Look to the Cross – God is with Us

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, located in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, is considered to be one of the holiest sites for most Christians. To understand the significance of this Church, it is helpful to know that a ‘sepulchre’ is a small room or monument cut in rock or built in stone in which a dead person is laid or buried. This Church is also called the Church of the Resurrection.

Here’s a bit of the history of the Church. Early in the 4th century, a woman named Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, searching for the places where Jesus spent his last days. Helena was the mother of Constantine, the Roman Emperor who legalized Christianity in 313 CE. Interestingly, Helena was a devout Christian; her son, the Emperor, not so much – he was baptized on his deathbed.

While in Jerusalem, Helena found and excavated the tomb where Jesus had laid. She, along with the Bishop of Jerusalem, encouraged Constantine to build the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to enshrine the tomb and preserve the holy site. The Church was dedicated in 335 CE (after 9 years of construction).

Today Christians from every nation and tribe and race and language and ability and gender continue to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to visit this Church, to see this place where Jesus Christ was crucified (at Calvary), buried (in the tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea), and rose on the third day, where he appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden.

Helena also found 3 crosses, including the one on which Jesus was crucified. (Legend has it that this cross was identified as the “True Cross” a sick person touched the crosses and was healed by one of them). Pieces of this cross still remain in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, hidden away, off the beaten path, under the watchful eye of the Orthodox priests.

Today we observe Holy Cross Day, in commemoration of the cross found by Helena in Jerusalem nearly 17 hundred years ago.

On this day we ponder the meaning of the cross for our own lives in this present time in which we are living.

Throughout history, the cross has been used by the Empire – by the State – as an instrument of execution. It was a particularly tortuous way to die – by suffocation. Death on the cross was a symbol of power and domination, meant to strike fear and terror and intimidation among the common people living under occupation (in the time of Jesus – the Roman Empire).

(James Cone – The Cross and the Lynching Tree – 2011)

Yet, it was through Christ’s death on the cross – the sign of the tyranny of the Empire – that the whole world is given the promise of resurrection and new and everlasting life with God.

How can this be?

Martin Luther gives us a way to understand the meaning of the cross through the concept of the Theology of the Cross. This teaches us that God is present in the suffering of God’s people; God’s power is hidden in weakness and submission; this is the foolishness of the cross that is described in our reading from 1 Corinthians.

The Theology of the Cross contrasts with the Theology of Glory – the more common view held today that seeks God through human wisdom and power and domination over others. The Theology of Glory implies that we earn our way into God’s grace and that some of us are more worthy of that grace than others.

The Theology of the Cross calls a thing what it is; it faces the reality of sin and death in the world knowing that Christ’s death on the cross overcomes death and leads to resurrection and new life for all people. All of this is accomplished through the power of God’s love for all the world. God shows no partiality; God longs to draw all people into God’s kin-dom.

Today, as followers of Jesus Christ, as people who call ourselves Christians, we recognize the cross…

as the power of God to save all people; to heal all people; to give all people new life in the name of Jesus.
as the wisdom of God and the love of God poured out for all of creation.
as the place of suffering where God has promised to show up and be with God’s people in love and mercy and grace.

We look to the cross and we see…

Jesus lifted up.
what God’s love looks like.
God’s love that is stronger than death.

We see God’s only beloved son…

hanging on the cross…
stripped naked…
humiliated for all to see..
beaten, bleeding…
a crown of thorns pushed into his head…
struggle to breathe…
thirsting…
forgiving those who were killing him…
calling out to God in his anguish and his pain..
welcoming the sinner into paradise with him….
providing care for his mother and the disciple that he loved…
commending his spirit into his Father’s hands..
finishing the work his Father had given him to do…
and bowing his head, giving up his spirit…
giving up his spirit so that we might have life and have it in abundance.

We look to the cross and see the sacrificial love that saves us and saves the whole world; the sacrificial love that draws all people back to God and the eternal life that God longs to share with us.

This is the sacrificial love that we, as followers of Jesus; as people who call ourselves Christian; as people who have been set free from sin and death through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, are called to carry into the world and to share with all people of every nation and tribe and race and language and ability and gender. All people.

Through the cross of Christ, we are called to love…

ourselves and one another
our neighbors and our enemies
widows, orphans, strangers and foreigners
people with whom we agree and people with whom we disagree people who are kind, good, caring and
people who are wounded, broken, traumatized, and weighed down by evil.

We carry that cross on our forehead, to remind us that we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

That cross on our forehead reminds us that God is always with us! In the pain, in the suffering, in the sorrow; in the joy, in the healing, in the new life we are given…God is with us.

The good news for today is that God’s love for all people – of every nation and tribe and race and language and ability and gender – is revealed through the cross of Christ.

The good news for today is that God’s love is always with us.

The good news for today is Jesus came and died for us so that all the world might be reconciled to God in mercy, love, justice and grace.

Look to the cross and live in Christ. Look to the cross and share the good news.