Holy Cross Day Devotional Sermon 2

 Devotional Sermon for meetings the day before Holy Cross Day. 

The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  Where are the wise?  Is it in the learned and eloquent of this age?  Or is it in the foolishness of the cross?  Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

While the weakness of words and water and bread and wine are universally acknowledged, there is another weakness worth our attention as we prepare to celebrate Holy Cross Day.  That is the weakness of the Church, of a people washed clean in baptismal water and granted a new birth to a new life, only to surrender that life to self-denial and cross bearing.  Jesus insists that whoever would desire the kingdom and follow Him must do exactly that – deny self, take up Jesus’ cross, and follow Him.  Where we would raise up an army of mighty warriors, God calls a people to deny themselves, take up the cross of Jesus, and follow Him in a life of mercy giving, love showing, sin forgiving, and righteousness desiring.  Who could expect to win the world with such weakness?  Only God.

Jesus insists that what was spoken of about Moses whose staff of a bronze serpent brought healing to the dying would be true in spades with His cross.  He is the One upon whom you look with faith and are made whole again.  Not Jew or Gentile but the any and all whom God desires to be saved.  And we become part of this staff of wood that lifts up Christ before the world.  Our words and our works matter.  Our deeds cannot purchase our salvation but they love and serve and help our neighbor, especially those who do not know our Savior and all that He has accomplished by His cross.

Sadly Christians no longer stand out nor do they stand up in a world crying out for the wisdom of the cross.  We have become a tired and passive people, eventually echoing the voice of the age rather than speaking the voice of the ages.  We enjoy the world and its many comforts like everyone.  We insulate ourselves from disease and sacrifice with the best of the world.  We indulge ourselves in the forbidden pleasures of our pet sins no less than the world which calls them virtue.  I say this not simply of others but of myself and knowing my own weakness.

I do not want to deny myself.  I do not want to bear the cross of Jesus.  I want to be free to be happy and do what is right in my own eyes no more and no less than the world seeks to do.  I do not want to take on a burden which will detract from that happiness any more or any less than the world seeks to do.  In fact, I confuse what Jesus says and presume that the cross bearing meant for me has to do with bearing up with my wife or my family, having to serve my children or do the work that brings home the dime.  These are not our crosses.  Wife, children, family, and work – they are not the crosses we bear.  We bear the cross of Jesus.  We live out a cross shaped life.  We forgive as we have been forgiven.  We love as we have been loved.  We serve as we have been served.  Not because they win us anything but because we have been won by the cross.  We earn nothing but a word of commendation for all our good works and yet that is enough because Christ’s good work has won it all for us.

Christians have become about averages and normals.  We fit into the crowd and are not distinct from it.  We sin no more but no less than any other sinners.  It s a comfortable place to hide but the lukewarm will be spewed from His mouth on the day of judgment.  Is the Church failing because we are too different from the world or too much the same?  Not us, we say, not the LCMS.  Maybe exactly us.  We are the men in the mirror who reflect too much the world’s values and goals and too little do we look like Jesus or bear His cross.  This is meant not to drive us to shame or despair but to lift us out of our doldrums and listen again to the word of the cross.  

We are not the perishing.  We have nothing to lose.  We have gained everything by that cross.  Ours is not the time to play it safe or to be timid.  Now is the time to take Jesus at His word.  Lift high the cross in word and works and see whom He will draw unto Himself.  This is not a recipe for growth but it is a promise that our works are not in vain.  The preaching of the cross seems weak but it is the most powerful thing of all.  The living out of the cross in daily life seems worthless in a world of sin and senseless violence but it is powerful in witness and powerful in what it accomplishes.  Do not be fooled.   Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.