by Revd Chrys Tremththanmor
The day on which Holy Cross Day is kept is, of course, 14 September, but with the freedom on which the church relies we are remembering Holy Cross Day on this Sunday. It was on 14 September, 335 AD that the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was dedicated.
But what are we celebrating? And how is our celebration today different than the veneration of the cross on Good Friday?
Holy Cross Day is also called ‘The Exaltation of the Cross’ or ‘The Triumph of the Cross.’ Good Friday is dedicated to the passion and the crucifixion of Jesus. On Holy Cross Day we celebrate the cross itself, as our instrument of salvation. Whereas on Good Friday we pray before a crucifix, today we honour an empty cross, for we know that our Lord died and rose again, a sign of his victory over the powers of evil and darkness which nailed him to that cross.
There are many ways to view what Jesus did for us by dying on the cross—the theological phrase is atonement. Somehow Jesus’ crucifixion brought us back ‘at one’ with God. Theologians have argued for centuries as to how this happened.
One atonement theory, which became prevalent through the Protestant Reformation, is called ‘Penal substitutionary atonement’. This theory of the atonement states that although God wished to forgive sinful humanity he could not, as he is also a just God. Therefore Jesus, the sinless one, died on the cross as our substitute. By paying the debt which sinful humanity could not pay, both the wrath and righteousness of God was satisfied.
I would consider that theory very much a Good Friday one. Penal substitutionary atonement points to the crucified saviour, the man-God on the Cross. If you hold to that belief, I’m not here to argue you out of it. But it’s not one I hold. I look instead to the empty cross, and the victory won by Jesus over the powers of darkness.
This alternative theory is called ‘Christus Victor’—‘Christ the Victor.’ It was actually the prevalent view of the early Church Fathers. Rather than a wrathful Father condemning the Son in order to forgive humanity, we have a God who enters into human misery and sin and redeems it. In Jesus God exposed himself to the full evil which worldly powers can bring to bear upon a person, an evil which will reject and torture to death an innocent victim. God the Father and God the Son are united together in seeking the downfall of the evil system which dominates so much of human life. And the Resurrection is God’s promise that this evil does not have the final answer. To me, the ‘Christus Victor’ is a ‘Holy Cross Day’ view of the atonement.
I am of course only giving the briefest outline of both atonement theories. Let me know after the service if you want some homework!
Whatever you believe of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, and it may be that you simply accept it and leave the actual mechanics to the mystery of God, it is true that the cross has power over evil and darkness. Just watch any movie or TV programme with vampires and you will see a cross being used as protection against them. Even people who don’t regularly go to church will cross themselves when facing a moment of worry or danger. When a house or a place has been blessed, usually because someone feels there is ‘something wrong’ in the place, a cross is often left behind as a reminder of the power of Christ over the powers of darkness.
‘Christus Victor’ is not so much as a rational theory as it is a drama. The victory of Christ is a passion story of God triumphing over the powers of darkness and liberating humanity from the bondage of sin. So with that in mind I’m going to tell a personal story, my own personal drama, of how the power of the cross can overcome evil and darkness.
My father is a Seventh Day Adventist, and from the age of eleven to fifteen I went to a Seventh Day Adventist school. There are those who consider the Seventh Day Adventist church to be a cult, and in that school we did follow all their most extreme doctrines. For example, our teachers told us that only those who went to church on Saturday were true Christians. Worshipping on Sunday was the mark of the beast. At the End Times international Sunday laws would be passed, forcing everyone to go to church on a Sunday. The Seventh Day Adventist church would be the remnant church, and we would have to hide in the hills until Jesus’ Second Coming. Which is why, whilst I attended that school, we children were regularly taken on weekend trips into the nearby mountains, taught which native plants we could eat, and how to walk through the woods without being heard.
But there was far worse to Seventh Day Adventist doctrines. We were also taught that Christ’s death on the cross had only bought us a second chance. If we confessed a sin, it was not removed, but only had a line put through it. If I died with a single unconfessed sin, then all the crossings would come off, and I would be held accountable for all of my sins.
And those sins were many. The Adventists follow the Old Testament food laws, and have additional rules. It’s a sin to wear jewellery, to wear a wig, to display photographs of family members, to eat meat, to go to the movies. Problem was, my family didn’t follow these rules. Our family shopping on Saturdays, and at home we ate meat and shellfish. And it wasn’t enough just to say, ‘God, forgive me for all the times I’ve eaten lobster.’ You had to remember and repent of each specific instance. So my nightly confessions became longer and longer.
When I returned to a secular school at the age of sixteen, I soon became an atheist. God became very real to me one evening in Wales in 1986. I argued with him whether or not he existed, and then realised that by the very fact that I was arguing with him meant that I must already believe that he existed. So I told him, ‘Okay, you’re real, but I’m having none of that Jesus crap and I’m not touching a Bible.’
I wandered spiritually for many years, and spent three years attending Quaker Meetings and then some time in New Age religions—I nearly became a druid. Then I started attending my local Anglican church. And I thought that I must have got it wrong about the Adventists. So I found a website for Former Adventists, and discovered that others told the same story as I did. They too had come close to suicide because of the impossibility of trying live up to all the Adventist rules.
For a week after reading the website I felt as if a darkness were stalking me. That’s the only way I can describe it. A darkness was coming for me. One evening it pounced. I sat in the living room of my house, and a storm of darkness and evil swirled around me. All I could do was to hold onto the thought that the cross had been the decisive victory against darkness, and I clung to the hand of Jesus with all my might. The storm passed.
How to describe that storm? Some of you might use the language I’ve already used, and see it as a battle between Satan and Christ. Or you could use the language of modern psychology, and argue that the pain buried in my subconscious had finally come loose. What had saved me was the great power of integration which is part of what God has given to the human mind, a power of integration which the Cross symbolises. I’m happy with either explanation.
It was the cross which saved me that night. From that moment on the death and resurrection of Jesus has not been some academic, theological exercise. I have known evil and darkness, and I have witnessed for myself that Jesus is more powerful than the devil. And it was on the cross that he won that war.
So it’s only proper that we have a service to mark the triumph of the cross. With our singing, our worship, our praise, we offer the best we have to God, honouring the way in which he came in Jesus to defeat the powers of sin, evil, and death. We still have battles to face, evil still stalks across our lands and sometimes into our homes. But the war has been won, and the cross is our sign of victory. Amen.