The cross is one, if not the most central image of our Christian faith. We have it all over the church: in the Nave there is one behind the altar and on the baptismal font. If you go out into the church there are many more, both inside and outside. There are crosses on the wall, above one of the doors. Crosses are a central image for us. The logo of St. Mary’s is a cross, a stylized cross, but it is a cross. That is not unusual. Go to any church throughout this country, and most of them will be filled with crosses. It is a central image of our faith. It is an image or symbol of our identity as Christians.
It is also an image of beauty for us. Artists make all kinds of beautiful renditions of crosses. The cross behind the altar has beautiful decorations on it. The cross in the back of the church from Mexico has beautiful painting on it. There are all kinds of wonderful styles of crosses. Our logo is a stylized cross. Jewelry stores have many beautiful crosses that artists have made from simple materials and precious metals like silver and gold, some of which are jewel encrusted. This is all because we see the cross as a representation of who we are as Christians.
I think that if Paul or anyone from the city of Corinth came in to our churches today, or went into a jewelry store and saw all of the crosses, they would be a little surprised, perhaps even confused or confounded by what the cross means to us today. It has become normative for us. We don’t really think that much about it, because for us the cross is a symbol of our faith. But for Paul and the people in Corinth and all people in the Middle East in the 1st century, the cross was not a symbol of the Christian faith. The cross was the tool of the state to kill people, to execute them. The cross was not used for everybody, but was used to kill particular people for a particular reason with a particular purpose, and it created fear in the population. Everyone saw it. It was a very public way to kill someone, and was designed to create terror among the people. It was designed to shame the person who died, shame them, their family, and their friends. To die on the cross was the most shameful way to die in a culture in which shame was in many ways worse than death itself. Death on a cross was adding insult to injury. Not only were you killed, but it was done in a way that took away all of your dignity in the process. You and everyone who knew you were punished with this shameful act.
Cicero, the great Roman orator a few generations before Christ, said that the mere mention of the word cross is shameful. That is hard to wrap our mind around, but if we can and understand that is the way Paul is looking at the cross, it makes more sense when he says, “The cross is foolishness to this world.” It makes a lot more sense when Peter rebukes Jesus when he talks about the cross. It makes a lot more sense that when Jesus is on the cross, almost all of his disciples abandon him because this is the most shameful way that you can die. To say that the cross is a message of hope, a message of God for this world is foolishness if that is your understanding of the cross.
But Paul says that is exactly where God shows up, not just in the suffering and pain of life, but God shows up in the shame of this world, that place that is worse than death. The thing that we do not want revealed to anybody, God shows up in that spot, and redeems it, transforms it, heals it. God takes that thing that the mere mention of fills us with fear, and God comes there.
This message about the cross with which Paul begins his letter is the foundation for everything he says. He starts the letter talking about the cross, because everything that he will say afterwards is going to be about that, even though he is not directly talking about it. If the cross is the set-up, what is the climax of this letter? Every single person here knows it if you’ve been to a wedding in America. The climax of the letter is that beautiful poem about love: If I have faith to move mountains but do not have love, it’s nothing. If I have all the wealth of the world, all the success, all the power but do not have love, it is nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious nor boastful or arrogant or rude. The climax of the letter is love. Faith, hope, and love abide, the three greatest gifts we can have in this world, but faith and hope pale in comparison to love.
That is all about the cross. Paul is saying that it is in that act of going to the cross, that place of utter shame, that Christ most reveals God’s love for us. Christ is willing to go there in his love and to show us his love so that we can be healed from that shame, so that we may, in the words of that prayer we said every Sunday in Advent, “without shame or fear rejoice to behold His appearing.” He comes to that place of shame in love, to fill that place of such deep hurt, the place we don’t want anyone to see, whose mere mention of it is shameful. He comes to that spot and fills it with love so we may stand tall again, so that we will not be afraid of it, that it may be healed. And being filled with that love, we share that love out into the world, the love of God, the love of neighbor, the love that Christ has most powerfully and importantly shown on the cross.
Whatever that spot is for you, whatever pain and suffering that is inside of you, whatever shameful place that the mere mention of fills you with fear, Christ shows up there for you in love, to fill you with love.
AMEN
