A Sermon for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity
November 17, 2024 at Holy Communion
“As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ☩ Amen.
We have a children’s book at come called The True Cross. It tells the story of the discovery of the remains of the cross on which Jesus died by St Helen in the fourth century. But it begins much, much further back. When Adam dies, his third son Seth is instructed to plant a seed in father’s mouth. From that seed grows a tree with miraculous healing powers. But its powers are first disbelieved and then forgotten, and in time that tree is cut down to build a bridge over the Brook Kidron in Jerusalem. In time the bridge rots and the timber is thrown into a junkyard. And in time a band of soldiers goes to the junk heap looking for suitable wood on which to execute an innocent man. The wood is, of course, the wood of the cross. It is the second tree of life, redeeming Adam and his children when, like Adam himself, it is planted in the earth in death.
This week we all received very sad news when we heard of the sudden passing of Julie-Ann Bruce. Her gentleness, and her kindness to her whole family and to everyone, will be missed.
I will not deliver a funeral sermon today—her funeral will be at 2:00 PM on Tuesday—but what I was going to say about today’s readings must now take second place to passing along a conversation I had with Theodora. When Katy told her that Julie-Ann had died, she asked, “Is Julie on the cross?” Most of Theodora’s encounter with death has been through our telling the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. For Theodora, “dying” means being on the cross.
I want to show you what I showed her to answer her question.
These are two icons. I will pass them around, and please make sure that you see both. Both are in the form of a cross, but the first shows the death of Jesus, and the second shows his resurrection. But pay attention to the foot of the cross. Beneath Jesus’ feet there is an opening in the earth: a cave, a tomb. In the first icon, the icon of the death of Christ, you’ll see a single human skull. It is Adam’s skull, which means that it is every man’s skull. It is the skull which the symbol of human death. Placing the skull there makes more explicit what occurs in the crucifixion: the death which Jesus suffers is a human death, Adam’s death, every person’s death. The crucifixion is the embrace by God of human death.
So what can I say to Theodora? Is Julie-Ann on the cross? Yes, she is, because the cross shows us every person’s death from Adam to the end of time.
But there is a second icon. The risen Christ coming out of the tomb is superimposed on a cross, this time with a glorious gold background. But again, beneath his feet there is a fissure in the earth for Adam’s tomb. But what is in that tomb? Nothing: the skull is gone.
If the crucifixion of Christ represents the death of every person, the resurrection represents the triumph of spirit over flesh in every person, the return to life and the disappearance of the spectre of death.
So the gospel I have for you this morning is from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22).
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