The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Lent 3A
During this season of Lent, we have a tradition of veiling the cross. It feels slightly ironic – the season when we’re following Jesus to the crucifixion is the season when we deliberately hide the cross in much of our worship. Even our new Lenten banner de-centers the cross; the central image is the wilderness, not the cross.
But this veiling of the cross de-centers the cross of Jesus so that we may meet it more clearly during Holy Week … and the veiling of the cross centers the WAY of the cross that we are all called to follow. The wilderness and the veiled cross bring our attention to the WAY of the cross. We have to discern our way of life, we have to figure it out in the midst of everything going on. We encounter Jesus in the words of the Gospels, we encounter Jesus in moments of daily life like the woman at the well, we encounter Jesus in one another, we encounter Jesus in preaching, teaching, and in the sacraments.
But we do not get easy, simple answers to things. Christianity is not simplistic, though some branches of Christianity sure have tried to make it that way; say a special prayer, have a conversion experience, and poof, easy street. I hate to break it to you, but real Christianity is hard. We have to keep our eyes on Christ, wherever he is leading us. We have to learn how to see Jesus, to listen to Jesus, to turn and re-turn to Jesus in every moment of life.
We have to walk the way of the cross – we follow Jesus to his cross, and we follow Jesus to our own cross, not knowing what shape it will take in our lives.
Again, parts of Christianity these days do not want to talk about that. Parts of Christianity, especially in America, have warped the cross into a symbol of wealth, power, and triumph. American Christianity made the cross into a sign of wealth – the prosperity Gospel where if you are good and righteous you get rewarded with earthly wealth and that greed is good and our obligation to our neighbors is purely voluntary. American Christianity made the cross into a sign of power – the power to get what you want no matter the consequences, and the power to avoid consequence. American Christianity made the cross into a sign of triumph – not of Jesus’ triumph over death, but American triumph over every enemy, foreign and domestic … and that American triumph includes only certain Americans.
So maybe it’s good that we veil the cross during Lent. We see and hear so many blasphemous messages about the cross that we need to purge our eyes, ears, hearts, and minds to let the cross of Jesus come into focus. We have to see glimpses of the cross from an angle, at a slant, that we may also see where our cross also lies.
Notice so many different saints in our banners – and so many of them have a cross with them. We see the cross more clearly when we see how the cross shows up in distinct human lives, in the lives of the saints.
So, let’s look at our saints so we can see the cross.
Jeremiah – if Isaiah is the prophet associated with Advent and Christmas, it’s Jeremiah who we see with Lent. He experiences suffering and rejection, gets thrown into an empty cistern, hated because of the words of his prophecy. He sees the downfall of Jerusalem – and how Jerusalem was falling long before the invading armies set foot inside of it. Jeremiah does not want to be a prophet; he is not aiming for social media fame like so many religious figures today. Jeremiah only wanted to be faithful to God and to speak the words God gave him – and to speak the truth when none will listen is part of the way of the cross.
And down from Jeremiah is Margaret of Scotland. An English princess born in exile who arrives in England in time for the Norman invasion to drive her family northward into Scotland where she marries King Malcolm – her spirituality and generosity as queen stands in contrast to the violence and scheming that characterized so much of the medieval royal houses. Sometimes the way of the cross looks like not being conformed to the world around you.
Down from St Margaret is Therese of Lisieux, a French Carmelite saint who died at the age of 24. She grew up with a great fervor for Jesus and wanted to be a nun from an early age. She wrote about her “little way” of loving Jesus … and it was this “little way” that she clung to when she felt a dark night of the soul that stripped away all the warm feelings of love toward the end of her life. She doubted, she struggled, and yet she persevered in love. That’s the way of the cross, too.
Below from her is William Stringfellow, one of my patron saints and a forgotten voice in the Episcopal Church. He was a layperson, a lawyer by training – but he was a far more insightful theologian than many who get degrees in theology and wear a collar. His piercing eye cut through the pious layers that mask the powers and principalities of this world. He made no friends within the church when he pointed out the racism and classism of the mid 20th Century Episcopal Church, and he certainly didn’t make friends when he was targeted by the FBI for subversive activities like harboring peace activist Daniel Berrigan. The way of the cross means knowing that powerful people will use their power against you.
And down from him is Florence Li Tim-Oi, first female priest in the Anglican Communion. She was ordained not in the comforts of Western Europe or North America, but rather in the chaos of war. She was ordained a priest in China in the middle of Japanese assaults in World War II because no one else was courageous enough to care for those communities. Her courage proved too much for comfortable, pious churchpeople who cared more about her gender than about her courage. She never surrendered her priesthood though she did not preside at Eucharist for much of her life. Sometimes the way of the cross is courage and unshakeable integrity.
At the top of the other banner is St Benedict, founder of Western monasticism. He wrote that a monk’s life should be a perpetual Lent, always one of penance and conversion. Though firm, he was not inflexible; the only absolute is, to use a phrase from his Rule, “to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.” If you find a better way to do it, then do that, he says. Pray. Read. Sing the Psalms. Learn how to love others and learn how to set aside your ego for a second. He didn’t need martyrdom to see the way of his cross.
Down from Benedict is Julian, medieval anchoress of Norwich. With a desire to see the Passion of Christ, she was granted a series of visions that became the foundation of her prayer for the rest of her life. Her book, the first theological text written by a woman in English, is deeply rich and evocative, but let me summarize it with three things she asked of God as a young person: true contrition, natural compassion, steadfast longing for God. To understand what truly to be sorry for and to change, to know in the depth of our human nature how to love others, to desire God steadily and continuously: that is the way of the cross, too.
Down from Julian is Lili’uokalani, last queen of Hawai’i. Watching as the rights of her people were stripped away by American colonizers in the late 1800s, she tried to protect them and guarantee their rights would not be infringed by greedy corporations, and for that she paid with her throne and her freedom. She stepped down when the corporations overthrew the Hawai’ian kingdom and America annexed it in 1893. She was imprisoned, and she prayed for peace and forgiveness. She was not successful in protecting her people – but faithfulness and trying to protect the suffering even when the odds are impossible is part of the way of the cross.
And also speaking for the downtrodden, we have Toyohiko Kagawa, a social reformer and proclaimer of the Gospel during the height of Imperial Japan in the early 20th Century. He was arrested for advocating for the poor, he was arrested for apologizing to China for the Japanese invasion in 1940, he was attacked for advocating for universal voting rights for men and for women. The way of the cross is freedom in body and in spirit.
And finally we come to Desmond Tutu, beloved Archbishop of South Africa during the final storms of Apartheid. Speaking for truth and reconciliation, hoping for a new future that goes away from eye-for-an-eye and instead makes for peace and justice. He saw as a young person how small acts of honoring the dignity of another human being make for powerful transformation, and so he never forgot the sacred dignity of every human being. The way of the cross means looking for the image of God in every person, and speaking out for human dignity when it is denied.
None of these great saints knew what their cross would look like. The shape of the cross in their lives only became clearer in retrospect; the challenges and suffering they endured carved an outline around the cross that was theirs. None of them knew in every single moment what they were called to do; no such certainty, but whatever was done was done with faithful love. Perhaps this is why I love the season of Lent so much. It’s messy – and I know my life sure is messy and imperfect, and I have to figure things out in the moment and do my little faithful thing now, no matter the consequences. These saints lived in very different times and places. Some of them we might consider successes – and others known for their faithfulness in the midst of failure. They knew the holiness of the cross is about faithful love. No matter where we go, let us follow Jesus – and see what the way of our cross looks like, and may we have the strength to live it. Amen.