HOLY CROSS SUNDAY                                                        GLORIA DEI, ANCHORAGE

SEPTEMBER 9, 2007                           PASTOR SCOTT FULLER/VICAR JULIA SEYMOUR

NUMBERS 21:4b-9;  PSALM 98;  I COR 1:18-24;  JOHN 3:13-17

The Old, Rugged Cross

Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word.  Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we may believe and in believing we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Scott:  The Cross – originally an instrument of punishment, a symbol of suffering and shame, is now widely accepted as a form for jewelry: earrings and necklaces, and art: paintings, carvings and tattoos.  Something happened to effect a radical change in our perception of that symbol – it’s as if white was turned to black, a desert into an ocean, a cold winter into a warm summer.  The cross, a cruel symbol of death, has become for us the ultimate symbol of life. 

Today we celebrate…

Julia:  (starts singing, gets louder) Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head…

Scott:  Today, we are called to follow Jesus Christ – in his words, we are to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow him.

Julia:  (sung) The stars in the sky look down where he lay, the little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.

Scott:  The Apostle Paul said of this cross of Christ, “It is folly to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.”

Julia:  (sung) The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes, but…

Scott:  Julia, why are you singing that children’s Christmas carol while I’m trying to preach???

Julia:  Oh, I don’t know…I guess I’d rather think about the manger today than the cross.  I know it’s Holy Cross Sunday, but it’s also Rally Sunday.  The Church is full of children and we don’t want to upset them.  I’m sure these people would rather sing songs that make us feel good about God.  So let’s talk about the manger instead (turn to the people) What do you think?

Scott:  Well, the manger is where it all began.  And Jesus’ birth is as important as his death.  But even in that amazing moment, wouldn’t you agree that there was more than the manger, more than a baby’s birth, more than an innocent child sleeping in heavenly peace?  

Julia:  Well, yes, the arrival of Jesus caused Mary some pain just like any other mother giving birth.  And the barn was crude, the manger made out of rough wood, and filled with prickly straw.

Scott:  Even in that silent-and-holy night there was a sharpness and a piercing that pointed beyond the manger…to a cross on a hill.

Julia:  Yes, but that was Jesus’ cross: it happened almost 2,000 years ago on a hill outside of Jerusalem.  There’s no such cross in my life, not on the hills I have to climb.

Scott:  No, you’re right.  No one will ever experience that kind of cross on that particular hill.  But not all crosses are made out of wood.  Suffering is all around us. 

Julia:  Oh, I know that.  We all know what it means to suffer.  But I wonder what Jesus meant when he said, “Take up your cross and follow me.”  Is he saying that God has a special experience of suffering picked out for each person?  Some awful time of testing that we each have to endure?

Scott:  Are you wondering if God causes us pain to teach us a lesson?

Julia:  No, I trust that God doesn’t send us troubles to drive us to our knees.  And I trust that God has the power to take the bad times in our lives and use them to bring about blessings.  But the cross of Jesus Christ wasn’t just his personal struggle with pain and injustice.  He carried his cross for the sake of all humanity.  Does God expect the same thing of us?

Scott:  That sounds like a bigger job than we can handle.  I wonder if the cross we’re called to bear is a little less grand and a lot more human; not one made of wood, steel or stone, but a cross that’s found in flesh, blood and bone.

Julia:  Say some more…

Scott:  Well, you remember how Martin Luther talked about the crosses we meet in the midst of life, in the people we encounter as we live out our days.  Every person who looks to be loved, who aches to be accepted, is a cross just waiting to be picked-up and carried.  The path through life that Jesus walked was littered with such crosses…and so are ours.

Julia:  That’s true.  I guess the people will change, but the needs of people won’t .  We will always meet folks who are filled with questions and doubts, people who are ripe to be introduced to Jesus.

Scott:  Yeah, I doubt that we’ll ever meet a person with leprosy warning us with shouts of Unclean!  Unclean! – but we have met and will meet people with AIDS and other diseases who have been labeled unclean by society.

Julia:  Nor will Nicodemus ever visit us in the night…but we have met with people who feel stuck in the darkness, empty of faith and filled with questions about God, ready to give up hoping for God’s gift of grace.  And most of us will never meet a rich ruler of a country…but we have met people who are poor and lonely and sick. 

Scott:  I agree – we can’t carry crosses for other people.  But that’s the good news part of living our lives in the shadow of Jesus’ cross.  We’re not called to be saviors of the world; we’re not even called to save our neighbors, family, friends or ourselves.  Instead, we’re called to see in Jesus’ death, our death to sin…

Julia:  …and in Jesus’ resurrection, our resurrection to a life of faith in God and service to our neighbor.  That is a real twist, changing an instrument of torture into a promise of good news, a tool of death into a doorway to life.  That fits well with Paul’s words for today, that the message of the cross is foolishness to many, but to us, it is the very power of God!

Scott:  What an amazing gift!  Jesus died on the cross, a terrible experience of pain for him…but as he was lifted up in death, so he was lifted up from the tomb on Easter, and so he raises us daily to live a new life of faith in God.

Julia:  I guess a cross we don’t have to bear is one of worry about whether we’re good enough for God to love, or worthy enough for Jesus to forgive.

Scott:  As we make our way through life, walking straight at times, stumbling at others, even falling down and becoming lost, we can trust that Christ is at our side through thick and thin, helping us find strength in the middle of our weaknesses, carrying our crosses and being carried by his.

Julia: I guess there’s no getting away from the crosses in our lives, is there?

Scott:  I don’t think so.  It’s fun to dream about what life would be like without any suffering, pain or death.  But it’s a blessing to be able to live a life of faith in the midst of that valley of shadows.

Julia:  Jesus seems to be telling us that we shouldn’t be afraid of the times when we suffer and hurt, but that in and through them, God promises to stir within in us the Spirit’s gift of faith, and through us the wonder of grace.

Scott:  So here’s the strange connection: where the manger can be a cradle of death, the cross can be the instrument of life…

Julia:  …sounds good to me.

Scott:  Me too – I guess one of the greatest insights we can have is that we are being held safely in the loving arms of our God.  Then imagine how that blessing multiplies when we realize that we are part of the world-wide community we call the Church.

Julia:  Yeah, though we must bear crosses that are uniquely our own, still we belong to a family of faith.  It’s an identity that’s meant to fill us with courage and strength as we use our gifts to follow Jesus as we worship together, pray for each other, serve one another and our neighbors in need.

Scott:  So we are blessed by both the cradle and the cross, celebrating the truth that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and that God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

Julia:  So, do I have to quit singing Christmas carols?

Scott:  Only when I’m trying to preach.

(shake hands, sit down)