by Brandon Beck

We sing, “Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim,” in Hymn 473, “Jesus Christ Our Lord” (1982 Hymnal according to The Episcopal Church).

The newly consecrated bishop of the Diocese of West Texas, the Rt. Rev. Dr. David G. Read, at our 120th diocesan council celebrating the 150th year of our diocese, spoke “Lift high the cross” into a theme for our diocese for this year. Bp Read calls on Galatians 6:14:

May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world, (NRSV)

as an invocation. Bp Read says that it is our Baptismal promise to “lift high the cross” and to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP, p. 305).

Supposedly, Benjamin Franklin said, “When you are finished changing, you are finished,” and this lifting high of the cross and baptismal promise to do so through sharing the Good News is a story of change.

Birth is a change from life in the womb – with lungs full of fluid and sustenance supplied via umbilicus – to a life of oxygen and food and circulation and noise and scent and independence. Jesus’s story begins with human birth; he too makes this change with the rest of us and has to learn to breathe.

Coming of age is a change, as St. Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NRSV), “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” We see Jesus come of age in Luke 2 when he reads from the scroll in the temple at age 12 and goes from there, in verse 52, “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”

Graduation, getting married, starting a career, having kids, retiring – these are all changes in our human lives. Calling the disciples, being transfigured, being tempted, retreating to pray, healing the sick – these are all changes in Jesus’s life.

And when we stop changing, “it is finished” (John 19:30, NRSV), right?

Our final change is death. Jesus died on the cross. His final change was death on the cross.

Except it wasn’t. It isn’t. Change is not final, and, even in death, perhaps even because of death, we must always be changing.

We know that death isn’t final because we “lift high the cross” as an example and reminder that after death, Jesus lives again, and we do too. “He…rose again on the third day” (Nicene Creed). We take and eat bread and wine in the Eucharist in memory of Jesus on the cross, not just for our own piety but to empower ourselves and others to go forth sharing the ways that we are changed by Jesus and Jesus’s followers.

We, too, are changed, over and over again.

Share the story. Show the change.