Homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Christ is the word that went forth from the mouth of God, achieving the saving purpose for which he was sent, and then returned to take his place with God in glory.

I have Mass at St. Isidore on Sunday, September 14 @ 9:30/11:30 am

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. 

Jesus said to Nicodemus, "No one has gone up to heaven, except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man." And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him." 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

When the children of Israel returned from exile in Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed that God would make a new covenant with the house of Israel. "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts." 

There's an ancient rabbinic reflection on this text. A disciple asked the Rebbe, "Why does Torah tell us to place these words upon your hearts? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?" The Rebbe answers, "It is because as we are our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts, and there they stay until one day the heart breaks and the words fall in." 

Heartbreak comes with a territory called being human. When trust is betrayed, when what gave life meaning fails us, when a dream drifts out of reach, a devastating disease strikes, or someone precious to us dies, our hearts break. The Quaker spiritual writer Parker Palmer asks, "What shall we do with our pain? How might we hold it and work with it? Is it possible to turn heartbreak toward new life?" Our answers to those questions are critical, Palmer suggests, because violence is what happens when we don't know what else to do with our suffering. 

The brittle heart breaks apart and explodes into a thousand shards and often gets thrown like a grenade at the apparent source of its pain. But there's another kind of heart, a supple heart, that can break open, not apart, giving us greater capacity to love and generate new life. 

This past Thursday, for the 24th time, we collectively marked the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Charlie Kirk's brutal murder the day before left all of us grappling once again with a psychological toll of violent images seared into public consciousness. 

In the Book of Numbers, Yahweh tells Moses to raise up a fiery serpent on a pole. Anyone who has been bitten and looks at it will survive. The very thing that was killing them is the thing that will heal them. The image of the bronze serpent in the desert became the symbol for doctors and healers. The cross is a homeopathic image, like those medicines that give you just enough of the disease so you could develop a resistance and be healed from it. The cross dramatically reveals the problem of ignorant killing to inoculate us against doing the same thing. 

This deep gazing upon the mystery of divine and human suffering is found in the prophet Zechariah. He calls Israel to look upon the pierced one and to mourn over him as for an only son and weep for him as for a firstborn child. And then from that mourning, five times repeated, will flow a spirit of kindness and prayer and a fountain of water. 

Annie Dillard writes, "God suffers the world's necessities along with us, and suffers our turning away and joins us in exile." 

In the beginning, God called the world into being. Let there be light, and there was light. John's Gospel begins with that first word, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." 

Paul's song in Philippians describes Jesus Christ as a revelation of what God is like. Jesus loved what God loves, Christ eyes, see all of God's creation, Christ ears, hear people's cries, Christ's heart is open to know and share God's love, Christ's touch brings healing, and Christ's will is to do God's will so that we might have life and have it abundantly.

God's word is always creative. As the prophet Isaiah reminds us, "So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it." Christ is the word that went forth from the mouth of God, achieving the saving purpose for which he was sent, and then returned to take his place with God in glory. 

Our image of God may be too small. We imagine creation as something God did past tense, like a toy that's been created by some craftsman. But creation is not something God once did. If God, even for a second, were to stop creating and sustaining us, we would cease to be. 

What the mystery of the cross teaches us is how to stand against hate without becoming hate, how to oppose evil without becoming evil ourselves. It was on the cross that God's heart was broken for the sake of humankind. 

God loved the world in this way, that he gave his own beloved Son. Transformation happens when we live within the tensions of life rather than running away. 

Susan Paolo Sherwin invites us to place ourselves at the center of the cross. 

There is a still point at the center of the cross where all is in harmony, all in balance. It is here at this point where the tensions of the crossings are equal and cannot pull. It's like the wheel of destiny depicted in medieval illuminations. If you place yourself at the rim, you are constantly being pulled down or pushed up. 

But if you place yourself at the center, at the still point of the turning world, there is calm, there is peace.