To begin with - the feast of the
Exaltation of the Holy Cross celebrates two historical events: the discovery of
the True Cross in Jerusalem, by Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor
Constantine and the dedication in 335 of the basilica built on the site of the
Crucifixion.
However the feast, more than anything
else, is a celebration of God's greatest work of saving love: his death on the
Cross and his Resurrection, through which death itself was defeated and
salvation poured out into the world.
I want to start with a truth that we
just heard and on which I constantly reflect, and perhaps base my entire faith
on
" God so loved the world that he
gave his only son"
It is essential to remember that God
did not send his son to die.
He sent his son to love and to save.
And because God loved us he wanted to
reveal himself to us, to have communion with us, to bring good tidings to the
poor and to proclaim his kingdom come.
Think of it - the Transcendent God, who creates and sustains all life, loves us, so much the he came to dwell with us.
To really and truly; take on human
life, to eat and drink, to tell stories, to laugh and weep, to heal and comfort
and, as all humans often do - suffer.
And in the end, (with unimaginable grace)
accepting an undeserved and unjust death.
Jesus, God with us, is total self
surrendering love.
And the cross is the undeniable sign of
that unimaginable love.
In the first reading we hear about
another sign that points to the cross.
The Israelites in the desert forgot the
journey they were on. They forgot what God had done for them and continued to
do for them. They were fed up.
"With their patience worn out by
their journey, (we read) the people complained against God"
As a punitive reminder God sent
poisonous serpents among the people.
Now, In their freight, they remembered
God, because now they really needed Him and they asked Moses to intercede for
them to save them from the snakes.
God gives Moses a simple, familiar
solution, build a bronze serpent, suspend it on a pole, and whoever looks upon
it after they have been bitten will live.
This was as a sign, a "thing"
that reminded the Israelites that it is only God who sustains and saves.
A sign is important, but it's importance lies
in what it points to.
It was not the bronze serpent that
saved, it was remembering and trusting in the God that saves.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus uses that
sign to help Nicodemus understand what was coming.
"just as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the desert (Jesus tells him) so must the Son of Man be lifted up so
that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life"
Moses lift up a sign of God' power and
glory while the Son of Man lifted up is God's power and glory. But, this power
and glory is surprising and unexpected and even beyond understanding and it
flows from one truth -
"God so loved the world that he
gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal
life."
Jesus' life, his death on the cross and
his resurrection is a living sign of the father's kingdom come; and that sign
looked like self surrender, humility, compassion, healing, forgiving and
redeeming. It looked like life not death.
To the authorities Jesus did not look
like power and might at all. He did not look princely and certainly not
messianic.
Paul describes God who dwelled among
us.
"Christ Jesus did not regard
equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave . . . . . he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even
death on a cross."
This is the amazing Good News.
God beyond all understanding wanted to
share his Devine life with us and so gave his beloved son to us and in doing so
revealed a God who is love, given freely and completely, for the salvation of
the world.
And this is Jesus, he showed us time
and time agin what the kingdom of God looks like; complete forgiveness, a
compassion that invited the outcast to table fellowship, that healed the sick
and broken hearted, that transformed the world by the breaking bread.
And when confronted by hatred, and
jealously he turned to a parable.
When he was falsely accused and turned
over to the authorities,
Jesus chose love of God over love of
self and in the midst of horrible agony and deep human betrayal Jesus still
trusted God to do as he promised and in that love and trust Jesus, the Son of
God, surrendered himself up to death. Even death on a cross.
If only the world had
listened and seen with open hearts and minds Jesus would not have died that
day.
But, the darkness of the cross revealed
the light of the resurrection.
Jesus' total commitment to live only
for God made the instrument of his death a sign of his love; sacrificial (in
its surrender of self) redeeming (in its sanctifying compassion for every human
person) and saving (in the fulfillment of God's promise to make all things new,
including eternal life)
Those that hated Jesus and his Good News
thought that with His death all would be well and business would be as usual.
But, they were wrong.
Everything had changed on the cross.
Jesus did not die into nothingness, (as
they hoped) but into the embrace of his Father, who's loving power transformed
Him and raised him to new life and seated him at his right hand.
To their horror the cross became not a
deadening scandal, but a living instrument of hope and salvation and it stands forever as a sign of
God's renewing love that embraces all suffering and death.
Because of the cross we can look
suffering and even death straight in the eyes and cry out from the depth of our
hearts
"Christ is risen. Alleluia"
But we are not done yet.
In the cross before us, that we
venerate, we know that God's work, Jesus' work of transforming the world
through self surrendering love is now placed in our hands.
We must, with the help of the Holy
Spirit, work hard because no one will believe that the Kingdom of a God
matters, that what Jesus did matters, that the Cross matters.
No one will believe Jesus is the
answer, unless that answer transforms our lives.
"Pick up your cross" Jesus
tells us "and follow me"
