The Cross

Reverend Philip Stringer

Numbers 21:4-9

1 Corinthians 1:18-24

John 3:13-17

LET US PRAY: Gracious God, you so loved the world that you gave your only Son. Speak to our hearts and stir them with a living faith that we may have life in his name. AMEN

I’m a big believer in taking notes. I write stuff down because I have a brain like a sieve. If I don’t write it down, I’ll probably forget it.

I put things on my calendar on my phone, but it’s easy to lose track of stuff like that, so if it’s something REALLY important, I’ll put a more permanent note up -- maybe stuck to the wall above my desk or on the refrigerator or on the door.

The problem, though, is that if I put the note up too far in advance, I get used to it being there ... I stop reading it ... before too long, it’s become invisible and I end up forgetting to do what the note was supposed to remind me to do.

The cross is one of the most recognizable symbols on earth. It is in churches and on hilltops and hangs around the necks of millions upon millions of people. It is SO common that it can become sort of invisible. The cross can easily lose its meaning.

I have a pastor/friend in Indiana who really gets angry about “pretty crosses” -- especially the use of the cross as jewelry. Delicate gold crosses with a diamond in the middle.

Cute precious moments cross nightlight with kittens and flowers.

He is right in a sense. The cross is a terrible and ugly creation. It is the symbol of death, torture, intimidation and oppression. Crosses should be ugly.

Maybe that’s the sort of cross we should have. Has the cross become invisible for you? I’ll admit that I look at the cross frequently without the slightest thought of its meaning.

Is the cross too common? Should we remove it? There is a church in Chicago that has become famous for reaching out to the unchurched in suburban America. The pastor of Willow Creek Community Church spent a lot of time in the 1970’s going from door to door in Chicago’s suburbs, asking people why they didn’t go to church. What he found was a sense of disillusionment with organized religion-- especially the institutional church. He said that many people identify the cross with the church as an institution, so he decided they wouldn’t have any crosses in their church at all. Willow Creek’s membership has exploded over the years, and by 2015, their weekly attendance was 25,000.

Willow Creek accomplished a lot of important things and carried out an important ministry to many people. But this is one area where we might disagree with the perspective. Can there be Christianity without the cross? Should it be set aside if it makes people uncomfortable?

Rather than removing the cross because it reminds people of the failures of the church, most Christians prefer another solution: recapture the meaning of the cross. Instead of us defining the meaning of the cross, the meaning of the cross should define who we are.

Holy Cross Day is intended as a time for you and me to remember what this symbol is all about. Our lessons today are intended to help us do that.

Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus who is struggling to understand the radical teachings of Jesus -- and I mean RADICAL. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, came to Jesus because he was confused. He seems to want to believe that Jesus has come from God, yet everything Jesus teaches is 180-degrees from what the Jewish tradition teaches.

Monet picture -- it’s a lot like looking at this upside down. It’s all there. It’s still pretty. You can pick out certain parts, but it doesn’t make total sense. It’s only until you turn it right-side-up that you suddenly see the big picture.

On the one hand, Jesus didn’t really teach anything new. What he DID do was to take the Law and the Prophets and turned them upside down -- or, rather, right-side-up -- for the first time.

Nicodemus thought the key to salvation and purity was right living. Do good and keep yourself clean and you will be pure.

Jesus taught that salvation means accepting that you are dirty; that we are slaves to the “law of sin,” as Paul later put it. Salvation is out of your hands. Instead, it is in God’s hands. To illustrate this, Jesus points to the story of Moses raising the bronze serpent in the wilderness.

The problem in the wilderness, of course, was serpents on the ground. The solution was to put a serpent up on a pole.

In Jesus’ example, if the solution is a human (the Word made flesh) on a pole, then the problem must be the humans on the ground.

That was hard for Nicodemus to accept -- and it’s hard for us to accept today, too. We are the problem. YOU are the problem. I am the problem.

This is perhaps the hardest thing for anyone to accept. We would like to believe that the problem is simply the bad things we do: “I should not have said that hurtful thing.” “I was driving too fast; I should slow down.” “I knew the store gave me too much money back. Next time I will return it.” If we think this way, the problem is bad things and the solution is just to stop doing bad things. We don’t need Jesus, in this case.

We want the solution to come from within us. But it cannot -- no more than you can save yourself from a snake bite by thinking positive thoughts. The problem is not the things we do. The problem is that we are sinful human beings. And so, the “cure” must come from outside of us.

The symbol of Jesus on a pole shows us that the problem with us is us -- and that Jesus is the solution. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Today you and I must face a truth that is difficult to accept in some ways -- but is freedom and life in its fullness:

We are sinners. That is who we are, and no amount of good works will change that.

But God loves sinners, and that is why Jesus was born. The Word became flesh to live among us. And ultimately, he became flesh so that he might be raised up on the cross -- and all who look to him will be saved.

He saves you and me from judgement against our sinful nature. You and I, through faith, have already passed through this judgment. Your sins are washed from you daily in the waters of baptism.

Nicodemus thought that by living a good life, a person could make oneself righteous. What Jesus showed him in turning that around is that we are made righteous by an act of God’s mercy — and when we have faith in God’s mercy, a good life naturally follows.

In my first congregation there was a high school student who came to worship several times wearing a yin & yang necklace. I asked her if she knew the meaning of the symbol. She did not. It was just the popular symbol that “everybody is wearing,” she told me. It had no meaning for her except to represent the “in thing”.

That’s what happens to the cross, too. The symbol of the cross may mean different things to different people. It may mean judgment and exclusion to some. It may mean abuse, oppression and domination to others. It may mean nothing to yet others.

But when you and I look at it, there is only one thing to see -- and only one thing to tell the world -- the cross is love in action.

When I served Good Shepherd Church in Taipei, I created the bulletin from scratch each week, including the Cover art. I would try to find something that captured a theme for the day and came up short sometimes.

So when I do that, I go to the kids.

I asked my daughter, Rachel, — who was 5 or 6 at the time — if she would draw a cross for the cover. That’s all. She agreed and when she brought it to me, she had drawn a cross with a heart on it.

I didn’t tell her to put a heart on that cross, but somehow, somewhere she learned that the cross means love.

We see crosses quite frequently in our daily lives. My hope for you on this Holy Cross Day — and every day — is that when you see a cross, you will see the heart of God.

When you look to the cross, remember the love of Jesus, and know that you are loved — and because of that love, you are safe.

AMEN