Lift high the cross
the love of Christ proclaim
Till all the world adore
his sacred name.
Many of you may recognise the
words of this hymn by Michael Newbolt.
And no doubt many of you would want to sing along gustily agreeing with
the sentiment.
Yet the question that I have
is what kind of cross do we envisage being lifted.
The hymn goes on “Come
Christians follow where our captain trod our King victorious Christ the Son of
God. Led on their way by this triumphant
sign the hosts of God in conquering ranks combine.”
For me the image that
immediately comes to mind with these words is that of an army marching off on a
crusade. It is militaristic and
imperialistic depiction of the faith and of what lifting high the cross might
mean.
I find this imagery deeply
disturbing because for me it creates an image of the cross which is the
antithesis of what we actually find in the scriptures.
In his book, “Crucified God”,
Jurgen Moltmann asserts, “In Christianity the cross is the test of everything
which deserves to be called Christian.”
Yet the cross which Moltmann
describes in his book is one far removed from such imperialism and militarism.
To understand then what it
means to lift high the cross I think the reading from John 3 sets us off in a
very different direction to understand what it means to contemplate the cross.
Of course the segment that we
read today from John 3 is a part of a longer dialogue between Jesus and the
Pharisee Nicodemus and it is valuable to read the whole story. Rather than do that own I would leave that
for your own time.
But the vital point is the
connection Jesus makes “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him
may have eternal life.”
It is commonly accepted that
what Jesus is referring to here is him being lifted up on the cross and what he
is saying to Nicodemus is that to understand the meaning of the cross involves
understanding what Moses did in lifting up the serpent.
So let us take a moment to
look at that story.
It is helpful to fill in a
little bit of background to the people’s whinging about the bread and wanting
to return to Egypt. The bread they are
complaining about was a miraculous gift, manna from heaven, when the people
were hungry. Not only had God provided
bread but God had also led Moses to split the rock at Meribah where the
Israelites had quarrelled with God to provide water for them. And just prior to the incident that we read
today God had given the Israelites a victory over the Canaanites, so great was
this victory that the place was named Hormah which means destruction.
The Israelites had been cared
for and provided for and protected by God and their response is ungratefulness
– “sorry God the bread’s a bit bland, Egypt was better.”
Now God’s response may seem a
little extreme as God sends fiery serpents among the people, biting them and
even killing some of the people.
When the people go to Moses
and plead that the snakes be taken away Moses approaches God. God’s response is not to take the snakes away but
to provide a means of grace. It is a brass snake mounted on a pole, a symbol to
be looked upon and a person would be healed.
What is interesting for us
today is that it is the source of the problem, the serpent, which becomes the
symbol of their healing.
Let’s bring this into
comparison with the Son of Man being lifted up.
If looking at the serpent was
looking at the source of the problems then looking at Jesus on the cross is at
some level doing the same thing.
Jesus is the symbol, like the
snake, of the source of our problems.
Now this may sound a little
uncomfortable and it should be because this is the confrontation with our own
humanity.
In Deuteronomy we read that
the one who is hung on the tree is cursed by God. So in looking at the Son of man lifted up we
see that the things which are not of God in this world, the world’s turning
away from God, our turning away from God, are tied up with the our human
existence.
We are the snake biting
ourselves!
The temptation for us who are
Christians is to forget just how confronting this image of the cross is and
that it continues to apply to us.
When we lift high the cross
we are confronted by the way in which as human beings destroy our very humanity
and so therefore God’s will and way.
Let me explore on three
levels.
As a person I know that there
are times that I fail to honour others as I should and this most obvious in the
intimate relationships that I have.
In an angry word or
dismissive gesture I can cause hurt to my wife or children. I can disregard me parents or in-laws and by
my apathy I can fail to show the love I should to my siblings. In each moment that I do these things I destroy
something of their humanity and mine – I fail to live as God intended. We all do it and like it or not it is what
sin is all about – being less than God created us to be, destroying the life
given to us or others as a gift. It is
an intensely personal and at the same time an entirely universal thing.
Personally I would argue sin
is not on a sliding scale, sin is simply what it is sin, whether it is these
simple personal interactions or something more dire: sin is sin! It is our turning away from God and so also,
and maybe inevitably, each other.
What we do in our intimate
relationships carries through into our communities; whether in the church or in
the locality. Our Australian urban
culture is typified by the building a bigger fences between or neighbours. We often don’t even know their names. As people we are becoming more isolated and
independent from one another.
And yes even as the church we
fail. The existence of the many
denominations is a sign of our inability as followers of Jesus Christ to be
faithful. It is not simply that we like
different things and express ourselves differently, which we do, but that we do
not know how to love one another.
Even internally, no
congregation I have ever been with or had association with has been free of
tensions and disagreements.
This is what the cross
reveals about humanity that we are the source of our own problems – we are the
serpent that bites itself and the consequences and implications are far
reaching.
In a world full of inequality
the lifestyle we live is propped up by countries in which people are working in
what any of us would say are intolerable conditions. Much of our coffee and chocolate is picked by
children, sometimes dealt with as slaves.
Many of the clothes we wear come from the sweat shops in other countries. We out source our manufacturing of technology
to the places we can find the cheapest labour.
We pick up our next bargain and it does not cross our minds as to where
it has come from. Ironically, we do all this whilst vocalising our concerns for
the poor of the world.
We are a paradoxical people.
Lift high the cross – what we
see is that we human beings are very much the source of our own misery.
So where is hope? Where is God in all this? The answer is to look to the cross. Returning to Jurgen Moltmann’s book the title
gives it away “The Crucified God”. God
in Christ takes this ‘god forsakeness’ into his death and transforms it.
The triumph of the cross is
as Paul says foolishness – God identifies with us in our turning away and all
of its consequences and says I am with you and I will lead you home.
As Paul writes to the
Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not
your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
Despite our ignorance, despite
our deliberate waywardness, and despite our plain stupidity the cross says to
us that God is with us and that God has not forsaken: even we who would nail
God to the cross. This is grace.
As people we are drawn into
this grace as we lift high the cross and as we are lifted into living again
with hope. Living with hope that sees
past our human predicament and the paradox of our rejection of God and seeks to
live again led and empowered by the good news that has been revealed to us.
Renewed constantly in our
relationships with one other we learn to forgive each other as we indeed have
been forgiven and we live as forgiven sinners, not perfect, yet witnesses to a
hope in God’s love.
As Paul says, “For we are
what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand to be our way of life.”
This is the good news the Son
of Man has been lifted up just as the serpent was lifted on the pole in the
desert and in the source of our affliction we also find our healing.
