Why the Cross?
Mark 8:27-38
To be a Christian is to believe in the God known in one Jesus of Nazareth
WHO WAS CRUCIFIED.
To be a Christian is to believe in God… but not just any God ~ God known in one Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus. One powerful…beautiful soul….
Someone who made people want to be better than they were….dream big love dreams, big justice dreams….Teacher, preacher, mystic, healer, blessing everyone he met no matter what or who they were.
Remember those beatitudes? Blessed are the merciful, peacemakers…pure in heart—like Jesus was reading from his resume’. Want to see how God is: Jesus–Caring, lifting and encouraging.
It is a beautiful thing but there is going to come a time when you will be asked the rest of the story.
Someone is gonna say: “Whatever happened to Jesus?”
Oh, he rose from the dead!
No, I mean before that.
Then, the truth: He was executed by the Romans to maintain the peace.
Nailed him up on a big fence post. Looked kind of like a railroad tie–impaled him on it. Some people lasted for days, but mercifully he lasted only a few hours..& sorry…but he expected his disciples to do the same thing…live a way of loving that will inevitably lead to suffering.
Many people walk away when they hear this. Go be Unitarian or spiritual life something…just sayin’…
So just to be clear, people will say: Every week you people come in and worship around the memory of such a cross? Well, yes, we do. Might as well have an electric chair up there! Be contemporary. Yes, that would be the modern version.
I’m not interested in any group that centers its life around such a horrible thing.
Why the Cross?
Why not just leave that part out…many have…why not just take the teaching of Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, best sayings of Islam; illustrate them with touching modern stories from all three traditions and you’ve got your new best seller called:
Chicken Soup for the Seeking Soul:
Four Great Guys Gabbing about God
No cross? Paul couldn’t do it. I have decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 1 Corinthians 2:2
Stood on a hill, Mars Hill and preached Jesus crucified and risen. Worst two things to happen to a preacher happened to him…laughed at him and then ignored him.
“A church that falls silent about the cross has a hole where the gospel ought to be.” Mark Heim
Jesus said, only a cross will do and Peter says, no, no, no! Jesus’ response? Calls his number one guy, evil! To oppose the cross way of living is evil!
What?
Our world is looking for rainbows with pots of gold, not crosses. Give God a nickel, God will cough up a dime. Architect Crystal Cathedral–no crosses outside or in. Don’t want anybody thinking of failure.
Poetic justice, whole thing failed and had to sell to the Catholic church… now count all the crosses!
A bruised and torn man slumps dead, four women weep at his feet, his friends scatter in terror…..what good is that?
Adolph Hitler knew what to do with a cross. Twisted it into a swastika———-power. KKK know what to do with a cross. Find a lawn and plant it there soaked in kerosene. Listen for the children’s screams blocks away.
Yet, Paul had to preach it. “Look there and see love, a love so great it can save you.”
In fact, one of the earliest creeds, the Nicene Creed just says,
Jesus’ death was “for us and for our salvation.”
Doesn’t explain how the death accomplished the salvation. Various theories have been offered….one that gets the most play without much reflection is the understanding of the cross as a ransom for sin….millions of Christians bring this with them every week. Problem is that this understanding doesn’t really take into account the true character of God—pretty much ignores what Jesus has to say about a God so imitate, tender, loving as to be called by such affectionate nickname: Abba, Pappa.
Most of you know how the ransom rationale for the cross goes:
All powerful, angry parent God, who tries to love us BUT our sin enrages God so much that somebody had to die for it, and that somebody is Jesus. God’s justice somehow demands perfect blood payment, and God’s own child is crushed under the dump truck of the sins and imperfections of the world God made that way. Gave us free will then waits in a dark alley of our shame for anyone who screw up and beats the hell out of them, metaphorically, of course.
I keep waiting for somebody explain to me how this is good news! How there is any reason at all in it. God angry enough to kill us, but then, despite everything, loves us enough to rescue us by sending his only child as a sacrifice to die horribly in our place. So many Christians vote for that and then say, “Let’s go hide colored eggs!”
Why the cross?
At the center of the gospel is this: In the cross, God shows us what God desires above all else:
God wants us to love extravagantly. That is God’s will for everyone. Everything else is secondary. This greater love, give up your life for love…. This God of the universe has fallen in love with us, and calls us to fall for one another. Suffering is often love’s glad cost.
You see it is more accurate, to speak, not of amazing grace, but rather outrageous grace. Grace as “divine foolishness,” as Theologian Robert Capon speaks of it…by which we are assured in full and in advance that the only thing keeping us from being home free and glad with God is our disbelief in that assurance…. “Only grace our fears relieved,” the old hymn goes. Law never saves anyone…no more painful report cards.
Try this. Just try: God never wanted or needed Jesus to die. Jesus chose this way, the way of the cross, because that is the character of Jesus, a greater love, a suffering love, a perfect reflection of God’s desire.
See it so fresh and strong…with our creation focus right now …new thoughts about Noah, as living out the way of the cross:
1st old Grandfather Noah ~ and before he measures one board, or hammers one nail, he makes of his heart an ark– an ark in the heart. Every holy grandfather, every loving grandmother, knows how dangerous life can be– this great-hearted one has one goal in life: to protect those he loves– to make of his life a shelter, a home… And so he gathers into the ark of his heart all that he loves– his family and as many friends as he could persuade, but then that’s not enough– because in the ark of his heart he has a love for the world and so gathers in all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small into the protectorate of his love to love them there, with patience, and kindness, even at the cost of pain.
Making of your life a shelter in the storm, suffering-love . . . living the compassionate way of God in Christ. Just ask any Grandparent.
Why the Cross, for me?
First, I preach the cross because it takes away our shame. At the center of the cross is God’s unconditional love, not my sin. No ‘let’s make a deal,’ just ‘please, come home!’
The cross is God’s breaking heart ~ great ark of a heart where all are cherished.
Why did Jesus die?
Not fate, or nature ,or getting in the way of evil’s hand….died because of the way he lived…lived out the character of God…loving unlovely people like us, refusing violence, loving all of us to the end. He died because he had the character of God…in love.
Secondly, I preach the cross because it is where the innocent have Jesus’ company.
It is a reminder of the cruelty, violence and sin in the world that affects people who have nothing to do with it. Ugly, cruel, mysterious, evil power that crushes and hurts.
I preach the cross to tell of a Christ who hangs with the innocent…mystery of evil’s breath-taking unfairness, and tho’ it offends, waits with an equal and desperate love for all the truly guilty. That’s what Jesus was getting at, I think, when he said with his last breath, not “good job Father, this was awesome, see you in three days…feeling nothing but forsaken, yet in faith and hope said, “Into your hands, I commend my Spirit.”
You won’t find a better line than that when it’s your time.
Finally, in the cross, God’s sympathy is extraordinarily powerful.
God identifies with our suffering.
God loves and suffers with us and that sympathy is astonishingly powerful.
How’s that work? Fred Craddock: A child falls down skins their knee & one of oldest scenes in the world begins to unfold. Mother comes and picks it up and says, “Let me kiss it and make it better.”
Magic in a mother’s spit? Picks up her child and holds it and it becomes well. God is my witness!
10 min. in the lap. Sit in the lap of love.
“Why are you crying Momma? I’m the one who hurt my knee?”
“Well Honey, when you hurt, I hurt.”
That does more for a child than all the bandages and medicines.
Just to sit in the lap.
Why the cross? To sit in the lap of God for a few minutes.
The God who in Jesus Christ hurts because you hurt.
Jesus says, you have to live that.
And so, I try.
Amen.
