If all my brother wants is the pink and black and orange towel, okay. So I opened the door and I walked down the hallway like, is mom still mad? And I said to my mom, okay, I'll take the blue and green one. My brother comes running out of the room going, I want the blue and green one. Four -year -old. So now I'm just steamed. That means mad, really mad. And I looked at my mother, and you know what she did? She looked at me like, you can figure this out. So I said, I'll take whichever one he doesn't want. And my brother said, okay. And he took the pink and orange one and just walked down the hall so happy with himself. Next time he went to the beach, he just lay down next to me on the sand and said, I got the pink and orange one. That's sacrificial love.
[00:12:34]
Does it really matter what color towel I lie on? Does it matter what towel? Not really, right? But at first it mattered to me a lot. And then I said, I got to give this up because he needs something. And he needs it more than I do.
[00:13:40]
That's what sacrificial love is. Giving up something we think we need or and we really, really want because somebody else needs it or wants it more.
[00:13:58]
So today we are celebrating Holy Cross Day which actually happens September 4th is the exact day and we're supposed to do it tomorrow but I'm bending the rules just a tad because you're not supposed to take over Sunday with Holy Cross Day but we're doing it the point of this day is to celebrate the cross to glory in the cross to revel in the cross to party around the cross and say what a great thing that Jesus died on the cross now most of you if you hear any sermon about the cross it tends to be on one of the other days when we wear red Good Friday and then the preacher will invariably talk about the suffering of Christ on the cross but here we talk about the pure glory and joy and love emanating from the cross might sound a little odd to you we don't do it very much at in this church anyway or in the Episcopal Church but it is a quite common experience for some of the famous mystics.
[00:24:00]
And as she's looking at him, more bright red, you know, freshly shed blood is coming from the wounds, including this wound. And as she's conversing with him, more blood comes out, like copious amounts. Now, if I was telling you this in any other context, you would think I was describing a horror film to you, right? Something frightening, something you wouldn't want to look at. But she's fascinated and feeling love and gratitude for his mercy and his sacrifice.
[00:29:07]
But she's fascinated and feeling love and gratitude for his mercy and his sacrifice. But she at first expresses some dismay that he suffers. And he says, oh, no, no, I would gladly suffer more. I would do it again. And so she asks herself in his mind, in her mind, how many more times would Christ endure this? And she saw an infinite number of times.
[00:29:31]
And then she says she's sorry that there's sin in the world, that this was done to him and that there continues to be sin in the world. And he says to her, sin is nothing. Also interpreted as no thing. Sin is no thing. And she's like, how can sin be no thing? How can sin be nothing? And what he showed her in her mind was that God is everything. God created everything and God is everything and in everything. And sin has no existence. It's not a thing anymore. What we see, what we experience is the suffering as a result of sin. That's what we are noticing. But it itself has no power, no essence. It doesn't exist because the cross defeated sin and death.
[00:30:00]
What we see, what we experience is the suffering as a result of sin. That's what we are noticing. But it itself has no power, no essence. It doesn't exist because the cross defeated sin and death.
[00:30:35]
Her response to this is to feel this overwhelming love. And as she's having this conversation, the pains, the physical pains that she was experiencing while lying in bed disappear. They just like morphine, you know, baby just erased it. And he continues to tell her that she need not worry about sin. He reveals to her own sin. He just kind of says, look. And she looks and he says, I don't want you to worry about this. This is not a problem. All I want you to do is love.
[00:30:54]
All I want you to do is love. So she perceives everything emanating from the crucified Christ as pure love, that self -giving love, that sacrificial love. And it just made her overflow with this. This is not a problem. I want you to do with this.
[00:31:26]
So she perceives everything emanating from the crucified Christ as pure love, that self -giving love, that sacrificial love. And it just made her overflow with this. This is not a problem. I want you to do with this.
[00:31:27]
And yet, it got picked up by Luther and Calvin and several other very influential theologians and so has been passed on. But the most central understandings of the cross are, one, Christ the victor, which is that Christ has overcome sin and death, so that sin has no substance or existence. Not really, just its effects. We still sin, the world still sins, but it can't wipe out God and God's creation.
[00:32:34]
But the most central understandings of the cross are, one, Christ the victor, which is that Christ has overcome sin and death, so that sin has no substance or existence. Not really, just its effects. We still sin, the world still sins, but it can't wipe out God and God's creation.
[00:32:45]
And the other one is that Christ is the liberator. Now, this is a common theology emanating from groups of people who have experienced oppression. Black men, black women, Latino men, Latino women, Latino Asian men, Asian women, women women, white women. And men, anybody who has been enslaved, colonized, made to feel othered, put down, people who have suffered at the hands of others. And they see in Christ someone who is at one with them in their suffering and somebody who is going to help them overcome that suffering, whether in real terms, like they get the wage increase they need or the slave owners go away, or salvation and inner salvation as well, helping them to bear with what they have to bear with at the moment. So, it's called liberation, Christ as the liberator.
[00:33:09]
So, it's called liberation, Christ as the liberator. In any case, what's happening on the cross is an emanation of self -giving love or sacrificial love, giving up the towel so the person who needs it more gets it.
[00:34:09]
In any case, what's happening on the cross is an emanation of self -giving love or sacrificial love, giving up the towel so the person who needs it more gets it. A perfect example of this in this week is the people who are on Flight 93 and 9 -11. The people who had been flying towards San Francisco when hijackers overtook the plane with box cutters only. And when the people on the plane realized through news reports that somebody was getting on a device, that there had been attacks in the Twin Towers and on the Pentagon on 9 -11, they started to realize what was going on because they saw the plane turning and they realized we're turning around. And Todd Beamer of San Francisco got on the phone, the satellite phone with the FBI in secret at the back of the plane and said, what's happening? And they said, we believe your plane is headed towards the Capitol building or the White House. And so everybody in that plane hatched a plan to take that plane down. It's an incredible gift of sacrificial love.
[00:34:15]
It is true, they probably realized that they were going to perish anyway. But the point is, they did it to prevent further loss of life. Far more people would have died if they had simply sat in their seats and waited for the hijackers to drive it into some big, well -populated building.
[00:35:20]
Most of us aren't called to do something that dramatic. I know that first responders, police officers, and firefighters often walk into danger, as do people in the military. But in general, most of us...us are not in that walk of life where we have to sacrifice our lives or possibly threaten our own lives in order to save others.
[00:35:42]
But if you stayed up all night with a sick child, you know sacrificial love. If you've let your spouse be grouchy for two years, because they need to be grouchy for two years, you know sacrificial love, right? If your teenager has done it again and you just pray to God, she's going to grow up, right? You know sacrificial love.
[00:36:05]
If you stayed up all night with a sick child, you know sacrificial love. If you've let your spouse be grouchy for two years, because they need to be grouchy for two years, you know sacrificial love, right? If your teenager has done it again and you just pray to God, she's going to grow up, right? You know sacrificial love.
[00:36:05]
And really what happens when we fall in love with the crucified Christ is that we start to adore Him for that incredibility He has and what He engenders in us, the desire to be like that ourselves, to embody sacrificial love. He moves us to do this.
[00:36:32]
And really what happens when we fall in love with the crucified Christ is that we start to adore Him for that incredibility He has and what He engenders in us, the desire to be like that ourselves, to embody sacrificial love. He moves us to do this.
[00:36:32]
So one of the things that we can do out of a loving response towards the love that emanates through the cross is to sit back and ask ourselves in our prayer time, in our meditation, what can I do to embody a self -giving love? It might be towards our family member or towards a church member or towards a co -worker or towards that person with the ideology you really can't stand.
[00:36:59]
How can I embody a self -giving sacrificial love each day, one time, let them get in the lane in front of me on Valmont. Go ahead, baby. You can have it. One time, ask yourself this week, every day, God, show me where can I be self -giving today?
[00:37:26]
How can I embody a self -giving sacrificial love each day, one time, let them get in the lane in front of me on Valmont. Go ahead, baby. You can have it. One time, ask yourself this week, every day, God, show me where can I be self -giving today?
[00:37:26]
