New Life and the Cross: Sermon Preached on 16th March 2025 (Second Sunday in Lent)

Preached at Christ Church, Bulkington and Holy Cross, Seend

Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

“For many live as enemies of the cross … their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven.”

March can be a cold month but it’s full of new life. The song birds are in full cry as they stake out their territory for the year, but most of all it’s the flowers that catch the eye at the moment. The primroses and the daffodils are at their finest, adding dashes of yellow everywhere.

The natural beauties of the springtime raise our spirits and fill us with joy. But why should we find them beautiful? After all, if the cold, scientific account of human nature favoured by people like Richard Dawkins is correct, human beings are nothing more than the product of billions of years of random mutations and the survival of the fittest. In this view, everything that we are has evolved over time to do only one thing—to ensure we pass on our genes to the next generation. If that is true, it makes perfect sense that we find (some) people beautiful – for this helps us find a fit mate who will give us the best chance of producing offspring who will themselves survive.

But it makes no sense that we find daffodils and primroses beautiful. We don’t eat them, or their seeds and bulbs—in fact, they could make us quite ill. Of course, they’re very important to our survival because, flowering so early, they’re a critical nectar and pollen source for bumblebees and honeybees emerging from hibernation. But we didn’t need to worry about the survival of the pollinators until very recently.

It makes no sense that we find these flowers beautiful. Still less does it make sense for us to find music beautiful, or a handsome piece of furniture, or a great cathedral.

It makes no sense unless, of course, our lives have some sort of deeper meaning than mere survival, and we human beings are more than biological robots. We all know, I think, that we are made for more than that. When we look at the stars on a clear night we know instinctively that beauty is written into the meaning of the universe.

Our instinct for beauty is a sign that we were made for more than just life in time and space and matter.

In this morning’s Epistle, St Paul is giving his readers a bit of a ticking off. Surprise, surprise, how unlike Paul! He says that those whose “minds are set on earthly things” are “enemies of the cross of Christ.” Now, we all need earthly things. We need food and clothes and shelter – and respect and love – and it is right that we pray to God to look after us in that regard. It is definitely right that we both pray for and work to relieve the necessities of those who don’t have food or clothes or shelter. The material things of our lives are important. But they aren’t all we’re about.

It’s also important that, as responsible citizens, we try to keep up with the affairs of the world. Yet the news these days can be overwhelming, leaving us without much hope in the future.

And here’s the flip side of Paul telling people off. Paul, so proud of his Roman citizenship, reminds his readers that they are citizens of a far more important kingdom—Heaven. He reminds them that it is from heaven that they are expecting a saviour who will transform their bodies into the glorious resurrection body of Christ. We ourselves should also be expectant, full of faith, that Christ will return from heaven and, if we have faith in Him, He will transform us to be like Him. That’s why we should always have hope even when the state of the world is so depressing.

Does anyone know where Paul was when he wrote this letter? He was in custody: probably in the relative comfort of house arrest, rather than in jail, but he wasn’t a young man by this point and he’d been in and out of jail all his life in the service of Christ.

Is he miserable about all this? Not at all! Philippians is a letter that is full of joy, full of Paul’s confident expectation of the future glory that will be his, and will be granted to everyone who stands firm in Christ.

Our Gospel reading starts “at that very hour some Pharisees came to him and said… Herod wants to kill you.” What was “that very hour”? Well, the previous passages show this incident took place when Christ was on his final journey to Jerusalem, passing through one little town after another, teaching and healing. Herod would indeed have His wish, soon enough, but not until Jesus had fulfilled His mission from the Father, as the Passover Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world on the Cross. The Cross is the symbol of the limitations of earthly things, of our inability to create true justice even in the presence of the living God, of the defeat of all humanity’s hopes for itself—and also means by God saves us unto eternal life.

To be made, as human beings are, in the image and likeness of God is to be free to love like God, and to create like God, but also to be free to make our own mistakes. Christ longed to save Jerusalem – but the city and its people were determined to seek power and vengeance rather than love and justice. People today are no different, and like the Jerusalemites of old, we have the God-given freedom to make our own mistakes.

Christ didn’t end His journey to Jerusalem by taking power and attempting to rule the perfect godly kingdom. It was exactly that which Satan tempted Him with in the wilderness. Instead He went to the Cross—the means by which our defeat is turned into God’s victory for us.

We can rage against God for the way life can be harsh, but if we look at the truly great problems of today, which have the potential to threaten human existence – nuclear war and climate change, runaway Artificial Intelligence or unwise Genetic Modification, even the decline of the pollinating insects – they’re all problems we’ve made entirely by ourselves.

Yet, somehow, no matter how badly we mess things up, God is in ultimate control of the world, how it all ends. It ends for us, if we trust the message of the Cross, in heaven, where we will all be changed.

It is so easy to be consumed by earthly things, for all the right reasons. It is so easy to wear ourselves out with our need to be useful to others by the standards of the world. But the Cross points out that we can never succeed in those terms, and then points us beyond to eternal life.

Should we do good works? Yes, of course we should. Should we play a full part in the affairs of the world? Yes, of course we should. Should we take joy in the beauties of the world and even enjoy the material pleasures of life? I’d be the last person to say we shouldn’t—the very last person! These things are all gifts of God. They bring joy to our lives. But they are only glimpses, seen through a glass darkly, of the joys that await us in heaven when we will be transformed to be like Christ after His Resurrection—still ourselves and yet somehow something much greater than we can imagine.

Look at a little primrose seed, only a millimetre or two across, and look at how beautiful and perfectly formed it becomes in flower. Now remember how much greater you are than a primrose seed, for you’re already something made in the image and likeness of God—so trust how much greater still is the future that God has in store for you.

Now praise, glory, and honour be to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is with us in times of plenty and times of austerity, when we are doing and when we are fasting, in all the earth and for evermore. Amen.

Top image: The churchyard at Holy Cross, Seend, 27 March 2022 @ Gerry Lynch.