Holy Cross Day Devotional Sermon 1

Devotional Sermon preached during a meeting over the days before Holy Cross Day.

Sunday is Holy Cross day, known as The Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the East and the Triumph of the Cross in Rome.  On this day we recall that Christ "was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world unto himself," and prays that "we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him."

The feast began with the dedication on Sept. 14, 335, of a complex of buildings built by the Emperor Constantine (c. 285-337) in Jerusalem on the sites of the crucifixion and Christ's tomb. This shrine included a large basilica and a circular church. Constantine's mother, Helena (c. 255- c. 330), personally supervised the construction amd it was said that a relic of the true cross was found during the excavation. Claims by the Church of Jerusalem to have the cross date from the mid-fourth century, and the pilgrim Egeria mentions a feast commemorating the discovery of the cross in Jerusalem in the late-fourth-century. This feast has also been associated with the exposition at Jerusalem of the cross by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (575-641). He recovered the relic from the Persians who took it from Jerusalem in 614 when they destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Church and Christians in general have always sought physical contact with the cross.  Whether relic or amulate, the goal has been to have some tangible connection with the profound mystery of Jesus’ sufferings and death for our salvation.  Surely the pursuit of a piece of wood was the fruit of such longing.  In our age there has been a different tendency.  Even among Lutherans we often distance ourselves from the physical in pursuit of the spiritual, something we consider truer and more godly than physical things.  One side wants to covet the physical evidence of Jesus and the other wants Jesus to live in the heart.  Both are wrong headed.

Jesus has given us the true relics of His cross in the means of grace.  We gather not around wood but around the Word which is His living voice speaking and accomplishing that which is spoken.  We gather not to adore a sign of what was but to receive its living fruits born of the womb of water and the Spirit granting us new life in baptism.  We gather not to honor something but the someone whom God appointed to take flesh in Virgin, be born to live the holy life we could not, die in offering for our sin, and rise to draw us with Him into the life that death cannot overcome.  The true fruit of this cross is not in a relic but in bread which is His body and wine which is His blood.  There He is lifted up still and there He draw us and all people to Himself to be saved.

The spiritualizing of piety and the internalizing of it is its own problem, the same as externalizing it in splinters of wood with an uncertain history.  We are not alone nor are individuals but the called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified together, the body of Christ built of living stones into one grand temple by the Holy Spirit, and the Church is also a relic, if you will, of that cross.  The Church is the physical place where we touch the eternal – not by our own will or design or strength but through the means Christ has appointed.  These means are efficacious, they do what they say and bestow that of which they speak.  The Church is where these marks are to be found, where Christ is lifted up in the preaching of the cross and where the living fruits of His redeeming work are given and bestowed to those who come.

As we prepare to celebrate the Holy Cross, its exaltation and triumph are revealed where we gather, in the Word and Sacraments that deliver the fruits of His saving work and where we are clothed with His righteousness to live as the people of His cross, denying self, and taking up our cross to follow Him, now in this mortal life and in eternity.