The Sunday of the Cross

Glory to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In my experience, if an American knows one verse of scripture, it’s usually John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Before I was a Christian, as a teenager I stayed with a family who had a Gideon Bible. In its front pages were about thirty translations of John 3:16, in languages I could pronounce, other languages I could at least recognize, and some that are just scribbles I still can’t begin to decipher. I wasn’t interested yet in spiritual things, but I was already a language nerd, so I read all those translations and compared them. (Norwegian and Danish, so similar; Dutch and Afrikaans, barely different…) I don’t remember thinking at that time about what the text meant. But I could recite, “Porque de tal manera amó Dios al mundo, que ha dado a su Hijo unigénito…” or half a dozen other flavors.

And then, after I came to faith in Christ, I was told to start memorizing scripture, a verse at a time. Nice! I had already done one!

The problem with memorizing individual sentences, in scripture or anything else, is that a single sentence makes a good internet meme but it doesn’t exist apart from its context. Here is the part immediately before John 3:16:

No one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life; for God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life; for God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him (John 3:14-17).

Saint John’s thought is racing ahead of his words here! He’s just jumped from the incarnation of Christ to his ascension – the Son of Man who came down from heaven and now is in heaven – to the days of Moses, 1400 years earlier, to the present tense where God sent his Son to save the world. John is tying the birth and ascension of Christ to the serpent that Moses lifted up, and he expects us to make a connection about the Cross.

In the twenty-first chapter of Numbers, the Israelites are in their long wandering in the desert, and they’re dying because of venomous snakes. The Lord tells Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live” (cf. (Numbers 21:3-9).

Moses makes an image of a venomous snake out of bronze, displays it on the crossbar of a tall pole (the Hebrew word means a standard, like our church banners with their horizontal crossbar.) I think you see where we’re going with this…  When the people who are dying, look with faith at the icon of their own death, hung upon a cross, then they are saved from death, made alive and whole.

John is going to return to this image again in a few chapters, where Christ says: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but as my Father has taught me, I speak these things… Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” And John adds, “This he said, signifying what death he should die.” (John 8:28; 12:31-33)

Saint Paul writes that “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Saint John of Damascus unpacks this for us a bit:

Since our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin, he was not subject to death (since death came into the world through sin.) [Christ] died, therefore, because he took death upon himself, on our behalf, and he made himself an offering to the Father for our sakes. For we had sinned against God, and it was fitting that God should receive the ransom for us, and that we should thus be delivered from condemnation.

Christ on the cross is not being punished for sins; he has none. What is happening is that he is carrying our sins up to the cross, through death, as an intercession – the same way I have put your names on the diskos and offer them up to God in intercession today together with the thank offering of bread and wine that in the Eucharist. When we look at the icon of the crucifixion, we are not seeing a man being murdered – we are seeing a priest carrying up all the names and sin and death of every one of his people to the Father. We are seeing the God and King of the Universe, of his own will, reigning as King on the cross as on a throne, taking away the fear and power of death.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57).

Pilate had the inscription “King of the Jews” posted on the cross. But our icons label him “The King of Glory.” The rulers of this world thought they had humiliated and killed a troublesome man. But Christ was showing us what it means to be King.

You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their superiors exercise authority over them. It shall not be this way among you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:25-26).

On the Cross Christ is revealed as the King of Glory, “the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence” (Colossians 1:18).

But the message of the Cross is not only about a one-time historical event. Christ told his disciples, “Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the sake of the Gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:34,35).

“Take up your cross.”

That was a hard saying in those days. A cross was nothing but an instrument of execution for condemned criminals of the worst sort. If you ever saw anyone carrying a cross, you knew he was a dead man walking – his only destination was shame and death. Crucifixion was meant to inspire horror and fear, like a lynching tree in our own history.

“Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

I recently re-read the book St Innocent of Alaska wrote, called “The Way into the Kingdom of Heaven.” He writes in one chapter that no one can be saved without taking up the cross.

The Church offers us a number of ways to challenge our stubborn will and teach ourselves to do what matters instead of what we want right this minute. So we fast from meat a few times a week, and we stand for long services. We make time for prayers at home and we practice costly hospitality and sacrificial almsgiving. These are little, external crosses.

And then we take up internal crosses no one else can see. We shut down thoughts of complaining or criticism, struggling to replace them with thankfulness and blessing and intercession. We forgive everyone, as we want God to forgive us. We let someone else have the best parking place, take the second-nicest piece of pie, and let other people have the last word. We’re practicing humility and mercy, even if we’re not good at it.

But St Innocent notes that most of us don’t pick up very many crosses, either external ones like fasting or internal ones like cutting off unprofitable thoughts. And for that reason, our God is so gracious and faithful and true to his promise that in his mercy he allows us to receive additional crosses: bodily illness, financial stress, horrible neighbors and bosses, and a culture that hates humility, purity, and the commands of the Gospel.

The Lord is committed to finish what he has begun in you: He called you for a purpose and he is determined to form the likeness of Christ in you. This is so important to him that he will not allow you to perish for lack of a cross.

This is why Saint Paul writes, “God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

Do we want to be conformed to the likeness of Christ, and gain the heavenly Kingdom? For Christ, the road to the resurrection and the right hand of the Father was the way of the cross. It won’t be otherwise for us, his disciples. With Paul, we want to “know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death – if, by any means, [we] may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8-11).

Therefore,

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus – who, although being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Colossians 2:6-11).

Now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.