We Preach Christ Crucified

Jesu Juva

1 Corinthians 1:18-25                               

September 14, 2025

Holy Cross Day          

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Since the year 335 AD, this day has been known as Holy Cross Day.  Think about those two words for just a moment:  Holy Cross.  On the day that Jesus died, no one standing at Golgotha would have called the cross “holy.”  At the cross there was cruelty, brutality, unspeakable suffering, blood and darkness.  The cross was a Roman tool of torture and death—the most cruel and unusual punishment.  To speak of the “holy” cross makes about as much sense as speaking about a holy electric chair or a holy guillotine. 

        This is why by nature we are repelled by the cross.  What happened on Good Friday—what really happened—is so hideous and grotesque that it seems almost blasphemous to connect the cross to God Himself.  Director Mel Gibson got it right in his movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” which is rightly rated R.  The crosses that we’re most comfortable with today are those that are beautifully sanded and stained and sanitized—perhaps with a precious moments angel added for good measure.  But clean crosses with no Christ cannot convey the magnitude of what happened there.

        The Christ and the cross go together.  A Christ without a cross is no Christ; and a cross with no Christ is certainly not holy.  But down through the centuries, lots of well-meaning people have tried to have the Christ without the cross.  In the First Century, when Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth, there were two distinct groups of people who wanted nothing to do with a crucified Christ.  First, there were Jews—Jews demanding signs and miracles.  Jews were looking for a powerful, political Messiah, not a crucified Christ.  And then there were Greeks—Greeks seeking wisdom. They were the first philosophy majors.  The Greek concept of God was so spiritualized that they couldn’t swallow the idea of God becoming man, to save man—a God who humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death—[especially] death on a cross (Philippians 2:8).  A God on a cross was foolishness to the Greeks.

        In fact, one of the oldest existing images of Christ crucified comes from ancient Rome.  It’s printed on the cover of today’s bulletin.  It’s dated around 200 AD.  It’s a piece of graffiti scratched on the side of an excavated house.  It shows Jesus on the cross, but with a terrible twist.

        The man on the cross in this picture has the head of a donkey.  And there’s another man drawn beside the cross with his hand raised

in devotion.  The caption you see written there says:  Alexamenos worships his god.  Do you see what’s going on here?  The drawing mocks this Christian man Alexamenos.  It mocks Christianity.  It mocks Christ.  It begs the question, “What kind of a God is this weak, dying criminal?”  It illustrates St. Paul’s point in today’s epistle:  The crucified Christ is foolishness to the world.  The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.

        The world hasn’t changed all that much since then.  There are still plenty of religious folks who have trouble with the cross—who think they can have a Christ without a cross.  Jesus is being preached today from pulpits all around the world.  But many of those sermons won’t go anywhere near the cross or the crucifixion.  Instead, you may hear quite a bit about Christ the Helper, Christ the Family Strengthener, Christ the key to Success, Christ the Money Manager, Christ the Life Coach, the Lord with leadership principles.  But all those sermons will have omitted the central message of the Christian Church which is summed up by St. Paul in two words:  Christ crucified.

        That is our message.  And if that is not our central message, our primary message, the message we hear and teach and preach and proclaim, then we are preaching a false Christ, a false Gospel, and a false god.

        Is Christ Crucified the Christ in whom you believe?  The devil likes nothing better than to direct our focus away from the Crucified Christ to a perverted Christ, to a Christ divorced from the cross, to a Christ who makes more sense to us modern Americans.  After all, blood and suffering, nails and thorns—these things don’t make much sense to us.  Those things aren’t logical.  Ask us to invent our own god and we would never come up with Christ crucified.  That’s unacceptable to our reason and senses.  But God doesn’t ask us to “accept” His Son—but to believe in Him.

        The message of the cross sounds so foolish—defies all common sense.  It is the message of how sinners nailed their Savior to a piece of wood so that He might bleed and die for our salvation—so that He might pay for our sins.  It is the message about a man who was also God—about a Lamb who was also a Shepherd, about a Defeat which was also a Victory.  That is our message—the Word of the Cross, the power of God.

        All false religions are about human beings making their way up to god.  And for that reason every other religion will fail.  All are false.  If God is the destination, dear sinner, no one—not you, not me—can get to there from here. It doesn’t matter how wise you are.  No amount of human wisdom is wise enough to bridge the gap between sinners like us and the holy God.  Only the holy cross—only Christ crucified—can bridge that gap.  Because we cannot get from here to there, God Himself came from there to here (via the Virgin’s womb).  Jesus Christ not only bridged the distance, but He bore on the cross all of the sin that ruins our best works and warps our highest wisdom.  The cross of Christ is the only way.  There are no end-runs—no shortcuts—no alternate paths to the true and living God who so deeply desires your salvation.  That road for you and me runs right through the cross—the holy cross of Christ.  This is how we know what love is:  Jesus Christ laid down His life for us!

        We don’t have to apologize for the cross.  We don’t need to make it more acceptable to human wisdom.  In fact, there’s no defending the cross; it can’t be defended.  It can only be proclaimed and preached.  And that’s why St. Paul writes, “We preach Christ crucified.”

        But this same Jesus, who was crucified for our offenses, was also raised for our justification.  Good Friday and Easter go together.  The death He died was your death.  And the resurrection life He lives is the guarantee that the grave cannot hold you either.  Because He lives, you shall live also.

        That’s why you’re here this morning—to receive the life of Jesus in your mortal body—through the Word and the Sacrament of Christ’s very body and blood.  But what if—what if we had the actual cross of Jesus right here in our sanctuary this morning?  What if we had here the very wood on which the Savior died?  On one hand, that would be amazing.  On the other hand, nothing would change.  For the Savior has not attached His power and His forgiveness to any relic or artifact—not even to the wood of the cross—not to wood, but to the Word—Word and sacraments. 

        Jesus has connected His saving power to the Word of the cross, to water of Baptism, to the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood.  The Savior uses these precious means to take the blessings achieved at the holy cross and give them to you, for your forgiveness. 

        And as you receive those gifts in faith, on this Holy Cross Day, God makes you holy.  If our God can take a terrible tool like the cross and make it holy, then He can also take terrible sinners and make them holy.  If God can bring blessings and life from a tool of torture, then He can also use you to bring blessings and life and light to this fallen world.  What happened at the holy cross makes you holy.

        There is no lasting heavenly joy apart from a crucified Christ, for there is no Christ apart from the crucifixion.  There sin is destroyed.  There death is vanquished.  There the gift of our salvation is won.  Happy Holy Cross Day! 

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.