Sermon for September 14, 2025, Holy Cross Day

John 12:20-33 (Holy Cross Day)

“Drawn to Christ and Saved from Death”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

September 14, 2025

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text for Holy Cross Day is the Gospel reading from John 12:

²⁰Now there were some Greeks among those who had gone up in order to worship at the feast. ²¹Therefore these came to Philip who was from Bethsaida of Galilee and asked him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” ²²Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. ²³And Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come and is now here so that the Son of Man should be glorified. ²⁴Truly, truly  I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵The one who loves his life loses it, but the one who hates his life in this world will guard it unto eternal life. ²⁶If anyone should serve Me, let him follow Me, and where I am there also will My servant be. If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him. ²⁷Now My soul is deeply troubled, and what should I say, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this reason I have come to this hour. ²⁸Father, glorify Your Name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have both glorified it and I will again glorify it.” ²⁹Therefore the crowd that was standing around and heard the voice and said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.” ³⁰Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not occur for My sake, but for your sake. ³¹Now is the judgment of this word! Now the ruler of this world will be cast out! ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself.” ³³And this He said to indicate by what kind of death He was about to die.

         Today, we observe Holy Cross Day. It began as a liturgical feast to honor the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. In the Eastern churches like the Greek and Russian Orthodox, the feast dates back to the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem (the site of Christ’s tomb) around A.D. 335. It was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in the 600s and is also observed among Lutherans and Anglicans. Holy Cross Day also included the commemoration of the discovery of the “True Cross.” Legend holds that the relic was found by St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land about A.D. 326. The Chapel of St. Helena inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built by the Crusaders in her honor, and below it lies the Chapel of the Finding of the True Cross, in which the cross of Christ’s crucifixion was reportedly discovered.

          As Lutheran Christians, we do not venerate or worship the cross. We do not go seeking the forgiveness of sins by viewing a “holy relic” of a piece of wood that may (but most likely was not) from the actual cross upon which Jesus was nailed. Erasmus of Rotterdam, a contemporary of Martin Luther quipped, “Even a cargo ship would be too small to transport the numerous fragments of the true cross, found scattered throughout the world.”

         Why, then, even bother to observe such a day in the Church Year? While this day is not about the cross, it is about the One who was Crucified on a cross—Jesus Christ. Today gives us another opportunity to “preach Christ crucified, . . . Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23-24). It is a day that Christ draws us to Himself by the Spirit through the Word of the cross so that we might continue to live and grow through His power and grace.

         But if we are going to talk about Christ and the cross, we are going to have to talk about death. Not just His death, but our death.

         Death is a topic that makes a lot of folks very squeamish. It is not up high on the topic of daily conversation list. Everyone knows that death is coming, but almost no one wants to talk about it. But we must. Otherwise, Jesus’ death on a cross is meaningless.

         One of the worst ideas ever to creep into humanity is this: death is a just a natural part of life. Baloney! There is nothing “natural” about it! Having soul and body ripped apart in death is not “normal.” People were not created to be disembodied spirits or spiritless bodies. The fact that there is physical death, a cessation of life in the body, is the punishment for sin. The fact that there is a separation of the immortal soul from the physical body at death is the consequence of sin. And let’s be clear about what sin is. “Sin is humanity’s fallen condition. We are turned away from God and unable to look to Him for security, meaning, and righteousness. The inner sinful condition results in actual sins of thought, desire, word, or deed that are contrary to God’s will as summarized in the Ten Commandments.”[1]

         We die because we are sinners. We are the ones who by nature do not have the ability to fear and love God. We are the ones who by nature are God’s enemies with an endless desire to sin. The result of this condition with which we were conceived and born is that we deserve God’s temporal and eternal death sentence. Ezekiel 18:20, “The person who sins will die” (NAS95). Paul says the same in Romans 3:23, “For the wages of sin is death” (ESV).

And this is clearly not natural; it is not what God intended. The devil tempted Adam and Eve with the lie, “You shall not die.” But listen to what God had said to them, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17 ESV). Death is the wage, the just payment, the punishment for sin. The Apostle Paul has written, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12 ESV).

Death, being unnatural and the punishment for sin, is not God’s desire. In fact, that the Lord has to punish sin according to His holiness and justice is called His “alien work,” the work He must do because He is holy. Listen to what He spoke through the prophet Ezekiel, “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 18:32 ESV). This is God’s “proper work,” having mercy, showing underserved loving-kindness, being gracious. The hymnwriter put it like this, “God would not have the sinner die; His Son with saving grace is nigh; His Spirit in the Word declares How we in Christ are heaven’s heirs.”[2]

In order to save His human creation from the death of sin, God promised that He would send a Savior. First promised in Genesis 3:15 in His condemnation of the serpent, the devil, God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15 ESV). The Savior would be fully human in order to take humanity’s place under the curse of sin. And the Savior would be fully divine so that He might be able to crush the power of sin, Satan, and death.

At just the right time, God the Father sent His one and only Son into the world in human flesh and blood. This is the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ—conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary—Immanuel, “God with us.” God the Son was “made man.” And what does the Christian Church immediately confess in the Nicene Creed after these words? He “was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.”

Who was Jesus crucified for? “For us.” For you! Jesus, in whom there is no sin, chose to die for you. If death is not natural for us, it is certainly not natural for the innocent, holy, Son of God made flesh. And yet, out of His love for fallen sinners like you and me, He endured the cross, the suffering of death and hell, for us, for our salvation and rescue from the power of sin and death.

Listen to how our Savior described His death on the cross for the sins of the world: “The hour has come and is now here so that the Son of Man should be glorified. Truly, truly  I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. . . . And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself.”

Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God, made His own the destiny under the curse of human sin and death. Lifted up on a cross, nailed to the tree, Jesus suffered God’s wrath and the full-blown punishment of death and hell so that you and I never will. In His death, Jesus, like a seed that dies, sprouts and gives life to “much fruit.” You are that fruit. The working of the Holy Spirit through the Word of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins has drawn you to Jesus, connected you to Him in Baptism, and empowers you to live connected to Christ.

In the Upper Room on the night of His betrayal, Jesus told His disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:1-5 ESV). By grace through faith, you are connected to Jesus, the True Vine. You are made clean from your sins by the Word spoken to you—you are forgiven in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That is the purchased gift of Jesus’ death for you on the cross—the forgiveness of sins and rescue from the power of death and the devil.

Paul tells us how, in Baptism, we also have been united with Jesus who was lifted up on the cross for us. “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Rom. 6:3-8 ESV).

To talk about the cross of Christ means that we also must talk about death. Jesus died our death on the cross. He has united us with His death on the cross and resurrection from the dead in the waters of Holy Baptism. We are connected to Christ by the power of the Spirit as branches to the True Vine. “O Lord, once lifted on the glorious tree, As Thou hast promised, draw us all to Thee.”[3] Drawn to Jesus and His saving cross through His Word and Sacrament, we are connected to Him by Baptism, branch to Vine, living and thriving in Christ’s power and grace. Amen.

[1] “An Explanation of the Small Catechism,” (St. Louis: Concordia, 2017), 56.

[2] Lutheran Service Book 571:3, “God Loved the World So That He Gave.”

[3] Text: © 1974 Hope Publishing Co. Used by permission: LSB Hymn License no. 110000752