Exaltation of the Holy Cross

This Sunday's readings: Holy Cross Day

by John Pridmore

Numbers 21.4-9;  Philippians 2.6-11;  John 3.13-17  THE CHURCH of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem houses two of Christendom's most holy sites, and exhibits several of its most horrendous schisms. The uniquely hideous edicule, beneath the main dome of the building, is claimed to cover the tomb from which Christ rose. Custody of this structure is shared between the Greek Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Armenian Apostolic Churches. The Copts have a miniscule altar round the back. The site of the cross - through the main doors, turn right, and up the stairs - is in the custody of the Orthodox. The feast of the Holy Cross (the Orthodox call it "the Exaltation of the Holy Cross") commemorates the finding of "the true cross" in this place by Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, and the dedication of the original church at a two-day festival held on the 13 and 14 September 335. The Greeks guard the site jealousy. A few years ago on this feast day, someone left the door open to the adjacent Roman Catholic chapel, and the Orthodox took this as an insult. A fist-fight broke out, which had to be broken up by the police. "See how these Christians love one another." Devotion to the cross as the instrument of our salvation is common to every tradition of Christian piety. The Orthodox and the Roman Catholics have their reliquaries, and the Protestants their hymns. The same instinct to contemplate the wood where our Saviour hung inspires both pilgrimages to the Chapel of the Holy Relics in the Santa Croce church in Rome, and rousing renderings of "When I survey the wondrous cross" at the Keswick Convention. That instinct is not unchristian. It is incarnational. Stuff matters. Things are good. Spiritualism is more of a foe of Christianity than materialism. Only when they are put to wrong use does the created goodness of things go bad. Never was timber better used than on Good Friday. High and low alike, we all sing from the same hymn-sheet. We all cling to the old rugged cross, and we shall go on doing so until we exchange it some day for a crown. We sometimes speak of the cross, on which Jesus died, as a tree. "Calvary's tree", we call it. It is a powerful image. We fell by the fruit of a tree, so says the strange old story. In the Garden of Eden we reached out and helped ourselves to the forbidden fruit, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And it stuck in our throat. We fell by a tree. But we are also saved by a tree - the tree on Golgotha, on whose dead branches Jesus Christ was impaled. And then, at the last, so we are told, we shall be made whole by a tree. The Bible closes with the tremendous vision of the garden-city of God, where, by the banks of a bright river, there grows a tree - the tree, says St John, "whose leaves are for the healing of the nations" (Revelation 22.2).

The Discovery and Inspection of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca © not advert" longdesc="find: The Discovery and Inspection of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca %C2%A9 not advert" border="0" style="border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "> Find: The Discovery and Inspection of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca

There is the tree in the garden, the dead tree in the Roman killing field, and the tree in the holy city, the New Jerusalem. According to tradition, the cross was made with wood from the tree from which the apple was taken. "Out of that very tree that made us suffer began our salvation after it had carried him who was both God and man." So the tree that was our scaffold, our gallows, becomes our only hope. An Anglo-Saxon poet hears the cross speak: "I beheld the healer's tree till I heard how it broke silence, best of wood, and began to speak. 'Lo, the Prince of Glory, heaven's Lord, hath glorified me above all forest trees.'"

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, you are shown where the tree that was in that first garden stood. It is immediately beneath the site of the cross. "We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ's cross and Adam's, stood in one place." So said the poet, so say the guide books, so says our Christian intuition. Archbishop Rowan Williams knows about the cross. He has been there. Some would say that is where we put him. While he was still Archbishop of Wales, preached at a service at the start of a meeting in Hong Kong of the Anglican Consultative Council. It happened to be Holy Cross Day. Here is a snippet from the Archbishop's sermon: All I want to say about the image of the Holy Cross this morning is that the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is where we wake up. 'Awake, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you life.' Our sin is like sleep, like a bad dream. We are locked in ourselves. The serious tangled insides of the human mind, the human heart, human speech trap us more and more. Here the reality of God stands against the reality of our minds and hearts. Get real. Touch wood. Text of readings Numbers 21.4-9 4The Israelites set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. 5The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.’ 6Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. 7The people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. 8And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’ 9So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.  Philippians 2.6-11 6Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death –  even death on a cross.  9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.   John 3.13-17   Jesus said to Nicodemus: 13‘No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’