Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
The Message of the Cross
September 13, 2017
“For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. … [W]e proclaim a Christ affixed to the cross: this trips Jews up and strikes Gentiles as plain foolishness. But those of us whom God calls, whether Jews or Greeks, know that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Cor. 1:18, 23-24).
Tomorrow, September 14, in the
Episcopal Church Calendar is Holy Cross Day, a feast where we meditate on the
instrument of our Lord’s death and the tomb where he arose from the dead. The date remembers the dedication on
September 14, 335, of the basilica built by the Emperor Constantine on the site
of Calvary and the tomb of Christ, where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is
currently located. Constantine chose the
date to remember the dedication of Solomon’s Temple hundreds of years before,
in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar (September was the seventh month of
the Roman calendar). The Emperor’s
mother, St. Helena, was in charge of the excavations of the site where large
pieces of the “True Cross of Christ” were reportedly found.
Some moderns are uncomfortable with
meditations on the cross: they wonder
whether a tool of capital punishment and torture is an appropriate focus for
spiritual devotions. Like the Jews and
gentiles in Paul’s letter, they find the cross something to stumble over, or
sheer non-sense.
Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517,
Augustinian monk Martin of Erfurt (Martin Luther) posted his 95 theses on the
door of the castle church in Wittenberg.
It was Luther who later made a great distinction between a Theology of Glory
(where we earn our own salvation and the Theology of the Cross, where we learn
about God through God’s self-revelation in Jesus who lived, suffered, and died
as one of us. Christians through the
centuries have always seen God’s love and saving help for us in the passion of
Jesus, in his sufferings on the cross.
That’s why the cross, often with a carved representation of the
suffering Jesus, has long been prominently displayed in most Christian
Churches. The point is not morbid gore,
or the questionable doctrine of transferred punishment, but rather, a glimpse
at the mystery of God suffering with us, as one of us.
In a 10th century North African hymn,
we see the way some who have gone before us have reflected on the cross of
Jesus as the moment when glory, salvation, and hope arrived:
The cross is the hope of Christians
the cross is the resurrection of the dead
the cross is the way of the lost
the cross is the savior of the lost
the cross is the staff of the lame
the cross is the guide of the blind
the cross is the strength of the weak
the cross is the doctor of the sick
the cross is the aim of the priests
the cross is the hope of the hopeless
the cross is the freedom of the slaves
the cross is the power of the kings
the cross is the water of the seeds
the cross is the consolation of the bondmen
the cross is the source of those who seek water
the cross is the cloth of the naked.
We thank you, Father, for the cross.
Grace and Peace.
Fr. Tony+
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