Dear Friends in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

As we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of Lake of the Isles Church, I will be sharing stories that may have been forgotten or overlooked in the written history of the congregation.  Today, I would like to begin with the story of the cross.

Three years ago, many of us were delighted to open the morning edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and see a picture of the church steeple set against a setting moon.  The image was titled “Sunrise. Moonset.”  The steeple and the cross have become an emblem for the congregation. Surprisingly, that was not how the church looked when the first worship service was held here on Easter Sunday, 1929. There was no cross atop the church; nor was there a cross in the sanctuary. The church was adorned with gothic ornaments of angels, shields and eagles, but no crosses.

For most Christian’s today, the cross has become the supreme symbol of love and the gospel.  But that was not how American society looked upon the cross 100 years ago. While the cross was an accepted symbol for Roman Catholic Christians, there were many Protestants Christians who were uncomfortable displaying a cross publicly. Anti-Catholic sentiment was strong in the 1920’s and it was often directed to immigrants, their cross adorned churches, their cross led processionals through their neighborhoods, and their allegiance to foreign powers who wore odd, shaped hats. It was simply un-American. Others believed that the whole notion of worshiping and reverencing the cross or even signing yourself with a cross was idolatrous.  Slowly attitudes changed, and when the Lutherans acquired the abandoned Lake of the Isles Church in the late 1930’s. one of the first alterations made was to place a cross in the front of the sanctuary.  Fifteen years later, in 1951, the cross was added to the steeple of the church.  Surprisingly, there was no dedication ceremony for the cross, or even special mention in the congregation’s annual report.  It just appeared and was known as the Frank Meyer memorial cross.

Over the centuries, the cross has become domesticated and sanitized has become almost genteel. In the ancient world, however, the cross was the ultimate symbol of capital punishment and death. It was a merciless form of punishing enemies of the Roman government, but this all changed when Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor was baptized and abolished the practice of crucifixion all together.

Constantine had a dream before the decisive battle which would determine who would be the Emperor of all Rome. In the dream he saw a cross appear in the heavens and he heard a voice saying, “In this sign, you shall conquer.” With this dream, and the vision of the cross, he ordered his soldiers to paint the letters Chi Ro on their shields, the first two letters of the name of Christ in Greek.  Constantine was indeed victorious in the battle and within a year in 313 AD, he declared Christianity a legal and protected faith.

Although nearly three centuries had passed since Christ’s death and resurrection, there was a renewed interest in finding the historical cross of Jesus which had inspired Constantine’s dream.  So, in 326 AD, Constantine’s mother Empress Helena travelled to the Holy Land. Temples to Jupiter and Venus had since replaced the Temple to the God of Israel, but the Christian community still knew the site of the ancient Hill of Golgotha. Empress Helene was guided to this place and then to the site of the empty tomb where Jesus had been buried and raised from the dead. Finally, she was led to an underground grotto, where she was shown the supposed true cross of Christ.  The bloodied wooden cross, now aged with time, had been abandoned after the Christ’s crucifixion.  There were, however, two other crosses in the grotto.  According to legend, they brought a sick woman and a dead man who was being carried to burial. The three crosses were placed one after the other on the sick woman and on the dead man. Two of the crosses had no effect, but on contact with the third cross, the sick woman was healed of her infirmity and the dead man came to life. These miracles clearly indicated which was the true holy cross.  The date was September 14^th, 326 AD.

As for the True Cross, over the centuries with wars and unrest, it was lost and then recovered multiple times, ultimately being splintered into countless relics venerated in churches around Europe and the Middle East. So much so, that by the time of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther chided, “That there were enough wooden fragments of the Holy Cross lying about Europe to erect an entire forest.”  There were other reformers too who looked skeptically upon the cross as a simplistic, superstitious, magical sign insuring long life and prosperity-the product of the Roman Catholic Church. Remarkably, Luther, did not dismiss the discovery of the Holy Cross, but he believed that we should meditate upon the True Cross and Christ’s suffering.

Unfortunately, that is not how many see the cross today.  Crosses can be seen as a sign of glamor, and power. They are fashionable in the form of necklaces, earrings, and the like. For some, crosses are a sign of achievement.  When athletes make a sign of the cross before or after a play, we recognize them immediately for their confession of faith, and that their greatness and success comes from a power above. We appreciate and applaud it even more when their team wins. Crosses are increasingly a sign of national identity as well of who is blessed and who is not, of who is our neighbor and who is not. Like the Apostle Peter in this morning’s gospel, we find ourselves guilty of setting our minds and crosses not on divine things, but on human things.

Jesus taught his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up the cross and follow me.”  It was not a great marketing plan then, and if we are honest, its message can be just as bothersome today.  We all like the respectability of religion, of a cross that crowns our steeple for all to see, and the notion of honor that the Christian faith still affords us in certain places. But in this passage Jesus is actually brushing aside the glamor and allure of all these false, modern crosses. They are as empty and powerless as the two crosses of the thieves in the grotto Empress Helena visited in Jerusalem. The True Cross, beneath which we stand, my friends, ultimately saves and gives life. All the others are merely distractions.

Ponder again the True Cross of Christ. Taking up your cross, as Jesus invites you to do, is a command of how you are to live your life.  You and I are to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, the crucified Christ.  God calls us to love, not to hate. God calls us to work for peace, and not to return violence for violence. God calls us to humble ourselves before others, and not to be proud. God calls us to forgive, not to harbor resentment or anger. That is the True Cross, you and I are called to carry.

100 years ago, when Lake of the Isles Church was built, there was no place in the blue prints for a cross atop the steeple or within the sanctuary.  Apparently, the fear of being confused for a Roman Catholic parish or as an immigrant church was too great.  But as I studied the cornerstone that was placed in 1925, I noticed something odd. There on either side of the year, 1925, there were two small crosses etched into the stone.  In my best Lutheran construct, I would like to say that these were two false crosses of the grotto, and the True Cross was in the heavens waiting to be seen and embraced and to be carried for all to see.

My friends, which cross have you chosen to take up? We live in world that is increasingly distracted by false crosses and false cross bearers that would divide and conquer. Know and trust that the True Cross is the one that unites and brings healing, forgiveness, wholeness, love, joy and life to this broken world. Any other cross is empty and has no power. It is beneath the shadow of that true cross of Christ, that you and I can and must find our rest.  Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.