Holy Cross Day 2014

Holy Cross Day 2014 (John 12:31-36a)

“I, if I be lifted up, will draw all people to me.”

The cross of Christ divides human history. Everyone before Christ died in a state of separation from God. Everyone since Christ is offered reunification with God.

The cross of Christ is the instrument by which God overcomes separation. On the cross, Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world. There are two parts to that statement. Jesus allowed himself to be placed into the breach of separation between humanity and God. In that place, Jesus willingly accepted the consequence of the human choice to separate from God. That choice is what the church calls “original sin”, or: the origin of sin.

In addition to Original Sin, Jesus also took upon himself all of the actual sins of omission and commission that all people have ever or will ever commit. There is no such thing as a secret sin or a victimless crime. Jesus experienced every sin and every crime humanity commits.

On the cross, Jesus experiences the universal and particular consequences of sin. The universal consequence is death and judgment. The particular consequence in the unique death of every individual who has ever lived and will ever live. The death of Jesus on the cross is the assurance that no one ever dies alone. Jesus is right there with them.

From time to time people relay stories of some gruesome and horrible death. They ask the question: where was God? Where was God when bullies kicked a teen ager to death? Where was God when a young child died so tragically? Where is God in a world where people kill innocent civilians in the name of one true religion?

God was right there. Jesus experienced that death personally. And, Jesus revealed to his beloved apostle John that he takes away the sting of death and the memory of death from all who receive his offer of divine love.

On the cross, Jesus accepted the full force of human sin, pride, fear, anger and self-will. Jesus accepted the consequence of sin: death. That death is physical and spiritual Jesus entered into that place which the Bible calls the Abomination of Desolation: the inverted pride of despair in the place of eternal separation from God.

God lives in the eternal realm. To enter into the Divine Presence is to leave time and enter into the Eternal. Sadly, souls lost in separation from God are lost in time and attached to time. The fatal irony of separation is that people have no time for God because we have no time for the eternal. We make no time for God because we make no time for the eternal.

The sufferings of the lost souls are entirely self- inflicted as they reject the eternal Real Presence of the Divine in a vain effort to hold onto the duality of time.

There is no duality in the eternal Real Presence of God. There is only love. There is only patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and delight.  In that unitive state there is only the joy of growing in the infinite knowledge and love of the infinite and eternal love.

On the cross, Jesus saves us from sin and death through love. It is the eternal love of God incarnate in the particular person of Jesus Christ who embraces the duality of sin, separation and death. In that embrace Jesus transforms sin back into original virtue, death back into original life, separation back into original unity.

The three parts of salvation Jesus accomplished on the cross are: justification, sanctification and glorification.

Justification is reunification of lost souls to God. As the new Adam, Jesus resets human nature back to its original pattern, The reset is a gift Jesus offers to all people regardless of who we are or what we do or even what we believe. Jesus offers justification (reunification) to people of all religions or no religions, to fine upstanding moral people as well as to people steeped in vice and sin, to the poor, the sick the lonely and the oppressed as well as to the rich the prideful the powerful and the oppressors.

In Jesus, God the Father restores to our entire species what we so foolishly abandoned and even more foolishly refuse to value.

The sacrament of Justification is baptism. The image of infant baptism is a perfect image of the gift of Justification. We are justified (reunited to God) by grace through faith- initially the faith of the church, eventually as we grow in grace- our own faith and personal trust in Jesus Christ.

The second part of salvation is Sanctification. The sacrament of sanctification is Holy Communion. The person of the Holy Trinity who oversees, directs and guides the soul in the process of sanctification is the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit always leads the soul into a deeper, more profound and joyful friendship with Jesus Christ. The two Biblical marks of friendship are time and attention. Friendship with Jesus is an active dynamic that sets us free from the tyranny of time, the pride of time and the despair of time to live and move and have our being in eternal love. Jesus sets us free to move more freely and more joyfully through time without being enslaved to time.

Attachment to time is slavery to duality. The religious manifestation of slavery to duality is legalism. Legalism always asks the question: what is the minimum I must do to gain the maximum reward? It is a question grounded in the deceit of separation and fueled by pride. It takes an entire lifetime of living the new life and following the new Way of living in friendship with Jesus to overcome this attachment to duality.

Finally, the third aspect of salvation Jesus achieved for us on the cross is glorification. Glorification takes place outside of time in the realm of the eternal. For those souls still attached to the duality of rewards and punishments, of the least effort for the maximum result, the first aspects of Glorification will be purgation.

In union with the Father, through the Son, by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, all souls will ask Jesus to help them surrender their attachment to the bondage of time and slavery to duality.

Since glorification takes place in the eternal realm, Anglicans do not assign a quantity of time to purgation. We grow in glorification in the hereafter much as we have chosen to grow in sanctification in the here and now. We grow according to our desire to change.

On the cross, Jesus reunified a lost and prideful humanity with the very source of life by the personal power of infinite and eternal love. It was if sin, being a drop of black ink, fell into an infinite ocean of pure unstained love.

 This is what Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross.

This is what Jesus is now accomplishing for us on the cross.

This is what Jesus will forever accomplish for us on the cross.

Jesus says from the place of infinite love that resounds throughout time and eternity: “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all people to me.”

Now and forever, world without end. Amen,.