The Word of the Cross

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

As a parent, I feel like I am constantly reminding my children to do the basic things that I think are good for them. Cleaning their rooms, picking up after themselves, doing their homework, etc.

You might expect that after all these years of frequent reminders, we would have reached an understanding and they wouldn't forget to do these things. While there has been some progress, there is still significant room for improvement.

Not just them, I include myself in that as well. Lisa would be the first to agree that I need reminders for many things. She attempts to accomplish this by keeping a very accurate schedule of all the family and church commitments, sometimes planning things weeks in advance.

Back in Washington, she had a fairly large hanging calendar in the kitchen, near the refrigerator, so it wouldn't be missed by the naked eye, outlining all the stuff and things, a source of truth, updated constantly, but I would still miss something.

She would often point me back to it and say, “It was on the calendar, you need to remember to look at it.” I would always give some lame excuse as to why I missed this or that, but the truth is, she was right; I wasn’t looking at it.

Even though it was right in front of my face every day. Even though for years she has tried (and I'm sure she felt sometimes in vain) to remind me, to keep us on the same page so that we could have some relative direction together, I would still find a way to get distracted, to miss something, and throw all our plans into chaos.

This kind of foolishness speaks to the heart of our sinful selves: too often, we aren't going to the source of truth every day to help us know up from down or left from right. Too often, we forget, and we are in desperate need of reminders that we might always know the truth.

If you have your bible with you, hold it in your hand. The source of truth for everything in life is in God’s word.

He places it in your hands so that you will be reminded that he keeps his covenants, that you would be blessed with faith, that you might be strengthened and endure. That we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. That he alone is the way, and our salvation. He gives us his word that we would know what is good, that he is good, and that his desire for us is that we would walk in right relationship with him all the days of our lives.

Through the mouth of his prophet, God comes right out and humbles the heart of a faithless and rebellious people with a word.

“O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.” (Mic 6:3-4).

His word compels us to remember his faithfulness, even in our moments of faithlessness. His word compels us to remember that he is close to us and has been close to us, in our hour of need, in our moments of despair, and he is the one who frees us from slavery, from literal slavery to sin, death, and the devil.

He has done this! He has done this through his son, through his cross. He has given his firstborn, his only son, for our transgressions, the fruit of his body, for the sins of our souls, because he so loved the world.

Every time we enter the church sanctuary, there is a visible reminder of God’s great love. Just above his altar, where his holy meal is administered as a grace for you. The cross reminds us that the wages for all our sins have been satisfied once and for all by the crucified and risen Jesus, and we stand underneath his cross to receive the promise of mercy and forgiveness found in his body and precious blood, while at the same time, he says, in his words: “Given and shed FOR YOU” to remind us always of what a great love he has for those who believe in his son.

Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor.1:18). Paul makes a curious statement if we are going off of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom would say that as we age, we are slowly perishing, our bodies and minds aren't as quick as they once were. It is a fact of life as we get older: things do not work as we expect or as they once did.

But Paul reminds us that God doesn't work by conventional wisdom, because our wisdom is nothing compared to God’s. We see things only in part, dimly lit in this life. But not God, he sees and knows all, and is the author of all wisdom and all things. God further emphasizes this fact through the prophet Isaiah when he says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). Paul's letter reminds us of our salvation in Jesus Christ: he has saved us, sinners, from perishing, and has called us to himself in repentance, no matter our age or the state of our bodies and minds, “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

In today's gospel reading, Jesus challenges the conventional wisdom of this world when he pronounces future blessings on his disciples who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are persecuted and reviled, the meek, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. These aren’t qualities we typically see as blessed.

We live in a world where being poor in anything is not considered a blessing, and mourning is not seen as particularly good. Instead of meekness, strength is often viewed as a blessing, and although we celebrate the idea of peace, we tend to persecute those who pursue it. Our race to put the collective wisdom of the world at our fingertips, through more robust internet searches and smart tools, might satisfy our “need to know” for the moment, but we are limited to being tethered to connections that are not always stable.

Access to God is not limited by anything. Prayer requires no connection from our local cable company. His word is unchained and can reach anyone, anywhere, and anytime. God does not come to only the learned, or those who are in good moods, or the strong in faith. It is quite the opposite as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “His power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

In the opening to his sermon today, Jesus is pointing us to this reality, one that is harder to see even when it's right there in front of our faces. Jesus, who has come into the world and is standing on top of his holy mountain proclaiming the good news for the poor in spirit, for those who mourn, for the meek, for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for the persecuted, and the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemaker, pointing us to the truth, that God’s only son, the promised messiah, has come among us to make a way for those who were dead in their tresspass, to come to the Father. A promise fulfilled through his cross.

Our Lord Jesus knows who and what we are, and he speaks to us from his holy hill and says, “Blessed.” Yes! Blessed, the Lord is with and among us always in times of trials, persecutions, spiritual poverty, and in our missional efforts to share his peace with our neighbor.

The Lamb of God who has come to take away the sin of the world is with us, to free us from spiritual death, from true bondage. He has come to overcome the world through his cross.

He says to us, “Blessed,” because no matter how we might fall short or miss the obvious things staring us in the face, he makes a way for us that we might be reminded of his words, to hear him in the scriptures, prayer and worship, that we might hold onto and endure in faith at all times, because this world is not the end for those who are in Christ. Our true home is with him in his eternal kingdom.

In Jesus’ kingdom, there is eternal comfort. In this kingdom, there is eternal satisfaction. In this kingdom, there is true mercy. In this kingdom, the reward is great and eternal. In his kingdom, we are true heirs and will be surrounded by the glory of God. - Amen