Year B
 Isaiah 45:21-25
 Psalm 98
 Philippians 2:5-11
 John 12:31-36a

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and darkness did not overcome it.

I remember when my parents seemed all knowing and all powerful… they actually knew when my favorite TV shows were on… or they knew how to find out… they could allow me to stay home from school… or compel me to go… they knew when I was getting into trouble… even though I thought I was flying under the radar… and I don’t remember just when it happened… but I remember that my all knowing and all powerful… parents… became human…

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

I also remember being amazed at something else…  that some people were able to imagine things that never existed before…  and design them on paper…  and have them manufactured in a factory… and shipped to a store… and then you could actually hold in your hands and buy…  the thing they thought up in their heads…  and that there was also an underlying continuity in this process… almost like the electromagnetic spectrum… different expression of one uninterrupted flow of energy… that in some important ways…  made all of it one whole… from start to finish…

I remember my first transistor radio… and feeling amazed by it… of being able to listen to music that was being broadcast from somewhere across the Hudson River…  in NYC…  to where we lived in NJ… a signal received by this thing that someone invented… and later on there were AM/FM radios… and then FM stereo… which began broadcasting in June 1961… and of course you wanted stereo headphones… and since then…  the countless medical and other technologies…  like computers and smartphones…

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

And all of you know about the Big Bang… an event of unimaginable energy and brightness…  and that moment of cosmic inflation…   when the universe came into existence… and there was…  for decades…  the idea that at some time in the distant future… the expansion of the universe would slow down… that the combined gravitational pull of billions of galaxies… would become greater than the energy with which they’re expanding… and the universe would stop expanding… and just hang there… in equilibrium…  for maybe a few hundred-million years…  but then… that combined gravitational force would pull it all back together… and all of them…  and even space and time… will converge back into another unimaginably small and dense and hot singularity…

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

We don’t light a light and put it under a basket to hide it… light was created to enlighten… and when the Romans… in their myopic vision…   which they believed to be enlightenment…  when they realized that Jesus was telling too much truth for comfort…  when they and some Temple leaders feared that the good life they had was in increasing jeopardy…  when they tried to keep flying under the radar…    but could not…  and when the gravitational pull of Jesus’ words could no longer be resisted…  they decided to silence him…  and they decided to do it in the most horrific way they knew how… so that anyone else who might want to pick up his staff… anyone else who might want to take on his mantle… would think better of it…  or be silenced too…

And down through the centuries…  there are those who we think know everything…  as I did my parents…  or who just claim to…  and who resist truth-telling…  so much so that enemies are made…  and sometimes threatened…  those whose values are not in line with Jesus’ values…  people who resist the gravity of Jesus’ truth…

And we don’t know how God did it… we can’t grasp the mechanics… we probably couldn’t understand it even if we tried… but since Christ was the One who was in the beginning with God… when through Christ… the idea of creation itself moved directly from the mind of God and into existence…  what the Romans and any others whose worldly opposition to this light didn’t quite count on… was that they met with an irresistible force…  like ants trying to stop a bulldozer…

Cosmologists now question the gravity that they thought would pull everything back together…  now question the kind of irresistible force it is…  they know that the galaxies that are farthest from us… are moving at close to the speed of light… and the farther they are… the faster they go… and these scientists now doubt that the expansion of the universe will ever slow down…  or stop…  that the collective gravitational force pulling it all together…  will never be greater than the energy which is propelling it outward… and that the universe will just get bigger than it’s already impossible-to-imagine size… and that all of the individual galaxies will just continue moving forever… into an uncharted and incomprehensible future…

Those who tried to silence Jesus on the cross… had no idea that the Word of God existed before they did…  and that it expanded into creation… had no idea that their divisive and accusatory actions…  fueled the ruler of this world’s opposition to God’s seamless continuum… couldn’t imagine that their efforts to contain God’s expansive love…  would fail…  they had no idea that they were running against the wind…

And so however it is… that the mystery of incarnation happens… however it is… that we are animated by Spirit in these bodies we inhabit… however it is… that all things came into being through Christ… and that we are all as inextricably connected to each other… as all of creation is inextricably connected to the singularity from which it came… ]  and if our formation means anything… if Christ came to offer us abundant life…  then like the expanding universe around us… we are always and only called into more and more… and never into less and less…

And so as we commemorate Holy Cross Day… we remember that the glory of the cross…   is that wisdom could have been finite…  but is infinite…  that a symbol of terrorism could have had the final word…  but was turned into God’s symbol for love…  that the limits of life were replaced with limitlessness… ]  the glory of the cross is that the power of gravity… and death…  has been overcome…  and have given way to expansiveness and eternal life…

Sometimes it’s difficult to know what to choose…  what seems like it’d be consoling sometimes ends up causing desolation…  and vice-versa…  and some people in this world continue to confuse short-sightedness with enlightenment…  but we are all on the same continuum… ] and we continue to be invited… to give up our small ways… in favor of God’s boundlessness…  ]  and since we were created in God’s image…  that means that we were created to create…  not just things that come out of factories… but systems of justice and righteousness…  of fairness and equity…  and to not only oppose that in this world which seeks to shrink God’s love…   but to choose the life-giving cross…  Amen…