I am going to invite you to close you eyes in just a moment. And I am going to ask you to image something in your mind. And when I do, give yourself a bit of time to picture it – what aspects do you notice? What are you drawn to? Let your mind’s eye play with the image in your head – to contemplate it. So, close your eyes now. The object that I want you to image is a cross. What do you see when you see the cross? Is there a corpus on it? What material is it made of? What do you notice, what are you drawn to, what do you see?
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Some see only the wounds. They are drawn to the scars and nail prints and blood and scourges – because their own lives are marked with that pain and suffering. Some are drawn to the face – to look into those eyes – hoping to find forgiveness or love or understanding instead of the judgement they have known from self or others. Some cannot picture a body there – but only the empty arms of the wood, because they know they are being invited to carry their own cross, to join Jesus on that wood. Some see the scandal there – the betrayal, the abandonment, the failure, the death –and they see what humanity has done to love incarnate.
One budding theologian here at St. Justin, looking upon our crucifix asked: Why does Jesus have a hole in his belly? On one level, he understood the kenosis – the emptying of Jesus that St. Paul spoke about. This morning, Fr. Johnson spoke about seeing Love and Sin and Suffering and Mercy in the mystery of the cross. But what do you see when you gaze upon the cross? What is there for you this year?
Among the many things that might be there for you, let me add one more. When you see that cross – may you see a choice. May you see a choice.
It is tempting, at times to think that the cross was something that Jesus could have avoided if he had played his cards right. John certainly did not think that was the case. If you know anything about the geography of Jerusalem, you would know how easy it would have been for Jesus to have avoided this moment. The garden of Gethsemane was about a 3 wood away from the Golden Gate to the walled city of Jerusalem. It was that gate where Judas and the soldiers came out to arrest Jesus. It is that gate which is easily seen from the garden. There was one path from the garden, up the mount of Olives. There the road diverges in three directions, one north, the Via Mare, the route to the sea. A second west, into the desert, and a third south to Jericho and the Dead Sea. Jesus would have had a 5 minute head start. That would have been more than enough time to get to the top of the hill and be well on his way in ONE of those directions. Then it would be a guessing game and cat and mouse, and he would be free.
But he stays. The cross was HIS choice, his decision to embrace a whole different pattern for our living, a different pattern for the transformation of human suffering. On the cross Jesus chooses the path of self emptying love. He transforms the world’s pain and suffering in the only way you can without becoming what you are transforming – by bearing the suffering in his own body. You can’t overcome hatred by more hatred. You can’t overcome abuses of power by using more power. You have to transform it. And you do that by absorbing into yourself. That’s what the cross says.
If we really see what is there on the cross for us, then we must be willing to choose what Jesus chose – to bear the sufferings even of those whom have wounded and betrayed us; to bear within ourselves the world’s pain as our own, and so transform it and redeem it. That is the choice that Jesus made upon the cross for us. To accept all our sinfulness and let it DIE with him on the cross. And that is the choice that is before us who come to worship this evening.
In a few moments, you will have the opportunity to come forward and reverence a relic of the True Cross. We bring to that cross, all those things which we see when we see the cross – our failures, our need for love, our suffering, our sinfulness. What I pray is that tonight you and I will have the courage to bring what Jesus brought to his cross – a choice. THE choice – to follow the pattern and life of Jesus. Bring to the cross YOUR love. Bring to the cross YOUR choice – to live as he has lived, to love as he has loved, and to give of yourself so that all you may know the power of the cross active through you.
What DO you see, when you see the cross?