The Cross as Our Only Boast - 24 November 2024

Today we encounter two powerful passages that speak to the very heart of our faith. In Luke's Gospel, we witness our Lord healing a woman on the Sabbath—a woman bound by infirmity for eighteen years, bent over, unable to stand upright. And in his letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul speaks of boasting in nothing "except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

These readings are not accidentally paired. They reveal to us a profound truth about where true glory lies in the Christian life.

Consider the ruler of the synagogue in Luke's account. He was indignant that Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Why? Because he placed his glory in his strict observance of the law. He boasted, as it were, in the flesh—in outward adherence to rules. How similar he was to those whom Paul confronts in his epistle, who desired to "make a good showing in the flesh" by compelling Gentile converts to be circumcised.

But our Lord's response cuts to the heart of the matter. "You hypocrites!" He declares, "Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it?" If such mercy is shown to animals, how much more should mercy be shown to this daughter of Abraham? The Lord reveals that true glory lies not in rigid legalism, but in the manifestation of God's healing love.

This is precisely what Saint Paul means when he speaks of boasting only in the Cross. The Cross of Christ is not merely the wooden instrument of our Lord's passion—it is the ultimate expression of God's healing, restorative love for His creation. When we boast in the Cross, we boast in divine love that stoops down to raise up the broken.

Look at this woman in Luke's Gospel—bent over, looking only at the ground for eighteen years. Is this not an image of humanity in its fallen state? We too are often bent over by our sins, our passions, our fears, unable to look up and behold the face of God. But Christ calls to her, touches her, and immediately she is made straight. She stands upright and glorifies God.

This is what it means to be a "new creation" as Saint Paul describes. The old order of sin and death is passing away. The new creation—inaugurated by Christ's Cross and Resurrection—is one where those who were bent over now stand upright, where those who were bound are now free, where those who could only see the earth can now behold heaven.

Let us therefore make no boast in external observances or human traditions. Let us not seek to "make a good showing in the flesh." Rather, let our only boast be in the Cross of Christ, through which we have been crucified to the world and the world to us. For in the end, as Saint Paul reminds us, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters, but only being God's new creation.

May we, like that blessed woman, stand upright, glorifying God, boasting only in His Cross, and bearing in our own bodies the marks of Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.