The Tree of Life

This morning we pause for something rare.
Holy Cross Day almost always slips past us midweek,
tucked quietly into the church calendar.
But this year it falls on a Sunday. And maybe that’s a gift.

Because it also comes to us in the shadow of a national trauma.
Another horrific public shooting has left many reeling —
some grieving, some angry, some fearful about what such violence
means for our common life.
We bring that weight with us into worship today,
and we bring it to the foot of the cross.

Because the cross is not a side detail of Christian faith,
not an ornament we take out once or twice a year.
The cross is the center —
the meeting place of heaven and earth,
matter and spirit, death and life.

Isaiah sets the tone in our readings today:
“Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.”
That’s not a word for a small group.
It’s a call for every corner of creation.

Paul’s hymn in Philippians echoes it:
the one who “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”
is now the one before whom “every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”
Heaven, earth, and even the depths are drawn into Christ’s self-giving love.

And then Jesus in John’s Gospel:
“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself.”
All things.
Not just souls, not just the righteous, not just our tribe.
All things are caught in the gravity of the cross.
That’s the scope we need to feel today.

The cross itself reminds us of it.
It was once a living tree, rooted in the soil,
drawing up water, stretching branches into the sky.
It carried the memory of years in its rings,
storms weathered, sunlight stored.
That wood became the beam on which Christ was lifted up.

So when we speak of the cross, we are not talking about an idea.
We are talking about matter. About creation itself.
The cross is made of the same world of which we are made,
the same world that groans in birth pangs even now.
And when Jesus was lifted on that wood,
he bore the weight of all creaturely life.
The whole created order was lifted with him.

We don’t have to force a “green” connection for this Season of Creation.
It’s already there.
Every sparrow that falls, every forest that burns,
every shoreline battered by storm —
all of it is gathered into the mystery of the cross.
God is not apart from creation’s anguish.
God is in it, bearing it, redeeming it.

Every Sunday we look at a sign of this truth in this very space.
Above the altar hangs our great Celtic cross:
a long vertical beam, encircled by a ring,
covered with leaves that shift from green to gold to crimson to bare,
before the cycle begins again.
That cross preaches wordlessly.
It shows us that the cross is not locked in one moment of history,
but alive in the turning of seasons.
Dying and rising, growth and decay, loss and renewal —
the whole cycle of creation is caught up in Christ’s embrace.
Redemption is not only a past event.
It is a living rhythm, God’s pulse moving through all things.

The cross stands at the threshold of death and life.
On Good Friday, we see the suffering plain.
On Holy Cross Day, we see what God has made of it.
The empire thought the cross was the end.
Instead, it became the tree of life for the world.

And that is what violence always claims —
whether in ancient Rome or in our own divided nation —
that it has the last word,
that it can silence, end, erase.
But Holy Cross Day proclaims otherwise.
The instrument of shame and defeat becomes the very tree of life.
The powers and principalities believed they had spoken the final word —
but God overturned their verdict.
And God’s last word is not death, but life.
And life more abundant.

This reversal isn’t just a past event.
It runs through the fabric of creation.
Seeds fall into the ground and die,
and yet from their death comes a harvest.
Branches are cut back in pruning,
and yet the vine bears more fruit.
Soil lies dormant in winter
and yet bursts with hidden life in spring.
Creation has been preaching Holy Cross Day all along.

I think of the witness of communities
who put their hands in the soil as a form of prayer.
Years ago, a group of young Christians began farming together.
They called their project The Abundant Table.
Their vision was simple but radical:
to root their spiritual life in tending the land, sharing food,
living in step with seedtime and harvest.

The poet Wendell Berry said, “the care of the earth
is our most ancient and most worthy,
and after all our most pleasing responsibility.”
That’s the poetry.
But farming is also a cross-shaped calling.
Farming is not glamorous.
It demands patience. It teaches limits.
Every harvest begins with a letting go —
a seed surrendered to darkness, a field resting fallow,
a labor that can feel endless before fruit comes.

And yet abundance appears. The table is set.
The Eucharist we celebrate here
is mirrored in the table set by soil and sun.
To break bread is to join creation’s own rhythm of dying and rising.
Farming teaches us what the cross proclaims:
what looks barren can become abundance;
what looks like loss can be life.

So what does it mean to keep Holy Cross Day?
First, it means trusting the scope of God’s redemption.
Paul does not say “some knees” but “every knee.”
Not just humanity, but rivers clapping their hands,
hills lifting their voices, the whole earth caught up in the song.
When we despair that creation’s wounds are too deep,
Holy Cross Day declares that Christ has already embraced them.

Second, it means taking our place in that chorus —
not as spectators, but as participants.
When we heal soil, protect waters, or marvel at the flight of a hawk,
we are not indulging hobbies.
We are living into the reconciliation already accomplished in Christ.
Composting, conserving, planting a garden, sharing a meal grown with care —
these are small sacraments of the cross.

And in this week especially, it also means refusing to believe
that violence has the final word.
We honor the dead by bearing witness to life.
We face grief and fear by remembering that the cross
is not a monument to despair,
but a living sign of God’s courage and mercy.

And third, it means living lightly, even joyfully,
in the shadow of the cross.
Because the cross is not a relic of death.
It is the sign that in every ending,
God is already making a beginning.
The cross gives us courage to carry one another’s burdens,
and the freedom to laugh, to hope, to rest
in the mercy that holds all things.

So today we lift high the cross
as a sign that God is at work
turning endings into beginnings.
No power of empire, no shadow of death,
no wound of creation lies outside God’s redeeming embrace.

Look at the wood.
Look at the circle of seasons above our altar.
Look at the table spread with earth’s gifts.
All of it is being drawn into Christ.
And over all of it, over all of us,
God speaks not the word of death —
but the promise of life ever flowing
and without end.

Amen.