Sept. 14, 2018
Brother Christopher
Brother Christopher
Holy Wisdom Chapel
Pilate said to the Jews,
“Here is your king!”
It doesn’t take much imagination to feel the suffering of so many
in the world. Every day, every hour, we see and hear stories of tragedy and
sorrow: just this past week, a black man being shot in his own apartment by an
off-duty police officer who mistakenly thought he was in her apartment, a
suicide car bomb killing many in a crowded area of Kabul, a report that one in
five girls have suffered some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18…20%! A
shooting in California leaving 6 dead… That’s just this past week, and even
this is only the tip of the iceberg. The scope of such horror and injustice can
become altogether numbing. And how often the question that accompanies such
stories: “Where is God?”, “How could a good God allow such evils?” For so many,
the evil and suffering in life prevents them from belief, from believing in a
God of infinite love and compassion. And so they stare blankly towards the
future with no hope save what they can get for themselves in this life.
The significance of the feast we celebrate today, the Exaltation
of the Holy Cross, is how it’s the Church’s response to the toxicity of
violence, injustice, and evil. It invites us to see, to look on a deeper level
at the unfolding complexity of life and perceive how God is not detached or
distant from any of it. “Here is your king”, said Pilate to the Jews, saying
far more than he knew or understood. For what we celebrate today is God’s
response to humanity in Jesus, who we believe became incarnate as a human
being, to share fully in our nature. This is the Divine kenosis, how in Jesus
God emptied himself of his Divine consciousness and shared fully in the human
condition. Jesus felt what we felt, experienced the broad range of suffering
that all human beings do, and because of that, he is able to be present with
us, compassionate with us in all our trials. He does so as the Risen Lord, who
suffered, died, and was raised to new life. There’s a reason why in our
tradition there’s a body on the cross: Jesus suffered in the flesh, and in that
suffering reveals the extent God will go to reveal God’s absolute,
unconditional love for us.
And it doesn’t stop there. While the cross was a physical,
concrete event in the life of Jesus, it has now become a symbol that
encompasses the whole of creation. As we sing in the second sticheron of the
feast: “The cross is raised on high this day, sending forth its power to all
the earth, to all four corners of creation, its arms extend salvation’s awesome
grace…” Whenever we see a cross we’re reminded of God’s fundamental stance
towards us: sacrificial love. This is why we wear crosses around our necks: to
remind us of God’s constant and invincible love for us and to witness that to
an uncomprehending world.
But the mystery deepens even more: we’re called to manifest the
same love by sharing in the meaning of Christ’s cross. Jesus wasn’t being
evasive when he said memorably, “If you
wish to become my disciples, you must take up your cross daily and follow me.”
I don’t think he was advocating masochism here. Taking up our crosses doesn’t
mean mimicking the precise kind of suffering and death Jesus experienced, but
facing the personal sufferings and deaths that come with the specific
circumstances of our own daily lives. We’re not called to carry literal wooden
cross beams, but rather all of the difficulties, disappointments, failures,
sufferings and trials we inevitably experience. And the good news is that these
are not the last word. Jesus did not come to simply die on a cross, but also to
rise from the dead, to walk in newness of life, and to once again become the
Cosmic Christ who draws all creation into communion with himself. Which is why
we can see that our crosses are not ends in themselves, but springboards
towards something beyond them, something new and life-giving, something leading
to holiness. And so we raise the cross on high and proclaim its victory!
