The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
September 14, 2014
I’ve often thought we should have a little
contest to see who can come up with the exact number of crosses and
crucifixes in the Cathedral. I’ve never counted but I know there are a lot.
The Cathedral itself is in the shape of a cross, of course, and there are
crosses in windows, shrines, and around the walls with the Stations and many
other places. And then there three very special crosses.
There’s the great processional crucifix over
there that led the procession into the Cathedral today. That crucifix
has a long history in the Cathedral. It dates from 1950. I always find it
deeply moving when it comes down the aisle, raised high above our heads,
leading the way, lighting our way, like the pillar of cloud and the column
of fire that led the chosen people of old.
And there’s the processional cross we use during
Advent and Lent, with the blackened figure of Jesus on it. It’s a survivor
of the Cathedral’s arson fire of 1992. At the time of the fire it hung
over the vesting table in the sacristy. The fire destroyed nearly
everything in the sacristy, but not the wooden figure of Jesus on that
cross. It just turned coal black. A resurrection story, if ever there was
one. That cross is on display in the chapel today if you’d like to see it up
close.
Also in the chapel today, hanging over the
altar, is a crucifix made of glasss. It, too, is a resurrection story.
It’s made of shards of glass rescued from sacristy windows which exploded
outward during that same arson fire. The morning after the fire, a Holy
Names Sister on our staff, Margaret Evenson, was outside on her hands and
knees in the dirt, painstakingly salvaging every bit of glass she could
find. Later, an artist assembled those random shards into a stunning
crucifix.
The cross at St. James Cathedral is as it should
be: prominent and clearly triumphant -- the cross that is both instrument of
torture and trophy of victory. But, of course, it is not the cross
itself that is triumphant: it is Jesus Christ who is triumphant, and his
triumph, his victory, is unlike any other. His victory came about not
as victories usually do – with force meeting force, power striking back at
power. No, his victory came about precisely when he refused the use of
power – when he allowed himself no defense whatever, becoming completely
vulnerable, the plaything of evil, “sin itself” to use St. Paul’s words.
Like Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, Jesus was a lamb led to the slaughter, a
sheep before the shearers, silent, opening not his mouth. Or to use
the words of the ancient Christian hymn in today’s reading from Philippians,
“He emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave.”
One of the Eucharistic Prayers says this in a
very striking way: “For our sake he opened his arms on the cross.” No one
opened his arms for him, he opened them of his own accord in an act of
perfect freedom – as if to say: here, and only here is the power that can
overcome evil. Not hatred, not force, not violence of any sort: only
love freely given! And so, my friends, the triumph of the cross is
really the triumph of non-violence, the triumph of vulnerability, the
triumph of love.
How, then, are we to explain our history – our
bloody and often vengeful history – we who claim to be followers of Christ
and who call his cross triumphant? How indeed? Even a cursory
reading of two-thousand years of Church history is a sorry tale of blood
shed in causes sometimes noble and sometimes quite disgraceful, a tale that,
no matter how we tell it, too often bears little or no resemblance to the
story of Jesus.
The story of Jesus is the strongest possible
argument in favor of non-violence. In fact, a good case can be made to
read his story and the entire Christian gospel as a call to do as the
earliest Christians did: to renounce the use of force altogether, not to
defend it. And I know that can sound simplistic, especially in the world in
which we live. And it’s not mine to propose it as a blueprint for statecraft
when the Church itself from the time of St. Augustine in the fifth century,
has developed a whole set of criteria for justifying the use of force under
certain conditions (the “Just War Theory”). But, unfortunately, human nature
being what it is, no criteria, no matter how carefully crafted, are immune
from being applied in a self-serving fashion, and no argument in favor of
the use of force can ignore the fact that at the very heart of our faith is
the One who could have fought back but didn’t, could have called up legions
of angels but refused to, the one who walked the road to Calvary, embraced
the cross, and spoke words of forgiveness for his tormentors and
executioners.
My friends, on this feast of the Exaltation of
the Holy Cross, we are reminded that the gospel of Jesus Christ stands in
stark contrast to the usual arguments in favor of retribution, retaliation,
and the use of lethal force. That makes things different for followers of
Christ. In forming our consciences, we are bound to ask different questions,
and we will often arrive at different conclusions from others.
That’s because we form our consciences with one image squarely in our line
of sight: the image of the cross that was made holy and triumphant by the
One who, in opening his arms on the cross, transformed an instrument of
death into a sacrament of life.
Each of us was signed by that cross at our
Baptism and we sign ourselves with it every day – maybe many times a day. It
is our path, and ultimately the only true path, to life and peace. In the
words of an ancient Christian hymn, “Hail, O Cross, our only hope!”
Father Michael G. Ryan
