Church of the Cross

Scripture: The Second Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 12), A.D. 2014 A

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

In the Year of Our Lord 1135, Wendish pirates from what are today parts of Germany and Poland assaulted the Norwegian town of Konungahella.

Though it lies within Sweden’s borders today, back in the Twelfth Century Konungahella was a major market town, well-endowed with holy relics and other souvenirs brought back from the Holy Land by the Crusader King Sigurd Jerusalem-Farer. The townsfolk’s pride and joy was a large silver reliquary, a processional cross containing a sliver of the True Cross from Jerusalem herself. Hence the name of Konungahella’s parish: Cross Church.

As the pirates descended, one woman slipped away to the countryside, sending around the war arrow as a cry of alarm, but she proved too late. Konungahella was burned and the people enslaved, a blow from which it never truly recovered. Trapped in Cross Church, the town priest proved equally heroic. As the Wends arrived, he presented their leaders with a silver-gilt scepter and a gold ring, on the simple condition that he be allowed to carry the holy cross into slavery with him.

When the old priest set foot upon the pirates’ ship, according to the Icelandic sagas of Snorri Sturluson, “there came a great terror over the heathens” for the deck of the ship “became so hot that all thought they were going to be burnt up”! The Wends set priest and cross in the ship’s boat and, with a boat hook, pushed them back to shore.*

Today’s Gospel text, brothers and sisters, reminds us of why people wanted to crucify Jesus. The Scriptures present us with a Christ Who is shocking and bold and loving and wild and terrifying and impossibly good all at the same time. He is a Man so astonishing, so incredible, that when people encounter Him they ask not, “Who are You?” but “What are You?” Indeed, that has been the central question of the Church ever since.

I fear that often we present the world with a face of Jesus that sacrifices much of His authenticity in favor of presenting someone nice. Our Twenty-First Century Jesus is predominantly a nostalgic Jesus, a sweet Jesus, Who would seem right at home hosting a children’s television show—like Barney or Kaptain Kangaroo. And really, why would anyone want to Krucify Kaptain Kangaroo?

It shocks us, then, to hear Jesus say things such as this:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will find it.

Wow. Where did that come from? And here I thought that He was such a nice, noncontroversial guy. I mean, let’s be honest; we have a name that we give to Middle Eastern religious figures who preach like this nowadays, don’t we? Jihadi. And that weighted term comes fraught with all sorts of implications, none of which are very nice. What are we to make of such a sermon?

As we are a people of extremes, there seem to be two takes on texts such as these. One comes from the left: a pearl-clutching insistence that such “texts of terror” should be publically denounced and rejected. Surely the real Jesus would never say such naughty things, were He as enlightened as we have become today. The other extreme comes from the right, which holds up a vengeful warrior Jesus as the Bible’s minority report, a tough-as-nails freedom fighter Who may have given out free health care under Rome but surely comes with air supremacy and tactics of shock-and-awe in the age to come.

Both extremes, of course, seek to hammer Jesus into preconceived manmade boxes, suspiciously coffin-shaped. We worship our own artificial ideologies and then slap Jesus on the side like a celebrity endorsement, insisting that if only He were here today surely He would bow to my false idol over yours. If blasphemy is taking God’s Name in vain then our entire society is sick to death from it. Given such options, it’s little wonder that modern American families decide to play baseball on Sunday mornings rather than choose between the Jesus of fight and the Jesus of flight. We get enough corporate branding during the workweek.

All this can have an embittering effect on sinners who have encountered the risen Christ. We see our Lord abused and misrepresented by politicians, by pet causes, and most egregiously by churches. We see God in the flesh, the most astounding miracle in all of Creation, ignored or overlooked by an increasingly anesthetized society. What are the faithful to do? How are God’s people to respond? And please, don’t tell me that the answer is any more of those ridiculous listicles offering “10 Reasons Your Church Isn’t Growing.” I hate those things.

There is a very natural impulse, I think, to bunker down: to build walls against society and cry, “This far, and no farther!” The Amish do it best, but they’re far from the only ones. Fundamentalist churches resemble nothing so much as spiritual bomb shelters waiting to emerge from the eagerly anticipated ashes of Ragnarok. And in mainline circles we form little communities that set ourselves off in subtler ways, calling ourselves “Orthodox Protestants” or “Evangelical Catholics,” so as to distinguish ourselves from what we perceive as shallower expressions of Christianity. I myself fall under the Lutheran category of Evangelical Catholic, and let me tell you, I’m as guilty of fostering a bunker mindset as anybody.

But for as tempting as it would be to build a little walled garden while the world goes to hell around us, that is not our calling, for that is not the Cross.

Jesus Christ has not called us to easy tasks. He has not called us to conform to political parties or sectarian groups. He has not called us to be liberals or conservatives. He has called us to be Jesus, to be His Risen Body still at work in this world—to be “little Christs” for our neighbors in God’s fallen, broken, beautiful Creation. Bearing the Cross doesn’t mean that we roll over and play dead; turning the other cheek is not a license to ignore our God-given responsibility to resist evil. Nor does bearing the Cross mean that we treat the world with vanity, anger, and haughty contempt. Christians are no better than anyone else; we are all of us sinners saved by grace and by no merit of our own.

Bearing the Cross means always striving to find the Third Way—the path between fight and flight, the path of strong, active, persistent, and self-giving love. Love here, mind you, is not simply a feeling, not an emotion of sappy sentimentality. True love is the willing choice to put the needs of others before our own. People need forgiveness and healing and dignity and truth. They need our witness that Jesus Christ is still alive and active in this world, and that, yes, He is a nice guy, but that there’s still an enormous difference between being good and being tame.

Of course, living like this won’t be easy. It will cause befuddlement and mockery and resistance and most likely violence in the world around us. The Cross will turn father against son and mother against daughter, not because that’s what Jesus wants, but simply because it is extremely disruptive to offer people what they need rather than what they desire. The Cross calls us to love Jesus even more than our own children—so that we are then freed to love our children in ways far greater and far deeper than any we could ever have imagined before.

Jesus’ words remind us that the Church today is in the same position in which she’s always been. In the past we’ve been beaten, burned, crucified and beheaded; today we’re ignored. What’s the difference? The world is still broken, people are still in need, and Christ is still with us. That means the job is still the same. We are commanded to be in the world, which destroys our isolationism, but not of the world, which forbids our conformity. So what path then is left to us? Only that of the Cross.

Jesus was broken upon the Cross that He might fully enter our broken humanity. And that, God bless it, is now our calling as well: to enter into our neighbor’s brokenness by admitting to our own. That takes humility and honesty and grace. It takes the sort of strength necessary to bear the Cross even into slavery, upon vessels and seas unknown—along with the faith necessary to trust that Jesus will always be with us, lighting unexpected fires beneath the rears of an unbelieving world.

Such is the way of the Cross. It ain’t exactly comfortable, but then, you were not made for comfort, were you? No. You were made for greatness.

So take up your Cross and follow the Lord. In Jesus’ most holy Name. AMEN.

*Credit to where credit is due. The story of the Wendish raid against Konungahella is taken, in some parts verbatim, from The Song of the Vikings by Nancy Marie Brown (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012).