Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ + Amen.
Today we celebrate Holy Cross Day. In the church year, we often hold feasts and festivals throughout the year commemorating specific saints of the church or particular events in church history. This day, our feast isn’t about a person or an event, but an object: the Cross. In our lives as Christians, we see and use crosses everywhere. We wear crosses around our necks, hang them up in our churches and parish halls, we make their sign upon our heads and hearts in remembrance of baptism. Some people have crosses tattooed on their bodies. But what is it all for? Why do we do this?
Looking at face value, the cross is a symbol of death. This Roman torture and execution device does not naturally have anything “good” about it. Crucifixion is an excruciatingly painful way to die. Not only were those who were crucified typically scourged beforehand, the act of dying on a cross required them to lift up their whole bodies in order to breathe. The cross was meant to draw out the suffering of those crucified, and to put them on public display for humiliation. Crucifixions were for criminals, slaves, and rebels, used as a tactic by the authorities to put fear in the hearts of those who saw them crucified.
We, as Christians, do see the cross as a symbol of death. When we look at Christ upon the cross, we see the effect of our sin. It is all of the sins that we ourselves have committed that put Him there. He was bruised, beaten, tortured, and killed to satisfy God’s wrath because of US! The cross is a reminder about what we deserve. We know that without the help of our Lord, it would be us who deserved to be put to death in such a way.
At first glance, there’s nothing about looking at the cross that should make us feel good, especially if we see a representation of our Lord Jesus upon it. There is something naturally unsettling about a Cross. Some non-believers have tried to mock Christianity by pointing out how ridiculous it would be to wear a necklace with a gun or an electric chair on it, pointing out that what we see as a symbol of our faith was just a tool of torture and punishment in the ancient world, and we would look crazy if Christ were put to death today by those methods. While they are trying to discredit, they’re sort of right! It would make us look ridiculous. The cross is a strange thing. It’s something the world doesn’t understand and it can even make a Christian uncomfortable. We know from our Epistle reading today that the cross is a stumbling block to the Jews and utter foolishness to the Gentiles. Both Christians and non-Christians can look to the cross as a symbol of death. We, of course, see it as a symbol for the death that happened for us, while the world only sees the death of Jesus as a historical event. But therein lies the key difference. The cross for the Christian is not simply a historical event.
Simply put, without the cross, we are still poor, miserable, hopeless sinners. The cross as a symbol shows us what lengths and horrors were gone to on our behalf. Yet to us Christians, the cross is not JUST a symbol of death. The cross is also a symbol of life. Through the cross, the weapon and tool for the victorious Christ, we have received the forgiveness of sin. The price of our wicked ways has been paid for through the holy, innocent, precious blood of the Son of the Most High God. The cross stands inside and upon the steeples of churches across the globe as a symbol of the hope that shines out from it. Through Christ’s suffering upon this violent tool of death we inherit the gift of eternal life. Your baptism is a baptism into that death upon the cross. Your partaking in the Holy Supper is a partaking in the blood shed for you upon the cursed tree. Outward from Christ’s cross springs the gift of life in a world that, as we have seen firsthand this week in the tragedies both recent and remembered, needs God’s gift of life so desperately.
The cross that we celebrate on “Holy Cross Day” is only “holy” because of the One who died upon it. Without Christ, the cross is just a wooden tool of punishment and death. The symbols we have used in the Christian church for over a millennia are only meaningful because of the one who gave us all meaning. This is why for centuries Lutherans, Catholics, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox Christians have used the crucifix as a symbol in our churches, homes, and artwork. The cross, as it holds the body of our crucified Lord, points us ever to our Lord Jesus in all things.
There are many people that believe that the sight of Christ upon the cross is unsettling. Rightfully so. The sight of a representation of our Lord Jesus bleeding, beaten, and dying should convict us. When we look to our crucified Lord we recognize that it is our sin that put Him there. The blood dripping down from our Savior’s face is our fault. Every last sin you’ve committed, no matter how great or small, can be seen in every artistic representation of our Lord’s death.
But it is also a symbol of our great hope and victory. When we see our Lord hanging upon the cross, we remember that our sins are no longer our own, but Christ’s, and He has buried them in His very own tomb forever. When we see the blood shed for us upon the cross we remember that this very blood covers us, body and soul, and makes us clean in the sight of the Lord.
Empty crosses also point us to Jesus. They remind us that our Lord did not remain dead, but rose again, bringing us the hope of eternal life. An empty cross reminds us of Jesus’s last words upon the cross: “It is finished.” But these words as they were written in the Gospel of John carry more weight than you may realize.
When Christ said these words, and when Saint John the Evangelist wrote them, they are expressed in the perfect tense. That means that the “finished-ness” doesn’t just mean it was finished then, but that it was finished forever, and that the results of it continue. The finished-ness of the cross happens right now, in the present! Christ’s work upon the cross is still active today. And so, in the work of Jesus, the cross is both empty and full. Jesus is Risen! But He is also still your crucified Lord. When you see an “empty cross,” it is a symbol of a good thing, but so is the Christ-filled Cross.
Holy Cross Day began as a celebration commemorating the supposed finding of the true cross that Christ was crucified upon. But whether or not anyone has found the true cross of Christ, that isn’t the reason we celebrate this feast in our church today. We commemorate this day to reflect and meditate on the work that Christ did upon the cross, accomplishing all we need for our salvation. Whenever we look upon a cross, whether it is brass, gold, or wood, whether it is painted with expensive paints or drawn by a little child with crayons, whether it has the body of Christ shown upon it or not, whether it is a small cross we wear on our neck or a fifty-foot cross on the side of the road, they all speak the same message: Christ Crucified. Now and forever your crucified Lord has finished the work that has won for you salvation. Look toward the cross in hope as it points you toward the Christ who delivers you now, and forever.
In the Holy Name of Jesus + Amen.