READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Numbers 21:4-9
Philippians 2:5-11
- St. John 12:32-36
Grace to you all and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Phile 1:3)
Who, once again speaks to you today, saying:
“the crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’”
Thus far from God’s Word written down that we may read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. How this is accomplished is through Word and Sacrament and Catechesis. We must be taught the Truth of God. In fact, the rules must be memorized in the light so they can be trusted in the dark. For in life we are faced with many copies and impersonators, thus we memorize the Original in the Light so He can be trusted in the darkness.
Today we are commemorating the recovery of the True Cross as discovered by St. Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, in the 4th century AD. Maybe unfortunately, what she found and brought back to Rome was a piece of wood that was tested on sick persons. It healed one and so was declared a piece of the true cross of Jesus.
Now, before you get all prejudiced against icons and relics, St. Ambrose preached that when St. Helena found the true cross, “she worshiped not the wood, but the King, Him who hung on the wood. She burned with an earnest desire of touching the guarantee of immortality.”
So we give her the benefit of the doubt, not having been there ourselves, but St. Ambrose makes an important shift in distinguishing between the Original and the copy. For St. Ambrose, the wood of the cross was the copy, in other words, the thing that points to the real thing, the Original.
This is also what the crowd was after, in today’s Gospel, when they ask about the Christ. Jesus is talking about dying, when the Scriptures clearly speak of the Christ never-dying. And if the Christ is ever-living, not dying, or maybe unable to die, then that would make Jesus the copy and the true Messiah yet to come.
Let us help the crowd and St. Helena today, and think about what rule would let us distinguish between a copy and the Original. For what is at stake is the truth of the world and the rescue of sinners from this wicked world. It is not worth simply winning a philosophical argument.
The first thing we can examine is the weight of reality that the thing carries. The Original will go all the way and is robust and complex. The copy will only satisfy for a moment and becomes useless after it reaches that point.
Take the wood of the cross. While we can allow that a healing miracle took place because someone touched wood, its usefulness ends there. It helps with nothing else. It does not comfort in times of sadness. It does not forgive sins. Though it can heal, it is limited.
The next rule we examine is where the thing demands that we look. Back to the cross: where are we to look for results in the wood of the cross? It wants us to look at it and it wants us to look inside ourselves for devotion to it. This is the demand of a copy.
Instead, the Original demands we look through it to something outside of itself. The true cross will not point us to itself, the wood, but the weight that hung on it. When we have crosses up in church, they point us to Jesus, not to itself. Extra nos, is the fancy Lutheran Latin phrase. Salvation is found outside ourselves.
And finally, what sort of satisfaction do we get from the copy as opposed to the Original? Are we happy for a moment and then needing more later, like a drug? The copy is fleeting, the Original is rooted in fact and satisfies real hunger.
And yet, in icons and relics we find God’s Truth. He is not willing that any of His creation NOT participate in salvation’s history. St. Cyril says it this way: “He was truly crucified for our sins. For if you would deny it, the place refutes you visibly, this blessed Golgotha, in which we are now assembled for the sake of Him Who was here crucified; and the whole world has since been filled with pieces of the wood of the Cross.”
Here now is the true witness of the true cross: it held Jesus. That it was set up outside Jerusalem. That it existed in time and space. We have word of it. We have physical proof of it. You can deny it all you want, but it doesn’t make reality less true.
It is not the cross that draws all nations, but the God-man on it, Jesus. Jesus is lifted up. Jesus will draw all men to Himself. However, it was on the cross that all this was accomplished. It was the True Cross that held Jesus, but when Jesus was taken down, it was no longer the True cross. Thus, if the cross is not causing the suffering and death of God, it is not the original, but a copy.
This is taught by God in two ways. First, when He tells us that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, He is saying that the Sabbath Day was a gift to be enjoyed, not an immutable law over us or even over God Himself, for men to attempt to find God guilty of breaking the Sabbath Day laws.
And second, is understanding baptism and the sacraments. God does not give us the inner-working details of Baptism for a reason. So that we cannot take it into a laboratory and make it into a superstitious thing, like being able to bottle it and call it holy water. Or worse, being able to make it without needing Jesus. Baptism and holy water are only valid when they are used as God said. No more no less.
It is Jesus Who is Lord of the sabbath. It is Jesus Who is Lord of Baptism. It is Jesus Who is Lord of the cross. Just as the Sabbath was made for man, so the cross was made for Jesus, not the other way around. The copy of the cross only serves to let Jesus pay for the salvation of all. The true cross brings that salvation to all.
It is Jesus’s job to use the cross, it is our job to preach Christ Crucified and to continue to proclaim His death, through His Supper, until He returns. This we must be taught. We must be catechized and this must be memorized or else we will be mesmerized by the world and its false crosses.
What we memorize is “with what has Christ redeemed you? Answer: Christ has redeemed me not with gold, or silver [, or wood], but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death”.
We memorize Daniel 7:13-14, that though “I saw One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven…He was given dominion…that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed”, it is by His wounds we are healed (Isa 53:5).
We memorize Isaiah 9:7, that even though “Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end”, it is the Blood of Jesus, His Son, which purifies from all sin (1 John 1:7).
The cross of Christ is the answer. It is where the holy Blood of Jesus is spent and the empty tomb is the response, for that is where the promise of God is confirmed. Our Forever-Seed, our Forever-Priest, our Original is the man Who suffers, dies, and rises again. That not even death could hold Jesus, and no one or nothing else, proves Him true.
The cross of Jesus is the Original. By it, the world is widened and made more robust. With the resurrection of the dead now possible, life takes on new meaning. Eternal consequences for our actions, sure, but also the truth of everything Jesus said. In His resurrection all things are made new and Jesus satisfies for all eternity, not just a moment.
We are pointed outside of ourselves to Him. Jesus does the work. Not us, not wood. We were not there when they crucified our Lord, but we were here to sin against Him and fasten Him to the cross. That we find inside ourselves. Outside ourselves we find Jesus perfecting His work of salvation for us.
The cross is a moment in time. No part of history denies it. Jesus was a real person. Jesus was crucified when the Bible says He was. Even His enemies attest to the fact that His followers believed He was raised from the dead and were willing to suffer and die themselves for it. Without even being religious, as the world says, we have a real Jesus, really crucified, and really risen.
All this and more, do our little crosses on our altars point us to. Jesus no longer promises to be on the cross for you and we do not crucify Him again, each Sunday. Instead, the Jesus of the cross, Christ Crucified, Who is raised from the dead, now says to find the fruits of His cross in Word and Sacrament. The cross is brought to us and we are drawn to Him.
Amen.
Who, once again speaks to you today, saying:
“the crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’”
Thus far from God’s Word written down that we may read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. How this is accomplished is through Word and Sacrament and Catechesis. We must be taught the Truth of God. In fact, the rules must be memorized in the light so they can be trusted in the dark. For in life we are faced with many copies and impersonators, thus we memorize the Original in the Light so He can be trusted in the darkness.
Today we are commemorating the recovery of the True Cross as discovered by St. Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, in the 4th century AD. Maybe unfortunately, what she found and brought back to Rome was a piece of wood that was tested on sick persons. It healed one and so was declared a piece of the true cross of Jesus.
Now, before you get all prejudiced against icons and relics, St. Ambrose preached that when St. Helena found the true cross, “she worshiped not the wood, but the King, Him who hung on the wood. She burned with an earnest desire of touching the guarantee of immortality.”
So we give her the benefit of the doubt, not having been there ourselves, but St. Ambrose makes an important shift in distinguishing between the Original and the copy. For St. Ambrose, the wood of the cross was the copy, in other words, the thing that points to the real thing, the Original.
This is also what the crowd was after, in today’s Gospel, when they ask about the Christ. Jesus is talking about dying, when the Scriptures clearly speak of the Christ never-dying. And if the Christ is ever-living, not dying, or maybe unable to die, then that would make Jesus the copy and the true Messiah yet to come.
Let us help the crowd and St. Helena today, and think about what rule would let us distinguish between a copy and the Original. For what is at stake is the truth of the world and the rescue of sinners from this wicked world. It is not worth simply winning a philosophical argument.
The first thing we can examine is the weight of reality that the thing carries. The Original will go all the way and is robust and complex. The copy will only satisfy for a moment and becomes useless after it reaches that point.
Take the wood of the cross. While we can allow that a healing miracle took place because someone touched wood, its usefulness ends there. It helps with nothing else. It does not comfort in times of sadness. It does not forgive sins. Though it can heal, it is limited.
The next rule we examine is where the thing demands that we look. Back to the cross: where are we to look for results in the wood of the cross? It wants us to look at it and it wants us to look inside ourselves for devotion to it. This is the demand of a copy.
Instead, the Original demands we look through it to something outside of itself. The true cross will not point us to itself, the wood, but the weight that hung on it. When we have crosses up in church, they point us to Jesus, not to itself. Extra nos, is the fancy Lutheran Latin phrase. Salvation is found outside ourselves.
And finally, what sort of satisfaction do we get from the copy as opposed to the Original? Are we happy for a moment and then needing more later, like a drug? The copy is fleeting, the Original is rooted in fact and satisfies real hunger.
And yet, in icons and relics we find God’s Truth. He is not willing that any of His creation NOT participate in salvation’s history. St. Cyril says it this way: “He was truly crucified for our sins. For if you would deny it, the place refutes you visibly, this blessed Golgotha, in which we are now assembled for the sake of Him Who was here crucified; and the whole world has since been filled with pieces of the wood of the Cross.”
Here now is the true witness of the true cross: it held Jesus. That it was set up outside Jerusalem. That it existed in time and space. We have word of it. We have physical proof of it. You can deny it all you want, but it doesn’t make reality less true.
It is not the cross that draws all nations, but the God-man on it, Jesus. Jesus is lifted up. Jesus will draw all men to Himself. However, it was on the cross that all this was accomplished. It was the True Cross that held Jesus, but when Jesus was taken down, it was no longer the True cross. Thus, if the cross is not causing the suffering and death of God, it is not the original, but a copy.
This is taught by God in two ways. First, when He tells us that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, He is saying that the Sabbath Day was a gift to be enjoyed, not an immutable law over us or even over God Himself, for men to attempt to find God guilty of breaking the Sabbath Day laws.
And second, is understanding baptism and the sacraments. God does not give us the inner-working details of Baptism for a reason. So that we cannot take it into a laboratory and make it into a superstitious thing, like being able to bottle it and call it holy water. Or worse, being able to make it without needing Jesus. Baptism and holy water are only valid when they are used as God said. No more no less.
It is Jesus Who is Lord of the sabbath. It is Jesus Who is Lord of Baptism. It is Jesus Who is Lord of the cross. Just as the Sabbath was made for man, so the cross was made for Jesus, not the other way around. The copy of the cross only serves to let Jesus pay for the salvation of all. The true cross brings that salvation to all.
It is Jesus’s job to use the cross, it is our job to preach Christ Crucified and to continue to proclaim His death, through His Supper, until He returns. This we must be taught. We must be catechized and this must be memorized or else we will be mesmerized by the world and its false crosses.
What we memorize is “with what has Christ redeemed you? Answer: Christ has redeemed me not with gold, or silver [, or wood], but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death”.
We memorize Daniel 7:13-14, that though “I saw One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven…He was given dominion…that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed”, it is by His wounds we are healed (Isa 53:5).
We memorize Isaiah 9:7, that even though “Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end”, it is the Blood of Jesus, His Son, which purifies from all sin (1 John 1:7).
The cross of Christ is the answer. It is where the holy Blood of Jesus is spent and the empty tomb is the response, for that is where the promise of God is confirmed. Our Forever-Seed, our Forever-Priest, our Original is the man Who suffers, dies, and rises again. That not even death could hold Jesus, and no one or nothing else, proves Him true.
The cross of Jesus is the Original. By it, the world is widened and made more robust. With the resurrection of the dead now possible, life takes on new meaning. Eternal consequences for our actions, sure, but also the truth of everything Jesus said. In His resurrection all things are made new and Jesus satisfies for all eternity, not just a moment.
We are pointed outside of ourselves to Him. Jesus does the work. Not us, not wood. We were not there when they crucified our Lord, but we were here to sin against Him and fasten Him to the cross. That we find inside ourselves. Outside ourselves we find Jesus perfecting His work of salvation for us.
The cross is a moment in time. No part of history denies it. Jesus was a real person. Jesus was crucified when the Bible says He was. Even His enemies attest to the fact that His followers believed He was raised from the dead and were willing to suffer and die themselves for it. Without even being religious, as the world says, we have a real Jesus, really crucified, and really risen.
All this and more, do our little crosses on our altars point us to. Jesus no longer promises to be on the cross for you and we do not crucify Him again, each Sunday. Instead, the Jesus of the cross, Christ Crucified, Who is raised from the dead, now says to find the fruits of His cross in Word and Sacrament. The cross is brought to us and we are drawn to Him.
Amen.
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