Love Kills Death


The Supremacy of Jesus, by Full of Eyes


You may find the accompanying children’s sermon here.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

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

Christ’s Crucifixion occurred outside the walls of Jerusalem. They took Him from Pilate’s judgment seat upon the Temple Mount, through the nearest gate, to a rock quarry. As limestone blocks were carved away, a raised section had been left intact alongside the road, as a site for public executions: a gallows-rock with post-holes cut for crosses, known to posterity as Golgotha or Calvary, the “Place of the Skull.”

I won’t go into the gory details. According to the Scriptures, when Jesus died, an earthquake tore the massive curtain of the Jerusalem Temple in twain. Today there remains a crack, which pilgrims can reach out to touch, in the rock of Golgotha, pointing straight toward the Temple. That proved strange enough for the authorities.

Christ and the two thieves on either side of Him were the last people crucified on Calvary. The city had been expanding beyond its borders for some time now, spilling out into a sort of suburban sprawl. A new loop of wall was needed to protect these settlements. The old emptied quarry now became a cistern for the new neighborhood. The Romans threw the crosses into the pit and filled it up with water; out of sight, out of mind.

A century or so later, after three Romano-Jewish Wars, the Emperor Hadrian built a temple dedicated to Venus atop the cistern, in part, it would seem, to discourage Christian worship at the site. But the locals remembered, even as the centuries rolled on. 300 years after Jesus’ Resurrection, the Roman Emperor Constantine, in response to a vision and subsequent battlefield victory, first legalized, then patronized, the Christian religion. The Church arose from our literal underground worship in the catacombs.

The Emperor’s mother Helena made a beeline for Jerusalem, armed with imperial records. Here she found the Venusian temple, which she promptly tore apart; beneath it, a vast reservoir of water, which she drained. And underneath the water she found crosses. Here was the hill of Golgotha, where Jesus Christ had died. A hundred yards away, she uncovered a rock-hewn tomb, which Hadrian had filled in, and which Christians told her was the tomb of Christ, whence He had arisen on that first Easter Sunday.

A massive sanctuary was built upon the site, encompassing the locations of Jesus’ death, His Resurrection, and the resting place of His Cross: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That church has been destroyed and reconstructed many times over the millennia, but the date of its consecration remains a festival on our calendar: the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Also known as Holyrood or Roodmas, this Holy Cross Day marks the beginning of the Church year for Eastern Christianity; unofficially, it does for us as well, what with Rally Sunday.

It’s hard for us to overstate the centrality of the Cross. It is for us the fulcrum of our faith, the axis upon which our worldview turns.

All religions seek to know God. We may use different names, different terms, but every one of us yearns for the transcendent, the eternal, the infinite, the true. And He finds us in many ways. Some discover God in intellectual pursuit, in philosophy, in theology; some find Him in acts of fervent worship and devotion; others in good works done for love of neighbor; yet others in silence and in solitude, in sacred contemplation. And all of this is good. All of this is God.

But ultimately, for us, for Christians, God makes Himself known, reveals Himself, gives Himself away for the world, in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the visible Image of the invisible Father. He is the one Word by which God eternally voices His entire self. He is God made Man. And everything we do here— the Bible, the liturgy, the Sacraments, the singing, the catechism— everything we do here gives us Jesus. That is the point of it all. Because we believe that when we are one in Jesus, then we are one with God. Alleluia.

And just as God reveals Himself fully in Christ Jesus, so Jesus reveals Himself fully in His Resurrection. That much is clear from the Gospels. No-one really seems to understand Him until after He arises from the dead. And the light of that Resurrection colors all that went before, and all that follows after. Seriously, the crowds don’t get it, the disciples don’t get it, the Apostles don’t get it, until suddenly it seems that we’re too late. He’s dead and gone and we are left to grieve. But then three days later— we find that Jesus’ ministry has only just begun.

The Cross shows the lengths to which Jesus’ love will go.

We have this notion, coined in academic circles as Penal Substitutionary Atonement, whereby we think that God was angry at us, God hated us in our sins, and the only way for God to calm down was to kill somebody. But not just anybody would do. No, it had to be a perfect victim, a spotless sacrifice, someone who could shoulder on Himself the sins of all the world. Kill Him, and the rest of us get off scot-free.

Americans preach this message all the time. And for the most part I find it psychotic. Theologically it presents a division within God, between the vengeful Father and the merciful Son, a sort of bipolar disorder within divinity, God having to save us from God. But also in terms of justice, it simply makes no sense. If your dear sweet auntie had been murdered, would it comfort you for the cops to say, “Well, we couldn’t catch the guy who did it. So we shot an innocent bystander to balance the scales.” It’s blasphemous.

And on top of that, it isn’t biblical. The Gospels clearly show Jesus forgiving people willy-nilly, as though He were God, and we then murdering Him for it. Right? The Cross wasn’t God’s idea; He’s not a psychopath. It wasn’t the requirement for us to be forgiven. The Cross was our response to Jesus’ love. And yes, He knew that it was coming. He could see it from a mile away. But that didn’t for one moment prevent Him from washing the feet of those who would abandon Him, sharing His Last Supper with the one who would betray Him, and forgiving His own murderers whilst we nailed Him to His Cross!

We threw everything we had at Him: every betrayal, every injustice, every torture and humiliation, and none of it could stop Him, none of it deterred Him. So finally we murdered Him and threw Him down to the deepest pits of hell— and there He conquered! He came right back up, three days later, with death defeated, hell harrowed, and the grave forever shattered. And the first thing the Resurrected Jesus did was to proclaim forgiveness to all of us who turned our backs on Him, fled from Him, hid from Him, murdered Him.

That’s what God is like. That’s who God is. Not some bully hurling thunderbolts on people from on high. No, God is right here with us, in the mud and the blood, feeding the hungry, curing the sick, teaching the ignorant, rebuking the wicked, forgiving the sinner, and raising the dead from their graves. And nothing you could ever do can stop Him. Because the power of God isn’t vengeance. The power of God isn’t anger. The power of God isn’t violence. The power of God is love! And love cannot die; love kills death.

If you want to know who God is, look to Jesus. And if you want to know who Jesus is, look to His Cross. We gave it to Him in our hatred. But we see in it now Jesus’ love.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.







Pertinent Links

RDG Stout
Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA
Twitter: https://x.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064841583987
Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/
Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074108479275
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026

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