By Bishop Jonathan Meyrick

Text

My Servant shall be exalted and lifted up.

Isaiah 52: 13

In Jesus’ world, any day began at sunset going through to the following sunset, and the Christian Church continued this as it marked its Feast Days. So the eve of any Christian feast day is treated as the beginning of whatever the celebration might be. Tomorrow, 14 September, is kept in many Christian denominations, the Church of England and Roman Catholic Churches among them, as Holy Cross Day. Here, we begin our marking of it with this evening’s service.

The day14 September, 1681 years ago, was when the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Bethlehem was dedicated. A large basilica church was built over the two sites of both Jesus’ crucifixion, and then his burial. I went there once, very early in the morning, before most pilgrims started visiting; that enabled me to appreciate the different levels of the hill of crucifixion and the tomb below it. The sense of being in both places under the same roof was very powerful.

Prior to its building, and during the excavation work leading up to it, Helena, mother of the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian, and indeed a Christian herself, had found a cross there, and the local conviction was that this was Jesus’ cross. From that moment on, together with Helena’s son having had a vision of a cross in the sky at a key moment in his life, the cross began to become the dominant symbol of Christianity. Prior to this, the symbol had been more usually a simple fish shape. Fish were key in Jesus’ ministry, and a number of his disciples were fishermen – memorably, Simon Peter was called to follow Jesus in ‘fishing for people’. But the chief reason for the fish symbol was in the name: the Greek word for fish is ichthus. You may know that in the Greek alphabet what we see as a combination of consonants in ch and also th were single letters [χ and θ], meaning that where our transliteration of ichthus has seven letters, the Greek only had five [ἰχθύς]. Each of those five letters was also an initial letter in a five-word phrase: ‘Jesus Christ, Son (of) God, Saviour’.

It made for a good secret code in those early centuries; but now the cross could be used more openly – it could be worn, or used as a sign on one’s head or chest. Indeed, it still helps us identify ourselves as Christian followers. One of my most treasured gifts when I was made a bishop was a simple silver cross which bishops wear on their chests; this one was engraved with the first words of a poem by George Herbert which still speaks powerfully to me of what it was that God was doing in Jesus as he hung on that cross: ‘Love bade me welcome’. Similarly, one of the saddest moments in those episcopal years was when I realised I had lost it.

The text for this homily is also from a poem; written by the second prophet who is called Isaiah; it comes from the passage we heard as our first reading this evening. The poet had in mind a future person (probably, though possibly a group of people from within the returning Jewish exiles) who will bring about the redemption God had always promised his people through his (or perhaps their) going through the anguish of suffering and rejection.

This person, this Servant of God, says Second Isaiah, will be exalted and lifted up. Jesus (who identifies himself with this prophecy) was indeed lifted up on the cross; but, as both Isaiah’s poem and Jesus’ own experience make clear, this particular lifting up on the cross does not seem all that ‘exalting’ an experience. It provokes in Jesus a cry of absolute desolation, and Isaiah’s poem talks about the Servant’s ‘marred appearance’; he is ‘despised and rejected’, unimpressive and undesirable.

Yet, the same poem will say that ‘he was wounded for our transgressions, stricken for the transgressions of my people’, bearing the ‘sins of many’ and making ‘intercessions for the transgressors’. It also makes clear that exaltation will follow all this, and indeed is because of all this.

Much of Jesus’ ministry was focused on bringing in those who found themselves on the outside; either because they always had been, or because they had been pushed there. That’s why, for instance, our response to the appeal in this week’s newsletter for volunteers to join the revived Soup Run for the Homeless is so important.

For me, any language about the Cross’s victory or Jesus’ exaltation as he is lifted high on the cross only works because of what it is that lifted up in him:

his selfless and self-giving love;

and his identification with those, who, like Jesus, are sent out beyond the city walls – that is, excluded from the community – despised and rejected.

On Jesus’ Cross, what is lifted high is suffering, and God’s identification with suffering, and the outpouring of his love into all suffering lives and situations. The glory only comes beyond, and to a large extent, through the reality of the suffering.

I finish with that other poem I referred to: Love by George Herbert. The poet pictures himself in conversation with God, though he doesn’t call him God directly, apart from one little slipped-in ‘Lord’ – otherwise he calls him simply Love. Conscious of his own unworthiness as he meets this love, he gradually finds that the welcoming hospitality of this divine love will lead him to a humble and grateful acceptance of it.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes, but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

George Herbert (1593–1633)

Herbert is quite clear that this Love, synonymous with God, and with his welcoming hospitality, is the love that is poured out on the Holy Cross of Christ. It is offered to us all.