Holy Cross Day during a Poignant Week
Friends,
Today is the Feast of the Holy Cross. A Holy Day on the other side of the church calendar from Good Friday, during which we are called to reflect again upon the Cross of Christ.
St. Paul will boast in nothing but the cross, we are told in his letter to the Galatians.
And the Feast of the Holy Cross is the Church Calendar’s way of ensuring that we grow in our ability to do the same each year—even outside of the context of Holy Week.
I am very aware, as I was while reflecting on the Scripture readings for the feast this week, that Holy Cross Day falls during a poignant and tragic moment in the life of our country.
This happened twenty four years ago, too, in the days that followed 9/11.
And so here we are: reflecting on the assassination of Jesus on a Roman cross at the end of a week in which political assassination has taken center stage in our public discourse and in our private thoughts.
So here is our task on this Holy Cross Day: to lift high the cross, both in light of what we are experiencing this week and, in some ways, in spite of what we are experiencing this week.
To allow our crucified Lord to enter our world—wherever it is that we find ourselves—while not forgetting that through the cross, we must ever more enter into his world, too.
There is a clear line of reasoning in which the cross is the worst thing that could have happened in human history. We killed the one who came to save us. It is tragedy beyond compare.
This is true. And yet.
The Cross was also a desperate attempt by our three great enemies—the world, the flesh, and the devil—to defeat the One whose victory was never in doubt.
The cross—as much as it is a sign of suffering and sacrifice—is a symbol of victory. The victory of God over the darkest of forces.
The cross was death’s last stand against God; and death lost.
This is why we lift high the cross in a way that we do not lift high other means of execution.
While a sense of remorse over our own sin is certainly appropriate on Good Friday, days like today are here to remind us that the cross cannot become one of a mere symbol of injustice and suffering.
The Cross of Christ can become for us a boast, not a shame. A sign that we are in communion with a God that does not lose. The cross is the sign to us
That neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I read portions of The Magician’s Nephew with a group of students this week. This is the sixth book, out of seven, in The Chronicles of Narnia.
(That is, unless you are an unbridled heathen and choose to read The Magician’s Nephew first, before The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe just because Harper Collins told you to. An utter shame on all counts, to be clear.)
There is a subtle but beautiful scene in the middle of the book that captured my attention this week. And I mean this week: a week in which both the cross and human evil are front of mind.
A handful of humans, along with the White Witch, have been transported back in time, and find themselves witnessing the creation of Narnia itself.
As Aslan sings creation into being, the witch grows increasingly irritated. She knows what is happening. She needs to stop it.
Her desire is to conquer every world she encounters; to oppress and to crush and to kill—whatever it takes.
She wants to rule worlds; it is unbearable for her to be in the presence of someone who can breathe them into existence.
At one point, her anger boils over and she prepares to mount an attack on the Lion:
Suddenly the Witch stepped boldly out towards the Lion. It was coming on, always singing, with a slow, heavy pace. It was only twelve yards away. She raised her arm and flung the iron bar straight at its head.
Nobody, least of all the witch, could have missed at that range. The bar struck the Lion fair between the eyes. It glanced off and fell with a thud in the grass. The Lion came on. Its walk was neither slower nor faster than before; you could not tell whether it even knew it had been hit. Though its soft pads made no noise, you could feel the earth shake beneath their weight.
The worst enemy with the best aim standing within 12 yards.
A moment in which everything could have crumbled. An opportunity for the witch to unmake Narnia itself. Or to remake it in her own image. That feeling of being second best her whole life would finally go away by destroying the only one more powerful than her.
So she took aim with her weapon. And she threw it with all her might.
And it merely glanced off His head; it fell with a thud;
He didn’t even notice.
Jesus Christ was Victorious—He was not a mere victim—on the cross. The crucifixion was the last great enemy’s last great assault.
And it failed. It utterly failed.
I know in my bones that the assault of death against the Son of God failed.
I know this because week after week I receive him—alive and well—in my palms. Many weeks I have the honor of placing him in the palms of others, too.
He has been with you this past week, and he will be with you next week.
And so the Cross—designed as an instrument of death and shame—stands before us today as a symbol of victory.
A victory won for us by Christ, and given to us to bear in this world.
There is one more note about The Magician’s Nephew that is worth sharing. It is a spoiler. But you have had seventy years to read the series. So I blame you.
The iron bar thrown at Aslan—the instrument of death and shame lodged in his direction by the witch—fell to the ground after it failed.
But it didn’t just stay there.
It grew.
It grew into a Lamppost.
It grew into the Lamppost.
Ages later in Narnian time, a young girl named Lucy would discover this lamppost when she walked into a wardrobe that was more than a wardrobe.
That lamppost guided Lucy and her siblings to Narnia and back. As children, and as Kings and Queens. It became a crucial ingredient in the final downfall of the witch herself.
As in our world, there was a great deal of time between the failure of the iron bar to defeat Aslan in The Magician’s Nephew, and the final redemption of Narnia. The victory of Aslan played out, at times, in a mysteriously slow way.
You and I stand two thousand years removed from the Cross of Christ. You are not alone in thinking that it can be hard to see definitive signs that the world, the flesh, and the devil were actually defeated in first century Jerusalem.
When you lose hope, go visit a church with an altar and a cross. Kneel at the altar, and commune with the risen Jesus.
And while you do so, look up at the cross, and try to imagine what the Cross will grow into—what the cross is growing into—both now, and in the life of the world to come.
And then ask yourself a question: What does a God who cannot lose have in store for me? What does he have in store for my neighbor through me?