This particular feast we are
celebrating this weekend is call the exultation of the cross. And as part of the legend goes St. Helen,
wife of Constantine, she actually had found the true cross on which Jesus died. Whether she didn’t, the important thing
though is that it is a very important feast.
Really the scriptures just want to pour out God’s love for us.
And you know that one line
from the gospel, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,”
is probably one of the most famous lines in scripture. You see it on bumper stickers, and you see it
on plaques, and other places too. And
one of the most basic symbols that we have as Christians of course is the
cross. And you can go and you find that
image and that symbol everywhere. You
know you find it on people’s desks, they got it on their rings, people even see
it on tattoos. Old people have it, young
people. Believers, perhaps people who
maybe are not even Christian. I notice a
lot of times you see media people or stars, athletes are wearing the cross on a
chain around their neck as well. It is a
very beautiful symbol, this symbol of the cross. And probably if you ask some people, “What
does it really mean?” Some people will
say, “Well, I don’t know. It’s a symbol
of Christianity.”
Well it’s a very important
symbol because it’s a symbol for love, for fidelity, for faith. One of our most basic symbols of what life is
all about as well as death. Because it is
a symbol of that really I think has two very important ideas. It reveals, it gives us a glimpse into God’s
nature. As the gospel said, God sent His
only begotten Son or love as it were. It
reveals God’s nature. God’s nature is
love being poured out upon you and me.
But also then it tells us that this symbol of the cross, that’s how
Jesus achieved salvation, by His death on the cross.
Go back to the first
reading. And the very symbol, the very
image for healing the people who grumbled against God in the desert, and they
were bitten by serpents. Moses then
mounted a serpent on a cross, and the very thing that was the cause of their
anxiety and their pain became the symbol of their healing.
So that’s why the
cross. If I asked everybody here today,
“How do you explain this mystery? What’s
the meaning behind it?” Probably
everybody here would have an experience in their life, some ‘cross’
moment. Maybe you feel you are carrying
a cross right now too. Explain all of it
and what it means to you.
You know there is a, I think
it was made into a book, I saw excerpts of it in “Reader’s Digest”. It’s called the “Last Lecture Series” and it
was the Last Lecture Series by a Randy Pousch, was his name. And it was at Carnegie-Mellon
University. They would invite every
year a member of the faculty to give a presentation or a talk as if this would
be his or her last time they would address their students. And of course, as fate would have it, this
Randy Pousch, when he was asked to give his last lecture it really was his last
one because he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and only had less than a
year to live. And if you read it and you
listen to it, you find something about the cross because the hall was filled to
overflowing, kind of unusual for this Last Lecture Series. He talked about his life, his education but
also he tried to make some humor into it, bring it into it. But everybody knew this was going to be his
final lecture of his whole life. He
talked about his love he has for his wife, for his three children. And finally he said you know, he talked about
brick walls. The brick walls are there
for a reason. The brick walls are not
there to keep us out, but the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show
how badly we want something. He said the
metaphor I use is this, “Somebody’s going to push my family off a cliff pretty
soon and I won’t be there to catch them, and that breaks my heart. But I have some time to sew some nets to
cushion the fall. I could curl up in a
ball and cry or I can get to work on the nets.”
Randy died this past July 25th. He took the very thing that was this brick
wall, we would say his cross, his cancer, and instead of crying about it and
whining about it and saying this is it, done, I can’t do anything, he used that
as the very instrument of transformation, as a means of lecturing to people
about the value of life, the importance of family, and never giving up. That’s what the cross is for you and for me.
You know when something
happens in our lives, some tragedies.
You can even think if this Hurricane Ike that just roared through Texas
and is going up the rest of the country.
The other hurricanes, the tsunamis in other parts of the world,
tornadoes, storms and ravages of nature.
We have no control over that.
Think about too of the madness of human beings, the violence that people
do to one another, torture, hatred, killings, muggings, rapes. And none of that makes sense and they are
terrible, and we never diminish the suffering that other people go
through. But what’s the first question
we always ask? Why? Why me Lord?
Why us? Why?
There is no easy answer is
there? What do you do? You look at the cross of Christ. Jesus came to show us that there is meaning
in all of these tragedies and all of these sufferings. He reminds us that suffering itself isn’t
redemptive because every person here in this church has suffered and does from
physical, emotional, spiritual sufferings.
We cannot think of how many people just in the parish this last week
have been in the hospital undergoing surgery for cancer, brain tumors, whatever
it might be. Think of all the people who
have lost their homes because of the economic conditions. The people who have come asking for help for
food, for the basic necessities of life.
And it goes on and on and on. And
everyone of you here tonight, myself included, either personally have suffered
or are suffering or know someone close to us who is and does.
Where do you find meaning in
it? Suffering in itself does not bring
redemption. Never has and it never
will. It is only the cross of Jesus
Christ that brings redemption.
So what do you do? You take your cross and I’ll take my cross
and we take our crosses and we put them on the cross of Jesus. There’s where the redemption comes. You take whatever it is that you are
suffering, somebody else’s pain or hardship or the madness of this world, or
the violence or the hatred and we take it and we put it on the cross of Jesus
and He carries it with us and for us.
Will it help you suffer any better? I don’t know.
But will it help you and me get through it? Yes.
To get through it to the other side, that’s what redemption is
about. That’s why this altar is here for
you and me tonight. We will come and
place bread and wine upon this altar which represent each and every one of us,
and then we will lift ourselves up to God and God will accept you and me and He
will make us become the Body and the Blood of His Son Jesus and then give us
back in turn the gift of His Son Jesus in Holy Communion. Then you and I will go through those doors,
everywhere we will go tonight and throughout this week and we will bring the
cross and the power of Jesus and we will redeem, we will transform the
suffering, the hatred, the dying to light and to hope. Never get down. Never begin to doubt the words. When we say it doesn’t make sense, and it
doesn’t, take up your cross and put it on the cross of Jesus.