O Cross, surpassing all the stars in splendor, world renowned, holier than all things, you alone were counted worthy to uphold the world’s ransom. Sweet the wood, sweet the iron, bearing so sweet a burden; we have here assembled to celebrate your praises, Alleluia.
(Antiphon on the Magnificat for the Finding of the Cross)
I've been listening to a series of lectures given at a recent preaching conference at Notre Dame University. One presentation in particular caught my attention. It was on preaching the parables of Jesus, and it was subtitled: “Explain. Exclaim. Proclaim.” I was a bit disappointed when the presenter said that the last thing we should do with the parables is try to explain them. Rather the preacher’s task is to exclaim and proclaim them anew, seeing the contemporary world as if through their eyes.
I must confess that it is almost impossible for me to refrain from trying to explicate the mystery of the cross of Christ. There has been century upon century of attempts to explain, or at least understand, what was happening when Christ died on the cross. What was being wrought and by whom? Why was it necessary or was it? What was the human need and what was the divine response and was it efficacious?
Anyone with even a glancing acquaintance with Christian theology is aware of the many theories or models that have been offered to help us wrap our minds, if not our hearts, around the mystery of this event so central for our Christian self- understanding. There are theories or models which stress the role of Christ as the victor over death or over that agent of death that we call the devil. Others emphasize the role of Christ as the perfect sacrifice, undoing the disobedience of our ancestral forbears. Or as the one who paid a certain debt to satisfy the moral outrage caused by human sin over against the stern face of a righteous and judging God. Still others draw our attention to the converting power of the perfect humility and self-emptying of Jesus the Christ.
One thing that characterizes our human attempts to come to terms with the mystery of the cross is a sense that if only we could find the missing piece, a clue such as we might find in a mystery novel, we could finally understand it. But of course, the mystery of the cross of Christ is not at all like that of a mystery novel. It's not about some missing evidence or a hidden hint, access to which might enable us to make sense of it on our terms. No. The mystery of the cross is mystery in a totally other sense. It is a mystery that we must enter into and then explore further and further all our days. It is a boundless mystery, a relationship really, one that invites us more and more into the deep places of God.
I'm not particularly wedded to any of these classic models of redemption or atonement, though I find some more interesting or helpful or suggestive than others. And I'm also not particularly enamored of catch phrases that try to encapsulate the Christian message in ten words or less. But I think there is a
phrase, a meme, a slogan which our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry often uses, and I think he has his finger on a profound interpretive truth. It is the phrase, used to great effect at the marriage of Prince Harry and Meagan: “If it's not about love it's not about God.” If it's not about love, then it's not about the Gospel revelation of God given to us in Christ Jesus. Period. This is, as theologians might say, a
fundamental hermeneutical principle. And it is a principle that needs to be applied with special rigor to any attempt to wrap our minds around the cross.
The cross is all about love and nothing but love. Yes, it is a message of love that is embedded in a particular historical and political situation, which makes it messy and sometimes hard to comprehend. It is a message about love that meets evil, suffering and death head on. It’s a tough love. But it is above all a message of love and a sign of God’s enduring love for God's creation. It is not a sign of a vengeful God which a deficient Trinitarian theology ascribes to the Father. Nor is it a sign of a passive Son who is victimized by both the Godhead and the human order. Nor is it the magic work of the Spirit who is unable to do better than to pull a rabbit out of a particularly unfortunate hat. No. It is the work of the One God working out eternal love in a particular time and place, a place not so different from ours today. And any theology or spirituality that would lead us to think that the cross that we celebrate today is ultimately a tragedy rather than, in the classic sense of the term, a comedy is simply wrong.
Before the gospel reading we sang the hymn “Come O thou Traveler.” It is one of over six thousand hymns written by the endlessly prolific Charles Wesley, the 18th century Anglican priest who, with his brother John, gave birth to the Methodist movement. One of the glories of Wesley was his deep conviction that, from first to last, the work of God—including and especially the work of the cross—is a work of love. In that hymn, which tells of Jacob wrestling with the angel, Wesley continues the scriptural story from Genesis. Before he releases him, Jacob demands the Angel (that is God) to name himself. And he does:
Tis Love, tis Love! Thou diedst for me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart:
the morning breaks, the shadows flee.
Pure universal Love thou art;
thy mercies never shall remove,
thy nature and thy name is Love.
Others have said it before him, of course, and perhaps none more passionately or eloquently than the Lady Julian of Norwich. In memorable words at the end of her Revelations of Divine Love we hear this:
Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was
His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love.
Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn
and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein
other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord's
meaning
In my book, this is the only safe and adequate interpretation of this unfathomable mystery that we celebrate today, the celebration of the Holy Cross of our Savior. It is of course a strange and awful love, a love which empties itself of all grasping, of all pretension, of all ego self so that in doing so it may give space for a cure, a remedy, a universal healing. And by its example it offers us a power to do likewise in this life and in the next. It is a promise and a hope ratified by resurrection.
It’s no surprise that we want to understand this. And the work of unpacking and repacking this understanding will continue, as it has for centuries. But as the presenter from the Notre Dame conference reminds us about the parables: beyond explanation, our work is exclamation and proclamation.
What can that mean? How do we exclaim the cross today? And how do we proclaim it? I think the short answer is this: we proclaim the cross by living lives that are themselves more and more self-emptying and less and less grasping and controlling and living into that difficult discipline or practice in thought, word and action. And we exclaim the cross when we notice such actions and such grace in the world around us, be they small or great, and acknowledge them. Oh wow. That seems so weak, doesn’t it? But if we start there, if we train our eyes to see how the power of the cross is still operating in us and around us and even occasionally through us, we will exclaim the cross, and its message will become self- explanatory.
Explain, exclaim, proclaim. Brothers and sisters, we are doing this right now in a particularly concentrated and ritualized way as we once again offer, together with Christ and in Christ, this Eucharist which proclaims the death of the Lord until he comes. We exclaim it with our lips and in our hearts, in these or similar words: “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life, Christ Jesus come in glory.” May we proclaim it, this mystery of the Holy Cross of our Savior, with our very lives.
Amen.
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