People of the Cross

Text: John 3:1-17

We are people of the cross. A church, a faith, of the cross. This is a tale of three crosses.

The first cross is a crucifix. Jesus on the cross. A physical, embodied, suffering human.

Jesus comes to this world to be human. Where, perhaps, God experiences what it means to be human. We are created by God, yet—could it be?—as much a mystery to God as God is to humans.

Jesus comes to suffer. But not only to suffer. I imagine he laughs with his friends (he certainly tells jokes). He loves to eat and drink. He is often the life of the party. He hangs with all sorts of people.

But he comes, in the end, to suffer. Either part of the plan, or an inevitable consequence of his mission—hard to say. All people suffer—and that is surely not part of the plan, though it, too, often comes with the mission. But sometimes suffering just comes for no reason at all.

Jesus sees what we see. In the passage just preceding the one we heard today, it says “Jesus … knew all people; … he knew what was in everyone.” He learns what we know. To experience regrets, make hard decisions (some of which have no good end), to lose one’s sense of self, to witness despair. We get confused by the wickedness of others, and surprised by wickedness of our own. We get frustrated by our inability to help others because we lack skill, resolve, or resource.

The cross is a sign of failure. In the same way that war is a failure. Executing others is a failure. Slavery is a failure, imprisonment. All are signs of a failure to discover, to imagine, a way of being that reconciles conflict, failure to see humanity equal to our own in other people, failure to figure out how to love all as we love those nearest to us. The cross is just one example of—and stands for—all the desperate last choices that we end up making.

There is nothing good about crucifixion. There is nothing good about war. There is nothing good about poisoning someone to death, or electrocuting him. There is nothing good about enslaving someone. There is nothing good about denying the needs of others. They are all dark failures of our souls.

The cross is failure for Jesus, too. Jesus did not eagerly seek his own death on the cross. Jesus despises death. Jesus did not seek death, but he was willing to go to his death. He was willing to live a fearless life that predictably would lead to his execution. Jesus came to persuade, teach, show, lead the world to another way of living. But that did not happen because of the hard and frightened hearts of humans. Death on the cross, as my colleague John ... says—that was Plan B. Such things are always plan B.

The second cross is an empty cross. Like the one behind the altar. Christ is no longer there. Christ is risen.

We are people of the Resurrection. Death is not the end of life. What we think of the end turns out to be open-ended. What we absolutely know about life and death turns out to be inadequate.

This cross brings hope and new life in the face of discouraging experiences. Even in the darkness we see light. The crucifixion of Jesus turns out to not be the end of the story. God is able to extract the good from evil, to mine the good from the ore of fearful errors that we keep making.

Nicodemus comes stealing out of the darkness. In a very strange conversation—each person seemingly speaking past one another—Jesus tells Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.

The word, as you probably know, means “from above” and also “again” and “anew.” Some Bibles, like ours, translate it “born from above.” Others translate it “born again.” It is like the phrase musicians use when they say “take it from the top,” also meaning again and anew.

In these meanings—theological or musical—the point is that we get to start over within familiar boundaries. Jesus is not talking about a some fantastic place totally unlike the one in which we live, but about this place here, only different. Take it from the top.

We are not condemned by our traditions or habits of heart to repeat old patterns. Just because we cannot think of another way to have the world run does not mean that there is no such way.

Neither are we condemned by our sins, by our fears, our regrets, our pain. Jesus’ words to Nicodemus are comforting, not condemning. There is another way to be, he says to Nicodemus. God brings it.

No one can see the kingdom, Jesus says, unless they are born anew. Open your eyes. Can you see it? Each day starts fresh. Each day we are forgiven. Each hour is new; each moment. It is eternal life—meaning abundant, blessed life, here and now—constantly renewed.

The Wednesday evening worship during Lent closes with this prayer: “What has been done, has been done. What has not been done, has not been done.” Neither forgetting or denying the past, yet we escape from the power over us of regrets and disappointments. Our sorrows will not rule us.

The third cross is made in gesture. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We are people of the Trinity.

Nicodemus comes to meet Jesus. He sees the power of God. He hears Jesus promise the gift of eternal life. He is invited to receive that gift—to receive new life—from the Holy Spirit.

We can lean on the trinitarian God, who created us and the elaborate, amazing, and difficult world; who knows intimately our sorrows and joys; and who leads us forward each moment into new blessings. The trinity is a multipurpose vehicle that carries us from death to life, from darkness to light, from crucifixion to resurrection.

The Gospel of John famously sees two ways of being, described mostly as two communities, two peoples. There is the community of darkness and the community of light. We are born first into the community of darkness. The one from whence Nicodemus comes, and which is the community of suffering. But we can come into the community of light. An encounter with Jesus (Nicodemus here, a woman at a Samaritan well next week), is (or can be) a transforming experience. We enter (or are born again, born anew) into the community of the light. We are freed from the captivity of the past (you will never be thirsty, Jesus tells the woman) and enter into abundant life. We become people of Christ.