Last week Fr Chris invited me to preach today and also to dig a pit for the Cross outside. I said you are giving me the same task physically and verbally because the founders of the priestly Society of the Holy Cross described our task as ‘digging a pit for the Cross’.
As the Cross stands tall outside may the truth of Christ crucified stand tall in our lives and in my preaching. For the Cross to stand tall we needed a deep pit. Our Christianity commends itself outwardly when we have depths about us which is a gift of the Spirit we have to dig out self to make space for.
I was talking on the phone to a church member who on return to Church was struck by the number of new faces. She told me how she had been given fresh confidence to talk to others about how much she is helped by use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We joked about how people think folk who go to Confession are odd but agreed God has an eye to the odd.
God himself is odd. He has a sameness to us, yes, but God is profoundly different from us. Love is his sameness, holiness his difference. My Facebook friend Chris put this comment on a picture of the Cross I posted last week: It is a very challenging question of Christian's when asked..."Why do you worship someone that insisted on a human sacrifice for him to forgive the people. If he was such a divine and noble figure… surely he would have just forgiven them anyway. The lesson that seems to come from this account is that forgiveness will only be given after sacrificial and excruciating punishment’.
This was my answer to Chris: ‘When people outside Christian circles debate with us about the Cross we find common ground in a perception that the world needs putting right by forgiveness. To get beyond the stumbling block of divine love willing suffering requires a vision of God with loving sameness to yet holy difference from us. Attaining such a vision can follow scrutiny of Christian basics where there is readiness to take seriously what God might have said of God, history and the future through scripture and the community of faith. Faith seeming to contradict logic brings an invitation to seek the understanding beyond reason the Holy Spirit supplies seekers’. On the same conversation thread Bishop Lindsey added in a simpler way: ‘The minute you take your eyes off the crib when you gaze on the cross, your doctrine of the atonement becomes mystifying rather than a mystery. ‘God was in Christ...’
It takes God to understand God and God to explain the Cross. I could dig a pit for the Cross outside but no words of mine can dig down far enough to provide a reasoned base for the Cross from the pulpit. God speaks of it in his word today. ‘His state was divine, yet Christ Jesus did not cling to equality with God but emptied himself… accepting death on the cross’ (Philippians 2:6-8) ‘I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard; I did not cover my face against insult and spittle’ (Isaiah 50:6).
The loving action of God in sending his Son to suffer goes back to the design of creation and its intended redesign in Christ to make eternal friendship with God possible by dealing with what breaks that friendship. Jesus died in our place to live in our place. He accepted the just penalty for sin in the face of God’s holiness on our behalf. This has become a transformative power in our lives as Christians. When we come repeatedly to the Cross our sinful nature is repeatedly put to death and the life of his Holy Spirit repeatedly gains power within us. That nature will rise again and again to our dying day but the death of Christ reveals its number is up - the decisive victory over sin, death and the devil has been achieved though we remain in a ‘mopping up operation’ in the wake of that victory.
The conflict of those two powers, one life-giving and the other death-dealing, is evident to faith. Priest poet Raneiro Cantalamessa writes: ‘In the Alps in summer, when a mass of cold air from the north clashes with hot air from the south, frightful storms break out disturbing the atmosphere; dark clouds move around, the wind whistles, lightning rends the sky from one end to the other and the thunder makes the mountains tremble. Something similar took place in the Redeemer’s soul where the extreme evil of sin clashed with the supreme holiness of God disturbing it to the point that it caused him to sweat blood and forced the cry from him, “My soul is sorrowful to the point of death… nevertheless Father, not my will but yours be done.”’
Holy Week is an invitation to climb down to the level ground at the foot of the Cross where all are on a level due to sin. As we seek forgiveness for our pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth sin’s power over us is broken. As a priest privileged to hear Confessions I see again and again people coming to that level ground before the Cross and being lifted up by the loving forgiveness shown there for them as individuals. ‘Go in peace, the Lord has put away your sins’. I hope to hear those words tomorrow at the Monastery.
A last thought. The pandemic has also dug a pit for us. We and many in our circle are in bereavement, frustration, depression, loneliness, anxiety and confusion. By allowing the Cross into this pit, by welcoming afresh the mystery of Christ’s love in Holy Week, there can be transformation. Burdens lifted. Intercession gaining a spring in its step. Discernment coming afresh. Grace to accept things we cannot change. Courage to make changes we ought to make. All is grace - this is made clear to us in Holy Week - all is grace!
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world!
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