Preacher’s note: The following homily was preached at the funeral of a St. John’s member, whose name has been removed for the family’s privacy. I normally don’t post funeral homilies/sermons, but this one – in this particular context, on the occasion of Holy Cross Day – felt particularly appropriate to share with a wider audience.

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St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, New York
19 September 2024
Philippians 4:4-9
Rev. Josh Evans

It doesn’t make any sense.
“Rejoice in the Lord always”? At a funeral?
“Rejoice”? In the midst of loss and grief?

It doesn’t make any sense:
A loved one taken from us –
a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother.
Even after ninety years, it never feels like enough time.

September 14th – the day [she] died.
September 14th also happens to be Holy Cross Day –
an ancient, often overlooked, day on the church’s calendar,
tracing its roots back to the 4th century,
when Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, was overseeing some archaeological digs in the Holy Land and unearthed what she believed to be the true cross of Jesus, a relic which quickly became an object of veneration for pilgrims visiting Jerusalem – at the site over which the Church of the Resurrection now stands.

Whether or not Helena or her archaeological team actually discovered any part of the actual cross is doubtful, but it did give us this unique, if not bizarre, commemoration: Holy Cross Day.

It doesn’t make any sense:
This instrument of torture and death
turned into the prime emblem of our faith.

Oh, that old rugged cross
so despised by the world
has a wondrous attraction for me…

What is it about the cross –
which stands at the center of our faith,
the faith which [she] clung to –
that holds such a “wondrous attraction”?

The first time I heard one of my own favorite hymns,
“Holy God, Holy and Glorious”
by the contemporary hymn-writer Susan Briehl,
I was attending the Good Friday liturgy –
another peculiar day on the church’s calendar that centers the cross.

In Briehl’s hymn text, she flips traditional attributes of God on their head:
God, who is glorious, enters into our human reality.
God, who is powerful, bends to us in weakness.
God, who is beautiful, is despised and rejected.
God, who is wisdom, chooses the way of folly and crucifixion.
God, who is living, lays down God’s life for God’s friends.

That hymn, for me, holds the key to what this cross is all about:
The cross challenges our expectations of what is logical, practical, or possible.
The cross shows us where God is – alongside those who suffer and cry out.
And ultimately, the cross gives way to resurrection, to God’s decisive victory over the power of death, and the cross defiantly bears witness to hope when all feels hopeless.

The cross is the reason why St. Paul,
writing from prison to the Philippian church,
is able to write with such confidence and encouragement,
as much for himself as for his audience:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice … The Lord is near.”

It’s the reason why we too can trust in Paul’s words of comfort:
“The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” – which doesn’t make any sense – “will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

It doesn’t make any sense.
Rejoice? At a funeral? Yes.

Even in the midst of loss and grief,
we can trust in the peace of God that doesn’t make any sense.

Because we know,
as [she] confessed and clung to in her life of faith,
the old rugged cross wins.

Death does not,
cannot,
will not
have the final word.

Thanks be to God.