The Christian God Is A Bit Unusual, Isn't He? Series

[This sermon was preached at St Barnabas Northolt Sunday 20th October 2024 - Trinity 21 Year B (Proper 24)]

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[Making the sign of the Cross] We meet in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

Would you all like to try that? [get them to make the sign of the cross]

A month or so back Kerrie and I visited Paris- which got me thinking about the beautiful Cathedral of Notre Dame which so tragically burnt down in 2019.

When the fire was finally brought under control and the first pictures were released you could see the scared remains of the roof up and down the main aisle.

But at the far end, on the high altar stood the golden cross amidst the debris. Why did the cross remain while so much of this international treasure was destroyed?

The simple answer is that the wood in the roof has a much lower kindling point than the gold covering the cross. But there is more to it than that. Why after 2000 years are we still celebrating the death of a man on a cross amidst the debris of human folly? (1)

We have a huge cross hanging from our ceiling in St Barnabas [point to it]. The cross is the central most important symbol of Christianity—for good and for ill. In the past churches were often built in the shape of a cross. People buy and wear all sorts of crosses. Round their necks; lapel badges; in their ears [miming it]. The building is full of crosses - I think there are well over a hundred of them in St Barnabas. (2)

And - as we did when we just began this sermon - many Christians Anglicans, Lutherans, Orthodox and Catholics make the sign of the cross as part of their worship. That goes way back. The early Christian writer Tertullian, the North African lawyer-theologian who lived around 200 AD wrote:

“At every forward step,

at every going out,

When we put on our clothes

and when we bathe

When we sit at the table to eat

when we light the lamps.

Yea, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign of the cross.” (3)

“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”

The Trinity and the Cross - the two things that we celebrate when we do “In the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit” - are the two distinguishing marks of Christianity. The two things that make us different from other religions.

In our Gospel reading James and John picture God as powerful and majestic. They have read Old Testament books like Enoch and Daniel - with their depiction of a “Son of Man” who is a majestic Divine King - eg Daniel 7:13-14 “Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

They had heard Jesus describe himself as the Son of Man - and they wanted in. , ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ (Mark 10:37)

Now we think they are crass and stupid - but that is what people were expecting at the time.

As the historian Tom Holland puts it -

“The utter strangeness of all this, for the vast majority of people in the Roman world, did not lie in the notion that a mortal might become divine. The border between the heavenly and the earthly was widely held to be permeable. Divinity, however, was for the very greatest of the great: for victors, and heroes, and kings. Its measure was the power to torture one’s enemies, not to suffer it oneself.” (4)

For James and John - they expected the Divine Son of Man to come in glory. A great warrior king who defeats his enemies. They have read Enoch. They have read Daniel.

They can’t understand what Jesus is talking about when he says “can you drink the cup that I drink and be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with” - which we get refers to his death.

But that idea was too shocking for the ancient world. As the powerful and beautiful prophecy in Isaiah 53 makes clear - when people look at someone being tortured to death on a cross, they wouldn’t think “that must be God” - they would think “we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted”