Living a Cruciform Life
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross, which is our parish feast day. What can we learn from the cross as a symbol of our practice of faith? How does the cross nurture our sense of connection with God and one another, with both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of our lives?
The Glimpses of Grace podcast is a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. We are passionate about supporting the spiritual growth of souls, and we hope these sermons and conversations meet you where you are and enrich your soul as we all continue to make meaning in the world today.
Glimpses of Grace on Spotify
Transcript
Beginning a sermon can generally be tricky.
So many moons back, when I first had the privilege of coming here, I learned that Grace did not have a feast day like others do. You know, if you’re named after a saint, you have that saint’s feast day. Grace did not have that because grace is a state of being, and every day is Grace’s day. I was kind of jealous of some of my friends who did have a big feast day, where they could focus and have a picnic and things like this. So we just created one. We picked one because we can do strange things like that. We chose Holy Cross Day. One: because it’s a beautiful day, and the readings and the hymns and all that draw our eye and heart toward this image. There’s deep truth. But also, it’s very convenient because it’s at the first of the school year. So it had both sides to it.
This is where we find ourselves on this day, looking at these wonderful images around the cross; how we understand the cross. If you’ve been in the Sunday forum, you will know that this fall, we’re doing a deep dive into symbols, looking at the symbols of our faith and how we make sense of them, how we engage with them, and sometimes how we have a kind of push-pull relationship with some of them. We look, we’re not sure about it. There’s a come here, push there feeling. How do we make sense of this? The cross is actually a very potent one to look at because there’s a part of it that appeals to us and draws our hearts in, but there’s also a part of it that really draws our eye to pay closer attention to the suffering of life, the suffering of Christ. And we don’t always know what to do with that.
When we got married many, many years back, I asked for one thing from my family for the reception. I asked for an armadillo groom’s cake. It’s the only thing I asked for. I didn’t think it was too much to ask for. I wanted an armadillo groom’s cake, and so I set them all up. I said, you know, there are people who know how to do these wonderful artistic pieces. I had grown up my whole life with that film, and I wanted an armadillo groom’s cake, and I wanted someone in my family to hack the rear end of it all and give it to someone else. If you’ve seen… and I knew who those people were, and I was going to act it all out.
So we have our wedding. We walk in there, and I’m looking for my armadillo groom’s cake. There were two groom’s cakes. Neither was an armadillo at all. On one, there was a Bible. [Audible sigh] There was a Bible, and on that Bible was a message: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” So, of course, you think the first thing: “How are we going to eat that? Who’s going to be the first person?” So this happened to this Bible. And sitting there next to it was the second groom’s cake. And it was a cross. [Another sigh] How are you going to eat these things? It’s like no one wanted to touch them. So they sat there for the longest time because who’s going to be the first person to desecrate a Bible and a cross with a large knife just to go at it? So no one knew what to do with them. No one knew what to do with them. Finally, we go over there. Well, by the end of it, they were all gone. They’re all gone. People had hacked into this Bible and this cross. And I have always thought about that. So I’ve always been kind of jealous. So maybe at the next parish picnic, we can put a challenge out to see how many armadillo cakes can show up.
But this image of a cross is a very potent one, right? And there’s a lot of different ways, in terms of this symbol, how we engage with this symbol. A lot of different ways to do that. So what I want to look at this morning is coming at it from a certain point of view to say, if you look at a cross, let’s spend some time digging and eating into it. Let’s spend some time eating into it. There are two axes: the vertical and the horizontal. They actually teach us a lot about what the cross can teach us as a symbol because the cross, as a symbol, predates Christianity. Cultures from around the world have used the cross—that shape, that symbol—to teach lessons about what it means to be human and how we understand ourselves: how we see where we came from, where we’re going, those higher powers that we are rooted in, how we make sense of ourselves, and how we make sense of the world that we live in.
So if we come at it like that, perhaps it opens up a space for us to spend some time in wonder. How do we make sense of our lives? How do we make sense of ourselves? Looking at the vertical side, that vertical side in cultures throughout time has always drawn us to ask, how are we connected with something larger, greater than ourselves? How do we understand ourselves as coming from something, someone who is greater than us, in whom we find our meaning? What do we want on that deeper level of who we are? Who do we see ourselves to be? And so that vertical dimension draws our eyes to think of how much that opens up. When you ask a child where heaven is, where do they most often point? Up. Over time, they start to point in. And that’s when it gets really, really fun, when they point in. And then over time, when we start pointing at someone else, when you ask, where is heaven? And you point at your neighbor. But we’ll get to that in a minute. So that vertical side, drawing our eyes up, seeing where we came from, where we’re going. It also teaches us a truth about our life, that we practice our faith with each other, that no one can practice our faith for us. We are called as persons living in community to practice our faith and to be aware within ourselves of how we claim that.
Here’s how that gets played out. Every Wednesday, the choir comes to practice. They commit themselves. They give of themselves. They give of their time. They give of their talent. They come and they dedicate themselves on a personal level to preparing. Here’s how that also looks: youth who want to be confirmed commit to showing up, to coming, having a practice, a discipline to join with other youth, making that time. We make time for what we want to invest in. That’s the truth that that vertical side tells us, and we’re sometimes right. We just spent three days, the first of this week. All of the clergy in the diocese all go, and we all sit in a room for three days. It can be a complex time, but one of the things that Bishop Wright said that has stuck with me was this: if you’ve never felt pinched by what Jesus calls us to do, perhaps you’ve never actually met him. If you’ve never felt pinched by what Jesus calls us to do, perhaps you’ve never met him. And we have to ask ourselves and wonder, in what are we rooted? In whom are we grounded? And how do we make sense of that? And that’s where we start.
The next phase of the cross as a symbol is that horizontal stretching out. We’re rooted in that awareness of God’s life within us, and we live it out with each other. So if you turn in your bulletin, or something, I want to show you on page 12. This is how we live it out in this place at this time. What you look at on these two pages is every space of ministry opportunity at Grace. Look at that. It’s extraordinary in those five broad fields. You’ll see how we’ve laid it out. So this is at a certain level. Within each of these, you can dig more. Within each of these, you can dig in more, but these are the ones at a certain level. When you look at all of our life, what makes up our common life as a parish at this time and in this place, it looks like this. I think it’s extraordinary how this has grown over 197 years into looking like this.
Here’s the challenge. The point is not just to have these. The point is not just to develop a program and then sit back and say, well, we have this or we have that, but each of these spaces, then these horizontal spaces, to go back to this image of the cross, each of these spaces, then the work that we’re called to do is to drive us that vertical, to always challenge us to say, how is it? And you can close your eyes and point your finger. I’ll do it. I don’t think I’ll land on. Children of Grace. How is it that Children of Grace is a space where all of those children, their teachers, and their families can grow in their spiritual lives and an awareness that God loves them? How can they live a transformed life? And each and every one of these? That’s what we’re called to ask ourselves. How can the skilled, the flower heal? How can the Good News at Noon crew, if you’ve never come on Tuesdays and just observed them in their natural habitat, how can that be a space where their hearts are transformed and they live more fully into the image of Christ in the world? That’s how we make sense of this. That’s how we do this. And at that intersection space where the vertical meets the horizontal, that’s where our lives take root and our lives grow. That’s where ministry happens. That’s where compassion becomes embodied. That’s where we are transformed, just as we reach out and share our gifts, no matter what they are.
So I encourage you, here’s my plug. If you have not found a space to share your gifts in this parish, spend some time with this. Take it home. See how the spirit is living and moving in your own life. We forgot to retime the bell. Isn’t that great? But that’s God saying yes, you should do this. You should go home. If you’re really brave and you don’t know what to do, you could do what I did. You can close your eyes and point your finger, and whatever you land on, commit to trying that out for one year. Let me know if you’re that person. I’ll give you a prize.
Here’s how we see this in our baptisms as well. In just a moment’s time, when we ask this family, we’re going to ask the parents and the godparent, will you be responsible for that vertical moment? Right. Will you own this? Will you live into this? Will you make this claim? Will you take this step? And then at the end of that, right, we ask all of us gathered, will you who are gathered here commit to supporting them? Both those pieces put in place and where they meet. Here’s where life happens and where fruit blooms.
So maybe at the end of the day, to go back to where we started. Maybe at the end of the day, whoever made those cakes was really on to something. Maybe they really were. Because what does it mean that we can reflect on the symbol of the cross, and we can take it into ourselves, we can own it, we can take it into our lives, and we can let it transform us from the inside out and shape us more and more into the fullness of Christ that we’re all called to embody in our lives. That’s what I’m thankful for in this place because you show each other how to do that. And I’m thankful for you. Amen.