Sermon 196 April 7, 2024 Lk 9:18-27-14, 1 Pt 2:21b-25 Is 49:1-7 Cross

 As preached by Brother Luke

Holy Wisdom Church



In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit!



Does the cross mean anything in our world today? In our popular culture, Easter, seems to be primarily, a day for family gatherings, easter egg hunts and bunnies. Easter has reverted back to the ancient spring festival from which the name is derived. And preparing for Easter with prayer and fasting and good works has devolved into an opportunity for fun in the sun in such warmer climes as Florida, the Caribbean and out West. But wrestling with our darkness and bringing it into the light of Christ may be unfathomable for most people.

In the Orthodox tradition, as we arrive at the middle of our Lenten journey, we are reminded of the passion of Christ by focusing on the Cross and its meaning in our lives and the life of our world. I happen to be reading through a rather large [over 3000 pages] medieval meditation on the Life of Christ written by a Carthusian monk. He draws upon every patristic source available to him at the time. And what I find fascinating is how, through meditation, the writer is drawing the reader into participating in Christ's life, and especially during his passion, into his suffering. How? By using contemplation to transform the events into a spiritual experience. Drawing on the approach of the fathers, he emphasizes that what we do today inflicts additional suffering on Christ. So, when I sin it is like spitting on Christ, slapping him, scourging him, indeed even nailing him to the cross again!

Curiously, this medieval approach connects to something much closer to our time. I recently, listened to a contemporary setting of the Saint John Passion by Bob Chilcott, an English composer of choral and vocal music, who for a few years sang with the King's Singers before breaking out on his own as a composer. The program notes began with a story from Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, who was a chaplain to the British armed forces. He wrote of an experience in WWI where he recalled 'running to our lines half mad with fright' during the Battle of Messines in June 1917. He stumbled over the corpse of a young German soldier. 'I remember muttering, "You poor little devil, what had you got to do with it? Not much of the great blonde Prussian about you." Then there came light. [...] It seemed to me that the boy disappeared and in his place there lay the Christ upon his cross. ... From that moment on I never saw a battle as anything but a crucifix. From that moment on I have never seen the world as anything but a crucifix. I see the cross set up in every slum, in every filthy overcrowded quarter... I see [Christ] staring up at me from the pages of the newspaper that tells of a tortured, lost, bewildered world.'

As I read that story I thought about how much these words fit with the medieval monk's meditation on Christ's passion and how much they still apply to our world today. It is not a stretch to think about how we humans crucify Christ over and over again. Whether it is something we notice in our own behavior or the behavior prompted by societal passions, not to mention played out on the world's stage.

But the Cross is not just a reminder of the depths to which we humans can descend, it is also a powerful symbol of hope. It points to the offering Christ willingly gave to the world by his death. By his willingness to take on the world's sins and transform them into building blocks of new relationships and new life. Every moment in history, including the one we are living now, can become the turning point toward individual and communal resurrection. If it points to where we have failed, it also points to where we can begin to change. No matter how evil and egregious the behavior, the opportunity to acknowledge error and initiate movement down new pathways is always available. It begins in each human heart and then spreads. This is our Lenten work. This is why we bring the cross to the center of the church to venerate and to meditate on its implications for each of us.

Christ is in our midst!