READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Numbers 21:4-9
Philippians 2:5-11
- St. John 12:20-36
Grace to you all and Peace from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus, the Christ.
Who, once again speaks to you today, saying:
"While you
have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light. '
These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them."
Thus far from our Gospel reading, included in God's Word to
tell us exactly where Jesus is hiding. It is important for Jesus to hide,
because if He were among us as He was with the Apostles, we would simply take
advantage of Him and turn Him into a figurehead for what we believe to be true.
For this reason, God hides Himself on the cross in order that we find Him as
the Crucified and Risen Savior.
Now, I know you know, because if you encounter anyone
calling themselves "Christian" in the wild, they will speak about the
cross, the cross, the cross. And although many "churches" are taking
down crosses from their artwork and sanctuaries, it has always been understood
as central to the Christian Faith.
From Pentecost on, the cross was both a revered symbol and a
pejorative for believers and non-believers respectively. To not have the cross
is to not have Jesus. So, we must ask the question: what does it mean to have
the cross?
On this day, we especially bring focus on exalting the cross
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Not that we don’t every other day, but lets
just say that if, today, you were to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in
Jerusalem, or Rome’s Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, you would
probably get to see a piece of the one, true cross. Possibly. Maybe. And that's
the best explanation you'll get from them that believe it.
Allegedly discovered around 327 AD by St. Helena, mother of
Constantine the Great of Roman Emperor fame, newly converted to Christianity,
she proved the truth of the true cross being found by letting a sick woman
touch it. There were two other crosses as control variables. The woman touched
the two fakes, and remained sick, but having touched the "real" one,
she was healed. Thus far, the origin of today feast day.
In the ensuing years, basilicas and chapels were built to
house other pieces of the true cross so they could be venerated and their true
powers offered to the faithful that kiss and touch them, all quite apart from
Jesus of course. They are under lock and key and guard so that no one steals
them!
But why? If they have the power to heal, why are they not in
constant motion around the world, healing those in hospitals and war-torn
countries? Why are they not free and available? Not that such things mattered
to medieval parishioners, because they trusted their pastors. They trusted them
to teach that, relics?, why not? God can do anything He wants, right? Even
imbue whatever He wants with His holiness anytime.
So what are we doing in Church, today? Why aren't we all
relic hunters, trying to piece together God in this world in order that we have
His Real Presence? We need to run after God, apparently. Where is He going this
time? Maybe a phone booth in San Dimas, CA? We need to jump after Him. Maybe
He's surfing the Jet Stream?
Regardless of my due or undue sarcasm, for the Christian the
cross is central to faith and we get that from the faithful in the Old
Testament. For the faithful in the Old Testament, God was not just everywhere
doing anything He wanted. He promised to be somewhere in order that those who
were there would encounter Him.
The promise was to leave a sign, or mark, to show where the
Lord would be doing His work and continuing that work to the end of the age. It
was not going to be a mark that would perish such as something made of wood
that decomposes over time. The Lord says to Noah that the sign He gives will be
forever, to all future generations. If Jesus wanted His actual cross to be that
sign, we would have the whole thing, now. He is not weak.
The promise was the Sign and yet we look for signs and
wonders elsewhere. The difference being that one sign is the Lord's Sign and
the others are things we play with in the dirt, the relics, whether they are
Apostles' finger bones or enough slivers of wood to build an Ark. We find it
easier to trust in those things we can handle and touch, than in the promises
of God.
We are so weak in sin, that we are like the Israelites and
the serpents. Once bitten, we'd look to the sign of the bronze serpent, be
healed, and go off to get bit again and love every minute of it. We'd feel as
if we really are part of God's plan. If God wants to heal me, then I'll just go
out and make myself sick. If God wants to forgive me, I should go out and
gather as much sin as I can in my life, so He can forgive me bunches.
Dear Christians, you do not have to go far in life to find
sin crouching at the door. But at that same door knocks the true, promised sign
sent to rescue from such a deadly predicament.
At the start of this sermon, though I quoted Jesus hiding
Himself, our clue is to where Jesus will show Himself. In verse 33 of the
Gospel today, Jesus speaks to show us where He will be, that is what kind of
death He was going to die.
In showing, He gives us the sign and Moses foretells it. The
"pole" on which the bronze serpent was hung, was literally a sign.
The sign of the bronze serpent is, not just that it hangs on a sign, but that
the very thing that poisoned and threatened death, was the cure.
When the people looked upon their poison, they were reminded
of their sin. The snakes were only there to punish according to the Law they
had broken, that is despising the Lord's Supper that He had given to them in
the desert.
Though looking at their punishment, they are saved by grace,
made well again by looking at the very fate that should have been theirs. That
is, suffering the consequences for their own sinful actions.
But they didn't. And they wouldn't. Instead, the
stiff-necked people that the Lord brought out of Egypt would continue to be
favored and blessed, only out of Fatherly divine goodness and mercy.
Continuing with the sign, Jesus also showed us the sign. The
bronze serpent was just the pre-game, for no creature, great or small, nor any
man redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him (Ps 49:7). And
yet, the poison of the bronze serpent was taken into Jesus.
That is, the poison that leads to death: sin. With His life,
Jesus became sin Who knew no sin. That is, He took all the poison that was
killing His creatures into Himself, "they will look on Him Whom they
have pierced" (Jn 19:37), and be saved. Not by the person, word, and
work of the wood, but by the Person Who ordained that wood to hold Him up at
His last breath.
The mark, the sign, for Cain was the cross. The sign for
Noah was the cross. Every other sign and image was forbidden to Moses except
this one: the cross on which hung the sins of the world. No other mark was
given to the Chosen People of God, in the Old Testament, which signified the
covenant between God and man.
Because no other mark is up to the task of signifying the
reconciliation of God and man. The cross is, at once, the sign of our
condemnation and the sign of our redemption. At the same time we see Jesus,
unjustly condemned to death because of our sin, we also see the definite plan
and foreknowledge of God at work (Acts 2:23).
From Pastor Gerhard of 17th c. fame: "We should
interpret that fact that Christ was willing to give up His spirit on the wood
of the cross as an announcement of His intention to restore what Adam had
broken on the wood of the forbidden tree. For the first Adam has stretched out
his arm to the forbidden tree-trunk, thereby bringing death upon all his
descendants. Here the second Adam stretches out His arms on the timber-trunk of
the cross and brings to us life and salvation. Here the fathers draw upon the
fact that Noah, along with his [family], was sustained in the ark during the
time of the flood (Gen. 7), and the Wisdom of God had thus helped him by means
of an ordinary wood timber (Wisdom of Solomon 10). Thus this wood of the cross
given to us as a secure little ship in which we can be preserved from the flood
of divine wrath. The Lord God directed Moses (Ex. 15) to take a tree or timber
and place it in the bitter water so that it might become sweet. Thereby it is
signified that Christ's cross is able to take away the bitterness of death and
every misfortune. (2 Kings 6) As the children of prophets wanted to fell some
trees, the iron [head of the ax] fell into the water. Then Elisha cut off a
piece of wood and plunged it into the water; thereupon, the iron floated to the
top. The entire human race had fallen into deep, eternal damnation and was
unable to rescue itself. Christ, the heavenly Elisha, came with the wood of His
cross and lifted us up again. In Ex. 14, Moses struck the Red Sea with his
staff so that it would divide and the Israelites could escape from Pharaoh.
With the wood of His cross, Christ made it possible for the spiritual
Israelites to travel through the Sea of Tribulation and to be rescued from the
hand of the hellish Pharaoh." (Johann Gerhard. An Explanation of the
History of the Suffering and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ. 239-240)
When we hide Jesus in our churches, we lose Him. He is an
afterthought to our reason and experiences. When Jesus hides in our churches,
it is in plain sight and He hides in order that we find Him doing His own work,
speaking His own words, and being His own person.
Jesus hides on the cross so that we cannot take Him off,
meaning, now all our faith and belief must deal with and center on His work
there. We must flee to His crucifix when we wish to see Jesus, we must flee to
His excruciating and humiliating crucifixion if we wish to be exalted, and we
must flee to His sacrifice there if we wish to live with Him.
Jesus has already made His suffering and death on the cross
the crux of the matter. We receive His service offered to us there. Not as we
interpret it, but as He ordained it. And He has ordained that we find Him, Word
and Sacrament, just as Moses, all the prophets, and all the saints found Him:
lowly, granting rest, and lying in our hands.
In this way, we are given the Light. To have the cross is to
be crucified with Christ. That our puffed-up sins are crucified in this life.
That our entire life is cruciform, taking up our cross, daily dying to sin and
rising to new life, and following Him, having to find Jesus in Word and
Sacrament.
What the super-spiritualists hope for in superstitions, the
Word made flesh gives in Word, water, bread, and wine.
