The Shadow of the Cross

April 13, 2025 • Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50:4-9a • Philippians 2:5-11 • Luke 22:14-23:56

When Jesus was a baby, his parents brought him to the Temple in Jerusalem. In the Temple was an old man, named Simeon. Simeon believed he wouldn’t die until he’d seen the Messiah with his own eyes. When Simeon laid eyes on the baby Jesus, he took Jesus in his arms and called him the glory of his own people, and the light that would enlighten other nations of the world.

But when we imagine the revelation of God in Christ only as a form of light, there’s a limit to how far it can spread. Light can play tricks and create distortions, depending on how we shine it. The religious and political authorities in today’s gospel report that Jesus has been spreading rebellious teachings, all the way from the northern province of Galilee to Jerusalem itself. He’s been proclaiming himself a king. He’s been performing miraculous signs—and Herod would sure like to see one. But these reports all distort what Jesus taught, how he presented himself, and why he used his powers—not to flex his own might, but to heal and to feed. The authorities distort the light that Jesus spread.

Light can also give some people the confidence that they have the truth and the power, while others don’t. The confident light of Christians has sometimes cast grim darkness over others. Some people bask in the light of Christ as mighty king. Others end up excluded from the warmth and abundance of Jesus’s table.

It’s telling, then, that in his last revelation to the world in his mortal life, Jesus hung on the cross in darkness. This darkness began at noon and lasted for three hours. Before this darkness began, Jesus asked God his Father to forgive the ignorance of people who saw him only as a criminal. And before this darkness fell, Jesus declined, once again, the same temptation he’d faced from Satan. Jesus refused to prove he was the Son of God by performing some irrefutable sign.

Instead of a showy sign, Jesus hung in darkness on a cross to which he’d been nailed in ignorance. This darkness wasn’t the sort of sign that could illumine and empower the few. It was a sign that implicated, but also encompassed, everyone.

This darkness is a revelation. It reveals that Christ didn’t enter the world simply to enlighten or arm us with the truth. Jesus came to earth from the heart of God to meet us where we are, and to show us fearless and boundless love.

*This sermon is indebted to Carl S. Hughes, Clouds of the Cross in Luther and Kierkegaard: Revelation as Unknowing (Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Lexington Books, 2024).

~The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh


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