Earlier this week, Doug Tompkins - our Head Server - was occupied with the task of removing the body of Jesus from a bronze crucifix that Garth had discovered among his storehouse of liturgical treasures. Doug is helping Wanda to make a new processional cross for the Sunday school children. The task was accomplished with ease, and now the little, bronze body of Jesus is resting comfortably in a drawer in Wanda's office. (At least, I assume it's still there.)

As you know, in our Anglican tradition, a crucifix - a cross that is adorned with the body of Jesus - is less common than in other traditions; most notably, the Catholic tradition. Anglicans, it seems, prefer a plain, bare cross - a "violence-free" cross - a cross less gruesome than a crucifix. Anglicans prefer a cross that points to the resurrection, that points to Easter - not one that dwells on the torture, the suffering, the nails, and the blood of Good Friday.

In this regard, our church is exceptional: it is quite unusual to have a stained-glass depiction of the crucifixion behind the alter of an Anglican church - particularly one dedicated to St John the Evangelist. Unlike the synoptic writers, John spent relatively little time describing the passion, suffering and death of Jesus. John's Christ was the victorious, King of Glory, whose depiction may be seen on the cross immediately behind me. It is a "Rex Christus," depicting Christ on his heavenly throne.

I raise these matters this morning because today, as you know, is Holy Cross Day - traditionally known as the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. To be honest, this celebration (and the readings appointed for it) seem strangely "out of sync" to me. It feels like a "blip" in the liturgical calendar. Abruptly, for one Sunday in mid-September, we are thrust forward into Lent, and Lenten preoccupations. I, for one, find it disconcerting, and a little annoying.

For one thing, I don't really like the name of this feast: "Holy Cross Day." The expression - "Holy Cross" - is, for me, somewhat of an "oxymoron," an expression that combines two words that are incongruous, or contradictory. The expressions "cruel kindness," "deafening silence," and "mournful optimist" are examples of oxymorons. Another, one of my favorites, is "laborious idleness" - something that I have perfected personally to an art form.

As you know, the cross was an ancient implement of execution - a hideous, particularly barbaric form of capital punishment. Today, one could not imagine the phrase "lethal injection," being modified by the adjective, "holy." Surely, there is nothing "holy" about the purposeful injection of poison into the arm of any human being. Similarly, one could not imagine using the expression "sacred torture." There is nothing sacred, nothing pure, nothing good about deliberately inflicting pain on any man, woman, or child. It is wholly abhorrent.

Why then do we name this feast day, this day of special observance, "Holy Cross Day"? We do so - of course - because of something called the "doctrine of the atonement." We do so because, as John suggests in our gospel for today, "the Son of Man [must] be lifted up." (John 3:15) We do so because, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, Christ crucified is "the power of God and the wisdom of God." (1 Corinthians 1:24)

There are - as you know - many theories, many doctrines of the atonement. Christ suffered and died on the cross for our sins. Christ suffered and died on the cross to save us, to heal us, to set us free - to reconcile us to God and to each other, and to open for us the pathway to eternal life. God gave - rather, God "sacrificed" - God's only child for you, and for me. God watched God's child suffer, bleed, sob, gag, and (finally) die in agony for you, and for me. God watched, and did nothing. It seems that God - all knowing, all-powerful, creator of heaven and earth - could find just one strategy to save us from sin: this monstrous act of barbarism, this monstrous, hateful desecration of a living person.

It is no secret, and not surprising, that many Christians today - some, I suspect (I know) in this community this morning - flatly reject the deity that I have just described. Similarly, they reject traditional theories of the atonement. John Spong is one such Christian.

Spong has spent much of his life "rethinking" traditional notions of Christianity with a view to formulating what he has called, "A New Christianity for a New World." His task is far from complete, but I find his reflection on the cross helpful - of interest to many who wrestle with doctrines of atonement that seem - in one way or another - to miss the mark. That seem - in one way or another - antithetical to the God that we have come to know, the God that we have experienced in Jesus the Christ, the God whom we love, and whom we believe loves us.

For Spong, the Jesus whom he encounters in the gospels is wholly in possession of his life, fully authentic, completely "real." Jesus is precisely whom Jesus is intended to be, and lives accordingly. Spong points out that: "Jesus understood that the call of every human being is not just to survive but to journey into both the fullness of one's own humanity and into the mystery of God." (Spong, A New Christianity for a New World, see pp. 138-142) Later, he writes: "This human Jesus seems to possess his life so totally that he can give it away without fear." (emphasis added) And give it away he does: Jesus gives life to others even as he succumbs to the relentless oppression of the religious and political authorities of his day, even as he succumbs to death on the executioner's cross. This giving - this self-gift - resulted, in the words of John Spong, "in the explosion of a new and radically different humanity."

Accordingly, Spong writes: "The cross for me does not represent a sacrifice required by a blood-seeking deity; it rather reveals the ultimate portrait of the threatening power of love that is present in the life of this victim. As this power [the threatening power of love] touches us, creating new life in us, we are driven to say, 'God was in that life,' and we stare at the source, this revelation, this God-presence, this Jesus, with a kind of joy and wonder. Jesus first reveals the source of life, and then empowers us to enter in."

For Spong, Jesus - on the cross - reveals the source of love as well, and similarly beckons us to enter in. He repeats himself, saying: "When one sees a life that loves wastefully, it is said of that person, "God was in that life."

I thought of Spong, and of my own questions about traditional theories of the atonement, as I considered the significance of Holy Cross Day. In my view, from both the traditional perspective and Spong's perspective, the instrument of our Lord's execution is indeed sacred: it is holy.

I thought about Doug also, and the little bronze Jesus hidden away safely in Wanda's drawer. Perhaps, from time to time, we might retrieve this figure and place it once again on a cross. Once more, we will have a crucifix - and we can "stare at [the image of] this source, this revelation, this God-presence, this Jesus, with a kind of joy and wonder." We can say together: "God was in that life." And God is in our lives as well.