In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Quick now:  What does the cross MEAN to you . . . the cross of Christ?  Come on!  What does it MEAN?

Do you find that a difficult question to answer quickly and simply?  Don’t worry if you do . . . I don’t think it calls your faith into question if no quick, simple answer arises to the question, “What does the cross of Christ mean to you?”  At least, no quick simple answer came to ME when I asked myself the question.  And my difficulty was not because the cross doesn’t mean anything to me . . . the problem arose because the cross means EVERYTHING to me.

Some of us are old enough to remember manual typewriters . . . I have a very old one in my office I’ll show you if you’ve never seen one, let alone USED one.  Those of you who HAVE used one of those ancient machines:  remember how, if you pressed down a bunch of keys all at once, the type bars – those little arms that held the tiny letters – would all come up and get stuck together before hitting the ribbon?  All those little arms would get stuck together and nothing would get written on the page.  You’d have to start prying the arms apart until the mess became untangled and all the arms would fall back into their resting places.  I remember that it was kind of a fun thing to do when I was a kid.  All those type bars stuck together made a great little mess, and it was kind of fun to pick them apart and see which of them – which letter – was the one holding everything together.

Well, when I started asking myself the question, “What’s the cross of Christ MEAN to me?,” I felt a little like an old typewriter . . . all the thoughts came up at once and stuck together . . . nothing came out, and my little brain was a MESS.  The only thing to do was to start prying some of those thoughts apart until they all fell back into their resting places.

While I was still stuck, with all of my thoughts jammed together, I started looking at other people’s sermons for Holy Cross Day to see if I could find something that would help me get UNstuck . . . something that would start to loosen the log jam in my head . . . but I didn’t have much luck.  A lot of the sermons I found tell the story of the Roman Emperor Constantine and his mother, Helena, who is credited with finding the true cross – the cross of Jesus’ crucifixion – in Jerusalem in the 4^th century.  Tradition has it that Helena not only found the cross, but the spot of the crucifixion and of Jesus’ tomb.  On these spots she built a group of buildings that now make up the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  It’s a good story . . . and lots of preachers probably retell it today because September 14, Holy Cross Day, is the day when that group of buildings that make up the Church of the Holy Sepulcher were dedicated in the year 335.  But still – as good as the story of Helena may be – it doesn’t help us with the question I seem to be stuck on, “What does Christ’s cross MEAN to you . . . to me . . . to us?”

Still trying to loosen the log jam in my brain, I went and got the cross that hangs on the wall beside my bed, and sat and looked at it.  It’s a simple wooden cross, made by a Native-American artist in New Mexico, and it was given to me by a friend at my ordination.  The wood that has not been carved is stained a dark brown, and I was told that the stain is some all-natural concoction that involves ashes and mud.  On the cross there’s a simple abstract design that flows out from the center of the intersection of the two arms . . . the design could represent light . . . or fire . . . or drops of blood.  But, although the design can be described as moving out from the center, it actually directs the eye back into the center . . . the light, or fire, or drops of blood moving out from the center of the cross, are also like arrows pointing back into the heart of the cross. 

As I stared at this cross, I felt my internal log jam begin to shift.  This little cross with its simple design reminded me that everything comes from the cross . . . and everything returns to the cross.  Everything.  Christ’s power emanates, flows forth from the cross . . . filling the entire world, transforming it into a new creation.  And at the same time, the cross gathers everything in creation to itself, pulling all creation into its heart, saving the world.  In the cross is the mystery of creation . . . the mystery of God . . . the mystery at the very center of all.

You know, the cross is an extremely ancient symbol . . . a symbol with mystical, religious meanings reaching back into time immemorial . . . I understand that a cross has been found in Crete dating back to the fifteenth century BEFORE Christ.  And I believe that all the richness of this ancient symbol is incorporated into our Christian cross.  Here’s a tiny fraction of what a French scholarly book[1] on symbols has to say about the cross:  “In it heaven and earth are conjoined . . . in it time and space are intermingled.  The cross is the unbroken umbilical cord of the cosmos, linking it to the center from which it sprang.  Of all symbols the cross is the most universal and all-embracing.  It symbolizes intervention, mediation, the natural and permanent structure of the universe and communication between heaven and earth, and earth and heaven.”

Whew!  No wonder all the little type bars of thought in my brain got all jammed together!

So let’s return to that question I started with, “What’s the cross MEAN to you?”  As you can see from what I’ve just said, the cross ‘means’ a LOT . . . there’s an infinite wealth of meaning in the cross . . . far more than I could begin to unearth in this little sermon.  So maybe the problem is with the question itself.  Maybe I should have asked something else . . . something like, “What does the cross of Christ OFFER you?” or “What may we RECEIVE through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross?”  I betcha we could have come up with a whole bunch of excellent, accurate answers to those questions right away.  Answers such as: “The cross of Christ offers me salvation” and “Through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross we receive forgiveness of our sins.”  These statements are not only true . . . they’re crucial . . . they’re linchpins of our faith.  The cross of Christ DOES offer us salvation, and through the cross we ARE forgiven our sins.  But we know these answers, these statements . . . right?

Remember at the beginning of this sermon when I was talking about manual typewriters and about hitting all the keys at once?  Remember how I said that when I was a little boy I thought it was FUN to do that . . . to make a mess of the keys, jamming them all together, so I could pry them apart?  Well, I’ve been doing it again, this morning . . . with you . . . just a little bit.  I asked you to consider the MEANING of the cross, hoping that you’d all have a bit of the same experience I had when I asked myself the question . . . the experience of having all your mental type bars jam together all at once.  Because I think it’d be tremendously good for us all to stop for at least a few moments and really, REALLY consider the meaning of the cross.  I think it would be tremendously good for us to go deeper and farther into all the things we’ve learned and come to understand about the cross from Sunday School and catechism classes.

Because in the cross lies REALITY.  The TRUTH, the REALITY of the cross goes infinitely deeper and farther than our learning and understanding can go . . . farther even than words themselves.  When I sat and stared at the little cross that hangs beside my bed, I told you that the log jam of thoughts in my head began to shift.  The shift was a profound one.  It was a shift away from the frustrated wordlessness of too many thoughts coming together at once, toward the adoring wordlessness of contemplation.  It was a shift away from the prison of self, toward the freedom of Christ.  It was a shift away from my illusions of the world, toward the truth of the reality of God.  Staring at my little cross, my mind and my heart were opened . . . if only for a moment.

You see, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is where we wake up.

If I’d really been on the ball earlier last week, I would have requested a hymn for today, #547.  It begins with a quotation from the letter to the Ephesians, which is in turn a quotation from a very early Christian baptismal hymn.  It begins, “Awake sleeper and rise from the dead.”  Take some time today to contemplate the cross, because through his cross Christ shall give you life, Christ shall give you reality, Christ shall give you truth.

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