Copyright Ian Ellis-Jones 2008 - All Rights Reserved.

1. THE THREE CROSSES
Being a revised précis of a sermon delivered at
the Church of Saint Francis, Gordon, on Good Friday, 21 March 2008
by
Ian Ellis-Jones
(Gordon)
Minister, Sydney Unitarian Church
Good Friday is a wonderful object lesson of the law of sacrifice. The law of
sacrifice is also the law of love, for sacrifice is selfless giving - that is, love.
Now, this is a homily about three crosses, namely, the cross of Calvary, the cross
of matter, and the cross of our own hearts and lives.
First, there is the cross of Calvary – the sacrifice of Jesus the Christ on the Holy
Cross. As Liberal Catholics, we remember and commemorate, not just the death
of Jesus, but also, and most especially, his sacrificial life. He left us a wonderful
example of how to live, for he constantly gave of himself selflessly to others, so
that others might live. Indeed, it is written that Jesus came that we might have
life, and have it more abundantly (cf Jn 10:10). That requires that we give of
ourselves to others. Jesus is the Way-Shower. He shows us the way by
awakening us to the possibilities of our own nature, and represents in his life all
that humanity can hope to be. He is the true pattern, leading us to union with the
Father in heaven that dwells in our innermost consciousness. In that special
sense, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life of God in man. Only those actions
through which shines the light of the Cross are worthy of the disciple.
We also remember not just Jesus but all the other great world teachers who have
descended into incarnation in order to help us forward on our way. We think also
of all the saints and holy ones. We give thanks for their great lives. We read in
the Qur’an:

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Of human beings no community
Is left without a warner and a guide,
All that have been sent,
Have been sent with only one truth to proclaim.
There is a wonderful thing about the law of sacrifice which the saints and holy
ones discovered, and which is true also for us. They rejoiced in sacrifice, sorrow
and suffering, because they offered every act of sacrifice as an offering on behalf
of the world - thus to lessen, by their own voluntary giving and enduring, the pain
and loss of others. We also think of the “still small voice” within, the voice of
conscience and reason that is always with us as our inner guide to wisdom and
truth.
Secondly, and most importantly, there is the cross of matter. Good Friday is an
acted parable or dramatization of the ongoing cosmic sacrifice - the self-limitation
of life itself - in which the Spirit of Life, the one absolute Reality which antecedes
all manifested things, ever descends into matter, ever offers itself, and ever gives
of itself to itself in manifestation, so that life, in all of its multiplicity of form, is
perpetuated. In this sacrificial outgiving - the putting forth of the Eternal Principle
of Life as the Logos which freely offers Itself as the ensouling life of matter - the
one life manifests itself in all things as all things but ever remains. Said the great
avatar, Sri Krishna: "I established this universe with a portion of myself; and I
remain." This is the enduring, eternal sacrifice by which the world is nourished
and sustained, the sublimest myth known to humanity, the “Man Crucified in
Space” of Hindu mythology, the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” of
Christianity - the Self-Givingness of life. In this cosmic sacrifice, or crucifixion, the
Life-giver, the eternal and immutable principle of life itself, is, as it were, crucified
upon the cross of matter and imprisoned in form. This is a continuing process in
which each of us has a part.
Let us never forget the one, common life in ourselves, that we are all one, that all
life is one and indivisible, and that every form that exists is a symbol of the

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supreme oblation, the Spirit of Life giving itself to its world that it might have life.
Yes, the Spirit of Life, which breathes into existence all that is, is both
transcendent and immanent in our universe, suffering, dying, rising again,
evolving, acting with and through all life. Alfred, Lord Tennyson put it beautifully
when he wrote:
That God, which ever lives and loves; One God, one Law, one element: And one
far off divine event to which the whole of creation moves.
This is the Ancient Wisdom, the Truth behind all True Religion, the Doctrine of
the One Life. As Bishop Arundale often pointed out, “The One becomes the
many, that the many might know themselves as One.”
Easter is about endings and beginnings. It is about love overcoming hate, hope
prevailing over despair, and life triumphing over death. Easter celebrates the fact
that life has no beginning and no end. Life is indestructible, and as part of life’s
self-expression we can never cease to be. We may change form and vanish from
view, but we can never cease to be. We cannot be separated from life. We
cannot be less than life. We read in the Rig Veda:
One sun lights up the whole world,
One dawn reveals all this,
One reality has become all that exists.
Thirdly, there is the cross of our hearts and lives – the victory of the Christ
consciousness in us, and as us, as we learn to take up on a daily basis our own
particular cross and follow the Master. This is both a crucifixion and a
resurrection experience. It can happen to us today, if we make a decision to lay
aside the old self, that is, repent of our self-centredness, pride and wilfullness. In
dying to self, we become new persons, our “best selves” (“God in us”). Our old
sense of isolation and alienation is gone. Out of gratitude, we now desire to live
selflessly for others and share our crucifixion and resurrection experience with
them.

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In The Inner Side of Christian Festivals Bishop Leadbeater wrote:
Every stage of the [spiritual] progress is a victory; every stage of that progress is
very truly a resurrection … The life of the Christ is a type of the life of every one
of us, and when we thank God for the Easter Festival, we are thanking Him for
that magnificent possibility.
CWL also wrote that “[t]he victory which [we] gain over the lower nature is
something which must be achieved in the life of every Christian … Easter is not
only the commemoration of something in the far-distant past; it is a real day of
celebration and of thankfulness for the victory which [each of us] has gained, is
gaining and will gain all through the ages over that which is lower, that which is
less developed.”
Three crosses – each one a sacrifice. Now, here is a truth: all three crosses are
really one and the same, namely, the cross of love, that is, selfless self-giving.
May you all have a happy and, more importantly, holy Easter.
-oo0oo-

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