The Life Giving Cross of Jesus Christ

This is the sermon I preached at All Saints Anglican Church in Springfield, Mo on Holy Friday (March 29, 2013). I offer it here with humility and prayers that it may minister to some. Glory to Jesus Christ for the Life Giving Cross!

Homily for the Solemnity of Our Lord’s Passion

March 29, 2013 All Saints Anglican Church Springfield, MO

By The Reverend Father Micah Joel Chisholm

Let us pray:

Almighty God, we pray you graciously behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross. We pray, do not rebuke is in anger, but deal with us according to your kindness. Give us eyes to see you, ears to hear you, minds to understand you and hearts to love you as you are revealed to us in your Holy Gospel. Grant Father, that no false words would be allowed to pass through my lips, but only those which you have prepared for us to hear this evening. For yours is the might, and yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

My dear brothers and sisters,

As humans we have been given great gifts by our heavenly Father. We have been created in his image and given the whole world. We have the capacity to see all that is around us and appreciate beauty as it is before us. We understand the power of an image to communicate meaning and emotion. We cling to photographs and portraits to keep our loved ones with us and to hold on to memories of the past. Museums are filled with masterpieces behind glass to keep them from becoming soiled by time. The walls and shelves in our homes are lined with mismatched frames and faded photographs that give us a sense of connectedness of wholeness and familiarity.

We recoil from ugliness, from suffering and from that which is unclean. We work to protect ourselves and our families from seeing blood and brokenness. Yet dear ones, as we observe this most solemn day I invite you to join me in fixing our gaze on Christ as he hangs on the cross and to see in his broken and disfigured body the ultimate expression of beauty and love.

In the passion narrative recorded by Saint John we find quoted the words of the prophet Zechariah “they will look on him whom they have pierced.”1 On this awful and Good Friday we are challenged to come face to face with reality as it is, filled with paradox and mystery because when we look upon Jesus nailed to the cross we are uncomfortably confronted by cruelty and mercy, disfigurement and beauty, death and life.

At first we try to avoid it. We look down or to the right or to the left. We tell ourselves that it is distasteful to look at so much blood, so much suffering, it will only depress us, it will give our children nightmares, and we are really protecting ourselves if we don’t look we say. We try so hard to live such clean and tidy lives, untouched by the blood and dirt swirling around us. So we look away. We put up pictures of a smiling Jesus, Jesus healing a lame man, feeding the five thousand, Jesus with children on his knee. This Jesus is always fully clothed with nicely parted hair and a manicured beard. We feel comfortable around this Jesus. We feel safe. We feel in control.

Eventually, perhaps out of curiosity perhaps out of guilt, we allow ourselves to take just a peek at Jesus as he appears on the cross – just a glance mind you, we aren’t fixated on death–so we give a sideways glance, out of the corner of our eye, and we see him. We quickly look away for we know deep down that if we were to look full on him in all his broken glory then it would be more than we could bear. So we go back to our sweet baby Jesus, our laughing child Jesus, our tender Jesus the Good Shepherd.

We go on like this as long as we can, avoiding the cruel reality of the cross. And each year this day comes and presents us with the beautiful tragedy of the cross. And on this day we are forced, often times against our will, to look upon him who was pierced and to hear him say:

“My people, what have I done to you? Did I not fill Judea with miracles? Did I not raise the dead with just a word? Did I not heal every disease and illness? How then do you repay me?...In place of healings you have given me beatings. In exchange for life, you give me death…the giver of the law like an outlaw, the king of all one condemned.”2

Turn to him now. See him as he labors to take each breath – his breath which filled the lungs of Adam and gave life to all now comes forth as a gasp and with much pain. See the deep lines in his back, each one cut into his tender skin by the whipping ordered by Pilate.3 Recall the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”4 Though you be tempted to look away in grief and shame hold your gaze on him who for you was nailed to the cross at Calvary. See now the thorns, twisted by the mocking soldiers, an unworthy crown for such a noble head, pressed into the forehead once kissed by his mother, his hair matted and tangled.5 Each drop of blood shed is a fountain of life for those who bathe in it, look on this man and see the source of your cleansing, the physician who can heal you. Hands that held children and healed the sick and blessed bread now curl in pain around the very source of pain, unable to avoid the cross, the cross must be endured. Feet that walked dusty roads with friends from town to town and brought glad tidings of the Kingdom of God now hang limp, stationary, as the King of Life hangs in this moment and the entire universe hangs in the balance.

There he is, do you see him. Stripped of all dignity, naked and alone, the crushed God-man clothes us in mercy and grace, making us fit to enter the banquet of the master.6 Out of love for us “the Lord took us to himself; because he loved us…our Lord Jesus Christ gave his life’s blood for us – he gave his body for our body, his soul for our soul…let us [then] look steadfastly to the blood of Christ, and see how precious that blood is to God, which, having been shed for our salvation, has set the grace of repentance before the whole world.”7 Let us look to his pierced side, opening wide a fountain of blood deep enough and wide enough to cleanse the sin of the world. His opened side opens to us the doorway to his own heart and to the Kingdom of his Father. His wounds become the very passage through which we pass from death to life, for in his blood is plenteous redemption.8

Brothers and sisters, “Behold your King!”9 Behold your beautiful King. The question has been asked “what beauty will save the world.”10 The answer is found in this man Jesus. Behold this man and see not shame, not ugliness, but beauty, for “In the world there has only been one positively beautiful person – Jesus Christ.”11 Look then upon this beautiful Savior and see in him the salvation of your soul and body. See in his broken state your being put back together, in his disfigurement the likeness of God being restored in you. Hear the Savior as he says “It is finished.”12 Know that the curse of death died on that cross as the Son of God laid down his life. The Fall that occurred in Eden was being undone and Paradise was being opened up for each of us as his body was opened by wounds, wounds which become for you and me the tokens of our redemption. The fruit of the tree in Eden, the eating of which brought death has been replaced by the fruit of another tree, this fruit the very body and blood of the Son of God, life giving fruit from the tree of life. Brothers and sisters know this:

“We see a fearsome and perplexing mystery acted out today…The searcher of hearts and minds is unjustly tried…the one before whom heavenly powers stand trembling stands before Pilate, the Creator is slapped by a creature’s hand. Condemned to the cross is the judge of the living and the dead, enclosed in a tomb is he who overthrows Hades. You bear all of this out of sympathy, to save us from the curse.”13

In Holy Week, we are brought to the foot of the Cross. The sacred dynamic at the heart of this Holiest of Weeks pulls us steadily toward Calvary, where Jesus was tortured and executed as a common criminal by a people unable and unwilling to receive him as anything else. Much as we wish to bypass it all and jump to the joy of Easter, the Cross demands that we pause, that we look, that we contemplate. It is very difficult to do this. It is difficult because “we know — somehow, somewhere down deep — that the Cross tells the truth about us, about our brokenness and sin. This is painful truth to absorb and we dodge it in all kinds of ways.”14

However, the cross will not allow us to avoid it and difficult as it may be, we must learn to give thanks for the truth that the cross speaks, because without it we are left trying to heal ourselves, trying to find our way alone, trying to save lives that only the Author of Life can save. We need to realize that “In bearing the cross, we see Christ submitting to everything each of us fears and out of fear seeks to avoid: rejection, condemnation, humiliation, pain, failure and death. He does so freely, with no motive but love for those with whom he has become one in the flesh.”15

This reflection upon Jesus on the cross is not meant to merely be a cerebral activity but is in fact intended to stir us to action. As we gaze upon Christ as he hangs for us, we are also called to come and join Christ on the cross, as he died once for all for our sin, we are called to die to sin and rise to new life in him. Saint Paul speaks of this in his Epistle to the Colossians saying “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”16 Elsewhere, in his Epistle to the Churches in Rome he writes:

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life…We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin...For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”17

The cross will always be a symbol of pain and suffering and death, but as Christians who have received grace from the Holy Spirit we are able to look upon the cross and see in it tremendous beauty, indeed we can look upon it and see in it the power to heal us and to bring us to new and unending life. For us the cross is the tree of life.18 This day is indeed a day of sadness, but it is a “bright sadness” sadness that already contains within it the rays of hope that will burst forth in the Resurrection. There is healing in the pain, there is redemption in the blood and water that flow from his pierced side. And so “we need not hesitate to add the concluding words of Zechariah’s text: ‘On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness’.”19 In the cross there is forgiveness for all of our sins. In the cross “God forgives, and His forgiveness is in Christ, His Son, whom He sends to us that…we may share in His love and be truly reconciled with God.”20

Let us come to the Tree of Life, let us come to the Fount of Salvation. Let us all together, with hearts full of thanksgiving look upon him who for us was pierced.

And may Christ our true God, who endured dreadful sufferings: the life-giving cross, and voluntary burial for our salvation, have mercy on us and save us for he is good and loves us all. Amen and Amen.

1 John 19:37 cf. Zechariah 12:10 2 Excerpted from The Doxastikon of Great and Holy Friday 3 John 19:1 4 Isaiah 53:5-6 5 John 19:2 6 See the Parable Jesus told about a wedding banquet as recorded in Matthew 22:1-14. 7 Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians. 8 Psalm 103:7, see also Frederick Faber’s beloved hymn, There’s A Wideness in God’s Mercy, 1854. 9 John 19:14 10 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, 367. 11 Philokalia: the Bible of Orthodox Spirituality by Anthony Coniaris, pp. 11-18; Light and Life Publishing Company 12 John 19:30 13 Excerpted from The Doxastikon of Great and Holy Friday 14 The Rt Rev'd Chilton R. Knudsen, Retired Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, http://diolex.org /blog/bishops-blog/they-will-look-on-him-whom-they-have-pierced-john-1937/. 15 Jim forest, Praying With Icons, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2008), 118. 16 Colossians 3:5 17 Romans 6:3-4, 6-7, 10-11 18 Theodoret of Cyr, Commentary on Isaiah 20.65.22, in the Ancient Christian Devotional: Year C, (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2011). 19 Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 220. See also Zechariah 13:1 20 This comes from Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann in his wonderful little pamphlet Forgiveness Sunday.