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sholycross03
Here
You See There Is No Other God
Text:
John 12:20-33
Date: Holy Cross Day (Pentecost 14)
9/14/03 comforter down king size
September 14 has been celebrated by the Holy Church
throughout the World as Holy Cross Day since the earliest times.
It claims its origin in a woman named Helena, the mother of Constantine,
the first Roman emperor to profess the Christian faith and to proclaim
Christianity not only legal but even the superior religion in the
empire. Tradition has it that Helena went to Israel to find the
places of special significance to Christians. Having located what
she believed to be the sites of the Crucifixion and of the Burial
of Jesus, she then had built over them the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
which was dedicated on 14 September 335. Whether the claim is true
or not that she also discovered the very cross on which Jesus was
crucified makes no difference. For it is not the wood of the cross
that we worship, but the Christ who died upon it.
Nevertheless, the cross has become the symbol par
excellence of the Christian faith. Christians trace it on themselves
as a remembrance of when they were first sealed with its sign in
holy baptism. Various forms of the cross adorn the “Church Year”
window here at St. Mark’s: the Serpent and Tau Cross as an Old Testament
symbol of the coming Savior’s sacrifice; the Ansate Cross with a
loop at the top (“ansate” literally means “handle”) symbolizing
life and the fulfillment of the prophecy of Christ’s birth; the
Cross Crosslet symbolizing the spreading of the Gospel to the four
corners of the earth, to all nations; the Greek Cross, with arms
of equal length; the Passion Cross with pointed ends, a cross of
agony; the Easter Cross with lilies and rays of light celebrating
the Resurrection; and the Cross Tripartite Fleur-de-lis, with the
three vertical and three horizontal members, a symbol of the Holy
Trinity. In Reformed churches it is preferred to have a bare and
empty cross, symbolizing, they say, the resurrection of Jesus but
more accurately reflecting a non-sacramental theology of an absent
Jesus. Sometimes you see a cross with the ever-living, reigning
and triumphant Jesus. But it is in the best tradition of the first
evangelicals, the Lutherans, that the cross bears the corpus of
the crucified Jesus. True, Good Friday alone will not save you.
But without a Good Friday, without the bloody sacrifice of the Messiah
and Lamb of God, not only would there be no Easter, but no forgiveness
of sin, no Gospel.
To speak of the glory of the cross seems strange, then.
A bloody instrument of execution and death hardly fits the word
“glory,” especially if you listen to how that word is used in modern
American Evangelicalism—always up-beat, happy and rarely in a minor
key. In fact the cross—any cross—is considered by many these days
to be such a negative symbol that many churches (including even
ones that call themselves Lutheran!) have no cross at all to be
seen in them. In what has become an hysterical drive to attract
more and more people, the word “church” has been replaced with “worship
center,” the architecture resembling something between a strip-mall
and a living room with theater seating complete with rear-projection
screens. Everything emphasizes the horizontal over the vertical,
the people and their relationship not as much with God as with one
another. Solemn dedications of new churches (or “worship centers”)
are termed “grand openings,” as if the place were some sort of religious
marketplace. The cross doesn’t fit into the theology of glory.
Yet in our text for today Jesus speaks of the cross
in terms of glory and as the way he draws people to himself. When
he says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all
people to myself,” John explains, “he said this to show by what
kind of death he was going to die,” namely, crucifixion. He speaks
of his death by crucifixion as “the hour…for the Son of Man to be
glorified.”
It is precisely by the cross that the Son if glorified.
For his glory is not as a mighty, triumphant warrior-King of majesty
as the crowds of Palm Sunday and even his own disciples thought.
His glory is in his defeat of sin, death and the devil by taking
it all to himself in his body on the cross.
We’re told of certain Greeks who were in town for the
feast of the Passover. When Jesus hears of their request for an
audience, he begins to talk about God’s plan of salvation for all
people by drawing them to his Son. Jesus speaks of dying as the
way to life. As it is necessary for a kernel of wheat to be buried,
that is, planted in the ground in order to bring forth many seeds,
so the death of Jesus would mean salvation and life for many. As
St. Paul said it, “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the
point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly
exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name”
[Philippians 2:8-9 (ESV)].
The way of the cross certainly wasn’t an easy way.
Jesus says, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father,
save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this
hour.” He didn’t pray to be delivered from his hour of suffering,
but for the Father to glorify his own name.
The Father had already glorified his name throughout
the ministry of Jesus. In all his teaching, preaching and healing
he manifested the splendor of the Father’s power, grace, and love,
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