Sermon for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

“And the people became impatient on the way.” 

+INJ+ 

Russia is much in the news these days, as a sort of evil empire. And so I will tell you a tale of Russia, when it was most evil.   

There were once many Lutherans in Russia, millions; that
is, until the first purge of Stalin, who put to death about five thousand
Lutheran priests, and exiled the laity of the Lutheran church to Siberia. 

This was during the reign of the Soviet Union, when
everything beautiful of that ancient nation was replaced with concrete and
uranium. 

When the Soviet Union fell, a professor of one of our
seminaries was sent to Siberia to seek out what Lutherans might remain there,
and to serve them. 

He in fact found many Lutherans still there, in Siberia.
They had maintained their faith for eighty years, baptized by laymen, as they
had no pastors. 

To them he brought communion, a gaggle of men and women,
old and young, in a small wooden shed that they gathered in and called
their church, though there was no sign on it to say it was, since it was
illegal. 

As he gave them the body and blood of Christ, saying as we
are used to hearing from any pastor ‘the
body of Christ, given for you; the blood of Christ, given for you’ he noticed them, with tears in their eyes,
mouthing these words in Russian. 

It was then and only then that he realized the obvious:
that this was their first communion; grey haired old women, and balled broken
men were greeting their Lord in person for the first time; and the Words of
Institution that they mumbled softly under their breath, they knew not from
hearing it week after week from a pastor’s lips, as they had none, but from the
Small Catechism, which was preserved from memory and passed on from generation
to generation. So they ate the body of Christ, and drank His blood; this food,
that they did not count as worthless, but the fulfillment of their unending
waiting. 

When they had properly received Our Lord, they made the
sign of the cross, and went to the back of the wooden shed, that others might
do as they did. 

The cross they put upon them. When the empire that was to
usher in the end of history had ended, when the hammer and sickle had ceased to
be waved, the cross remained. 

The Red standard has fallen, even as the SPQR of the two
thousand year long reign of Rome has fallen. Every flag has been taken down,
and every kingdom and imperium ceased. And even the Stars and Stripes shall one
day be torn down, for though a great creation, our nation is a creation of men,
and is therefore mortal, short, and passing. 

But the cross shall remain: perhaps on the flags of
nations; perhaps in the halls of churches; perhaps hanging in the entryways and
living rooms of Christian homes; but always imprinted invisibly and forever
upon the forehead and heart of every baptized body; the sacred temple of the
Spirit when all that is sacred it cast away. 

This banner waved invisibly on hundreds of thousands of Russian
exiles, just years after the Red hammer ceased to be waved anywhere in the vast
domain of the Soviet. 

This banner, this imprint, this vision, is the Holy Cross,
and it shall outlast all things; every ruler and king and dictator and
president; every nation and empire and utopia; it shall outlast the earth and
the stars. Nothing will overcome it. For the Holy Cross is emblem of the reign
of Christ, whose kingdom will
have no end. 

For He, and He alone, with the Father and the Spirit,
eternally one, is God, who has no beginning nor end, as His kingdom has no
beginning or end; as His Gospel has no beginning nor end; as His Passion has no
beginning nor end; and thus His Cross has no beginning nor end. 

So we make the sign of the cross upon ourselves, not just
to mark ourselves as ones baptized, though this is true, but to show our
citizenship to the imperium
sine fine, the empire
without end, the rule of our Lord Christ, who is as a lamb slain upon an altar, and to whom crowns of kings are thrown. 

When the Son was slain, it was written behold the king of the Jews. The Jews demanded that the inscription be
changed, but the gentile ruler rightly declared what I have written, I have written. For He would forever be the king of the children of Abraham, and
of all those who would be made children from rocks cast on the road. And this again written upon the cross. 

We fear in our age that the time of the Church is coming to
an end, that modernism, postmodernism, materialism, scientism, that these are
all exterminating the old ways of Christ. We anxiously look at polls of how
many Americans call themselves Christians, and with worry look at how God is
pushed out of the public sphere. 

But God is pushed out of nowhere, for he is a God who hides himself. We worry and fear where He does not, for we
do not live very long, and so a short time seems long to us. We too become impatient upon the way. 

Foolish Christians, do you not know that the sign of the
cross placed upon you in baptism will cover even your coffin? Do you not know
that when you close your eyes for the last time to this sinful world, you will
open them to the Holy Cross, in the world without end? 

Everything shall pass, everything, but the Holy Cross,
drawn upon your forehead, and upon your heart. The symbol of the eternal
kingdom of God, everywhere and always present, made immortal in the
resurrection of the flesh, which shall be raised in the last day, to enjoy the
vision of Christ your God forever. Therefore, grumble not, but be patient. This
is the meaning of the cross. 

Now bear this cross upon you knowing that: 

Whoever loves his life shall lose it; but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 
 
+INJ+ 

Preached by Pastor Fields

Sermon Texts: Numbers 21:4-9; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 12:20-33.