Sermon for Holy Cross Day, 2025: Lifted Up

Holy Cross Day: Lifted Up

Isaiah 45:21-25; Philippians 2:5-11; John 12:31-36a

The Reverend Paul D. Allick, Church of the Advent, Sunday, September 14, 2025

I think it is fair when people assume that we clergy have all of this

Christian stuff figured out. After all, we’ve been trained for it, right?

But the hard news is that many times we do not.

Much of what we encounter in our Christian Faith is a mystery.

Some assert that calling the hard questions mysteries is a cop

out. It is not a cop out at all. It is the realization, that we do not yet

fully know the mind of God. It is detrimental to our souls to think

that through sheer willpower we can do so.

Today, as on Good Friday, we look directly at a difficult mystery:

the Holy Cross. In our Collect, we prayed, “Mercifully grant that

we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace

to take up our cross and follow him.”

Today, Jesus says to a mixed crowd of people trying to

understand who he is, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the

ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up

from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

As we often do, the crowd resists. Why would the Messiah have

to die? And why must we go on this hard road with him?

Another way to look at it is, maybe the hard stuff in this life is

unavoidable because each and every one of us is broken by sin.

All that we do to each other and ourselves which is against God’s

reconciling love can only be healed by Jesus and not by our

willpower. We follow the Way of Jesus through this mess so that

we can find everlasting peace.

Jesus says to the crowd and to us, “The light is with you for a little

longer. Walk while you have the light...If you walk in the darkness,

you do not know where you are going.”

The Way forward with Jesus toward the light is not about going

up, and up, and up forever. It also involves some coming down to

the ground. To the depths of sorrow and distress where we also

meet the love of God. Sometimes the ascent is not possible

without the descent.

In the third chapter of John, Jesus says to the religious teacher,

Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the

wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever

believes in him may have eternal life.”

Like the bronze serpent in the 21st chapter of Numbers, the cross

ends up becoming a sign of life.

The tribes of Jacob were wandering through the wilderness. It

was a time of immense trials. God is very present with them, but

their troubles do not disappear.

They became impatient. They spoke against Moses and God.

They are sick of eating the manna, the miracle food God sent

from heaven. In His frustration God sends poisonous serpents.

Which then causes the people to turn back. They ask Moses to

pray for them. The Lord hears Moses. He tells him to make a

Serpent of Bronze on a pole. Each person who has been bitten

goes to the Bronze Serpent and is healed.

In the ancient world the serpent was a complex and powerful

symbol: it represented an evil which conveyed death and it

represented fertility, life and healing. (Access Bible pp. 195-96 OT)

Being Lifted up with Christ involves suffering and dying and

healing and living. The Crucifixion and Resurrection happen all in

one action, Holy Week and Eastertide. This is the mystery and,

no, I do not have it all figured out yet.

But I do know what the catechism tells us.

The nature of God revealed to us in Christ is that God is love. The

great importance of Jesus’ suffering and death is that, “by his

obedience...Jesus made the offering which we could not make; in

him we are freed from the power of sin and reconciled to God.”

(BCP, p. 850)

I do know that I will find peace when I abide with Christ, “who,

though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with

God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.”

So far this is what I have figured out and it fills me with eternal

hope. This hope echoes through the last of the solemn collects on

Good Friday.

Through Christ’s Holy Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery,

God is carrying out the plan of salvation. Mother Church stands

as the sign that things which were cast down are being raised up

and brought to their perfection through him through whom all

things were made, Jesus Christ our Savior. (BCP, p. 280)

Christ’s cross and resurrection points us toward this hope. The

hope which carries us forward. As St. Paul wrote, “For now we

see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in

part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Cor. 13:12)