The Symbols of Holy Week: The Cross

The Symbols of Holy Week:  The Cross

A Good Friday Meditation

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

April 22, 2011

Scripture:  Mark 15:21-39

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

This week, in our Holy Week services beginning last Sunday, I have focused in my meditations on the symbols of Holy Week.  Now, for our Lutheran and other friends who have joined us here this evening, don’t worry that you haven’t heard those meditations.  You don’t need to have heard them to follow this one.  So far I have talked about the symbol of the donkey on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem and about the symbol of the table of the Last Supper.  This evening we come to Good Friday, and the central symbol of Good Friday is, of course, the cross on which Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, died.  Like the other symbols of Holy Week the cross is, on the most basic level, a physical object.  It is a most terrible and fearful physical object.  It was an object the Romans used not only to execute people.  They used it as their form of execution especially for political prisoners, for people they feared could stir up the masses against them.  They used it in very visible, public places.  Crucifixion is a terrible, horrible way to die, and when the Romans executed someone they wanted everyone else to see the condemned not only dying but suffering horribly as he died.  They wanted everyone to see so that they would think twice about daring to defy Roman power.  As a physical object the cross is an instrument of terrorism every bit as horrible as a bomb exploded in a public market place.  On that level of meaning the cross is an abomination, a crime against humanity.  On that level of meaning we should despise the cross, we should hide the cross, we should have nothing to do with the cross.

Yet like the other symbols of Holy Week the cross is for us Christians so much more than a mere physical object.  It is a symbol.  As a symbol it has another level of meaning beyond its meaning as a mere physical object.  It has a much deeper level of meaning.  As a symbol it points beyond itself to profound truth.  As a symbol it connects us with profound truth.  The truth to which a true symbol, in this case the cross, points and with which it connects us is a spiritual truth.  It is a truth about God and, in the case of the cross of Jesus, a truth about Jesus as the Christ.  So if we are to understand the cross as the central symbol of Good Friday, indeed, as the central symbol of the Christian faith, and not merely as the instrument of execution that the Romans used to kill Jesus, we have to ask:  What is the profound spiritual truth to which the cross of Christ points, what is the truth with which the cross seeks to connect us? 

Christians have given different answers to that question over the years.  The most common answer that the Christian church has given to that question, at least since the High Middle Ages, has been that the cross points us to the truth that Jesus suffered and died as an innocent victim to pay the price for human sin that had to be paid before God could or would forgive our sin.  This evening, however, I want to suggest a different truth to which I believe the cross of Christ points that, for me anyway, speaks loudly and clearly of the love and grace of God in a way that touches my heart and stirs my soul.  Perhaps it will touch your heart and stir your soul as well.

To get at that truth we start where any understanding of the deeper meaning of the cross must start, namely, with an understanding of just who is it that is being tortured and killed on the cross.  He is Jesus of course, and for us Christians that means a whole lot.  It means that he is fully human yet it also means that he is at the same time fully divine.  He is the Son of God Incarnate, the Word of God made flesh.  He is Emmanuel, God with us.  Emmanuel is a title for Jesus that we mostly hear at Christmas.  That’s because the only place it appears is in Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth, but I think it is particularly apt here on Good Friday as well.  Jesus is God with us.  He is God in truly human form suffering and dying on the cross.  During his life as Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus taught us with his words and showed us with his life who God is for us, how God relates to us human beings.  In his life he taught and lived God’s compassion and God’ grace.  Now we come to his death.  What does seeing him even on the cross as Emmanuel, as God with us, tell us about the meaning of his death, the meaning of his cross?

I believe that seeing Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us, even on the cross tells us how God relates to us not only in the good times of life but also, and much more importantly, in the bad times.  Jesus, Emmanuel, on the cross shows us that God does not abandon us in the bad times.  God does not scorn our suffering and our death.  God is not remote and removed from our suffering and our death.  Rather, God is with us even in the worst that life can hand us.  In Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, on the cross, God in God’s own person enters into the worst that life can hand a human being.  God experiences in God’s own person suffering, and even more. 

There is a great paradox in seeing Jesus as God with us even on the cross.  In Jesus on the cross God experiences everything that a human being can experience in the worst of times.  On the cross Jesus cries “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  In that cry God is paradoxically experiencing being abandoned by God.  God enters into the human experience of being abandoned by God.  God demonstrates the seemingly impossible, that God is with us even in our feeling of God abandoning us.  In Jesus on the cross God does not observe our feeling of aloneness, our feeling even of abandonment, from afar.  Rather, God enters into those feelings and shows us that God is with us even there.

And there is an even greater paradox in Jesus on the cross.  On the cross Jesus dies.  On the cross Emmanuel, God with us, dies.  On the cross of Jesus God experiences death.  God dies on the cross.  That’s a shocking statement I know, and it is one the Christian tradition has been very creative in finding ways to avoid.  Yet Jesus Christ is precisely God with us, and Jesus Christ dies on the cross.  In the death of Jesus on the cross God enters into and experiences human death.  In the death of Jesus on the cross God show us in the clearest possible way that God is not absent from human death, that God does not scorn or reject or judge human death.  Rather God enters into human death and is present in it, is present with us even as we die, never truly forsaking us, never truly abandoning us.

The Christian church has long taught that the death of Jesus on the cross functions as an sacrificial atonement for human sin. Yet for me, and for a lot of Christians today, the cross of Christ speaks not of atonement or sacrifice but of the unfailing presence and grace of God in everything that comes our way in life, up to and including suffering and death.  The cross then is about us and about how God relates to us.  God doesn’t prevent the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross, and God doesn’t prevent suffering and death in our lives or the lives of our loved ones either.  Rather, in the cross of Jesus we see demonstrated in fullest measure God’s abiding and sustaining presence with us in suffering and death.  We see God with us even as Emmanuel suffers and dies.  That, for me anyway, is the Good News of Good Friday, and it is very good news indeed.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.