The Christians and the cross. To be honest, it’s a loaded story. It’s loaded with notions of imperialism and militant pride. It’s loaded with pious misunderstandings. It has inspired heavy theology, deep spirituality, and mysticism. Despite all the books that have been written about this central symbol of our faith, from the countless “theology of the cross” attempts to the popular “The Crucified God” by Jurgen Moltman, to the hymns we sing during Holy Week, one question is still stubbornly in our faces: can we get it right, the cross? If someone asked you, what does the cross mean to you, what would you say? And if we asked people in our pews, how many answers would we get? So, let us begin with a simple prayer: “Lord, we gather before your cross today. You died on that cross. You suffered on our behalf. You shed your blood. As we come to pray at your cross, help us understand what it means and touch our hearts. Amen.”
I would like to begin with the opening hymn for this morning, “Lift High the Cross”. The hymn is not as old as you might think, at least not by the historic timelines of the church. It was written “yesterday,” in 1887, by George William Kitchin from the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church. In 1916, it was revised by another Englishman, Michael Newbolt. Quite obviously, the hymn was designed to be a processional hymn, to be sung by the entire church as the cross bearer walked into the sanctuary lifting high the cross as the central symbol of our faith, followed by the choir, the acolyte and the clergy. It has a nice marching energy, which is why I love this hymn so much… at least, I love the tune and the music. The text, I find a little harder to fully accept. “Come Christians follow where our captain trod our King victorious Christ the Son of God. Led on their way by this triumphant sign the hosts of God in conquering ranks combine.”
I still love this hymn and I love to sing it, don’t get me wrong. But I always wonder what the original cross bearer might think about the victorious, militant language it uses. The one who carried THE CROSS and with it the weight of all human sin, the one who suffered under the violent hands of soldiers and was tortured and crucified… what does he make of this 19th century hymn from the height of the proud British Empire? Would he like it? Would he endorse it? Or would he throw it out of God’s Temple just like what he did to the money exchangers in the gospel passage we heard last week? I love this hymn, and I must confess, I am a little bit afraid of Jesus’ answer. I think, at the very least we need to better understand what kind of Christian soldiers he would want us to be.
The military image in this hymn reminds many people of a famous, yet controversial story from the 4th century, one that changed the course of history. You might have heard it before. Here it is… In the late stages of the Roman Empire, Constantine, who later became known as “Emperor Constantine the Great,” was in the fight of his life against his main rival Maxentius. Maxentius was opposing him with an army double the size of Constantine’s. Constantine, who was not a Christian at the time, famously had a dream during the night before the battle, wherein he was advised to mark the heavenly sign of God, the two initials for Christ, on the shields of his soldiers, which he ordered them to do. In another account “he saw with his own eyes a trophy of the cross arising from the light of the sun, carrying the message, “In Hoc Signo Vinces” or “with this sign, you shall win” It is needless to say that Constantine won the battle, became Emperor and introduced the Christian faith as state religion. In fact, he actively brought the church together by calling the first church wide synod in the city of Nicaea. This dream about the cross as a symbol of victory before a real army, changed history.
The story is at once beautiful and troubling to me. Beautiful, because this emperor clearly came to love the church and sincerely tried to understand its message, although I am not sure he ever fully grasped the meaning of the cross. But then, who does? At the same time, the story is also deeply troubling to me, because it mixes notions of empire and political power with the Christian gospel, and Jesus explicitly said, “My kingdom is not from this world.” I can almost hear Jesus screaming, “I did not die for soldiers to march under the sign of my cross!” “I did not come so that my disciples would kill in the name of my cross!” Which is precisely what happened, tragically, during the crusades in medieval times. Political power and the Christian faith have never mixed well. And where they try to mix today, it’s usually not a good thing either.
The Christians and the cross. It’s a loaded story indeed. It’s loaded with misunderstandings and misconceptions. And yet, this is such an important symbol for our faith that we could never, ever abandon it. After all, our Savior died on it, shed his blood on it, – for our sins, the scriptures say, for our redemption, so that we might live. It is at its deepest level an expression of God’s undeterred love for humanity, God’s willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for us. That kind of cross we should always lift up! That kind of message we should always carry into the church and bow our heads before it. So long as we know that the cross does not entitle us to any status or privilege other than serving God in humility!
Perhaps the people who best understand the message of the cross are those who are persecuted themselves, like Jesus was. They will not think of the suffering of Jesus as something that can be explained easily and snugly, because they know it might happen to them. So, one of my favorite quotes about the cross comes from archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in his church in El Salvador in 1980 because he spoke up for the poor. Romero said, “We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.”
“The violence of love,” that Romero talked about might be the way to better understand one of my favorite hymns, “Lift high the cross.” Jesus suffered violence on that cross. And yet, he asked people to love, even if it cost them a lot, to give up selfishness and to fight for those who have no voice. If we understand the cross in that sense, our Lord invites us to rally behind it as a church. In fact, the “church militant,” is an old expression in the teachings of the church and it never had anything to do with weapons made of steel, but with hearts committed to the kingdom of God. In that sense we need an army of people committed to the kingdom of God in order to infiltrate this crime-ridden, violence-ridden world with the power of love. Now, if you ask me the question I started this sermon with, “What does the cross means to me?” I would simply say this: “The cross calls me to die to selfishness.” That’s all… What does the cross mean to you?
Amen.