The workbench of God's love

A sermon for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, from Fr Russell Goulbourne

On Wednesday last week my wife Lisa and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary — which I remembered because it fell on the same day as when I got into terrible trouble last year for forgetting our wedding anniversary.

 Occasional lapses in memory notwithstanding, I think there’s something about how we’re wired as human beings that means we need to mark significant moments in life: for some reason, we’ve evolved to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries in ways that other sentient beings haven’t. We live in time and space and society – and so dates and places and people are important.

 And, perhaps unsurprisingly, this is reflected in the life of the Church. It’s fair to say, I think, that the Christian calendar arises mostly from the human need to remember significant things that people have done by marking anniversaries of one kind or another, such as commemorating saints on the anniversary of their death. These annual feasts have something about them that resonates with our human desire to mark significant moments.

 And the feast we keep today – the feast of the Holy Cross – is a case in point. Today we mark an anniversary – the anniversary of the dedication, 1690 years ago, in the year 335, of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The church was built over the site of our Lord’s crucifixion and it housed the relic of the cross on which Christ died. That relic had been discovered there a few years earlier by St Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, whose conversion to Christianity changed the faith from a persecuted movement into the official religion of the Roman empire.

 Accounts relate that after the events of the first Easter, when the seeds of the early Church began to take root, authorities in Jerusalem hid Christ’s cross in a ditch, together with the crosses of the two men crucified on either side of Jesus, in order to prevent it becoming an object of veneration for the new religious sect. Jerusalem was then almost destroyed in 70AD but later rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian, and a Roman temple was built over the site where the crosses were buried. But knowledge of the whereabouts of Christ’s cross was handed down amongst certain Jewish families – so when, in the year 326, when she was about 80 years old, St Helena went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a descendent of one of those Jewish families told her where to look.

 St Helena had the Roman temple demolished and down amongst its foundations she discovered three buried crosses – but she could not tell which was which. So, a dying woman was brought to the scene and was laid upon each of the crosses in turn, and when she was laid upon the third cross, she immediately recovered – this was declared to be the True Cross, the cross on which Jesus was crucified. St Helena and the Emperor Constantine then had the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built on the site of the discovery, and the church was dedicated on 14th September 335. The relic of the true cross was venerated that day – hence today’s feast.

 I dwell on the history behind today’s feast because it helpfully reminds us of the materiality and physicality at the heart of our faith – and of the length, breadth, height and depth of God’s love for us, loving us so much that he leapt into the heart of human suffering, giving of himself even to the point of death at the hands of human fear and hatred – and not just any death, but a degrading, humiliating death on a cross. The cross was a terrible instrument of torture and death that the Romans used to execute undesirables. The fact is that in dying on a cross, Jesus wasn’t dying the death of a martyr or a hero. No: he was dying the death of a criminal, the lowest and meanest form of death.

 But, of course, the story doesn’t end there. The darkness and shame of Good Friday was transformed into triumph and joy by Christ’s resurrection on Easter Day. God’s purpose of salvation for all people, seen in the resurrection of Christ, changes the cross from a symbol of death into a sign of everlasting life, from a symbol of injustice and oppression into a sign of boundless love and mercy. Out of the pity of the cross – the excruciating suffering, the death penalty given to an innocent man, the heartbreak of his family and friends – comes the glory of the cross and its redeeming work: the cross is the workbench of salvation, the hope of humanity, the triumph of the eternal love of God.

 So it’s in the cross that we see the deepest truth about God and about ourselves and about our world: for in the cross God takes the worst that we can do to him, and turns it into the best that he can do for us, opening wide his arms and drawing all people to himself, including you and me, and loving each of us – just as we are – with an everlasting love.

 Today we remember the dedication of a church in Jerusalem under which the relic of the true cross was found. Today, here in St Peter’s Eastern Hill, a cross stands on top of the altar: Christ reigns from the cross – the altar on which the precious blood was shed – and so it is right that a cross should stand on this altar, at the very place where, in the Mass, the sacrifice of the New Covenant is renewed. For it is here that we are drawn into the movement of Christ’s self-offering. It is here that– in the broken bread, which is his body, and in the cup of wine, which is his blood – we receive his life to be our life.

 And at the end of this Mass today, as you leave this building, you will have to turn your back on that cross. But as you go from here, fed by Christ’s body and blood, and even if, like me, you tend to have occasional lapses in memory, try to remember this: that you live your life in the light of the cross – the cross from which flows a crucified and faithful and persistent love. A love that calls your name. A love that seeks your heart. A love that never forgets you.