The Medium is the Message

The Readings for the Elevation of the Holy Cross (14 Sept 23)

• 1 Corinthians 1:18-24 (Liturgy)
• John 19:6-11, 13-20, 25-28, 30-35 (Liturgy)

IC XC
✙
NI KA

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1 Corinthians 1:18

TAKE A LOOK AT THE various English translations of 1 Corinthians 1:18. Most of them refer to “the word of the Cross” or “the message of the cross”. There are a few outliers, but most of them pick one of these two ideas. The Greek text uses the word λόγος logos which carries a massive load of Greek cultural baggage and, since Paul was writing to Gentiles in a Greek city, I think this baggage is important. Doubly so, since Paul calls out both Jewish and Greek non-believers with this logos.

Logos means “word” yes. But not in the same way that we might say “here is a list of words for the spelling test.”. This Greek word, in Chinese Bibles, gets translated as 道 tao or dao as in “Taoism”. It carries the sense of “the real meaning” or the “actual nature of” or even “the formatting principle behind”. Jesus is called the logos of God – which is also, itself, God. (And yes, in Chinese, Jesus is called the 道 of God. So what is the Logos or 道 of the Cross?

It’s a stumbling block and foolishness. It’s folly. We might say, it’s downright stupid.

What it means is that the ways of the world are not the ways of God. AND YET. God uses the ways of the world as his own to bring about his own ends. God own submission used the cross – a method of state-sponsored torture and death – to show us who he really is.

When we lift high the Cross we are saying nothing matters in this world because God has made everything matter in him: God is not in this world because everything is connected back to God. Because of the Death of God our death is now only more life happening.

The early scriptures are filled with references to the dead in their grey underworld, alone and lifeless. Death now unites us more closely to God because it is something that God has done and – forever – what God has done stays a Holy Mystery of participation in God. God was born. So are we. God was baptized. So are we. God grew up, went to school, studied Bible, ate bread and soup, played in the yard, messed his diapers. So do we. God loved his mother, lost his earthy father to an early death, health with political oppression, thirsted, strove, and died. All of this will be true of us and as we live in union with God, all of these things draw us closer to him.

That is the word, the logoc, the logos of the Cross: it reveals the one thing that has been from eternity. The father pours himself out into the son, the son pours himself out for us, the holy spirit is poured into us. And we pour out love for everyone. To hold back from this continual outpouring is death.

In the end, death, the final enemy, will also die. The Cross will be lifted high likethe serpent in the wilderness and, life will shine forth from all the tombs and from every corner of the universe. The cross will be revealed as the logic of everything: to pour yourself out, to give yourself over to the will of God in loving others, is to truly live. And to die in that self-outpouring is to be resurrected for eternity.