You see . . . Look beyond the obvious meaning of that Cross to see its deeper and truer meaning. That was the easier part of the sermon. There are two troubling foci of our questioning about the life-giving power of the Cross. One centers on our difficulty in understanding that leadership is servanthood.
Leadership is servanthood.
Jesus of Nazareth was a servant, and his servanthood is that which led him to the Cross, which now stands for all times as, ironically, the chief sign of goodness, of love, of compassion, and of serving. We know these things when we see them in a Mother Teresa or a Martin Luther King, Jr., or in a friend who brings love to us when we are not lovable, or who brings understanding to us when we are truly lost and wandering in the soul's dark nights or an act of goodness when we are most persuaded that no one notices or understands or cares. The other focus of our questioning about the life-giving power of the Cross springs from our culture's sense that of course we make it on our own. We have trouble acknowledging that our success, whatever it may be, is anything other than that produced by the combination of our talent, our hard work, our creativity, and indeed our genius. We celebrate the self-made person.