world’s
redemption,
For your burden makes us
free.
Do
we see? God himself comes to us in the most unlikely of places. It has to be
this way, if God is God-with-us. If
God were god for himself, if he simply reigned above the world in blissful
perfection, distant from us and to us, and he demanded that we must ascend to
his perfection, then the cross would not be necessary. Indeed, it would be foolishness.
But God in his wisdom, in his being-for-us, made it otherwise.
It
is necessary, for we are all irretrievably caught up in this beloved but unholy
world; a world of innocents being put to death and those who put them to death.
It is necessary for God-with-us to be with us not where we are at our best, but
where we are at our worst – the intersection of indifferent and corrupt
religion, power politics, injustice and oppression, torture and humiliation,
physical expiration. It is necessary for God to triumph over sin, evil, and
death at the place where they would shout their victory the loudest.
The
serpent of death became the sign of life for the ancient Israelites. Wrapped up
in their sin in the desert and afflicted by that sin, they turned their eyes to
the serpent, seeing in that poisonous sign God’s inoculation of their disease. In
that foreshadowing, we see the cross, and it becomes not death but life for us.
It
is on Good Friday, confronted with the holy, life-giving cross, that we
understand the fullness of what Jesus, the man-for-others, the God-with-us, says
to Nicodemus: ‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must
the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal
life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him may not perish, but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send
the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved
through him.’
Martin
Luther says, ‘You must think only of Christ’s death, and you will find life…the
image of grace is nothing other than Christ crucified, and all His dear saints…Christ
on the cross takes away your sin and carries it for you and destroys it. That
is grace and mercy. Believe firmly in it, have it before your eyes and do not
doubt it. That is to behold the image of grace and form it in yourself…Thus
Christ is the image of life and grace, and over against the picture of death He
is our bliss and gratitude.[1]’
Thomas
Traherne writes, ‘If Love be the weight of the Soul, and its object the centre,
all eyes and hearts may convey and turn unto this Object: cleave unto this
centre, and by it enter into rest. There we might see all nations assembled
with eyes and hearts upon it. There we may see God’s goodness, wisdom and
power: yea his mercy and anger displayed. There we may see man’s sin and
infinite value. His hope and fear, his misery and happiness. There we might see
the Rock of Ages, and the joys of heaven…’[2]
On
this day, as on Good Friday, we turn our eyes to the Holy Cross, seeing there
not the defeat of humanity, but the victory of God, We pray that we may always hold
that cross, and him who hung upon it, before the eyes of faith until the day we
enter into the fullness of the kingdom he has won for us.
In
the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
