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The Greeks in today's Gospel lesson had no doubt heard that Jesus spoke with eloquence, with passion, and, most of all, with great wisdom, unlike any other great teacher had ever spoken. They wanted to meet the man behind the wisdom. The Greeks seek wisdom. The Jews demand signs. These men were both. So they prayed, “Lord, we wish to see Jesus.” They wanted to see Jesus teach and preach, but they also wanted to see some of the great signs like the one that was going wildfire around Jerusalem during the Passover — Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus was not helping things; he was walking around Jerusalem telling the story.
The Pharisees were jealous. “The world — the ‘kosmos’ — has gone off after Him…” (John 12.19) they said as they saw the Palm Sunday parade pass by, all because of the Lazarus miracle. Now, here were Greek Jews who had come for Passover, and they too were seeking after Jesus. All glory, laud, and honor to Jesus that day — Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!
The hour had come for the Son of Man to be glorified, Jesus said. But the glory of Jesus is not that the world “has gone off after Him”, ready to make Him a king, or even just another great prophet and wise teacher. The glory of God would not be in a large earthly, religious–political following like the Pharisees imagined. Instead, God's glory would most clearly be seen in what appears to every mortal eye as an utter defeat, a cursed death, something to be ashamed of.
Holy Cross Day was indeed coming. There is no earthly glory from this sinful world for finding the blessed cross. The cross means death to the sinner, death to life in this world. It means killing off all that pleases our carnal, fleshly, sinful selves in this world. It means an end to serving ourselves. “The one who loves the life of his destroys it, and the one who hates the life of his in this world will keep it into eternal life,” Jesus says. (12:23).
“The cross alone is our theology,” Dr. Luther writes. We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles. How different is that attitude than the prevailing wisdom of this world where the cross has become a stumbling block and folly even to many people who profess to be Christians. So many are afraid the cross will offend! I have to commend this congregation for this beautiful processional crucifix. Many mistakenly think that the empty cross is somehow a sign of Jesus' resurrection and death at the same time, so why bother with the body hanging on it! I grew up in churches with empty crosses. I once thought that. It took a patient pastor in Christ to point this out to me: without this man hanging on the cross, there is no salvation, there is no resurrection. The empty tomb is the sign of resurrection. The deep down truth is: we're afraid the man on that cross will offend others or us.
When Dr. Luther says “the cross” alone is our theology, he does not mean the empty cross. He does not mean two solitary planks of wood crossing each other. The cross means nothing whatsoever without the God–man hanging on it. It should offend you — it should draw to your remembrance the sins and shame and punishment that belongs to each of us — but it should also remind you and me how very much God loves us despite our sinful failings, the very depth and length and height God would go to for us, that He would die there on that cross and suffer for us in our place.
This is Holy Cross Day. Good Friday. There is no other single event in all of human history that has been or ever will be more important. It was a glorious battle when death and life contended that day as Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified. But the death of Christ would be the end of the fray. As a victim, He won the day. There, salvation is completed and the victory over sin, death, and the devil has been won. Just as so many Christian icons depict the crucifixion, Mel Gibson's movie “The Passion of the Christ” showed us what happened on that Holy Cross Day. The death of Jesus defeated Satan and locked him and the eternal death he wants for each of us into hell, there to remain.
Through the folly of the cross and the folly of preaching this cross, it pleases God to save those who believe. Here, in apparent weakness, God is showing His strength. Here, in apparent foolishness, God is showing His wisdom. Here, in apparent shame, God is glorified, enthroned in a splendor and majesty that can never be taken away. Here, on His most Holy Cross, God's Son, Jesus Christ, located Himself for you. Here, He saved you. Here, He went to hell and back for you and for me. The cross and the God–man dying on it is for you and for me.
Emperor Constantine the Great and his mother Helena believed that. In 312 AD, before the battle of the Milvian Bridge near Rome, in a dream, Constantine saw a flaming cross inscribed with the words, “In this, conquer.” He changed all the standards and flags of his army over to crosses, and his army won the battle. Soon after, he and his mother were converted to Christianity and baptized. In 313, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, giving civil rights and toleration to Christians throughout the empire.
His mother, Helena, in the next 10–15 years, began scouring the Holy Land for the locations of all the events in the life of Christ. The Christians in the Holy Land at the time certainly knew where these locations would be. She marked and built a church on the traditional place of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. She was taken to the location of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, very near each other on the same hill. Dirt and refuse and pagan idol shrines had covered the spot. She uncovered and restored the site. According to the story, in the excavation, she allegedly found only a part of the very cross of Jesus' crucifixion on September 14th, 320 AD. Fifteen years later, upon the consecration of what today is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, Constantine declared this day to be the Feast Day of the Holy Cross, thus becoming one of the Church's earliest annual festivals.
Many legends surround what happened to that piece of the cross Helena found. A few hundred years later, a Persian king stole the cross, and an army was taken a long distance to go out to retrieve it. Many cities and churches and monasteries asked for and received pieces of the piece to enshrine. By medieval times, abuse was rampant, focusing on the piece of wood and not on Jesus. Luther said, by his time, something to the effect that, if one put together all the pieces of the cross that are claimed to exist, one would need a ten–ton cart to carry it. That, and there were enough bones enshrined for all twenty–eight of the apostles.
Today, the actual cross is gone. Was it foolish for Helena to mark the location of our Lord's crucifixion and resurrection and to find part of our Lord's cross? Jesus was not on it any longer. Jesus is not there. The question should never be, “Where is the Holy Cross, and can I see it?” The right question should be, “Where is Jesus?” The right prayer is that of the Greek Jews looking for Jesus, “Lord, we wish to see Jesus.”
Yet, it seems that Helena and Constantine were asking the right question. They were not looking for an empty cross, for a mere relic to worship. The official name they gave to this day in Greek and Latin was “The Exultation and Raising Up of the Holy Cross.” Hard to do that with merely a portion of the cross. The text for the festival has always been Jesus telling us in the same Gospel you heard today, “When I am raised up (by God), I will draw all men to myself.” (12:32). They knew, despite anyone who might err later, that the true glory in the Holy Cross was that Jesus died on it, and that, there, He suffered for us, and because of that salvific act, all men could be drawn back into the Savior's arms. They were not worshiping the piece of wood; they were worshiping the Savior who died on that piece of wood in their place. In that cross, by faith in Christ, they saw, and we see, the means by which sin, death, and the power of the devil are conquered.
How is this victory of the cross given to you and to me? What does the cross mean for you and me today? Ask this question: Where is Jesus Christ? Here is how our ancient sermon hymn answered that question:
Faithful cross, true sign of triumph, be for all the noblest tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom, none in fruit thine equal be;
Symbol of the world's redemption, for the weight that hung on Thee!(Lutheran Service Book #454 v. 4)
The cross is only the sign and symbol of our triumph. It is the means by which Jesus saved us. But there is foliage, blossom, and fruit that comes from that blessed tree. Our Lord is not back there, on Good Friday, stuck in time. He is here, as He promises in His Word, giving you and me the fruit of this tree, in the here and now.
We cannot go back to the cross, and neither, does our Lord. There is no clinging to the old rugged cross. We do not have to. In Christ, in the Church, God makes every day for you and for me a Holy Cross Day. Christ has baptized you into His death and resurrection and washed you of your sins and given you the glorious name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while making the sign of His Holy Cross upon you. So, with confidence, we can bravely live each day in our baptism, beginning and ending each day by making the sign of the Holy Cross upon ourselves as Luther teaches us in our Small Catechism, confessing that we belong to Christ in both action and in our prayers. The sign of the cross has been given to you. It belongs to you. Do not be afraid to use it in your personal piety. You simply confess your baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus by using what is yours.
Whenever He gathers us together for the Divine Service, God makes that day a Holy Cross Day. Here, the same Christ who spoke words of forgiveness and peace from His cross is present in His living Word, read, proclaimed, and preached. In that Word, His Holy Spirit that He gave over from that cross builds faith in the hearts of His people. Here, through the mouth of His pastors, He proclaims to us that our sins are forgiven and that we have peace with God on account of His cross. Here, the same Body and Blood that was sacrificed on the cross in a great miracle comes to us in our here and now, heaven meeting earth, to heal and forgive you and give you food for the journey, strengthening you as you bear your cross with Christ until you are brought to everlasting life.
Lord, we wish to see Jesus. So this life is a cross bearing journey. It is also a fruit–of–the–cross bearing journey. It is, therefore, a Christ–bearing journey. We are crucified with Christ, Saint Paul tells us. We suffer from the lingering effects of sin. We face our own mortality to this temporal world. Our health will fail us. Our jobs may not be secure. Our homes and vocations may come under attack from wind and wave. We will eventually be stripped of all things, as our Lord was, and we will die to this life. Nevertheless, we live, and not us, but Christ lives in us in His blessed Word and in His Sacraments, because He died in our place on the cross and rose from the dead, and the life we now live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. (Galatians 2:20).
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