John 19:6–11, 13–20, 25–28, 30
Today we celebrate the Elevation of the Holy Cross, and I want to ask you a question that might make you uncomfortable: When people in Duluth think about our parish, what comes to mind first? Do they think of the Cross of Christ? Or something else?
Because here’s what I’ve been wrestling with as your priest: We’ve made the Cross comfortable. We’ve made it pretty. We wear it as jewelry, we put it on our walls, we sing about it in beautiful hymns. But somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that the Cross wasn’t meant to be comfortable. It was meant to be scandalous.
The Scandal We’ve Forgotten
When Pontius Pilate ordered Jesus to be crucified, he wasn’t creating a religious symbol. He was using Rome’s most brutal tool of terror. Crucifixion wasn’t just about killing people—it was about sending a message. It said to everyone under Rome’s boot, “If you challenge our system, this is what happens to you.” The cross was planted on busy roadsides, including Jerusalem, so everyone could see. It was Rome’s way of saying, “We have the power. You don’t. Remember your place.”
James Cone, an American theologian, reminds us that in America, we had our own version of the cross: the lynching tree. For nearly a century, it served the same purpose that crucifixions served in Rome. It was terrorism designed to control and humiliate. It was a public spectacle that said: “Challenge white supremacy, and this is what happens to you.”
And here in Duluth—our Duluth—we know this isn’t just history from the Deep South. On Tuesday, June 15th, 1920, just over a century ago, three young Black men—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie—were torn from the city jail by a mob of thousands and lynched at First Street and Second Avenue East. Just blocks from where we gather for worship today.
They were circus workers. They were somebody’s sons. They were accused of a crime for which there was no physical evidence. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was sending a message about who had power and who didn’t.
Both the cross and the lynching tree were tools of the powerful to crush the powerless. And here’s what shakes me to my core: God chose to be found hanging with them.
The God Who Hangs with the Lynched
Think about that for a moment. When God decided to enter human history, he didn’t come as Caesar. He didn’t come as a wealthy landowner or even a religious leader. He came as one who would be executed by the state. As Cone puts it, “God’s revelation comes to us through the oppressed of the land who hang on trees.”
This is the scandal of the Cross that we’ve sanitized away. Christ didn’t just die for our sins in some abstract theological sense. He died the death of the despised, the marginalized, the terrorized. He died as one whom Rome deemed a threat.
When that mob gathered at our city jail in 1920, Christ was not with the mob. Christ was with Elias, Elmer, and Isaac. When they were dragged to that street corner and hanged, Christ was hanging with them.
And when we gather here each Sunday and venerate the Cross, we’re not just honoring a pretty symbol. We’re declaring that our God is found with those who suffer, not with those who cause the suffering.
Where Are the Crosses Today?
So let me ask you this: If Christ is still found with the crucified, where is he found in our Duluth today? Where are people still being hung on trees of injustice?
I’m not going to tell you exactly who—that’s the work the Holy Spirit needs to do in your heart. But I will ask you this: When you drive through our city, when you read our local news, when you hear conversations at work or at the grocery store—where do you see people being treated as less than human? Where do you see a “Rome” that crushes rather than heals? Where do you see modern-day mobs, even if they don’t carry torches?
The Cross isn’t just about what happened 2,000 years ago on Calvary, or even 104 years ago on First Street. The Cross is about what’s happening today wherever people are in need of healing, true healing.
And here’s where our parish vision comes in. We say we want to be known for our “commitment to Christ.” But what does commitment to Christ actually look like?
The Power That Transforms
Here’s the miracle of the Cross, and why we celebrate it today: What looked like ultimate defeat became ultimate victory. What the Roman Empire intended as a tool of terror, God transformed into an instrument of liberation. The Cross reveals that suffering and death don’t have the last word. That the last shall be first and the first shall be last.
Right here in Duluth, we’ve seen glimpses of this transformation. In 2003, our city erected a memorial to Clayton, Jackson, and McGhie—not far from where they died. In 2020, the state granted Max Mason, another circus worker wrongfully convicted, the first posthumous pardon in Minnesota history. What was meant to terrorize became, eventually, a call to justice.
The power of the Cross isn’t that it makes our lives comfortable. The power of the Cross is that it shows us where God is working in the world—always with those who hang on trees, never with those who put them there.
This is what it means for us to be “cross-centered.” Not crosses on our walls, but “cross discipleship” in our lives. Not beautiful liturgies that leave the world unchanged, but worship that transforms us into people who stand where Christ stands.
Our Call to Bear the Cross
In our vision statement, we talk about helping our neighbors of the Northland find “healing in Christ.” But friends, that healing has to include liberation from crucifixion. You cannot separate the spiritual from the every day. Christ didn’t.
So what would it look like for 12 Holy Apostles to be truly known for the Cross? It would mean being known as the church that shows up wherever people are suffering. It would mean stewardship that funds justice, not just our building maintenance. It would mean that when people face their own lynching trees—whatever form they take—they know there’s a place in Duluth where they’ll find Christ.
It would mean that when people think of us, they don’t think “Oh, that’s the church that does Greek dancing.” They think “That’s the church that shows up wherever crosses are being raised.”
This is costly discipleship. This is what Jesus meant when he said “Take up your cross and follow me.” He wasn’t talking about enduring personal hardships with a smile. He was calling us to risk our comfort, our reputation, our safety for the sake of those society crucifies.
The Choice Before Us
The lynching tree and the cross of Christ have much in common. Both were tools of oppression designed to terrorize. But God took the symbol of defeat and made it the symbol of hope. God took the instrument of death and made it the source of life.
That same power is at work today. Every time we choose to stand with the crucified rather than the crucifiers, we participate in that transformation. Every time we use our privilege to lift up the oppressed rather than protect our comfort, we elevate the Cross.
As we go forward in this new church year, the question before us is simple but not easy: Will we keep the Cross comfortable and pretty? Or will we let it transform us into the people God calls us to be—people who bear witness that death has been trampled down by death, and there is hope for resurrection?
In a city that once gathered as a mob at the jail, will we be the church that gathers instead at the foot of the Cross—not to perpetrate violence, but to receive the love that transforms violence into healing?
The choice is ours. But we cannot claim to follow the Crucified One while remaining comfortable with crucifixion.
Let us pray that God gives us the courage to be truly cross-centered, knowing that this is where we find not just our salvation, but our calling to help heal a broken world.
Amen.