Online Sermons
15th Sunday in Pentecost (proper 19): September 13, Martha Rogers
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsThere was great debate among many of my seminary professors about using the symbol of the cross. My Hebrew studies teacher said that she could never wear a piece of jewelry in the shape of a cross as she really believed that it cheapened the death of Jesus and turned the cross into a decoration; a trinket rather than a theological statement of belief in the power of the cross.
My ethics professor constantly brought up this subject of the symbol of the cross, stating emphatically that a cross had to have a corpus, a body, on it for it to be the real image of Christianity. “No body, no cross”, he would say. Many students argued just the opposite: that the image of the body had to be gone from the cross to represent Christianity: no body meant hope for resurrection and new life and emptiness gave meaning to an instrument of death.
My liturgics professor said that as priests we should never make the sign of the cross on the forehead when distributing ashes on Good Friday, but rather we should just make a smudge of ashes. This professor taught us that the sign of the cross is given on the forehead in baptism and confirmation and with those we are marked and sealed as Christ’s own. To use that same symbol in remembering our death, he would teach, is confusing symbols. The cross means life and should be reserved for sacramental marking only.
When I first attended an Episcopal Church, I noticed right away that some people made the sign of the cross on their bodies and others didn’t. When I inquired about this practice, I learned that the use of the sign of the cross is widespread throughout the Episcopal Church by celebrants, officiants, and parishioners and that its use is typically a matter of custom and personal piety. The Book of Common Prayer does not require the gesture to be made by members of the congregation at any time.
I make the sign of the cross for many reasons: when the gospel is introduced, I was taught as a young child to cross myself three times: over my heart, over my lips and on my forehead. While doing so, I say to myself: May the gospel and words of God be in my heart, in my speaking and in my thoughts. When I cross myself during worship, it is an automatic habit, and I use it to physically remind myself that I am blessed and I use the gesture to seal myself in: to protect, to guide and to feel blessed. I use the sign of the cross when I invoke the name of the Trinity (in the name of the father, and the son and the Holy Spirit) or when I receive forgiveness of my sins after confessing them. I wear cross jewelry as a symbol to myself and to those I meet that I am a Christian. I was taught as a child who lived near the bay that each time I entered the water to go swimming I should cross myself to keep safe and I watch athletes do the same thing in their sports competition. I bet we could make a long list of customs regarding the cross.
Where do some of these practices come from?
In Deuteronomy 6:4-8 it is written that the Lord says:
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.”
Compare those words with the words of St. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, proclaimed around the year 380 AD:
“Let us, therefore, not be ashamed of the Cross of Christ; but though another hide it, do thou openly seal it upon thy forehead, that the devils may behold the royal sign and flee trembling far away. Make then this sign at eating and drinking, at sitting, at lying down, at rising up, at speaking, at walking: in a word, at every act.”
The Sign of the Cross is absolutely ancient, rooted not only in the Old Testament but the New (The Revelation of John speaks of those who have the sign of God on their foreheads -- and those who have the sign of the Beast on their foreheads).
St. John of Damascus wrote “This sealing, this [making the cross gesture] was given to us as a sign on our forehead, just as the circumcision was given to Israel: for by it we believers are separated and distinguished from unbelievers. “
Crossing one's self recalls this seal, and the invocation that is said while making this holy sign calls on our God -- the Father, His Son, and the Spirit -- and is a sign of our of belief; it is both a "mini-creed" that asserts our belief in the Trinity, and a prayer that invokes God . The use of holy water when making this sign, as many people do in some churches, also recalls our Baptism and should bring to mind that we are born again of water and Spirit.
Some cultures and religions believe that because of what the cross indicates -- the very sign of our salvation -- Satan hates it, and our using it makes demons flee.
In using the sign of the cross, or wearing a cross on a chain,, we send a visible sign to the world and follow the advice of St. Ephrem of Syria (died A.D. 373) who said “mark all your actions with the sign of the life-giving Cross. Do not go out from the door of your house till you have signed yourself with the Cross. Do not neglect that sign whether in eating or drinking or going to sleep, or in the home or going on a journey. There is no habit to be compared with it. Let it be a protecting wall round all your conduct, and teach it to your children that they may earnestly learn the custom. “
The sign is made by some when receiving holy communion or when in times of trouble or fear (e.g., when receiving bad news, in times of temptation, when hearing an ambulance or fire truck go by), when passing a cemetery or otherwise recalling the dead, when seeing a Crucifix -- any time one wishes to honor and invoke God, or as some believe, ward away evil, fear, and temptation.
The cross is a common sign and symbol which has been taken up by the world in so many different ways. Perhaps because Jesus tells us very plainly today that we are to set our minds on divine things, not on human things, and to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him.Very often I hear people take this gospel directive as a way to cope with a burden or a challenging personal situation. You’ve heard it too when people say “this is my cross to bear in life.” Very often, when words are difficult to find in certain situations, Christians will tell each other: “we all have crosses to bear in life, this is yours.” And I wonder to myself if this is a selfish way of thinking. The cross Jesus took up had very little to do with his own situation and everything to do with ours. He took up his cross for the benefit of others. And so should we.
In my thinking, to take up one’s cross means to think less of self and more of others in order to bring life to them. Jesus, in today’s gospel, is urging us to develop and apply to our own lives a theology of the cross. And if we follow his teaching to deny ourselves and take up our crosses, will it mean that we are finding a way to cope with our own situations or will it mean that we are willing to “ go to the wall” , put ourselves all out, for the sake of others, as He did. For me, the taking up of our cross is not about coping with our own suffering, frustrations or disappointments, but rather it is about committing to a way and attitude of living, for others, for the good of each other, for new and resurrected life and days.
Today we have a choice. To be fashionable and wear our crosses only as pieces of jewelry, decoration in our homes or pieces of art, or to really think on, and live from, our understanding of the cross.
And that is precisely what the gospel of Mark insists on. For Mark, nothing is closer to the heart of the matter than the cross. In Mark, Jesus’ true identity is revealed publicly only after he loses his own life on the cross and the centurion shouts: “Truly this man was God’s Son!”. Mark says that like Christ, our true identities will be revealed only after we too decide to take up the cross and live for others, for making God’s world a better place, for being bearers of resurrected and new life. That is what being a follower of Jesus means in the gospel and teachings of Mark.
The words are haunting and the symbol confusing and enormously challenging: Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me.
Deny. Take up. Follow. Easier said than done. Only accomplished with God’s help.
May God help us all.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
+ Amen.