Sermon — March 3, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
The Cross is a symbol so familiar that it’s easy to forget what it means. For baseball players, the sign of the cross is a good-luck charm before stepping up to the plate. For Christian nationalists from the Crusades to the present day, the Cross is a sign of Christian identity and Western culture. Our own Episcopal Church logo turns the Cross into an allegory of our church’s history: it includes both the cross of St. George from the English flag and the cross of St. Andrew from the Scottish flag to symbolize our church’s original roots in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and the Scottish flag is made up of nine smaller crosses, one for each of our original dioceses.
But if we treat the Cross as just a symbol of our church’s history, a recognizable sign we can paint in red, white, and blue, then we can’t make any sense of Paul’s claim that the crucifixion is a “stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Cor. 1:23) If we treat the Cross as a symbol of Western culture and heritage, then we’ve got things the wrong way around: the Cross is a symbol of the cruelty of the Roman Empire, of Western culture as a brutal occupying force. And the Cross is not, in any sense, a symbol of good luck. In fact, it’s a symbol of the worst luck. It’s a sign of failure, not success; of weakness, not strength. The Cross isn’t an abstract religious emblem: It’s an instrument of torture and death, a horrifying sign of the humiliating failure that awaits anyone who challenges the power of the Empire.
This is what Paul means when he writes that the message about the Cross is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” Paul’s message is absurd. To say that “we proclaim Christ crucified” is a paradox. Paul’s fellow Jews were waiting for a Messiah who would deliver them from Roman rule and usher in a new era of world peace. And to them, Paul proclaims that the Messiah has come, and h he’s done wonderful things! Has he thrown the Romans out of Judea? Well, no, not quite. Is he ruling over the people in peace? Not so much. In fact, he’s dead, Paul tells them, crucified on a cross like many failed insurrectionists before him. And the Romans are still there. But I promise you, Paul says, despite the objective reality: he’s the real thing! A stumbling block, indeed, for all those awaiting the Messiah’s liberating reign.
And it’s even worse for those who aren’t waiting for the Messiah, for the Greeks, the Gentiles Paul is trying to convince. You know the gods you worship, Paul says, the ones who do great and heroic deeds in all the pagan myths, the ones you pray to for success in this world and immortality in the next? Those gods are trash, Paul says. I’ve got a much better god for you. “What did your god do?” they ask, intrigued. “Oh,” Paul says, “he died.” Yeah, the Romans killed him with a couple of bandits on either side.
This is what foolishness is.
But it’s the foolishness of Jesus himself, who stood on the grounds of the Temple Mount, the glorious monument of God’s presence in the Holy City, restored just years before by King Herod the Great, rebuilt and expanded to form the largest religious sanctuary in the entire ancient world, stories tall and covered in gold leaf, and said: “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The people want a sign, and Jesus says he’ll give them one, but they’re too wise to understand. “We’ve been working on this thing for forty-six years—you’re gonna raise it up in three days?” Yeah, right. This Jesus is a fool, for sure.
Of course, he doesn’t mean that Temple, the building containing the Holy of Holies, the place on earth where God was believed most fully to dwell. He means the Temple of his body, the Word of God made flesh, the one in whom God really does dwell, who will be destroyed on the cross and then, miraculously, rebuilt. And it’s only through that destruction that the Holy Spirit of God comes to dwell fully in us, and we become the Temple, the place where God dwells on earth.
The world in which the message of the Cross makes sense is a world turned upside down. It is a world in which true success comes only through failure, true strength comes only through weakness; a world in which the cross of shame is transformed into the throne of glory. It is a world in which victory is not won by the edge of the sword or the barrel of a gun, but by self-sacrifice and surrender, a world in which only the eyes of faith can see God working in and through a situation that seems hopeless. In the eyes of the world, the message of the cross is foolishness, full stop.
And so we live in a world full of crosses, but the message of the cross goes unheard. We human beings continue to serve ourselves and betray one another, in small ways and in large ones. And it’s not as if the sign of the Cross alone can fix it: Jews fight Muslims in Gaza, and Muslims fight Muslims in Sudan, but in Ukraine, Russian Orthodox Christians attack Ukrainian Orthodox Christians, egged on by their religious leaders, and they could not be further from the message of the Cross, no matter how many crosses they might wear. And the same is true of every Christian church: our pews are as full of imperfect people as the world outside, and sometimes even more.
But there is another way. Hope is not lost. We can embrace the foolishness of the Cross. We can accept that in Jesus, we are invited to live in a world turned upside down, a world in which greatness and excellence and success pale in comparison to goodness and humility and love.
Toward the end of C. S. Lewis’s novel The Great Divorce, the narrator—who’s been journeying through a vision of heaven and hell—sees a procession approaching through the woods. The leaves begin to shimmer with light cast by innumerable spirits, who dance and scatter flowers through the forest, singing more beautifully than any human being ever has. A procession of heavenly musicians surrounds the lady at the center of it all, in whose honor all this is being done. The purity and beauty of her spirit shine out through her, wrapping her in a gown of goodness and joy that flows out behind her like a long train. All the light of heaven radiates from her face.
The narrator turns to his guide, and whispers: “Is it…? is it…?”
(We’re left to fill in the rest. Is it some great Queen or princess of the past? Is it some blessed saint, perhaps Mary herself?)
“Not at all,” says the guide. “It’s someone ye’ll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”
He goes on to tell her story. She was not great, but she was good. No journalist or scholar ever knew her name, but every animal and every child had felt her love. The narrator is astounded by the pomp with which so simple a person is surrounded in heaven. But as the heavenly guide points out, “Fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.” “For the message about the cross,” we might add, “is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” (1 Cor. 1:18)
Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But sitting in this church, right now, you are surrounded by fools. Right now, you are surrounded by potential Sarah Smiths. You are surrounded by people who have chosen to spend their time worshiping a crucified God with an eccentric crew of children old and young. You are surrounded by people who have chosen to try to give their hearts to love, however foolish it may be. And there’s a chance, just a chance, that you may even be one of them.
And you can be one of them. You cannot cause all war to cease on earth. You cannot fix every one of society’s ills. But you can be one of the nameless Sarah Smiths of the world, who look like fools on earth and shine like saints in heaven. It may be harder if you are wise in this world, if you are a scribe, if you are one of the “debaters of this age”! You may have to try, really try, to be a fool. But you can do it. I believe in you. You can treat the weak and the foolish and the small like they are just as good as you. You can give up your own self-interest, to help those in need. You can follow the way of the Cross on the path through failure and defeat, and find that God will lead you through it all, to something even better than success in this world: “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor. 1:25)