September 15, 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Mark 8:27-38
In Search of the Cross
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Yesterday, September 14, is recognized as Holy Cross Day. The festival commemorates when St. Helena discovered what is believed to be the true cross. Here’s how it happened:
Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. His mother, Helena, also became a Christian. In the year 326, Constantine sent his mother Helena to the Holy Land on a quest. She was to find the sites significant to the life and ministry of Jesus. Where exactly was Jesus born in Bethlehem? Where did he live in Nazareth? Where did he multiply the loaves and the fishes? Where was Peter’s house in Bethsaida?
In the early 300’s oral memories of these significant sites were still circulating. These clues aided Helena in her search for these sites. And she was very successful in her quest. This also included the site of Jesus’ tomb.
What made it a little tricky was that Jerusalem had been rebuilt after it had been sacked by the Romans. The oral clues led Helena to the site of what was now a temple dedicated to Venus. Helena ordered the temple to be removed and a careful excavation to begin. Underneath the layers, they indeed found a small tomb. But the area also revealed a small hill with three crosses lying in disarray.
Helena surmised that this was the site of Golgotha, where Jesus had been crucified. But there were three crosses. In order to identify which of the three crosses had borne Jesus and which the two thieves, a terminally ill woman was brought there. One by one, she touched the three crosses. And when she touched the third cross, she was immediately healed. This miracle, it was believed, identified the true cross of Jesus.
Helena ordered that a church be constructed over this most holy of sites. And so the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built. If you travel there today, as you enter you’ll see the small tomb on the ground level. And when you climb a flight of stairs, there you will see an altar built over the rocky outcropping where the crosses were found.
When Helena left Jerusalem and returned to Constantinople, she took a piece of the cross with her. The remainer was housed within the Jerusalem church. However, over repeated wars, that Jerusalem cross was forever lost. The only remaining portion was the section that Helena had taken to Constantinople.
There it remained and was venerated by pilgrims. However, many years later a new emperor faced bankruptcy. In order to generate cash, he had the holy relic divided into pieces and then he sold them off to the highest bidders. A few of these smaller relics still exist today. And that is the story behind what is believed to be Jesus’ true cross. Buried under rubble, divided into pieces, lost to history, and sold to the highest bidder.
Nowadays crosses can be found in abundance. They don’t only adorn our sanctuaries and churches. They don’t just rest atop our steeples. They’ve become fashion statements. Athletes wear blingy gold crosses. We find crosses embossed on coffee mugs and scented candles.
But it wasn’t always this way. In Jesus’ time, a cross was a cruel instrument of death, to be avoided at all costs! Crosses didn’t decorate the walls of family dining rooms. They stood along the byways outside of towns. Criminals were nailed on them and died horrible deaths.
Now, Jesus had an appointment with his own cross. And that cruel end wasn’t something he shied away from. No, this distant cross was his destiny! It was to be the final movement in what was the symphony of his life.
But when he told his disciples about this, well, that just didn’t compute! No way, no way was Jesus’ brilliant ministry supposed to end in such a complete failure! Didn’t he just admit he was the Messiah? Didn’t he just reveal that he’s the anointed one of Israel, the king? The whole point for him going to Jerusalem was to take his throne, not to die!
This just could not be! Peter pulled him aside to try and talk some sense into him. But Jesus’ response just doubled down on the insanity. Jesus called Peter SATAN!
No, it doesn’t make sense. What kind of a religion is this, anyway? Buddha attains enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. Hindus, through repeated cycles of death and rebirth, come into complete harmony with the universe. Their paths lead upward. But in Christianity, our God is crucified on a cross! This is not a recipe for success.
Something is going on with the cross. It’s something more than what meets the eye. How does the Word made flesh, how does the divine incarnate one end his ministry with arrest, condemnation, and death?
Helena was in search of the true cross, the physical cross upon which Jesus was hanged. In our life of faith we’re also in search of the cross, but not the physical one. What we seek is the divine mystery revealed through it. We seek to know how this instrument of death can be transformed into our greatest symbol of hope.
Jesus didn’t run from his cross. On the contrary, he marched towards it with determination. He was resolute, even facing his own suffering and death. For the cross was meant to act like a kind of a lens. You know how a lens works. The light streams into the lens, and then the lens refracts the light. It bends and flips all of that light completely upside down. What was up is now down, and down is now up. Everything is turned around.
The cross is like this. The divine light of God came into this world through Jesus Christ. He is the light no darkness can overcome. And he purposely came and drove himself headlong into this sign of abject darkness and death. And that crucifixion acted as the moment of refraction. The divine light of life and love flipped everything upside down:
• Failure became conquest
• Humiliation became glory
• Death became life
• Sin became righteousness
These things could only happen with Jesus meeting the cross. Unwittingly, for the forces of evil didn’t know that their greatest instrument of violence and humiliation and death were doomed to become their own undoing! This is the glory of the cross. This is why we lift it high.
We seek the cross, and in it we discover the mystery of Christ’s salvation. But we also seek another cross. This is the one Jesus lifts for us: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
We each are given paths of service – a calling, a ministry – where we can share in the cross. Here’s what this means: we make a conscious decision to take on the suffering and struggle of the moment for the welfare and sake of another. Taking up the crosses that present themselves to us is the way our love, our passion, our energies can be used to transform the life of another. These crosses are unique to each of us. They present themselves in the real time and place of our life. Taken together, they present a lifetime of searching. And in searching for our cross, we search with love for our neighbor.
Cross bearing is something we also do together, with others. As a congregation, and as the larger vehicle of our synod and as the church body of the ELCA, we’re also invited to take up our crosses of service and love. These crosses, these acts of service, are central to how we bear witness to world.
As you know, Hope is privileged to host an event significant in the life of our synod. This afternoon our newly elected bishop, Martin Halom, will be installed into his office. It’s a great honor for our congregation to host this gathering.
As part of that service, Bishop Halom will be given a pectoral cross unique to our synod. When I don my own pectoral cross atop my alb, chiefly it reminds me of Jesus’ cross and its mystery. But it also reminds me of the crosses we’re called to bear as the community of Hope Lutheran Church. These calls are unique to us. As a community, we proclaim our savior’s love and serve in his name. We do this in all the ways particular to our place and time. This is the cross we gladly bear.
So likewise for the cross Bishop Halom will receive. Wrapped up in that cross is our shared calling within this northwest portion of our state. What crosses are we invited to take up and bear in the name of Jesus Christ?
In our faith pilgrimage, we are in search of the cross. We seek the mystery of divine grace and life revealed in the cross of our savior. And in turn, we are ever searching for the crosses we’re invited to take up. In our earnest searching, may the love of Christ transform this world’s despair into hope, and sorrow into joy.
