Sermon for Holy Cross Day, September 14th, 2008
Faith Lutheran Church – Sept 14, 2008
Holy Cross Day – Year A
Primary Text: John 3:13-17, 1 Cor 1:18-24
When I was looking into the history behind Holy Cross Day, which we are celebrating today, I was very interested to find out that its origin is from the founding of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The church was founded in 325 after the Roman Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, found what she claimed to be the True Cross of Christ. After this find Constantine, order the building of the church over the site believed to be the site of both the Crucifixion and the burial tomb. The Church was finished in 335 and on September 14, the true cross was brought in. During my trip to Israel this last January I had the opportunity to tour and explore the church twice, once with our tour guide and the entire group, and a second time with just three others and me. I found the site to be fascinating. You enter through a large door set on one side of the main building. Upon entering directly to your right are two sets of very steep steps leading up to the top of the actual crucifixion rock, here there are two alters, one Roman Catholic and the other Eastern Orthodox. Most of the people visiting will line up here to reach under the Eastern Orthodox alter where there is a small opening in the floor which allows you to touch the original stone underneath. Many people have told of how they may doubt that this is the actual true site of the crucifixion but the fact that over 1,700 years pilgrims have been coming to this site and reaching to touch that stone is very impactful and spiritual.
While Holy Cross Day is a minor festival, only being celebrated on the 14th and so only on a Sunday when it happens to line up with one. I feel that this connection to history is important to remember. I think that it can really help us to look closer at both Christmas and Easter. The consumer culture that the US finds itself in has turned both into here and now events, leaving out the historical meanings. Easter is turning more into a simple festival of spring in the secular world and Christmas has already turned into a “looky at all the presents that I got this year” time. This is where Holy Cross day, and every Sunday, should try to reorient us away from this secular culture that we find ourselves immersed in every day back to the historical meaning that even two thousand years later holds so much significance.
Holy Cross Day reminds us of the dichotomy of the Cross, or the dual opposite natures of the cross. In our Christian context it is the symbol of our salvation, because of Christ’s death on the Cross we have received eternal life. The other side of the Cross still exists though, the Cross as a weapon of torture and death. When we look to the Cross, we are also reminded of the fallen world that we live in. We remember that we too undergo suffering, pain and death.
Dichotomy is fascinating. As Christians, we embrace it, and as Lutheran’s we especially uphold this two fold meaning everyday. Just as we are sinner and saint at the same time, the Cross is both method of death and method of life. It is directly to this problem that Paul writes of in 1 Corinthians. The main conflict that arose within the early church was between how to speak of the Cross to the Jews and to the Greeks or Gentiles. Each view the cross differently. To the Jews it is a stumbling block. The Jewish understanding of Messiah does not allow for that messiah to die, a messiah is a great leader that will lead Israel to glory, if that leader dies they cannot lead. The Gentile understanding of how gods work, does not allow gods to die, so for Jesus to be God, he could not die. It is exactly because of this death that Christ completes what it means to be human. Humans die, if Christ does not die he could not have been truly human. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we get another place of what can seem like foolishness, on the Cross Fully Human/ Fully God died, and on Easter morn Fully Human / Fully God was resurrected. It is in this dual nature of death and resurrection that we can know the true nature of Christ, fully human and fully God.
Jesus tells of the history between pain and suffering, and living in the story of Moses and the bronze serpent. When an Israelite would be bit they would look at the bronze serpent and they would live. It does not say that they would be healed, but that they would live. All the trouble and pain are still in the world, but life is also given to them. Jesus references this fact in the Gospel, just as the serpent was raised so must he also be raised. It is in this raising that he gives us eternal life, but the troubles and struggles of sin still exist, however through incarnation and death, God has experienced them and has taken them into Godself.
In last weeks edition of the Booneville Democrat, the religion section tells the story of a Russian Author who was in a Soviet Labor Camp. He got to the point where he felt that life was not worth living, and did not care and wanted the guards to kill him. One day, another prisoner that he had never seen before and never did again, came up to him and drew a cross on the ground. The author says that he looked at the cross and remembered his reason to live, “here was man’s freedom.” He is still in the camp not actually free, but the power of the cross of Christ gives him life and makes him truly free. We need to seek the cross when we have problems. They will not go away necessarily, but we will knot that Christ is with us in them.
This is the importance of the Cross and why we commemorate it today, the cross symbolizes our salvation, and our death, it completes the incarnation, and begins God’s victory over death. As Douglas John Hall says in his book, The Cross in our Context, in regards the symbolic status of the Cross. “One dimension of the significance of the cross remains steadfast, however, and is the presupposition of all possible interpretations of this event: namely, faith’s assumption that the cross of the Christ marks, in a decisive and irrevocable way, the unconditional participation of God in the life of the world, the concretization of God’s love for the world, the commitment of God to the fulfillment of creations promise. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only son…’ (John 3:16)”
Holy Cross Day – Year A
Primary Text: John 3:13-17, 1 Cor 1:18-24
When I was looking into the history behind Holy Cross Day, which we are celebrating today, I was very interested to find out that its origin is from the founding of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The church was founded in 325 after the Roman Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, found what she claimed to be the True Cross of Christ. After this find Constantine, order the building of the church over the site believed to be the site of both the Crucifixion and the burial tomb. The Church was finished in 335 and on September 14, the true cross was brought in. During my trip to Israel this last January I had the opportunity to tour and explore the church twice, once with our tour guide and the entire group, and a second time with just three others and me. I found the site to be fascinating. You enter through a large door set on one side of the main building. Upon entering directly to your right are two sets of very steep steps leading up to the top of the actual crucifixion rock, here there are two alters, one Roman Catholic and the other Eastern Orthodox. Most of the people visiting will line up here to reach under the Eastern Orthodox alter where there is a small opening in the floor which allows you to touch the original stone underneath. Many people have told of how they may doubt that this is the actual true site of the crucifixion but the fact that over 1,700 years pilgrims have been coming to this site and reaching to touch that stone is very impactful and spiritual.
While Holy Cross Day is a minor festival, only being celebrated on the 14th and so only on a Sunday when it happens to line up with one. I feel that this connection to history is important to remember. I think that it can really help us to look closer at both Christmas and Easter. The consumer culture that the US finds itself in has turned both into here and now events, leaving out the historical meanings. Easter is turning more into a simple festival of spring in the secular world and Christmas has already turned into a “looky at all the presents that I got this year” time. This is where Holy Cross day, and every Sunday, should try to reorient us away from this secular culture that we find ourselves immersed in every day back to the historical meaning that even two thousand years later holds so much significance.
Holy Cross Day reminds us of the dichotomy of the Cross, or the dual opposite natures of the cross. In our Christian context it is the symbol of our salvation, because of Christ’s death on the Cross we have received eternal life. The other side of the Cross still exists though, the Cross as a weapon of torture and death. When we look to the Cross, we are also reminded of the fallen world that we live in. We remember that we too undergo suffering, pain and death.
Dichotomy is fascinating. As Christians, we embrace it, and as Lutheran’s we especially uphold this two fold meaning everyday. Just as we are sinner and saint at the same time, the Cross is both method of death and method of life. It is directly to this problem that Paul writes of in 1 Corinthians. The main conflict that arose within the early church was between how to speak of the Cross to the Jews and to the Greeks or Gentiles. Each view the cross differently. To the Jews it is a stumbling block. The Jewish understanding of Messiah does not allow for that messiah to die, a messiah is a great leader that will lead Israel to glory, if that leader dies they cannot lead. The Gentile understanding of how gods work, does not allow gods to die, so for Jesus to be God, he could not die. It is exactly because of this death that Christ completes what it means to be human. Humans die, if Christ does not die he could not have been truly human. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we get another place of what can seem like foolishness, on the Cross Fully Human/ Fully God died, and on Easter morn Fully Human / Fully God was resurrected. It is in this dual nature of death and resurrection that we can know the true nature of Christ, fully human and fully God.
Jesus tells of the history between pain and suffering, and living in the story of Moses and the bronze serpent. When an Israelite would be bit they would look at the bronze serpent and they would live. It does not say that they would be healed, but that they would live. All the trouble and pain are still in the world, but life is also given to them. Jesus references this fact in the Gospel, just as the serpent was raised so must he also be raised. It is in this raising that he gives us eternal life, but the troubles and struggles of sin still exist, however through incarnation and death, God has experienced them and has taken them into Godself.
In last weeks edition of the Booneville Democrat, the religion section tells the story of a Russian Author who was in a Soviet Labor Camp. He got to the point where he felt that life was not worth living, and did not care and wanted the guards to kill him. One day, another prisoner that he had never seen before and never did again, came up to him and drew a cross on the ground. The author says that he looked at the cross and remembered his reason to live, “here was man’s freedom.” He is still in the camp not actually free, but the power of the cross of Christ gives him life and makes him truly free. We need to seek the cross when we have problems. They will not go away necessarily, but we will knot that Christ is with us in them.
This is the importance of the Cross and why we commemorate it today, the cross symbolizes our salvation, and our death, it completes the incarnation, and begins God’s victory over death. As Douglas John Hall says in his book, The Cross in our Context, in regards the symbolic status of the Cross. “One dimension of the significance of the cross remains steadfast, however, and is the presupposition of all possible interpretations of this event: namely, faith’s assumption that the cross of the Christ marks, in a decisive and irrevocable way, the unconditional participation of God in the life of the world, the concretization of God’s love for the world, the commitment of God to the fulfillment of creations promise. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only son…’ (John 3:16)”
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