Sunday, 14 September, Holy Cross: Numbers 21:4-9, Philippians 2:6–11
and John 3:13-17
The legend of the story of the discovery of the true cross is that Emperor Constantine’s mother Helena found it in Jerusalem during a pilgrimage to holy sites in Palestine in 326.
She was guided to the place where it had lain buried by an elderly Jewish man - who carried ancient knowledge - and after excavating the ground, three crosses were found, along with nails.
Finding this ‘true’ or holy cross turned a sign of brutal and shameful torture into an object of devotion: something that prompts reflection on the breadth and depth of God’s love and forgiveness.
Today the cross is still found in familiar and complex ways. A sign of God’s grace and our commitment to live in love, yes; but also tagged with questions of identity and power, challenge or conformity.
It’s worn as an item of jewellery - a fashion accessory, blingy or subtle; a cherished gift, a statement of faith.
It is found in galleries and churches - an object of art and devotion in paint and sculpture, in stained glass, wood or brass, stitched into tapestries.
We stumble across it: chalked on pavements, crossed twigs, marks in sand; found and noticed, an unexpected reminder of faith.
It’s part of our body language: a gesture made by sportsmen and women before taking a penalty or sprinting from the blocks; a sign traced on our foreheads in baptism, an invisible yet indelible mark of being ‘in Christ’.
We find it flown from flag poles, waved aloft and draped across shoulders: at the last night of the proms and in citizenship ceremonies, at football or athletics tournaments and significant moments in our national life.
It is flown, waved and draped in pride, belonging and unity; but also in protest, exclusion and fear. The cross has been claimed as a sign by which to conquer and a means of liberation.
Wherever we find the cross, we need to notice its effects - does it heal and bless, or divide and wound? Our readings today take us beyond flags and jewellery to the heart of that; to the gesture of God in Christ.
The sign of the cross is traced on text and lips and heart as we proclaim the gospel - reminding us to dwell on God’s love in thought, word and deed. A sign traced in the air - taking up space as we receive gifts of forgiveness and blessing.
It is a sign of God’s hope breaking into a broken world: a sign of healing, of salvation; the overcoming of an old order of sin and death, an invitation to life and hope.
In that sense, the cross cannot be limited or defined by a nation, but it can reshape a nation’s imagination. It cannot by definition be claimed as a mark of exceptionalism, but it can make us look beyond ourselves.
As members of Christ’s body, it makes visible our ‘in Christ-ness’ as a community, in all our diversity and individuality. Whatever our age, gender, class, health, occupation, sexuality, ability or ethnicity we belong; we are set free, valued, accepted, being transformed.
To take words from a statement from Bishop Anderson this weekend, freedom - whether it is freedom of speech or freedom in Christ - should be something we exercise ‘not to deepen fear or exclusion, but to foster compassion and unity’.
Sometimes our familiarity with the cross can domesticate it. Sometimes we need artists to shock us to think afresh about its meaning.
During her Confessions tour, almost 20 years ago, Madonna performed “Live to tell” whilst hanging on a giant mirrored cross wearing a crown of thorns.
Still from YouTube video of "Live to Tell"
Unsurprisingly she faced a strong negative reaction from religious groups. Her performance was described as blasphemous, distasteful and heretical.
Her response to this criticism was to say that her main intention was to highlight the plight of millions of children dying from poverty and hunger in Africa.
During the performance, the death toll of victims is counted on a screen behind her; the words “in Africa 12 million children are orphaned by AIDS” are projected onto the stage. Images of children fade in and out as she sings.
In 2025, maybe she would have used the scandal of the cross to focus on a different aspect of the scandalous suffering of humanity: the millions facing starvation or displacement and exploitation; those feeling disillusioned, ignored or hopeless..
Somehow the cross we find brings us back to our common humanity made in the image of God - provoking us to recall our need for repentance and the enormity of God’s love and forgiveness.
As “Live to tell” draws to an end, Madonna steps down from the cross and removes the crown of thorns. She kneels and bows her head. It’s the body language of prayer.
Above her words from Matthew 25 appear: ‘And God said… whatever you do for the least of these…’: the hungry, abused, marginalized, excluded, homeless.
To quote Madonna’s own lyrics: ‘how will they hear, when will they learn, how will they know.’
The hearing, learning and knowing is addressed to those who have power and to the powerless - by the one who takes on our humanity in humility, who restores our human nature.
That imagery taken from the letter to the Philippians is one of the earliest creedal statements or hymns to Christ. It reminds us that we are called to walk in the steps of the one who did not cling to equality but humbled himself, taking the form of a servant.
The cross we find invites us to respond to the one who came into the world not to condemn but to save: to reconcile all things in self-giving love that bears the pain and judgement – to redeem, restore, heal and transform us.
John’s gospel records an episode at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: it’s a conversation with someone who had considerable learning and curiosity, whose own authority meant he came to see Jesus undercover of darkness.
This man, Nicodemus, is faced not only with a message but a person. He is being invited to go beyond his previous understanding of life and faith. We catch the end of his exchange with Jesus today.
Jesus is stretching his imagination - taking images from the Hebrew scriptures that Nicodemus knows so well and inviting him to see the truth of God’s love for the world.
When God’s people become impatient and disgruntled, they only repent when confronted with the painful and deathly consequences of turning away from God’s ways. Moses lifts up the symbol of their suffering and it becomes a source of healing. Playing with this idea, Jesus talks about how he will be lifted up on the cross.
When people saw it, they were also, in the words of one commentator, looking at ‘the mirrored representation of their own destruction - the evil of empire, the oppression they participate in, the violence that beats at the heart of society, the scapegoating tendencies of people to allow innocent people to suffer sins that aren’t their own.’
The cross becomes the means by which we repent of such a cycle of blame, violence and indifference; systems that overlook, demonise, impoverish : God in Jesus goes to the depths of that self-destructive pattern which drives us from compassion to fear, from unity to exclusion.
In the cross we find a mirror which opens up the possibility of trust - to put our faith in God: for God so loves the world in this way - giving the only Son - so that everyone who trusts and follows Jesus will have abundant and everlasting life.
Finding the cross allows us to see the truth, to find healing and to follow Jesus - the one in whom love ultimately wins.
In being lifted up on the cross, he calls us to hear, learn and know the scandal of love: our need for forgiveness for the mirco-agressions and ambitions that dehumanise us and deny God’s image in the other; the economic, technical and social-political systems that silence us and drive us apart..
The shock of the cross reminds us of the scope of God’s love: it shapes our response to injustice and violence; humbled yet restored in dignity, we are forgiven and called to self-giving.
Others will hear, learn and know such love when we go to the cross and know its power to heal; when love pours out through us. In prison, Bonhoeffer shared this poem with his friend Bethge:
People go to God in their need,
For help, happiness and bread they plead
For deliverance from sickness, guilt and death,
Thus do they all, Christians and pagans.
People go to God in God’s need,
Find God poor, reviled, with neither shelter nor bread,
See God entangled in sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand by God in God’s suffering.
God comes to all human beings in need,
Sates them body and soul with Hi s bread,
Dies the death of the cross for Christians and pagans,
And forgives them both.
© Julie Gittoes 2025
