Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (Traditional)
In the book, The Silver Chair, Aslan the Lion brings a girl named Jill Pole into the world of Narnia, places her on top of a mountain, and tasks her with a mission. Her mission is to find and rescue prince Rulian, the heir to the Narnian throne who has been missing for ten years. Aslan gives her four signs to guide her in her quest. He tells them to her one by one and he has her repeat them over and over and over again until they're embedded deep into her memory. And just before he sends Jill down the mountain, Aslan tells her two final things.
Speaker 1:Let me read them to you now. He says, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning, and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, he adds, I give you a warning.
Speaker 1:Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly. I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain the air is clear and your mind is clear. As you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind.
Speaker 1:And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters. Every time we walk into this place, whether we realize it or not, God has gathered us and has brought us up to an elevated space, A place where heaven and earth meet.
Speaker 1:The air is clearer here. Our minds are clearer. And it's here we're not for, but one single sign. The only sign that truly matters in the world is repeated over and over and over again to us. It's repeated in the cross processing down the aisle.
Speaker 1:It's in the very shape of the room that we're in. It's repeated in word and in sacrament. We are utterly surrounded right now by this one sign. And the sign is this, it's Jesus Christ and him crucified. At the end of the day, everything that you see and hear and smell and taste serves that purpose of repeating that sign to you in as many ways as you can possibly take in.
Speaker 1:To remind you of the fact that this is the sole hope of the world, That the crucified and the risen Jesus is the light with which the church shines. It's repeated over and over again so that by the time the cross makes its procession out the back door and you are led down into the valleys of your everyday life, you will remember, remember, remember the signs. That you will come to know nothing but Christ and him crucified. But, of course, that kind of remembering goes far deeper than a mental exercise, doesn't it? I mean, it's easy to think about the cross every once in a while.
Speaker 1:But to truly remember it is to allow Jesus' cruciform life to shape and to mold our own, both as a community and as individuals. If any want to become my followers, Jesus said, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. That's the great claim of our faith. That the liberty and the abundant life that Father John prayed for a moment ago does not belong to the rich or to the powerful or to the successful in the world, but only to those who would dare to follow Jesus in the way of the cross. Which of course is easy for us to accept while we sit in this room.
Speaker 1:The difficulty comes comes when when we we try try to to embrace embrace it it out out there. There in our everyday lives. Because the same warning that Aslan gave to Jill is true for us. The air thickens when we return to the day to day. Our minds are quickly confused.
Speaker 1:Voices clamor and muddle our vision, and the crucified Jesus never seems to look the way that we expect him to. And so we get lulled into the idea that it's perfectly fine for us to live with competing loyalties. That we can serve both God and wealth, both God and social status or success, both God and the political left or right. But friends, in the end, the cross sets all of these things to folly. It exposes them as the foolishness that they are.
Speaker 1:I mean, for the wealth seekers there's nothing more impoverished than a cross. For the status hungry there's nothing more self abasing than crucifixion. And even though the cross has quite a lot to say about what happens in our neighborhood and in this country and around the world, its judgment never quite fits into the right or the left paradigm of our political moment No matter how hard we try, all of the ands that we try to tack on to Christ crucified simply reveals our weakness and sinfulness and our capacity to be led astray. That's why today's call it to ask God to deliver us from the bondage of sin and why Saint Paul moves so quickly from speaking about Christ crucified and into the role of the Holy Spirit to reveal that sign in us. They both get that we are utterly dependent upon the work of God in our lives to cause the cross to permeate our souls in the way that we view our world.
Speaker 1:We can't do it ourselves. We are dependent upon God's work in us. As many of you know, we just finished our annual parish meeting, which is a chance for us to come together as a congregation and to set our sights on a new year of life and ministry together. And so with that in mind, I want to pose a question for us as I close. Friends, beloved in Christ, what would it look like this year if we committed as a church body and as individuals that come what may we will remember the sign.
Speaker 1:That we would know nothing but Christ and him crucified. What would happen if we turn to the Lord in prayer and truly sought him for freedom from the bondage of our sins and an openness to the work of the spirit to root the sign deep into our hearts that it would absolutely permeate our being. What would happen if we turned off the pundits and the voices that tried to lull us into the mistake of God and, and instead spoke into the world in a way that was truly, distinctly Christian, distinctly cruciform in nature? You know, to be honest, I don't quite know what that would look like entirely. But I would imagine it looks quite a bit like what we heard the prophet Isaiah say today.
Speaker 1:And what I also know is that the world around us is desperate to hear it. And I know that the light that we already shine would shine all the more brightly into a dark and a weary age. Let us pray. Almighty God, whose most dear son went not up to joy, but first he suffered pain and entered not into glory before he was crucified. Mercifully grant that we walking in the way of the cross may find it none other than the way of life and peace.
Speaker 1:Through the same thy son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
