Heb 4:14-5:6

When we talk about God, we often find ourselves at a loss for words. He is beyond our ability to describe, in fact it is hard even to think of Him as He is. He is so great, so different from us that we can only describe Him in the vaguest of terms or with metaphors that are woefully inadequate or which require a disclaimer not to push the imagery too far or take it too literally. God is so far beyond our ability to perceive Him and understand Him that without His help we could not even begin to conceive of his existence. But He gives us that help in many ways. In His creation, He leaves His fingerprints everywhere. We can see the image of His beauty all around us in nature. We can see His grandeur in the heavens. We can see his power and might in the natural force of movement of the wind and the sea and the earth. We can see His depth in the complexity of the molecules and cells. We can see His unity in the interconnectedness of all life. We can see His love for us in the love and care of parents for children. Everything in creation reveals to us something about God for that which is created always bears the mark, the signature, the imprint of its creator.

God’s fingerprints in the natural world are not the only way that we know about Him. We know about Him also because we are created in His image and His likeness. That means that within each person there is a reflection of God. Sometimes that reflection is mostly hidden or distorted by sin and neglect. Sometimes that reflection appears ordinary and is taken for granted. Sometimes, as in the saints, that reflection is cleaned and polished and shows us a clearer image of God.

There is still another way that we can know God. All of these fingerprints and images and reflections can only help us to know about God, but God in His great love for us desires not only that we know about Him, but that we come to know Him as our Father, and as our friend. In order to make this possible, God has taken the step of revealing Himself to us. In the beginning, God walked with our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden and there they communed with Him and knew Him. But that original knowledge of God was broken off as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. Even though they no longer walked with God in the same intimacy and closeness, our first parents retained the memory of God and always sought for the way to return. Through the generations, however that memory waned and mankind soon forgot about the true God and began to make their own gods. In order to preserve the true knowledge of Himself in the world, God chose the man who had kept the old knowledge of God – Abraham – and through him and his descendents preserved the knowledge of the One True God and even more continued to reveal Himself to them through the law and the prophets.

Even this self revelation through the law and the prophets was insufficient, however, for men to truly know God and to return to the intimate communion with God that had been enjoyed by our first parents before their sin. In order to restore this knowledge of the true God and to reopen the way to union and communion with Himself, God took a radical step. He, Himself, took on human flesh – the One of Whom we are a reflection became one of us and that reflection became a reality. In order that we might know Him and in order that He might fully know us, He came not as a shadow nor as a spirit, but fully and completely He became man and dwelt among us. He was born of the Virgin Mary, taking our flesh from her who was the most perfect human being ever born (for she was the fruit of the centuries of preparation through the generations of the chosen people). God Himself took flesh and was born as an infant, and He grew and developed in the world just as we do. He felt all that we feel, He experienced all that we experience. He went through poverty, persecution, hardship and homeless wandering. He was the guest of the wealthy and the poor alike and knew how they both lived. He ate rich food and simple fare alike. He knew joy and sorrow. He was frustrated and even angry. All these things that we experience, He Himself now experienced. He took on the fullness of our life from birth and growth and the life of adulthood and finally He experienced our death, that is the unnatural ripping of the soul from the body that we call death (for in this the body loses the animation of the soul). And having shared our life, He now offers to us the opportunity to share His life.

Today we honor the memory of the life-giving Cross of our Lord. It is on the Cross that our Lord experienced the extremes of our own life. He experienced excruciating pain, for crucifixion was designed to be a torturous death. He experienced shame and mocking and derision, for crucifixion was the most shameful form of execution reserved for the worst and lowest of the condemned. He experienced the sight of his mother and his closest friends suffering at the sight of his own suffering. He experienced the cruelty of one human towards another. All of these extremes He took upon Himself and even in such a condition He took on all of our sin, all of our evil, all of the worst that humanity has to offer and He transformed it and changed it. In His suffering, He did not complain but patiently endured all. In the midst of the cruelty and mocking of others He did not retaliate, but He forgave. Seeing the suffering of others, even in the midst of His own suffering, He offered comfort and compassion. He took our experience, our life, our humanity at its fullest and He transformed it and changed it. In so doing, He showed us that we too can be changed and transformed. He showed us what we can become with His help.

In the Cross we see the instrument of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Cross we also see the instrument of His boundless love for us in that He took upon Himself the fullness of our life and experience so that in knowing us, we might also come to know Him. In the Cross we see shame and humiliation and torture transformed into forgiveness and compassion and love. We see defeat transformed into victory. We see death transformed into life. To us as men, the cross appears as a termination, as an end. But Jesus Christ has taken the cross and made it into a beginning, into a door from death to life, as the means by which we can return to the intimate union and communion with Himself that our first parents experienced in the garden of Eden.

Jesus Christ, the God/man, took flesh and came into this world not just so that He might experience our life. Certainly, as God, He knew all about us and how we lived. He took on our life that by doing so He might change it, that He might transform it and join it with His life. Our life in this world is a march toward death. We are born and from the moment of our birth we fight off death. Our Lord Jesus Christ came and took on our life and embraced it even to His death on the cross. By embracing our life and our death, He changed its nature so that now our life is no longer limited and defined by death, but it has become a means toward acquiring life. The purpose of our life is no longer to fight off death for as long as we can, but rather the purpose of our life in this world is to enter into the Life of Christ and death is no longer the termination of our life, but rather the doorway into that Life in Christ and into the bliss of union and communion with Him. The cross is no longer for us an instrument of torture and shame and death, but it is become the instrument of love and compassion and the doorway to Life eternal.