Christ, and Him Crucified - Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon

Bishop Barron introduces the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, highlighting its unusual nature. He describes his own golden cross, noting that while beautiful with adornments, its stripped-down form is a terrifying Roman cross, a brutal instrument of death. He marvels at the weird poetry of exalting such a horrific object, comparing it to decorating a hangman's noose or an electric chair.

Barron recalls a scene from the HBO series 'Rome' where a Roman soldier, Vorenus, threatens crucifixion to locate a stolen standard, illustrating the casual brutality of Roman power. He emphasizes that Caesar's genocide of a million Gauls and widespread crucifixions didn't bother Romans; it was seen as a sign of a great commander. The cross was a terrifying symbol of ruthless, state-sponsored terrorism. Exalting it would have been incomprehensible to the ancient world.

The first Christians embraced the fact that Jesus died on a Roman cross, not despite it. This was paradoxical because a crucified Messiah contradicted Jewish expectations of an anointed king. Barron argues that the only historical explanation for the emergence of Christianity, with followers proclaiming a crucified Lord and willing to die for it, is the resurrection of Jesus, which conquered and mocked the brutal power of the cross.

Barron discusses how the resurrection turned the world upside down. While ancient Romans were not bothered by genocide or crucifixion, modern society condemns such acts as monstrous. This shift, he suggests, is due to the resurrection, which revealed that God is not with tyrants and murderers, but with the victims of violence.

He analyzes Philippians 2, where Paul states that Christ, though God, did not grasp at equality with God but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave and humbling himself 'becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.' This contrasts with Adam's sin of grasping at divinity. God’s divine condescension answers human pride. Rather than exalting himself, God descends to the lowest point of human suffering and indignity.

Barron uses analogies of helping a misbehaving child or fixing a car to explain God's descent. To truly help or fix something, one must go 'all the way down' and work from the inside. Similarly, God descended into the depths of human cruelty, hatred, and violence on the cross, not to condemn from afar, but to remake humanity 'from the inside.' Jesus’s words of forgiveness from the cross signify God's love overcoming all evil, making the cross the beginning of salvation.

The cross, once the lowest point in Roman society, is now exalted because on it, God went all the way down to fix what is dysfunctional in humanity. This profound act of divine love allows Christians to confidently proclaim, with Paul, 'Christ and him crucified.'