As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The cross is everywhere in our society. It is in things we don't even think about as having a cross: windows, building structures [remember the 9/11 photos of the collapsed twin towers], tile walls and floors, lamps, telephone poles, appliances, and many others. This doesn't include all the things we know to be used as religious symbols: cemetery crosses, hand crosses, crosses worn as emblems, and of course the familiar act of crossing ourselves. There is also the terrifying image in the film The Mission of the priest tied to a cross and thrown over the Iguazu Falls in Paraguay. And we also have the Old Testament story of Moses holding up his arms during the battle against Amalek. Today's feast, the Exaltation of the Cross, commemorates the story of St Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, finding the True Cross in Jerusalem in the 4th century [ca. 326]. It is also a reminder of how important the Cross is to the Christian faith.
In thinking about today's feast I was constantly brought back to the concept of the True Cross. It is an obvious reference to the wooden cross that Jesus was crucified on. Yet it also opens up the possibility of meditating on the cross not as a physical object but as the essence of our faith. How do we human beings live a life linked to the Cross?
John Behr in his book Becoming Human, offers a meditation on the nexus between our humanity and Jesus Christ's human reality. God becomes a human being so that human beings can become God. All of creation comes from God. We humans simply work with and manipulate what God has created. The fact that we live is from God. The fact that we die is our human reality since God does not die. The fact that Jesus Christ died on the Cross as a human being and passed into life eternal is the redemptive salvation that Christ bestowed on humankind. What he did, he did once for all.
As John Behr says in his book Becoming Human: "Death is... the only thing that all men and women have in common from the beginning of the world onwards, throughout all regions and cultures of the world." [p. 21]. But that death is not about an end but rather a new beginning. On our journey in this life, the more closely we are able to align ourselves with Christ's life the more fully we will be able to experience the life eternal that Christ has prepared for us.
As we continue to align ourselves with the life of Christ, the more powerful is the reality of the Cross in our lives. The Cross that we carry is not some external physical object. What is the true cross? Stand up and hold out your arms. No you're not being frisked! That is the True Cross for us, we are actually made in it's image and likeness! We are born with it and carry it all our life!
Glory to the Holy and Lifegiving Cross! Glory Forever!
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