"The cross of Christ"

Good Friday March 29, 2002

A sermon by Dean Keith Joyce

There was a time when I used to be concerned about such casual use of the cross, feeling perhaps, that this was a kind of desecration of something so precious to Christians. But now I simply give thanks, regardless of how well it is understood, that it appears so much and in so many places. Not only does it provide an opportunity to talk about its meaning, should such an opportunity arise, but I find it good to see, so often, the clearest reminder of God's love for the world, and for me.

At times I've wondered what it would be like should our government ever forbid the sign of the cross to appear anywhere. I don't anticipate that happening in my life time here in Canada, but you can feel the possibility of it, because our society seems at times to express increased hostility to religion, and sometimes especially towards Christianity. Then it is interesting to look around for signs of the cross that weren't ever intended to be that. Telephone poles with cross beams can look very much like crosses. The letter "X" is a stylized cross. Other examples can be found, I know. And when I discover these "hidden crosses" I take heart in the encouragement of such discovery, knowing that somehow the power of that symbol can never be removed, even if it is never intentionally put up again in a public place.

Why can the cross have such impact, you might ask? It's because the cross is so central to, and so much at the heart of Christianity.

Ironically, it's a sign of weakness, of shame, of death. That's how it would have been understood in the first century. Why has something so despicable become so key to our faith? It's because Jesus Christ died on a cross. Paul celebrates this in I Corinthians 1:23 & 24 where he says, "we proclaim Christ crucified" which is, "the power of God and the wisdom of God."

What we take as weakness, as utter loss, God makes into strength and wisdom. Jesus's dying on the cross is in actual fact the work of God, of God the Father and of God the Son. So when God is doing something that seems foolish and weak, especially when we can't comprehend it according to our wisdom, it will always be truly wise and truly strong. That's why Paul also says, "For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength."

The truth of this struck me when I thought back to Mother Teresa's funeral on September 13, 1997. She, and the Missionaries of Charity, have become strong because they took on the weakest thing of all, caring for the dying of the poorest of the poor, in Calcutta. So simple, so weak, so unsophisticated, yet those very acts were recognized with all the pomp of a state funeral. God has exercised a strong, powerful ministry through the weak and "foolish" work of this humble nun.

The cross in itself is not important at all. It simply is another form of capital punishment. It's only important to us today because Jesus died on a cross. If he had died on the spokes of a large wagon wheel, then we all would be wearing wagon wheels on chains or on lapel pins or in those pierced body parts. It is only because of Christ's death on the cross that the cross now is most significant.

The cross is also the gateway into the Father's love for us and for his world. In 1 John 3:16 we read, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." This is true love, from which every other love takes its meaning and significance. One would think that the meaning of love is self-evident, but that's not so. John Stott, in his book, The cross of Christ, tells us that St. John would disagree with that notion. The Epistle writer, Stott declares, "dares to say that, apart from Christ and his cross, the world would never have known what true love is. Of course all human beings have experienced some degree and quality of love. But John is saying that only one act of pure love, unsullied by any taint of ulterior motive, has ever been performed in the history of the world, namely the self-giving of God in Christ on the cross for undeserving sinners. That is why, if we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in the dictionary, but at Calvary."

In Romans 5:8 we hear again about God's love for us. It reads, "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." This is God's very own love, a pure and perfect love. There is no love like it because its primary and ultimate expression is one of Christ dying for others who do not automatically deserve it. Yes, human beings will die for others. It has been done many times in the history of the world, but usually it is a sacrifice for someone the person knows and who is considered worthy to receive such an expression of love.

A friend of mine a number of years ago was doing some rather precarious rock climbing in the mountains of New Zealand. Though he was inexperienced as mountain climber, he was doing this climbing with a very experienced climber, and things should have gone well. Frighteningly, one or both of them had slipped most dangerously. The more experienced climber faced a critical decision. The situation was such that either he hung onto my friend's hand and both of them would most certainly fall to their deaths, or, let go of my friend's hand, and he alone would die. He let go.

Jesus's death on the cross is like him holding on to all our hands, and letting go, so that he alone dies and we can have the opportunity to truly live. But then we must remember that the thing which gives Christ's death such power to express God's love for us is because he rose again from the dead in order to have absolute victory over sin and death, and to give his followers new life. And so the cross reminds us of this incredible truth, and of the vast love God has for his people. In the words of Canon Vanstone, as quoted by John Stott, God's love "'is expended in self-giving, wholly expended, without residue or reserve, drained, exhausted, spent.'"

This love of God, the giving of his Son to die and then to rise again, is really his giving of himself. The sign of the cross, therefore, tells us about the heart of God. It is God's work, it is God's glory, as well as it's God's way of our salvation, the door that opens to new life. And so may we humbly look at the cross, remembering that it tells us more about our Lord, about his love, and about his mighty work than it does about our salvation and our spirituality.

I'll end with this story which I have used before, but which shows the power of the cross to change our lives when we take it seriously. A bishop once came to an old priest sitting on a bench near where the priest lived in retirement. The bishop asked the priest whether he remembered him at all. The answer was no, he had no recollection of the bishop.

The bishop then went on to tell him that when he was a young man he had been out driving around with some of his friends. And they'd been drinking. As they drove about town they came upon a church and thought it would be a lark if one of them went in, as a joke, and make a fabricated confession. Well, he was chosen, so in he went. But he took much longer than his friends had expected.

The bishop went on to say that the priest had asked the young man to spend half an hour in front of the crucifix at the front of the church. That half hour of contemplating the cross had such an impact on him that it changed his life. He went back out to his friends a different man from the one that went in as part of a joke. The bishop then ended by saying that he had been that young man and the old priest was the priest who had given him that strange task. And because of it his life had taken a direction such that he now was a bishop, and he wanted to say thank you to the old priest for putting him before the powerful impact of that crucifix. He had been changed by the love of God displayed by the death of Christ on the cross.

Hear now words we soon will sing:

Faithful cross, thou sign of triumph,

now for us the noblest tree,

none in foliage, none in blossom,

none in fruit thy peer may be;

symbol of the world's redemption,

for the weight that hung on thee!