Journey to the Cross – Holy Week – Lent 2025
By the Rev’d. Allison K. Dean
(Find the reflection for the Fifth Sunday in Lent here).
***Note: In St. Luke’s Parish we have a service every night of Holy Week. Each year I use this time to focus on something specific. For example, one year I preached through The Lord’s Prayer in six parts. This year we have been on a Journey to the Cross, where each night I have focused on a different aspect of or perspective on the crucifixion. What follows is the sermon preached on Maundy Thursday, the fourth night of Holy Week, and the beginning of the Triduum, the three holy days. For those who prefer to watch/listen to the recording, you can do so here.
This week, we have been on a journey, travelling with Jesus to the cross. We have sought to see the cross with fresh eyes, to consider again, or maybe for the first time, the significance, importance, meaning, and place of the cross in the Christian faith, in the Church, in our lives.
On this journey we have seen how Christians across time and place have upheld the cross as the preeminent and foundational symbol and sign of our faith. Indeed, the faith we profess, the resurrection itself, loses all meaning and significant without the cross. As Fleming Rutledge notes in her book on the crucifixion, “It is the crucifixion that marks out Christianity as something definitively different in the history of religion.”1
This journey has also caused us to consider the tremendous sacrifice God in Christ made for us on the cross. The blood that Jesus shed for the world was a sacrifice, an offering, of his own life for the lives of sinful and wicked people, much like the priests of old did in the temple, with one important difference: his sacrifice lasts forever. The hymn writer says,
For, as the priest of Aaron’s line
within the holiest stood,
and sprinkled all the mercy-shrine
with sacrificial blood;
so he who once atonement wrought,
our Priest of endless power,
presents himself for those he bought
in that dark noontide hour.
These words capture what the writer to the Hebrews tells us: “Christ appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” (9:26). Thus we sing, the blood that Jesus shed for me, way back on Calvary… will never lose its power.”
In meditation on this great sacrifice we came to see that we are not saved for ourselves alone. God has called us to follow Christ, to be witnesses in the world for him. This has always been God’s call to his people. When God called Abraham he told him that he would bless him so that he would be a blessing to all the families of the earth. In like manner, Jesus bears the cross for us and for our salvation that we might in our turn bear our own crosses. When Peter rebuked Jesus for predicting his death Jesus told him, “You think as men think, no as God thinks. Anyone who wishes to be a follower of mine, [wishes to be my disciple], must [deny or] renounce himself, take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:23-24).
It is a requirement and condition of discipleship to take up our cross. No one can truthfully call themselves Christian without being willing to take up their cross. To be a Christian is to be a person who has put on Christ. To be a Christian is to be a person pursuing Christlikeness. To be a Christian is to be a person willing to give up themselves and replace worldly thoughts, views, and desires with the mind of Christ, he who Paul tells us did not regard equality with God as something to cling to, but emptied himself and humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross (Philippians 2:5ff).
All of this that we have said about the cross this week boils down to one thing in the end: love.
John 3:16 tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 1 John 4:10 tells us that “in this is love, not that we loved God, but that he gave himself up for us to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
The crucifixion, the cross of Christ, reveals to us the truth that the Scripture has also long declared: God is love. His very character and essence is love. Not the love of Hallmark movies and Valentine’s Day, not the love that is shown only to those who love us in return, but deep and abiding, immovable and unshakeable love.
‘Can a woman’s tender care
cease towards the child she bare?
Yes, she may forgetful be,
yet will I remember thee.
‘Mine is an unchanging love,
higher than the heights above,
deeper than the depths beneath,
free and faithful, strong as death.
It is this love that Pail speaks about when he writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:4-8), “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
It is this love which allowed Jesus to suffer and die for us while we were yet sinners.
It is this love which caused him to give us his body and blood to continually eat and drink in the Holy Communion until he comes again.
It is this love that Jesus tells us we ought to have for one another. He tells us that the world will know that we are his disciples if we love one another (John 13:35).
Doesn’t the Scripture say that anyone who doesn’t love their brother or sister, anyone who doesn’t love their neighbour cannot possibly love God, because God is love.
God is love in Jesus Christ on the cross, praying for everyone who participated (and still participate) in his death, “Father, forgive them, for they know no what they do.”
How many of us would be willing to show and live that kind of love? How many of us are prepared to still love people while they are hurting us? How many of us would even consider forgiving someone who tried to kill us, rob us, destroy our reputations, insult us, treated us like dirt? Can we help the selfish person we know won’t help us in return?
This is not a call to stay in abusive situations. It is not a call to tolerate sin. Remember that love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, no matter what form it takes.
This love is not a passive emotion. It is a verb, an action word, that calls us to do something. Namely, to love God and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.
The love of God manifested in Jesus on the cross is a love that desires an abundant and full life for us, a life of freedom. It’s just that abundant life and freedom in God’s kingdom looks different from how they look to the world. Life and freedom do not consist of money and power or of us giving in to every lust, passion, and desire that we feel. True life and freedom are found in living a life of complete surrender to the will and purpose of God. It is only then that we are freed from worldly desire and worldly passion and being enslaved to money and the lust of power.
In obedience to the Father Jesus endured the unendurable, forgave the unforgiveable, loved the unlovable. Therefore, he has been exalted. Therefore, he sits at God’s right hand.
Beloved, let us love one another, remembering that greater love has no one than this, but to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Amen.
1 Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, p. 44.