Sermon for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, All Saints Houghton Regis

 

Byzantine Reliquary of the True Cross from Jerusalem, la Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, Genova
(Photo Matthew Duckett 2018)

Numbers 21.4-9

Philippians 2.6-11

John 3.13-17

 

Some of our well-known hymns have really exciting backstories. It was in the year 560 that Radegunde, Princess of Thuringia and Queen of the Franks, escaping from a dynastic murder plot at home, fled to the Bishop of Noyen, who ordained her a deaconess and professed her as a nun.

Being a Queen, she didn’t join someone else’s abbey, but built her own, at Poitiers, and persuaded her friend the Byzantine Emperor to give her a large relic of the True Cross, a fragment of the wood found by St Helena in Jerusalem a couple of centuries before. And she asked another friend, Bishop Venantius Fortunatus, to write some hymns for the occasion of its solemn reception. 

We sang one of those hymns at the start of Mass today, “The Royal Banners forward go”. Another one is also familiar in our hymnals:

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle, sing the ending of the fray;
now above the cross, the trophy, sound the loud triumphant lay,
tell how Christ, the world’s redeemer as a victim won the day.

The dominant note in these hymns is triumph. The cross is lifted up in celebration as a standard of victory. Our word “trophy” comes from the ancient custom, after a battle, of decorating a convenient tree with the captured armour and weapons of the defeated foe. It was called the tropaion.

In these hymns of the sixth Century, which are gold mines of the theology of the early Church, the cross is hailed as the trophy captured from the enemy by the conquering hero, and displayed to prove that the enemy has been defeated.

How are we saved? How does the death of Jesus on the cross save the world? How has he defeated death? And the answer the early Church gives is not a definition, but poetry. Glorious facets of a glorious and wonderful mystery, the triumph of the crucified one. A mystery in the Christian sense is not a puzzle to be solved, or something we can know nothing about. It is rather, something we can never wholly know, a journey into depth and meaning that will never be exhausted.

This is why the New Testament talks about the death of Jesus using so many different images. It is paradox: the stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone. 

It is sacrifice, which itself has different dimensions. Sacrifice is the surrender of a good thing in order that another good might come, Jesus giving his life so that we might live. But it is also in the strict sense an act of ritual violence which Jesus undergoes, becoming the scapegoat of humanity to take away our need for victims. 

Again, the death of Jesus brings about reconciliation, in St Paul’s words, by putting to death hostility – the hostility between Jew and Gentile, the hostility between humanity and God. 

Jesus himself describes his death as the new covenant, sealed with his blood, to reconcile humanity and God. He describes it as a ransom paid to free us from the captivity of sin. 

Elsewhere in the New Testament the death of Jesus is described as an example inviting imitation, identity with Christ through patient suffering and acceptance of God’s will. It is the debt owed because of sin paid on our behalf. The death of Christ is also our death, baptised in him we have died with him and been buried so that we might share his resurrection. 

Again, Christ is victor conquering the powers of evil through his death and resurrection, taking them captive and leading them in his victory procession – the imagery that Venantius takes up in his hymns.

In Hebrews, Christ is described as passing into the heavens through his death, so as to act as an advocate and intercessor, obtaining forgiveness for sins.

All of these scriptural images describe but do not exhaust the meaning of Christ’s death. And all of them lead us to the same truth, that by his death we die with him to our sins, and by his resurrection we are raised to life with him and in him. 

Attempts to define the atonement as a sort of mechanism, to set out how exactly it works, always fall short of the rich tapestry of images in the New Testament. To say, so some Christians do, that God had to punish human sin and so punished Jesus instead of us, does not reflect the richness of scripture and tradition. Worse, it leaves the Cross still in the enemy’s hands, its power of death not overcome, just diverted elsewhere.

But the New Testament message, celebrated in hymn and liturgy, is that the Cross has been seized from the enemy, and paraded by the conquering hero, who voluntarily suffered on it for our sake. The lure the foe put forward, to ensnare humanity into death, has become instead the pledge of life and resurrection. “Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory” 

The Cross changes the whole way in which power is exercised in the world, and the meaning of human history. Hope shines forth where death once held sway. The Church celebrates the triumph of the Cross, in images, poetry, hymns and theology. Crosses are seen everywhere. And splinters and fragments of wood believed to derive from the original wood found by St Helena are still venerated throughout the world as the banner captured from the enemy, the sign of his defeat. 

If you think that’s a bit old fashioned, you might need to look again. At the Coronation in May, as the King and all the panoply of state and church processed into Westminster Abbey before the eyes of the world, they were led by a new processional cross, the Cross of Wales, which incorporates fragments of the True Cross, a gift from Pope Francis. Radegunde, Queen of the Franks and Abbess of Poitiers, would have known exactly what was going on, as the Royal banners forward went. All earthly power acknowledges and bows before the Cross of Christ. And to the Cross all people may look in hope for salvation. For the Son of Man has been lifted up, and being lifted up from the earth, he will draw all things to himself.

Power and Forgiveness

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 14 2023

Ezekiel 33.7-11

Romans 13.8-14

Matthew 18.15-20

 

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus speaks once more about the Church, and the sort of community it should be. This is a theme in Matthew’s Gospel. Two weeks ago we heard Peter’s confession of faith and Jesus’ response, “on this rock I will build my Church”, “what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven”. But that can set up ideas of authority which can be misinterpreted, as Peter soon finds out when he tries to forbid Jesus from going to Jerusalem to be killed. 

Just before today’s reading, in a bit that is skipped over by the lectionary, the disciples argue about who in the community is going to be the greatest. In spite of Peter’s rebuke they still haven’t got it. And Jesus answers by setting before them a little child, a person who in the society of the time had no status and no rights. The community of the church is one in which authority is given for service, not for wielding power over others.

It’s important to bear that in mind when reading today’s passage. Jesus describes the church as a community in which things will go wrong, members will sin against each other. And that is really a joyful and liberating message, because it means there is hope for us all. The Church is not perfect but it is nonetheless the Church, the community of grace and forgiveness.

Jesus teaches about forgiveness and reconciliation in the Church. When things go wrong in any community they can quickly escalate, gossip and rumours leading to accusation, blame and conflict, scapegoats identified and cast out, people taking sides, entrenched against each other. 

The way the Church is to deal with sin is the reverse of this. Jesus’ teaching on what to do if your brother or sister sins against you is not about excluding that person, but about taking every possible means to keep them included. 

This process of forgiveness is communal, and intended to avoid escalation. First talk in private, then with two or three others, then the whole community. As a last resort, says Jesus, treat the offender as a gentile and tax collector. But gentiles and tax collectors are precisely the ones Jesus reaches out to in the Gospel! This is a process aimed at reconciliation, gathering together. And it also recognises that sin damages the community. Forgiveness is about healing the wounded community, as well as wounded individuals. 

And the Church is the community in which this is to become the reality, remaking humanity. The Church is not the club of good people, it is the community of forgiven people. The community which receives and practices reconciliation. 

But it is also the community that, still, gets things wrong. It is a community in which sin can be horribly damaging. The scandals of abuse that have been so grievous in recent years are not over, as recent news stories about “Soul Survivor” show. 

Abuse so often happens through the misuse of power. It may be that someone is in a position of official authority, and misuses that. Or it may be that someone has power in other ways, perhaps by having a very charismatic personality, or by being skilled at manipulation and control. 

In today’s Gospel Jesus describes a community in which someone who has been wronged can go and talk to the culprit in private to seek reconciliation. But we also need to remember Jesus’ teaching just before this passage. The community that can practice forgiveness in this way is a community in which everyone has the status of a child, and nobody exercises power over another.

It’s important to recognise that. Because situations of abuse are not like that. They arise from the misuse of power. And one of the ways in which the church has gone wrong is to misuse today’s gospel reading, and say to victims and survivors of abuse, “we are Christians, so you should forgive. Talk to the person who has harmed you in private and sort it out between you”. Advice which has led to further harm and continued abuse. 

To read this passage this way ignores its overarching message that forgiveness is about healing the community. Where one member suffers, all suffer. And where the community has been harmed through the misuse of power, the community needs to own that, and forgiveness has to include restorative justice. We should not ask individuals to forgive on their own when it is actually the task of the whole community and needs structural change. We should not expect individuals to stop hurting, if the community does not fix what hurt them.

This is why the Church must constantly be improving its commitment to safeguarding. Why there are safeguarding officers and diocesan safeguarding teams to refer concerns to, when they arise. 

The communal dimension of forgiveness is something that is part of the life of the Church. It is about restoring communities, as well as individuals, to wholeness of life. 

The Church is not the club of good people, it is the community of forgiven people. It is founded on grace, God’s free gift, not anything that we have earned or could earn. It is the community that believes in the forgiveness of sins, that receives the forgiveness of sins, that practices the forgiveness of sins. And this means a commitment to truth telling and justice as aa part of reconciliation, when the community itself has been harmed.

The Church is the community that includes and gathers together, that seeks out and brings in the lost. It is the community where even two or three can start to undo the rivalry, conflict and division that are the wounds of sin, by knowing that the Lord is there with them when they are gathered in his name.  

And it is the community that has to make forgiveness and reconciliation visible in the world, to bring hope to a divided and broken humanity. A humanity that needs to know that forgiveness is not only possible, it is freely offered to all as the gift of God in Jesus Christ. Which is why that must be lived out in the Church, first of all.