The Call of the Cross :: Ephesians 5:8

At one time, you were in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord (v. 8).

Never has an emblem of torture and death been so magnified, so displayed, and so glorified as the ancient instrument of execution known as the cross. It’s been presented in sizes as small as a quarter inch to dangle around your neck, and as monumental as the Cruz de los Caídos in Spain, a towering structure that stands 492 feet tall. We dip them in gold or bronze, and paint them bright white. The biggest cross I’ve ever seen ... which just so happens to be the biggest in America ... is in Effingham, Illinois. It is a mere 198 feet tall. But the Cross Foundation estimates 20 million cars drive by it every year. 

The cross has inspired untold millions of composers. Today, we just sang 

In the cross of Christ I glory, Tow’ring o’er the wrecks of time.
All the light of sacred story, gathers round its head sublime. 

The cross is displayed in millions upon millions of homes. They cover two walls in mine. It comes in all kinds of styles. Celtic crosses, the Coptic cross. the Jerusalem cross, which is five crosses in one. They come right side up and upside down. Some are clean and simple. Some are wretched and twisted. But they all say the same thing. 

THE CROSS CALLS US TO REMEMBER. 

Now what are we to remember? 

Are we to remember the death of Jesus, as we do in the Lord’s Supper? To be sure, we dare never forget that. But there is so much more to remember. The cross calls us to remember its purpose, its cause. Because as he just heard in Saint Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians: At one time, you were in darkness. 

Paul isn’t speaking of temporal darkness. He isn’t talking about the darkness you may experience in a room without windows, or merely the darkness of a moonless, cloudy night. He isn’t speaking of what it’s really like to be physically blind, like the man born blind in our reading from John 9. 

Although these images certainly help us understand, Paul is speaking of spiritual darkness. No one really understands that. 

This is the darkness that is best explained in contrast to Christ, who is called the light of the world. Jesus is the light of the sacred story, the Word made flesh, the Word which created the Light, the Light which shines in the darkness, but which the world doesn’t understand. 

Everything in scripture ultimately reveals this truth to us. Yet, the world doesn’t understand. Even though the world has seen him, like the blind man, it asks who is he? 

The world wants you to believe that Jesus is nothing more than a good man with a good word about good living. The world wants you to believe that Jesus is just a good example. 

But the world doesn’t understand. The world is in darkness.

Scripture often uses darkness and light as metaphors ... symbols ... of the godly and the ungodly. In many ways, Paul does too. 

Earlier in his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul describes this best by writing, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. You were dead. Dead men can’t see. They were following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Eph 2:1-3). 

To save us from this wretchedness, God shined his light upon the cross of Christ. 

The cross calls us to remember our sins.

Sin is a most unpleasant subject to speak about, especially when it is our sin. When I say the word sin today, our world immediately dismisses it, tuning out. Sin is such a negative word, the world says. “We need to have only positive thoughts.” 

The word itself is becoming less frequent in American pulpits today. S-s-sin has the hiss-s of the serpent in it, the father of lies ... the Deceiving One (Rv 12:9), the Slanderer (Mt 4:1). He wants to silence it. 

He has been doing his best to keep us in darkness since man’s fall into sin that fateful day in the garden. Be proud of your sin, he declares. Be loud and proud. Shout it out. Call the evil you are doing good, the world says. Be proud of their abortion, their immorality, their adulterer, their hook-up culture. 

God did not create man to live in this darkness. He created us to live in his light. 

But we have been separated from his light by sin. And we have been dying because of this sin ever since. 

To save this world from its death spiral, it was necessary that God swing into action ... not just for the souls of mankind, the pinnacle of creation ... but to save all of creation itself, which is groaning under the weight of our sin, our sensuality, our idolatry, our envy, our divisions, under our fits of anger against the left, against the right. ... These things are killing you. 

So God delivered to you death on the cross.

It was necessary for this cross of Christ to become an historic fact. 

When I remember the cross, what I remember most often is Isenheim Altarpiece in Alsace, France. It’s called La Crucifixion. If you have never seen it, Google it sometime. It is a portrait of agony, and despair, and wretchedness. It features an emaciated and twisted Jesus, who is stricken, smitten, afflicted ... despised and rejected. 

It shows us our darkness ... and reveals the light of Christ.

Through the cross of Christ, Our Lord is showing you what sin is doing to you. Thanks be to God if you recognize just a little bit of it. He is the one who has opened our eyes ... of how He has come to dwell with us in the person and work of Christ, to live a sinless life for you, and to take your sin from you. He has carried your sin to his cross, and made sure that your sin died with him there, on his cross. 

He carried your sin into the grave for you, so that your sin will never be seen again. He has paid the price of your sin, shedding his blood on the tree of life, and set you free to live with him forever in his resurrection.

The cross calls us to remember that we are no longer prisoners in darkness. He has opened our eyes. This transformation from darkness to light, from sinner to saint, was accomplished without any merit, any worthiness, or even any desire on our part. It was God’s desire to give sight to all of us who were born blind.

That’s because you were united with Christ on the cross in your baptism. You were crucified with Christ. But he has come to you, and called you out of the grave. He has opened your eyes in a shower of baptismal grace that pours out upon you daily, drowning all of your sins, making you holy because he is holy.  

When God’s Holy Spirit worked a saving faith in your heart through the washing of regeneration in Holy Baptism, you were transformed. Now you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, who did what you couldn’t do, live without sin. Now because of this, I know for certain that ... 

When the woes of life o’ertake me, hopes deceive and fears annoy.
Never shall the cross forsake me; Lo, it glows with peace and joy 

No one, who understands this transformation from sinner to saint and darkness to light, can escape a feeling of gratitude that God so loved the world that he gave his only son to die on this cross for all of us. 

So heed the words of Saint Paul, and walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 

And do not fear. He is faithful and just. He has forgiven your sins ... on the cross. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this good news. 

Only the message of the Gospel, only the preaching of the cross, can bring about such a transformation.  Awake, O sleeper, and arise ... Christ will shine on you.

When the sun of bliss is beaming, Light and love upon my way, 

from the cross the radiance streaming, adds more luster to the day.