Queen Valley AZ
April 6th 2012 (Good Friday)
Mark 15:1-47
The Blessing of the Cross
God has a way of changing the perspective on things that happen. He sees things from His point of view in a way that’s different from the way we see them. Things that look like disasters from where we sit are often things that God will turn into something wonderful and good.
The cross was an instrument of torture, one of the most horrible ways to execute a criminal ever devised. It typically took a victim three or four days to die in this way, and it was a slow, agonizing, painful death. It was a tremendous crime deterrent, because as the victim died people had plenty of time to see and consider and think about how much they really didn’t want to end up in that way!
The cross was a symbol of Roman repression and power. It represented the iron fist of Roman justice. It was a constant reminder that “you didn’t mess with Rome”.
There are Christian groups today - as well as a number of pseudo-christian cults - who refuse to use the cross. They say that using the cross as a symbol would be like keeping the rope that hung a beloved family member as a keepsake and hanging it on the wall of your living room as a reminder of them. And it does seem strange, doesn’t it, that if we love Jesus we should practically venerate the instrument of His torture and death?
But Christians hang a cross on the wall of their bedroom. We put one on the steeple of our churches, or wear one on a chain around our necks. Some people even tattoo crosses onto their skin. We love the cross!
If you see a building with a cross on top, you can be pretty sure it’s a Christian church. If you see a church-like building with no cross on top, it’s usually - not always, but usually - the gathering place of some kind of a cult.
There were any number of other ways that Jesus could have died, but He chose this one. He had a special purpose in mind for us by choosing this particular way to die. Last week we read how He even said, talking about the cross: “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to myself.”
And so God has turned the cross into the symbol of our faith. This one thing - the cross - identifies Christians more than any other symbol. It identifies us with Jesus. It signifies that we are His own. The very figure of the cross is a way of visually preaching the Gospel, without saying a word. Every one who sees a cross is instantly reminded that Jesus died for them.
An American girl was visiting family in Mexico. She didn’t speak any Spanish. One day she was riding a bicycle along a major boulevard in Aguascalientes and a huge truck almost ran over her. She crashed her bike, but was unhurt. The driver of the truck stopped and jumped out, thinking he had accidentally killed her. In machine-gun rapid Spanish he was trying to ask her if she was alright, and she wanted to tell him she was okay. So she crossed herself and looked up to heaven. He was so relieved he laughed out loud, and did the same thing. With no words, they were both saying, “Thank you, Jesus! God has protected me, and I am safe!”
On my Arizona Ranger uniform I wear a cross on the collar, opposite the chevrons that identify me as a Sergeant. The cross identifies me as a Chaplain; it identifies me with Jesus and as His representative in the Company with which I serve. It always impresses me how suddenly people’s language and attitudes change when they see that cross.
After 9/11 a pair of steel girders from the destroyed World Trade Center buildings “accidentally” formed a cross in the midst of the rubble, and thousands of people took pictures of it. Many who lost friends and relatives there found comfort in that cross; they felt as though Jesus Himself were saying, “I’m here, with you, in the middle of all this!” People lit candles there or left mementos of a loved one whose body was never recovered from the rubble, beside that cross. Without a word, the Gospel was being preached and people were being comforted, by that cross.
God has turned this terrible instrument of torture and death, a symbol that struck fear into thousands during the Roman Empire, into a symbol that infuses hope and peace and comfort. Isn’t that just like God, to turn the wickedness and cruelty of mankind into good, into blessing, and comfort for people?
And so it is: whatever cross you bear as a follower of Jesus will be turned into good and will somehow, in ways that you could never imagine, become a blessing far greater than the pain and grief that it causes you now. The very thing that now seems too painful and impossible to bear, sheer torture and death to you; as you faithfully follow Jesus, God will turn it into a source of comfort and salvation and renewed strength both for you and for others who see you and are drawn to Jesus through that.
And not only that, but in God’s plan, Good Friday is followed by Easter Sunday! The cross is followed by the resurrection. And so the cross becomes for us not just a grim reminder, a symbol of death, but a reminder of the resurrection of Christ and of His promise that we, too, will rise from the dead just as He did.
We look to the Cross and are reminded that Jesus has already been here before us, that He understands what we’re going through, and that He can walk us through it. We’re also reminded that at the end, after the cross, comes the resurrection, for us as well as for Him; and that knowledge fills us with the sure hope of God’s proven promises to us.
Jesus said, “No one takes my life from Me; I give it up of my own free will. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again. This I have received from My Father.”
And so He laid it down, for you. And for you He took it up again, and so He proved to you that you are forgiven, that you are His, and that just as the resurrection came after the cross for Jesus, so it waits for you.
“If any one would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and come, follow Me,” Jesus said.
And knowing what we know about the cross, that very act of taking up the cross and following Jesus becomes an expression of faith and hope and a source of joy, because we do it with joyful anticipation, watching to see what He is going to do, and how He’s going to turn it into good for us.
And so, “God works all things together for good, for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”