In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
If
you stop and think about it, what we are all doing this morning is rather
audacious. We gather in the name of an executed Jewish peasant, we say that he
reveals to us the truest nature of God and the universe, and then we participate
in a meal in which we claim that we receive his Body and Blood, which we then consume.
It is rather crazy, isn’t it? Faith really is pretty absurd when our Western
and so-called “enlightened” minds try to make sense of it. Even in a very
different culture and time, St. Paul knew this and mentions in his first letter
to the Corinthians that the Cross of Christ is a stumbling block and
foolishness. So if St. Paul is right, and I very much think that he is, then
that makes us all fools for gathering with the Cross at the center of our
worship.
We
heard in Isaiah this morning that people are walking in darkness. Indeed, we
know darkness. Sometimes darkness is self-imposed. We prefer to live in the shadows
because we wouldn’t want anyone to see our text messages or hear those things
we mutter under our breath. Sometimes the darkness is something we fall into
like addiction, depression, or a bad medical diagnosis. Darkness might come in
the form of giants that are bigger than us as individuals: war, poverty,
racism, environmental catastrophe. Other times the darkness comes from our
mistakes, our insecurities, our doubts and fears. Whatever brings the darkness,
it’s there.
Now
whether it be a book or movie, the way such darkness is usually resolved is
that a hero comes on the scene and defeats the villain and everyone lives
happily ever after. When we’re in darkness, what we want is a light to take
away that darkness. But when God comes to save us in Jesus, he doesn’t come as
a bright bonfire that vanquishes the darkness forever. No, instead Jesus comes
as a spotlight that shines on the Cross. At the center of our faith is not the
story about how Jesus came and preached love and everyone was so moved by his
speeches and miracles that they started following the way of love. Rather, we have
a story that reminds us of the darkness inside of us all; the darkness doesn’t
want light to shine. The story of Jesus is the story of the Cross – of us
rejecting his teachings and miracles and nailing him to a Cross to die an
excruciating and degrading death.
Imagine
being in a difficult situation – maybe you’re trapped in a cave. What you’d
probably like is someone to come with lanterns and climbing gear. In the world’s
estimation, that’d be a pretty good savior. But what if someone climbed down
into the cave with you and said, “I’m going to get us out of here.” Then he pulls
out a stick of dynamite and says that the solution is to just blow up the
entire cave and that will get the both of you out it. It’s absolute foolishness.
And that’s the Cross.
Having
the Cross at the center of our faith just doesn’t sit well with how we’ve been
raised. You all know that an idea that I often come back to is that the Cross
shows us the grain of the universe. By that, I mean that the Cross shows us the
deepest truths of life. It shows us that death can be overcome, that our sins
are forgiven, that fear does not get the last word, that God is never done with
us, that we are always loved. These truths though are not self-evident. In our
society, we value things like self-reliance, independence, strength, power, and
victory. The Cross is none of these things. The Cross is about vulnerability,
weakness, defeat, self-giving, and lowliness. And so the Cross actually stands
against all of the things that we’ve been trained are important and virtuous.
It’s
why the message of the Cross is foolishness and so often rejected. It’s why so
much of what passes for Christian faith isn’t actually very Christian – because
it isn’t rooted in the Cross of Christ. We don’t want to hear that in order to
have abundant life we first have to die to ourselves, we don’t want to hear
that confessing our sins is the way to find amazing grace, we don’t want to be
told that it is more blessed to give than to receive. And if you choose to live
this way, following the way of the Cross, you’ll be seen as a fool. The word
that St. Paul uses is moria, as in “moron.”
If the world though looks at the Church and sees its own reflection, then it’s
clear that we’re not paying attention to the Cross.
Consider
the story about Jesus calling his disciples in Matthew. Jesus is walking along
the Sea of Galilee and tells two brothers who were fishermen that they’d become
fishers of men. And what they did was absolutely foolish; people may have
called the “morons.” They dropped their nets and followed Jesus. They left
behind their family, their income, their homes, and their commitments. It’s an
incredibly outrageous thing to do. The reason why it’s so outrageous is that it
disrupts our cultural norms and expectations. Culture gives us certain values,
such as being responsible and predictable, to value family above all else, to
make prudent financial decisions. But the Cross of Christ gives us a very
different set of priorities. And so when Peter and Andrew drop their nets to
follow Christ, we are left shaking our heads, thinking they are fools and that
we can’t imagine ourselves ever doing such a thing.
When
St. Paul tells us that the cross is foolishness, he notes that it is foolish to
those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of
God. The thing about being those who are perishing is that it means that you
aren’t dead yet. If you are in the process of perishing, then you haven’t yet
perished. One of the most central passages in all of St. Paul’s writing comes
from chapter 6 of Romans. It’s such a crucial passage to our faith and
understanding what St. Paul is getting at here, I want to read it to you in
full: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by
baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have
been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him
in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him
so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved
to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died
with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that
Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has
dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but
the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves
dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
You
see, the reason why the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing is that
the perishing are those still flailing around in the deep waters. They’re the
ones still trying to be their own saviors, to build their reputations, to make
their life meaningful. And in that struggle, they are perishing. But for those
of us being saved, we’re already dead and so death has lost its power. A poet
once said, “I will die, but that is all I will do for death.” Because of the
Cross, death has been robbed of its final power over us. Here in the Church, we
are already dead, and so we come to see that though the world sees the Cross as
a symbol of defeat and weakness, we know it is actually our saving grace, it
shows us the grain of the universe, and is full of strength and power.
This
is why Jesus begins his ministry with an announcement – “Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven has come near.” Repenting isn’t about making apologies, it’s
about how you see the world. The meaning of the Greek word in question is “to
change your mind.” And that’s ultimately what the Cross helps us to do – it allows
us to change our minds. So no longer do we have to worry about whether or not
our sins are forgiven, the Cross tells us that the Lamb of God has taken away
the sin of the world. No longer do we have to worry about dying, the Cross
tells us that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. No
longer do we have to be afraid of being alone, the Cross tells us that God’s
love is always with us, no matter how dark the situation may seem. No longer do
we have to wonder about the meaning of life, the Cross tells us that abundant
life has been opened to us by the mercy and grace of God. No longer do we have
to worry about being strong or independent, the Cross shows us the better way
of love.
The
Cross is the ultimate declaration of what God is really like – self-giving,
loving, full of grace and mercy, and powerful in a way that we can’t begin to
imagine. The wood of the Cross shows us the grain of the universe, which is
none other than the fearless, fierce, and faithful love of God. And this is why
the Cross is the symbol of our faith – it reminds us that light shines in the
darkness, that there is always another and holier way of seeing things, and
that God is always with us. Indeed, to the world the Cross looks like utter
foolishness, but for those of us who have been saved by dying with Christ and
are alive to God through his Resurrection, the Cross is the most beautiful
thing in the world.
