The Divine Weirdness of the Cross
Homily for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
This year, I’ve had the joy of teaching an elective at St. Margaret of Scotland School called Strange and Wild Scripture Stories. The kids just call it “Weird Bible Stories.”
So far we’ve learned about
Jeremiah and his dirty underwear;
Judith, the only one in Israel brave enough to step up and save her people from the enemy army and general;
and Jesus casting a legion of demons out of a man… and into 2,000 pigs.
Go ahead—check your Bibles. You’ll find all this and more: witches and prophets, parables and poetry, song and satire, visions and moral tales, all bound up in one collection we call the Bible.
But we don’t talk about weird bible stories just to be weird. We use these stories to learn deeper truths. Some truths that my students have learned include:
That evil is self-destructive. It may seem powerful, but violence and hate always end up devouring themselves.
That sometimes faith and courage require more than words—they require us to act, to step out in trust and help bring about God’s Kingdom of peace and justice.
And that even when our lives feel ruined—like Jeremiah’s soiled garment—God’s mercy can make us new again.
Suffice it to say for a class called Weird Bible Stories, I have plenty of material. And this is all by God’s design. Because our God is indeed… strange, wild, and most definitely weird.
And that mystery of Divine Weirdness is on full display today. Today we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross—a feast where we honor what was once a tool of torture, a marker and sign of all the violence inherent in the world.
The Roman Empire used the cross to keep people in line, to maintain power, to crush anyone who questioned the world’s so-called wisdom and the status of the powerful.
And yet—In God’s divine weirdness, this instrument of hate has become the greatest sign of love. As our Gospel says, the Son of Man was “lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
Through that Cross, Jesus calls us to himself, calls us to be united to him and receive life through him. He did not come to condemn the world, but to save it, redeem it!
Through that Cross, Jesus shows us the heart of God. And that heart is love—strange, wild, self-emptying and weird love. And our world desperately needs that love.
But we don’t just need love, we need more. We need a God who shatters our categories of winning and losing, power and weakness, vengeance and victory.
We need a God who takes the worst we can do or that can happen to us—violence, betrayal, cruelty and prejudice—and transforms it into the very means of salvation.
Why? Because the world we live in is steeped in violence, harshness, and hate. And that violence has become the norm. This week as I reflected about the state of the world and some of the most recent violence, the shootings and the hate, here’s the worst thing: I’m not surprised.
School shootings don’t really surprise me anymore.
Political violence, even after this week, doesn’t really shock me anymore.
The rejection of the immigrant and the death of the unborn does not surprise me anymore.
We have gotten used to it, gotten used to and beaten down by the ways and the status quo of the world.
And that breaks my heart.
We see it on the news, in our schools, on our streets. We see it in political discourse that thrives on rage, in the casual dismissal of the dignity of those who are poor, powerless, or inconvenient. The way the world silences the voices of so many people… That’s the norm of the world.
But it’s not ours. It is not and cannot be the Christian norm.
The Cross that we exalt, that we lift high tells a different story. A weirder story. It tells the story of Jesus who did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but who emptied and humbled himself, becoming like us. Afflicted, and hurting, bruised and battered, violated and abused.
He became like us and allowed himself to be nailed to a Cross…and did what Jesus always does: He flips tables and changes the script.
The symbol of pain is no more, the Cross instead has become the place where God forever unites himself with the suffering, the hurting, and the broken of the world.
Those who the world would ignore or forget or even murder, are taken up into God’s own life and God’s love. On that Cross, Jesus entered into solidarity with all who suffer:
-With the immigrant or refugee seeking a safe home, fearful of detention or deportation, Jesus is united
-With the young woman who is struggling to find her voice in the midst of a world which seeks to silence her again and again, Jesus is united.
-With the families in Minneapolis who are mourning children lost to gun violence and with the 8-year-old and the 10-year-old who were killed there, Jesus is united.
-With the public figures we argue about and who were murdered—Melissa Hortman the Democratic Representative in Minnesota and her husband, Charlie Kirk the Conservative advocate in Utah—Jesus is united. Jesus is united to them. And that is weird, it is against every norm that the world has been pushing on us.
But the life and the promise of Jesus push right on back, and go against everything that the world promotes.
According to the world we are meant to be violent and hateful, polarized and vicious. The powerful are not meant to love and be united to the poor, the weak, and the hurting. They are meant to rule, and govern, and oppress the poor. That’s the norm set by the world.
But friends…that is not who our God is and that is not who we are. That’s not who we want to be.
If we are Christians and we are believers in this God of ours, then we too must become a little bit weird. A little bit different. A little bit less like the world.
We must be willing to love when it would be easier to hate. To talk and to dialogue even when we’re sure that that we’re right and they’re wrong. To forgive even when revenge feels more satisfying. And when the world demands our viciousness, we will speak the word that is Jesus Christ and his love.
That is the Divine Weirdness of God, the Weirdness of the Cross. Foolishness to some but to us it is wisdom and it is life.
Today, as we celebrate and lift high the Cross, proclaiming the love of Christ, may we dare to become just as weird as Jesus.
Weird enough to love.
Weird enough to hope.
Weird enough to tell people that the world can be redeemed, that it is being redeemed through us and wild and weird power of Jesus Christ and his Cross.