“My kingdom is not from this world.
If my kingdom were from this world,
my followers would be fighting
to keep me from being handed over.
But as it is,
my kingdom is not from here…
You would have no power over me
unless it had been given you from above.”
How quickly we all forget
this central claim of Jesus’ life
of Jesus’ authority.
John’s gospel begins by making it clear.
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was God,
and the Word was with God…
And the Word became flesh
and lived among us.
But Jesus, God’s Word,
the perfection of the idea and reality of God incarnate
is not from this world.
Nor are the machinations
by which God saves
all of creation.
Jesus this evening has raised Lazarus.
He’s predicted his own death.
He knows its coming.
Still he goes to pray
that it might happen another way.
That we might hear his message,
that those who’ve followed him
and heard him speaking clearly in the synagogues
will love one another.
But they don’t.
We don’t.
Jesus is arrested
and has a conversation with Pilate,
not that he says much.
Pilate is not convinced
that there’s any reason
to put Jesus to death.
But the crowds that followed him
celebrated him on a donkey
with palm branches in front of him,
the crowds that hailed him as the Son of David
the true King of Israel
were too much to handle.
Jesus couldn’t get out of this.
He was too dangerous
to the structures of power
that existed and wielded without mercy.
So we’re here today,
remembering Jesus’ death
and perhaps venerating the Cross in a few moments.
We venerate the cross
our tongues sing the glorious battle
in the Cross of Christ we glory
not because it is a torture device.
Perhaps our understanding of salvation
is that Jesus died on the cross
to take away our sins,
but that doesn’t have to be our understanding
especially with the texts appointed today.
We glory in the Cross of Christ
because it is a symbol of God winning.
We glory in the Cross of Christ
because it’s a testament – 2000 years later –
that Jesus’ kingdom is not from this world.
Crucifixion was an act of terror
meant to shut up dissidents
and scare their followers into silence.
It was a direction
to know your place and stay in it,
or this could happen to you too.
We glory in the Cross of Christ
because despite the empire’s best efforts
Jesus’ disciples weren’t scared off or shut down.
They were scared, to be sure,
but that fear was done away with.
As we venerate the Cross
we’re venerating and worshiping
that God’s love conquers all.
Those who heard Jesus message
didn’t understand it or follow it
before bringing him to death.
Those who hear about Jesus’ death today
many of us
still don’t understand or follow it.
God has loved the world so much
that God came to live with us.
God’s love and message of love were too much
for us to hear,
so we put God to death.
God’s love and message of love were too much
to be bound by death.
What we intended for evil
God used and transformed
for the good of the whole world.
“My kingdom is not from this world.
If my kingdom were from this world,
my followers would be fighting
to keep me from being handed over.
But as it is,
my kingdom is not from here…
You would have no power over me
unless it had been given you from above.”
The world into which we’re baptized,
the kingdom over which Christ rules
with the symbol of his death
being the symbol of his triumph
is not from this world.
It is from above.
It is there that we set our eyes
as we set our eyes on the cross.
In the cross of Christ we glory,
towering o’er the wrecks of time;
all the light of sacred story
gathers round its head sublime.
Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,
by the cross are sanctified;
peace is there that knows no measure,
joys that through all time abide.
Look on the wood of the cross
on which was raised the savior of the world. Amen.