The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
March 28, 2010 

The Power of the Cross
Luke 22:14-23:56

We are gathered now at the foot of the cross. The cross is empty. Jesus is in the tomb. Our worship today has brought us this far. We began with the hosannas of welcoming Jesus in to Jerusalem. Now once more we have recounted the story of Jesus’ death on the cross. Luke emphasizes Jesus never did anything wrong and yet he is put to death. Jesus’ response as we heard in our reading is to pray for those who kill him as they are killing him is to love. Jesus said, “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” We find the power of the cross in the love of Jesus. 

Few looking on that day took in the love Jesus offered. On that day, thoughts were not on the death of the Messiah becoming the means of life. Instead, there were many relieved that Jesus was being put to death that day. Jesus’ movement was threatening to turn the world upside down. His talk of the last being first and the least being the greatest wasn’t just talk. Jesus was bringing the outcast back into the community. Jesus was threatening the way things work. And everyone who benefited from the way things work was relieved that day as there would be one less person stirring up trouble.  

Rome knew the power of the cross. Hang someone on a cross outside town and everyone could understand that those who go against the empire will bear its wrath. Rome put thousands and thousands of people to death by crucifixion. The cross had become a symbol of Rome’s authority. If anyone doubted whether Caesar had control of life and death, could just see the crosses on the edge of town. Full or empty, they were a sign of Rome’s power. 

Jesus’ cross not unique in that regard. Lots of people had been killed in this way, many more would die on a cross before other forms of capital punishment took over. The cross meant not just death, but a tortuous death that would send fear into the hearts of any who saw a crucifixion. 

Jesus’ cross was meant to be a symbol of shame and death, proof of Rome’s power. But Rome only had power in this world. Roman rule could never extend to heaven. Looking back on Jesus’ crucifixion as an Easter people, we are still awed by the willing sacrifice, we notice the cost of death Jesus was willing to pay, but we see the cross not as a symbol of shame and death but as a sign of life. Jesus who had the power to come down off the cross, willingly suffered death out of love. 

I want to share with you two images of the cross to take away with you this Palm Sunday. Hold these images as we journey into Holy Week. The first I discovered through a YouTube video someone sent me. The evangelist Louie Giglio tells of meeting a molecular biologist excited about the molecular protein Laminin. The biologist told the evangelist how Laminin is the protein that causes cell adhesion. Laminin is what holds life together. He gushed, “You’ve got to tell people about Laminin!” The evangelist asked him to tell him about Laminin, but the molecular biologist told him to he would have to see Laminin for himself to understand. He said, “Google Laminin and look at the images.” When Giglio got to his computer, he typed in the search and found what the protein that knits our bodies together looks like. [show PowerPoint image of Laminin] 

The substance that holds us together is cruciform. The protein Laminin waiting discovery within every fibre of every human being, in fact in every fibre of all cellular life on earth, that protein created before the foundation of the world looks just like a cross. 

The evangelist Giglio connects this well to Paul’s letter to the Colossians, in which Paul wrote of Jesus, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15-17).

Inspired by God, long before any human knew what the substance that literally holds us together looks like, Paul described Jesus as being what holds us together. Metaphorically that rang true for Paul. It turns out that this is also literally true, as it is a cross-shaped protein that is holding every cell in your body together now as you listen to me.

This powerful metaphor built into the very structure of our bodies teaches that it is in the cross of Jesus that we are held together. So hold on to that as the first image for Holy Week. This cruciform protein that actually holds our cells together is a powerful symbol of how we are held together by the power of Jesus’ cross.

The second image I want to share hangs over the altar. It is the King of Peace cross. I designed this cross we used first on our logo and later to hang over the altar to present in picture form, what we mean when we declare Jesus to be the King of Peace. For we declare Christ to be the King of Peace in a world that does not always seem peaceful. In fact, our world is quite the opposite.  

I designed the cross after reading about work in Quantum Physics on a phenomenon referred to in science as Strange Attractors. The term came up in work on chaotic systems. It was discovered that there was a pattern to what seemed like chaos. It is not that anything was possible, but that the chaos happens within limits. This is true whether the system is the weather or the stock market. The fluctuations may be unpredictable, but there are limits. Like gravity, which pulls unseen, scientists described how something holds chaos in check. They called the pull on a chaotic system a strange attractor. This attractor is what they wrote keeps chaos within bounds.

The swirls on the cross represent the very real chaos, in our lives, in our families, in our towns, and in our world. If you were an ant crawling across the face of that cross, all you would see, all you could know, would be that chaos—things out of control.  

The design of the cross points to a deeper reality. What is true is that no matter how out of control life may seem to get, it is never beyond the power of God. Anything that happens in our lives, in our world, is not beyond the power of God’s love as revealed in the cross of Jesus Christ. The swirls in the cross are contained within the boundaries of the cross. Nothing we are experiencing is beyond God’s power to heal and to transform. We can make a mess out of our lives, but we cannot go beyond God’s power to redeem. Others may cause harm, but they can never cause our lives to get beyond the power of God.

Now I want to pull the images of this sermon together. We began with the powerful reading of the Passion. We heard once more the story of Jesus death on the cross. Then we considered how Rome wanted the cross to be a sign of the power of their empire. Instead, the cross became a symbol of the limitless love of God. Then I shared the discovery of how the protein that holds our bodies together is cross-shaped. This tiny image hidden within each of us by our maker is a sign that as God created you out of love, every fibre of your being is marked with the sign of that love, the cross. Finally, I shared the image of the King of Peace cross, that nothing in the world is beyond the power of the cross. The common theme in all of this is love.

Our world is chaotic because human will is so often turned against God’s will. Yet, in seeing that nothing is beyond God’s redeeming, we understand that nothing we do can take us beyond the power of God’s love. Through the protein Laminin, we find God’s love written into our very being. And in Jesus’ words of forgiveness we find that same love expressed most fully.

Those who sought to silence Jesus with torture and death did not yet know the power of God’s love. They could not know there very bodies were held together by the power of the cross and that the world would never stop looking back on that day outside Jerusalem as the clearest statement of how much God loves us.

It is love that made you. It is love that binds you together. It is love that seeks to redeem you from every mess you and others have made of the gift of life and love. It is love that awaits you not just through this life, but into the life eternal. This journey of Holy Week is a journey into the heart of the love of God. Open yourself up completely this week to that love of God seeking to find its way more fully into your life.

Amen.