Sermon 149; Is 49:13-18,22,23; Gal 2:15-20; Mk 8:34-9:1 Cross

As preached by Brother Luke

Holy Wisdom Chapel

September 17, 2017

When I die, and I am laid out in a coffin I will be holding this cross to my heart. Inscribed on it will be the date of my profession and the date of my death. Though I will not die on a cross, holding on to that symbol in death is a statement about what the cross means for believers. The texts for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross are a wellspring of images about the cross. The text we use at Psalm 51 is almost a sermon in itself.

“O cross of Christ! Be our strength and our protection! By your power make us holy that we may honor you in faith and love. You are the hope of Christians and the guide of those who have strayed, haven of those tossed about by the storm of life, pledge of victory for all who battle evil, and resurrection for the fallen! By its power, O Christ, have mercy on us all!”

We don’t always need a lot of words to get the message across. During our retreat, I happened to pick up a slim volume by a French priest, Pierre-Marie Delfieux, who was the founder of the Jerusalem Community. The book of meditations is on the 7 last words of Christ on the cross and the 15 stations of the cross. Fr Pierre-Marie spent 2 years in the Algerian Sahara Desert in the hermitage of Charles de Foucauld, the famous French religious of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Fr. Pierre-Marie then took from his desert experience the idea that the prayer, silence and peace one can acquire from the desert is desperately needed in urban environments. The mission of the Jerusalem Community is to offer that kind of oasis in Paris, Montreal and other urban settings. His little book reflects that experience.

While using that volume for meditations I was particularly struck by two short phrases that truly captured for me the essence of the symbol of the cross.

The first comes in connection with the word of Christ given to the thief: very truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise. To this Fr Pierre-Marie adds: “it is not so much our flesh that is buried when we die, but rather our past.” For the thief, that meant a full pardon for whatever he had done so that the path to heaven could be opened to him. And for us, the cross symbolizes the total forgiveness that Christ’s passion represents. So, as I hold on to this cross, whether in life or in death, I am grasping at that promise of forgiveness that is the foundation of God’s love for us. I am also being reminded that such forgiveness is our mission to others.

The second phrase is tied to the statement: woman this is your son, son this is your mother. Part of the meditation on that word of Christ is tied to the scene when the centurion uses his lance to spear the side of Christ and from that wound flows blood and water. That image has often puzzled me. Why the emphasis on both blood and water? Fr Pierre-Marie gives a beautiful answer: it is the blood of our life and the water of our pardon. Christ shed his blood for our salvation. He gives it to us again at every communion. The water symbolizes cleansing and purification to which the many examples in scripture testify. Water is used to wash away our sins, especially in Baptism. Water, living water, is what Jesus offers to the woman at the well. The water we bless at Theophany is then used in turn to bless others and our environment. It is the water turned into wine at the wedding feast that brings joy and foreshadows the eucharistic celebration.

So, as we continue to celebrate this feast of the exaltation of the holy cross, may our gaze upon that cross help us to see in it God’s gifts to us and to pass them on: the gift life, the gift of understanding, the gift of forgiveness, and the gift of love.

Homily for Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

As Preached by Sister Rebecca

September 14, ‘17 

Holy Wisdom Church

            There are 2 levels in which we behold the Holy Cross of Jesus: in the Chronos Time: the cross of abasement, of unthinkable suffering, of losses beyond counting of Good Friday.  The second level is Kairos Time, God’s eternal time when today we are celebrating the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.  We behold this Cross through the lenses of the Paschal mystery: the Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost.  During the feast of the Transfiguration, we also receive a glimpse of its glory. 

            We have just listened to Johns Gospel of Jesus’ death on the cross.  John wrote his Gospel approximately 70 years after the event.   He recounts Jesus’ dying on the cross in the light of the paschal feast: it is laced through and through with allusions of the already glorified Christ. It differs dramatically from the Synoptics: How so?  Let us reflect on the last sentences of our Gospel:

“Jesus knowing that all was now finished said to fulfill the scriptures: I thirst…so they put a sponge full of the vinegar to his mouth.  “When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said: “it is finished and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

Two key words here:

1.  “It is finished” may be translated from the Greek as:  “it is completed, accomplished.  What is completed?  John tells us in Ch. 4:34: when Jesus answered his disciples: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work”, the work given to him by his Father.

      Scripture scholars perceive Genesis 2: 2-3 as backdrop illuminating our text:‘On the 7^th day God finished his work (of creation) …and rested on the 7^th day … God blessed the 7^th day and made it holy because on it God rested from his work from all his work in order that it may be completed.’

            Jesus is declaring his work finished, completed-the work God the Father had given to the Son to accomplish on earth. Nothing was wanting.

2. The second keyword is bowed or rested:

The Gospel says: “Jesus bowed his head” but this could also be translated from the Greek as “he laid his head to rest”. This is the Rest where Jesus, having completed the work of his Father, now enters fully into God’s Holy Sabbath and opens it for all humanity.

     Jesus’ cross in Kairos time reveals God’s unconditional love.  The cross tells us, more clearly than any other revelation, that God is utterly vulnerable and the cross invites us into this same vulnerability. 

            We, humans, are forever connecting God to coercion, threat, guilt, shame, and to the idea that a power should somehow rise up and crush by force all that is evil.  “Why doesn’t God do something about this hopeless world of ours?” God is not the great avenger of evil.   Rather, God is love, light, truth, and beauty; a gentle if persistent invitation and one that is never a threat.

            God’s power lies at the deepest base of things and will, in the end, gently have the final say.   It is also the only power upon which love and community can be created because it and it alone ultimately softens rather than breaks the heart.  Its power invites us in.  Surrendering to this invite we do not give in to bitterness and grow mean when we are slighted when our dreams are dashed, when we feel helpless and there is nothing obvious that we can do about it.   When we remain in trust and in stillness we are acting in a divine way, in that vulnerability in which lies our coming to love and community.

This morning, what message may we open our hearts to as we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross?

PRAYER

God of all time, You call us out of the ordinariness of our everyday lives to see the world anew in your time. Help us to respond to your call to see in all things: both a completion and a new beginning; both an end and a renewed start; both sadness and joy. While our time marks your death on a cross as an end, Your time marks the Transition from one life to the next. Enflame in our hearts a desire to see in life and death the Transition and transformation your life, death, and resurrection has brought forth in the world. Your time is a time of fulfillment that makes little sense to the world, for what is logical is replaced by what is Kingdom-oriented, and this way of thinking appears as foolishness to the worldly. Help us to live as your fools, willing to announce your Kingdom. Give us the strength to keep your time, where relationships take priority and we start over, again and again, to serve the least among us.

Christ is in our midst!

(I did not include the following in  the homily as it would make the homily too long.)

One of the key revelations inside the cross: We have a redeeming, not a rescuing God! It took Christians some time to grasp that Jesus doesn’t ordinarily give special exemptions to his friends, no more than God gave special exemptions to Jesus.   So like us, they struggled with the fact that someone can have a deep, genuine faith, be deeply loved by God and still have to suffer humiliation, pain, and death like everyone else.  God didn’t spare Jesus from suffering and death and doesn’t spare us either from them.  Jesus never promised us rescue, immunity from cancer, or escape from death.  Rather like this morning’s feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, he promised that in the end there will be redemption, vindication, immunity from suffering and eternal life.