Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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To place a cross in front of a church -- on the lawn, or attached to the facade, or even up on the steeple, to put it where everyone can see, is to thumb our Christian noses at the world. It's sassy. It's "in your face." Too much time has passed; we no longer feel its impact. The cross says, "We know, world, that you would like to hide from this symbol of shame -- this instrumentality of death, this cruelty, this rude reminder of who we are and what we are like. But we embrace the cross, and lift it high. We, too, see in it all our sin (but we are no longer afraid of sin). Because we also see in it God's immeasurable love (on which we have staked our lives). We will never be ashamed of the cross. It is our defense against the world and its ways. The only way to stop Dracula was to hold a cross before his eyes. The only way to stop the world from sucking all our blood is to hold high the cross.

There are Christians Who are Enemies of the Cross

"For I have told you often before," Paul writes to Philippi, from jail, "…I have told you often before, and I say it again now with tears in my eyes, that there are many who walk along the Christian road who are really enemies of the cross of Christ." Paul, how can we be enemies (or friends, for that matter) of something that is not alive? Well, we can deny the meaning of the cross and the power of the cross. And, in that sense, I would say that, even today, many walk the Christian road, but (in the realities of their thinking and living) are "enemies of the cross." How is it possible for one who goes to church, and pays his tithe, and says his prayers, to be an "enemy of the cross of Christ"? Why would it be so?

Inside us, the cross pierces our hearts, crushes our pride and self-esteem, bursting all our bubbles. I never feel so unworthy, so totally empty, and (I might add) so afraid, as when I stand before the cross of Christ. In the crucifixion story, I am not the noble, crucified One, dying for what is right and good. (Who would I be kidding, if I told you that!) No, unfortunately, I know my place in this story. I am a soldier at the foot of the cross, who, instead of looking up to receive His rich treasure, divvied up his meager possessions on the ground. I am one of the mockers. Or, at best (and this is the highest role, literally the highest role, I can hope to play in this scene) -- at best I am the guilty thief crucified beside him, who confessed his sin and was absolved. That is my place (our place) in the story of the cross. It is no wonder the cross has so many enemies!

We Need the Cross to Heal Our Frailty

Everything inside, every modern inclination, says, "I can't be that bad!" "Surely there is something good about me, something noble, something to be proud of." The cross says, "no," not on the bottom line. Maybe in Galilee, but not in Jerusalem where men and boys diverge." It is popular today to say that people are "in denial." ("He's in denial about his wife's death." "She's in denial about the abuse she suffered as a child.") Truth is we are wonderfully good at denial, and our denial of things like death and abuse only scratch the surface.

The whole human race is in denial, has been since Adam and Eve, deceiving ourselves and trying to deceive each other whenever possible (using complex deceptions passed down from parents to children -- you know, the sins of the fathers -- deceptions which are quite the same today as in Jesus' time.) We get together and make deals not to tell the truth. Let's say, "I'm o.k. You're o.k." Then we'll both feel better. "No," whispers one who knows the cross, "I'm not okay, and neither are you." We think we will feel better if we play "let's pretend." But it turns out that the pretenses themselves are painful, they shut us off from each other and from God. So, by some perversity, we suffer trying to avoid suffering. But when we accept suffering, accept the cross and all our human frailty, accept our helplessness in the face of sin and death (as when an alcoholic accepts his problem and his inability to deal with it), then the cross becomes the key which opens the door to a new life, to an abundant, eternal life based not on our deserving but on God's loving. Based not on our ability to get, but on God's willingness to give.

We should never be enemies of the cross. We should befriend it and hold it high. To me the cross represents all that is wrong, with me (always, first, with me), and with the world. In those two crossed beams I see, condensed and focused, everything that has gone awry since the garden of Eden -- sin, and death, and hatred, and warfare, and greed, and jealousy, and pride, and all the rest -- and I see God stooping down and kissing that ugly cross and saying, "I love you anyway." That is how the cross is our friend. It is an expose, but it is also a love story.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul?

When We Admit We are Dead, Then We Can Begin to Live In Christ

How can we explain the amazing strength and courage which becomes ours when we befriend the cross, when we accept its verdict upon our lives. The answer is simple. Once we have died in Christ, we cannot die again. So why be afraid? Once we have accepted ourselves and (with great salt tears) heard the cock crow over our lives, dispelling any vestige of pride, wringing out of us the last boast, once we know how truly dead we are, then we begin to live. Then we can, as Christ said, "take up the cross" and do amazing things, as his followers did.

The Canadian theologian, Douglas Hill, says that the cross is both "the permission and (the) commandment to enter difficulty with hope." It gives us permission to expose ourselves in hope. Hope is a dangerous thing. What if we hope for something and are disappointed? Safer to be cynical and depressed. But the cross says it's o.k. to hope, even in the worst of times, for difficulty is part of God's plan (was for Jesus, and is for us), and out of the ugly comes the beautiful, out of defeat comes victory. It not only permits us to be hopeful, according to Douglas Hill, it commands us to be so. Not to be cockeyed optimists, but to be strong, positive people who live through our troubled lives as if God loves us. Not hiding our scars and warts. Not ashamed of our mistakes. Not denying the cross, but accepting it -- indeed, befriending it.

Our Humility and Vulnerability Is Attractive to Others

This willingness to be seen as children of the cross, to acknowledge our miserable state and our dependence on God, this is the engine of Christian charity. We come to our charity not full of sanctimony and self-righteousness, but we come aware of our own needs. Someone had said Christian charity is one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread. When we are willing to show our vulnerability (which we can now do, because we are assured of God's love), others flock to us. Needy people are attracted to soft, open hearts. When we stop pretending to be righteous, when we stop having to be perfect (in our own eyes and in the eyes of everyone else), when we share our faults and failures, others beat paths to our doors. And we are able to minister. Not in our own name, but in Christ's name.

They executed Carla Faye Tucker in Texas a few weeks ago. A lot of preachers came to her defense. They all had reasons why her life should be spared, but I was not moved. I wish one of them had said, "Don't you see? When I plead for Carla's life, I am really pleading for my own. For, when I see the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot help but see the murder in my own heart. We've got to adopt a new formula, something other than judging each other, or else we've all had it." I wish someone had said that.

We Boast Not In Ourselves But in Our Lord

Albert Sweitzer, laboring one day in the hot sun to build a new room on his primitive hospital in Lamborine, looked up and saw a tall, handsome African man, in a white suit and Panama hat, standing under a tree, watching him work. "Could you give me a hand with this heavy beam," he asked? "No," the man said. "I'm an intellectual. I don't do that kind of work." "Ah," said Albert Sweitzer (with five earned doctor's degrees), "I used to be an intellectual, but I couldn't live up to it." We Christians say to a broken world, not "Look at us. We are good, and you should be like us." No. We carry a cross before us and say to the needy, the hurting, the grieving, "We used to be good, but we couldn't live up to it." "We used to be righteous, used to think we could obey God's law, used to think we were hot stuff, better than everyone else, used to judge and condemn, until one day we surveyed (that is, took a good look at) the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, and ever since we have counted our richest gain as loss and have poured contempt on all our pride. Paul (who had plenty to brag about) said, "God forbid that I should boast, save in the cross of Christ my King."

The Cross Is Our Hope and the Hope of the World

We try so hard to be safe that we sometimes put ourselves in danger -- and even become dangerous to others. We strive so to make things go right, they go wrong. We want clean, neat lives, lives without risk, sterile lives with no suffering. We want to give an image of perfection. As such we are enemies of the cross of Christ. The cross blows all that away. When the dust settles after the crucifixion, only the church is left -- it is a church of poor, damned souls, struck dumb by what they have seen -- a humble church singing, "In my hand no price I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling." "To the old rugged cross, I will ever be true, it's shame and reproach gladly bear…'til my trophies at last I lay down, Lord God, 'till my trophies at last I lay down." We don't want to be enemies of the cross. The cross is our only hope, and not ours only but also the hope of the whole world.