I’ve often thought we should have a contest to see who could come up with the exact number of crosses and crucifixes in the Cathedral. I’ve never done the count but I know this much: there are a lot of them. They are everywhere! And among them are some very special ones. Did you know, for instance, that the cross we use as the processional cross during Advent and Lent – the one with the blackened figure of Jesus on it – is a survivor of the Cathedral’s arson fire of 1992? At the time of the fire, it was hanging over the vesting table in the sacristy. Nearly everything else in the sacristy was destroyed by that fire, but not the corpus on that cross. It merely turned coal black. Kind of a resurrection story. It’s in the chapel this morning in case you’d like to see it.
And then there’s the glass cross that hangs in the chapel during the Easter season, although it, too, is in the chapel today. The glass cross is another resurrection story. It is made of shards of glass rescued from the sacristy’s old stained-glass windows, all of which exploded outward during that same fire of 1992. The morning after the fire, a Holy Names Sister on our staff, Margaret Evenson, was on her hands and knees in the dirt outside those windows, painstakingly salvaging every piece of glass she could find. Later, an artist assembled those random shards into a stunningly beautiful crucifix.
Then there’s the great processional crucifix over there that leads the procession on many of the great feasts of the Church, including today’s. That crucifix sat on the Cathedral’s old high altar for 45 years when the altar was at the far east end. Now it’s in our midst and approachable, and I, for one, am always deeply moved when I see it coming down the aisle, raised high above our heads, leading the way, lighting the way, reminiscent of the column of cloud and the pillar of fire that guided the chosen people on their way through the Red Sea to freedom.
The cross is as it should be at St. James Cathedral: prominent and clearly triumphant -- the paradoxical cross that is both instrument of torture and trophy of victory. Of course, it is not the cross itself that is triumphant: it is Jesus Christ who is triumphant, and his triumph, his victory, is unlike any other. His victory came about not as victories usually do – by force meeting force, power striking back at power. No, his victory came about precisely when he refused the use of power – when he allowed himself no defense whatever, becoming completely vulnerable, the plaything of evil, “sin itself” to use St. Paul’s words. Like Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, he was a lamb led to the slaughter, a sheep before the shearers, silent, opening not his mouth. Or to use the words of an ancient Christian hymn in today’s reading from Philippians, “He emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave.”
One of the Eucharistic Prayers says this in yet another way: “For our sake he opened his arms on the cross.” No one opened those arms for him, he opened them of his own accord in an act of perfect freedom – as if to say: here, and only here is the power that can overcome evil. Not hatred, not force, not violence of any sort, but love freely given! And so, my friends, the triumph of the cross is really the triumph of non-violence, the triumph of vulnerability, the triumph of love.
How, then, are we to explain our history – our bloody and often vengeful history – we who claim to be followers of Christ and who call his cross triumphant? How indeed? Even a cursory reading of two-thousand years of Christian history is a sorry tale of blood shed in causes both noble and disgraceful, a tale that, no matter how we tell it, too often bears little or no resemblance to the story of Jesus.
The story of Jesus is the strongest possible argument in favor of non-violence. In fact, a good case can be made to read his story and the entire Christian gospel as a call to do as the earliest Christians did: to renounce the use of force, not to defend it. I know that sounds simplistic, especially in the world in which we live, and I’m not proposing it as a political philosophy or a blueprint for statecraft. I know very well that from the time of St. Augustine in the fourth century, the Church has developed sophisticated arguments to justify the use of force and killing under certain conditions, but I also believe that every argument that we make to justify the use of force must take into account the fact that at the very heart of our faith is the One who could have fought back but didn’t, could have called up legions of angels but didn’t, the one who walked the road to Calvary, opened his arms on the cross, and spoke words of forgiveness for his tormentors and executioners.
Whatever we believe about the violent use of force – about wars, just or unjust, provoked or preemptive or, for that matter, about the state-sponsored killing that is capital punishment, we Christians must do our thinking and form our consciences with one image squarely in our line of sight: the image of the cross – the cruel instrument of torture and death made holy and triumphant by the One who could have struck back but didn’t.
Today, we look at our world (pick your place!) and we see appalling violence, vengeance, and endless retribution, and we find ourselves asking, “Where does it all end?” And, of course, the answer is that it doesn’t end, and it never will end – not as long as violence continues to be met by violence. As Christians, the cross is our answer, the triumphant cross of Jesus Christ! Or, better, Jesus Christ is our answer – Jesus whose death, while it looks like total defeat, is really the path to life and peace, the only path to life and peace!
And then there’s the glass cross that hangs in the chapel during the Easter season, although it, too, is in the chapel today. The glass cross is another resurrection story. It is made of shards of glass rescued from the sacristy’s old stained-glass windows, all of which exploded outward during that same fire of 1992. The morning after the fire, a Holy Names Sister on our staff, Margaret Evenson, was on her hands and knees in the dirt outside those windows, painstakingly salvaging every piece of glass she could find. Later, an artist assembled those random shards into a stunningly beautiful crucifix.
Then there’s the great processional crucifix over there that leads the procession on many of the great feasts of the Church, including today’s. That crucifix sat on the Cathedral’s old high altar for 45 years when the altar was at the far east end. Now it’s in our midst and approachable, and I, for one, am always deeply moved when I see it coming down the aisle, raised high above our heads, leading the way, lighting the way, reminiscent of the column of cloud and the pillar of fire that guided the chosen people on their way through the Red Sea to freedom.
The cross is as it should be at St. James Cathedral: prominent and clearly triumphant -- the paradoxical cross that is both instrument of torture and trophy of victory. Of course, it is not the cross itself that is triumphant: it is Jesus Christ who is triumphant, and his triumph, his victory, is unlike any other. His victory came about not as victories usually do – by force meeting force, power striking back at power. No, his victory came about precisely when he refused the use of power – when he allowed himself no defense whatever, becoming completely vulnerable, the plaything of evil, “sin itself” to use St. Paul’s words. Like Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, he was a lamb led to the slaughter, a sheep before the shearers, silent, opening not his mouth. Or to use the words of an ancient Christian hymn in today’s reading from Philippians, “He emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave.”
One of the Eucharistic Prayers says this in yet another way: “For our sake he opened his arms on the cross.” No one opened those arms for him, he opened them of his own accord in an act of perfect freedom – as if to say: here, and only here is the power that can overcome evil. Not hatred, not force, not violence of any sort, but love freely given! And so, my friends, the triumph of the cross is really the triumph of non-violence, the triumph of vulnerability, the triumph of love.
How, then, are we to explain our history – our bloody and often vengeful history – we who claim to be followers of Christ and who call his cross triumphant? How indeed? Even a cursory reading of two-thousand years of Christian history is a sorry tale of blood shed in causes both noble and disgraceful, a tale that, no matter how we tell it, too often bears little or no resemblance to the story of Jesus.
The story of Jesus is the strongest possible argument in favor of non-violence. In fact, a good case can be made to read his story and the entire Christian gospel as a call to do as the earliest Christians did: to renounce the use of force, not to defend it. I know that sounds simplistic, especially in the world in which we live, and I’m not proposing it as a political philosophy or a blueprint for statecraft. I know very well that from the time of St. Augustine in the fourth century, the Church has developed sophisticated arguments to justify the use of force and killing under certain conditions, but I also believe that every argument that we make to justify the use of force must take into account the fact that at the very heart of our faith is the One who could have fought back but didn’t, could have called up legions of angels but didn’t, the one who walked the road to Calvary, opened his arms on the cross, and spoke words of forgiveness for his tormentors and executioners.
Whatever we believe about the violent use of force – about wars, just or unjust, provoked or preemptive or, for that matter, about the state-sponsored killing that is capital punishment, we Christians must do our thinking and form our consciences with one image squarely in our line of sight: the image of the cross – the cruel instrument of torture and death made holy and triumphant by the One who could have struck back but didn’t.
Today, we look at our world (pick your place!) and we see appalling violence, vengeance, and endless retribution, and we find ourselves asking, “Where does it all end?” And, of course, the answer is that it doesn’t end, and it never will end – not as long as violence continues to be met by violence. As Christians, the cross is our answer, the triumphant cross of Jesus Christ! Or, better, Jesus Christ is our answer – Jesus whose death, while it looks like total defeat, is really the path to life and peace, the only path to life and peace!
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