O.P. Kretzmann’s funeral was 50 years ago this week. He died on Holy Cross Day – September 14, 1975. The Torch covered the event extensively. Others and I find the date of his death rather poignant, because he frequently referred to Valpo as a university “under the cross.” “It is our task,” he wrote in September 1959, “to climb our way up to the foot of the Cross. In its shadows there is light, and in its madness there is ultimate wisdom…the wisdom of Jesus Christ, the highest gift of the Spirit of God.”
The story of the Festival of Holy Cross Day is a curious one. Most of the festivals and commemorations on the church calendar are associated with significant moments in the life of Christ or the martyrdoms of his earliest followers. Holy Cross Day seems to celebrate an object, and this is, in fact, the case. The story goes that during the construction of a church on the site, which was said to be the location of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial (a claim that most scholars acknowledge as credible), three crosses were uncovered, and one of them was determined to be that of Jesus. The church was consecrated on September 13, and the cross was presented for veneration the next day, Sunday, September 14, 335.
The accounts of how they determined which was Jesus’ cross are varied and may strike contemporary readers as fanciful. Still, we should not be quick to reject these stories as fabrications, even if they sound fantastic and do not meet our historical standards. Robin Jensen presents these accounts sensitively and responsibly in her book on the History of the Cross as a Christian symbol. I recommend it.
You won’t be surprised to learn that soon, people are removing parts of the cross and taking them all over the Christian world. By the 14th century, a thriving relic trade carried not only pieces of the cross across Europe but also objects claimed to be those used at Jesus’ crucifixion – the crown of thorns, the hammer, the pliers used to remove the nails, along with the ladder used to take down Jesus’ body. These objects came to be presented pictorially as devotional art and known collectively in Latin as Arma Christi, the “Weapons of Christ.” The photograph above is a contemporary example on the side of a country road in Bavaria, Germany.
I should disclose at this point that Martin Luther, the German church reformer, was no fan of the relic trade. Luther’s criticism was primarily driven by the way the relics had become monetized. People charged admission to see them. More critically, some claimed that venerating a relic would bring divine favor and even improve one’s chances of receiving eternal life. This practice was at odds with Luther’s commitment to the truth that forgiveness was a gift from God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Luther stopped short, however, of denying that it was possible for spiritual blessing to be present in a physical object. Some theologians of his time completely rejected the materiality of the faith, claiming that a finite thing was incapable of carrying the infiniteness of God. Further, they held that since Jesus’ ascension into heaven, it was not reasonable to imagine that Jesus would be physically present in space and time. Luther and his colleagues stuck to their confession. Spurred on by things that Jesus himself had said, they made claims like “This is regular water, but when that water is combined with the word of God, it becomes the gift of life in your holy baptism and the coming of the Holy Spirit into your life.” Or, “This is just bread and just wine. But when that bread and wine are combined with the promise of Christ through His Word, it is in fact the body and blood of Christ.” The language they used in an attempt to describe what was basically indescribable was that Jesus is present “in, with, and under” the bread and wine.
But back to the Arma Christi, what I find compelling on this anniversary of Holy Cross Day and the death of O.P. Kretzmann, and his commitment to a “University under the Cross,” is the theological insight present in the collective name of these objects. Notice, Arma Christi is not translated as “the weapons against Christ” or “the weapons over Christ” but “the weapons of Christ.” The weapons in the picture belong to Christ because they are his to use. He uses them in self-sacrificial love to defeat death and bring life. The wisdom of the Cross that Kretzmann was so ardently seeking is the wisdom of Divine love for the whole of creation and all people.
Paul writes that this is regarded as foolishness by most people. He had specific attitudes in mind, no doubt. It seems to me that in our day, the problem with the cross is the perception that it is either irrelevant or that it appears like weakness and failure. We live in a culture that values what is current, what is strong, and what is successful. Some loud voices of our time are even denying the value of empathy.
Yet, we know from our own experiences in the context of family and friendships that sacrificial gifts are frequently profound and that forgiveness has real power to make things new. The cross of Jesus is all of that, but only more real. It is the essence of the Divine community of the Trinity.
This has significant implications for us in our time. I noted earlier that one of the contentions of the Protestant Reformation was the physical location of Jesus, the God-man, after the resurrection and ascension. Both Luther and his Roman opponents agreed that Jesus declared himself to be physically present in the sacrament of the Holy Supper; others did not. For them, Jesus was reigning from heaven; it was their task to bring about the reality of the church on earth through preaching, prayer, and right living. While most who hold this position are not Christian Nationalists, it is essential to know that American Christian Nationalism was born in this school of thought. Furthermore, for this way of thinking, the return of Christ is tied to their ability to create what they consider a Christian society to replace the present order by all means necessary.2 At its root, this is a posture of fear.
But you don’t need to fear a culture, a community, a government, an idea, a way of living, or a way of thinking because Christ is with you. Christ will never leave you an orphan. Christ will never dismiss you from his sight. Christ will always love, always forgive, always cherish. This is the very being of God for you.
– Pastor Jim
Rev. Katherine Museus and Rev. James A. Wetzstein serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions.
- HH58 Own work, 5 May 2016, Creative Commons License
- For a detailed analysis of the theology of Christian Nationalism, see A Lutheran Response to Christian Nationalism by Thomas Korcok, Associate Professor of Theology at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario.
