To Be Saved by Christ Is to Be Saved by the Cross

5th Sunday of Lent

I grew up listening, thanks largely to my mother, to the soundtrack of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar. We came to know and love the music because each year our parish would put on a concert toward the end of Lent that included one of our priests singing (belting) the show’s two biggest numbers, Heaven On Their Minds and Gethsemane. You don’t need to worry about me trying to replicate his performance—I simply do not have the high notes. For all of the show’s quirks and problematic theology, I always thought that Jesus Christ Superstar did a good job of expressing, if not the doubts of the disciples themselves, then at least the skepticism of the modern world, for whom Judas Iscariot is often the mouthpiece. In the opening number, Judas sings, “Listen, Jesus to the warning I give. Please remember that I want us to live. But it’s sad to see our chances weakening with every hour. All your followers are blind. Too much heaven on their minds. It was beautiful but now it’s sour. Yes, it’s all gone sour.”

We know that Jesus’ story does not end with his death on the cross, and it was good that he did not heed Judas’ warning. We believe in the resurrection and his life seated at the right hand of the Father. But the Cross is where the story of Jesus ends for those who, like Lloyd Webber’s Judas, do not believe in his divinity. For them, Christ was a figure who “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38), who preached “good news to the poor… [and] liberty to captives” (Lk. 4:18), who healed the sick, stood up for the oppressed, called out hypocrisy, challenged a self-righteous establishment, and so on. For all of this, in their eyes Jesus Christ is at-best a martyr for his cause; at worst, he is a failure, one whose work was beautiful but has all gone sour. It would have been better, as the world would have it, if he had never provoked the government, if he had been more discrete in his criticisms of the Jewish teachers, if he had never allied himself with God to the extreme of claiming to be God’s Son. With a bit more foresight, his work could have continued a bit longer, and he would have inspired those who followed him and carried on his example to avoid extremes for themselves. Christians, had their Lord not been so misguided, would not have had too much heaven on their minds. They, the Church, would do only the good work the world needs doing and avoid securing their Lord’s fate as their own.

But for us who believe in Christ as the Son of God, we know the truth of his words in today’s Gospel: “It was for this purpose that I came to this hour.” Today, Christ speaks near the end of Lent and on the cusp of his Passion of the events that are about to unfold for us and for him. What is about to happen will give meaning to everything. Everything that Jesus said and did was to lead to the Cross; and without the Cross, none of his ministry would have attained full and ultimate value. If Christ had merely went out about doing good, he would have brought healing to those who would later die; he would have proclaimed liberty to those who would eventually be chained by death; he would have announced salvation but only in a temporal and material sense. With the Cross, and only with the Cross, the proclamation of the Good News reaches its fullest expression, in the words of the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (10:10). The life that Christ came to offer—the life won for us by the Cross—is not merely worldly life. It is life, to the full—which is to say, life eternal.

Christians must ever be people of the Cross, for the Cross is our only hope of salvation. [This Cathedral bears the words Ave Crux Spes Unica —Hail, Cross our only hope— on the altar gate at the entrance to the sanctuary, visible when it is closed. The Cross above the altar, and the other crosses around the church, in keeping with the Church’s tradition, are veiled from the 5th Sunday of Lent through Good Friday, so that at Easter we may rejoice to once again look upon the Cross by which we are saved and delivered]. The world looks upon the Cross as folly, a mistake, and a sign of humiliation and death. We as people of faith look upon it as the manifestation of God’s glory, a glory which is not diminished by death but revealed by triumphing over it.

But it will not suffice to merely proclaim the Cross as an idea or an event of history. We must do more than talk about it as a theological principle or as a pivotal moment in the past like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. No, the Cross reveals God’s glory by incorporating us into it, and thus we must proclaim the Cross by being nailed to it ourselves, on Christ’s word: “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” To be saved by Christ is to be united to him; to be saved by the Cross is to be united to it. What this means is that we must enter into Jesus’ Passion with him, walking with him every step of the way from now until he is laid into the tomb. We must identify what within ourselves inhibits or blocks the abundant life he came to bring from living in us. We must see in Christ going to the Cross him going to put that part of us to death, so that the whole of us can rise to new life.

In this, the Father’s glory will be revealed. “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” He will glorify his name, as he did on Calvary, again each time Christ’s victory is victorious in us. It is then that the world may come to understand the Cross, not as an unfortunate ending to a good life, but as the fulfillment of life itself. For as Paul teaches: we are “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:10-11). As the life of Jesus is manifested in us, the Father’s glory is manifested to the world, so that the world may also be saved through the one who came to draw everyone to himself so that everyone may live through him, with him, and in him. Amen.

Homily preached March 16/17, 2024 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen and Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish.