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What's in the Cross?

WHAT'S IN THE CROSS?

TEXTS: FROM JOHN 20:19-31

 

INTRODUCTION TO SCRIPTURE
We're still in the Easter period-white stoles and paraments. Christ is risen! So close your eyes for a moment and visualize the risen Christ. What does that look like?
Some of you probably imagined Jesus suspended glorious in clouds in a majestic pose, arms extended, seeming to embrace or bless the whole world-the universe even. Our imaginations are much influenced by art. This is the resurrected Christ we meet in cathedrals all over the U.S., Europe, and the Holy Land. But artists who depicted it this way were working from only a couple of lines in Luke that say he was taken into heaven or Matthew where one sentence says the disciples went to the top of a mountain to worship him. There are much better stories with greater detail that tell a very different story. And, to my mind, they present a risen Christ that is far more relevant to my experience of faith than Christ in the clouds.
These stories are about seaside cookouts, long walks on dusty roads, and my favorite which starts as a small gathering with his frightened, skeptical, and disheartened disciples hidden in a locked room.

FROM JOHN 20:19-31
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the [authorities], Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ... 24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." 28Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"

SOMEBODY TOOK JESUS
Once the children from the Pilgrim Nursery School were given a tour of the building, they came to my office and I said hi and they went came in to the sanctuary to hear the organ just like our kids are going to next week.

As they walked in, one little boy gaped at the cross and said in horror, "Somebody took Jesus!" Maybe those of your who grew up with a crucifix as a central image, have a similar response when you see our empty cross.

THE CROSS AS SYMBOL
From the first moment I walked into this sanctuary the night I came for my interview, I have loved that cross. It is so simple, elegant, and tasteful. ... Just exactly what a cross shouldn't be. People, that is an instrument of torture. The equivalent of hanging an image of the electric chair or a gallows up in front of the organ pipes. At least the Catholics and Orthodox retain that meaning with their crucifix. Our Protestant reason is, 'Well, do not emphasize the suffering of Jesus but the resurrection; the empty cross is our sign."

OK, I agree, but let's talk about that. Inspired by the title of children's' moment-the literal, "What's in the Cross?"-I want to ask the theological question. What's in the cross for us? What meaning does it hold?

Somebody told me about overhearing this conversation at a jewelry counter in Macy's.
Customer: "I'm looking for a cross."
Clerk: "Well, here's a chic little number in sterling silver."
Customer: "Hmm, I'm looking for something that will make a bigger statement."
Clerk: "Yes, I understand, the larger crosses are very hot this year." And hauling out a 5" cross on a heavy chain, she slipped it on her customer's neck. "Now, this will really say something about your sense of fashion!"

Oh yeah. If not your sense of irony.

WHAT'S IN THE CROSS? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO US?
So what about it? What's in the cross for us? The scripture today captures it for me. Who is the resurrected Christ? The one suspended in the clouds? No. It is Jesus, who stands among us with wounds in his hands, feet, and side. If we have sufficient imagination, we can look at that cross and be reminded of what happened there. Not just to Jesus but to thousands and thousands of poor souls who threatened the order of the Roman empire.
There were fields of them-crosses with decomposing bodies, dotting the city borders like a sinister wind farm. A grim reminder to stay quiescent.

THE WOUNDED JESUS
Our mythology about resurrection and the afterlife is all about perfection. We imagine that we'll be at our best-whole and perfect. But if Jesus wasn't, why would we also not bear our wounds. As a colleague commented this week, "If I continue as myself after death, I can't imagine being without my wounds. The sorrows, depressions, betrayals, and losses that I have endured. These wounds are part of me; they have shaped who I've become." Will Willimon says, "The cross is about failure, foolishness, and emptiness. It is the place all of us get to if we live long enough."

I find companionship in the risen Christ who stands wounded among us and invites us to touch his nail holes and to know that they are real. The scars from the cross show us the suffering God who has chosen to be part of our world, even when it crucifies. When we follow Jesus, when we take up the cross, we join him in his willingness to risk ourselves for the healing of the world.

There is a commonly held theology that says the cross and Jesus' death on it was a God-ordained sacrifice for our sins; that only the death of a sinless human being could atone for the massive sins of the whole world. I do not believe in a God who would require that sacrifice. It is a barbaric theology inconsistent with the God of infinite mercy. Would the One who commands us to choose life, choose anyone's death to settle accounts? This idea imposes our limited imagination on God who needs no intercession to save the creation she adores.

And yet, the cross stands as a powerful symbol of God's compassion for humanity. Theologian Anthony Padovano puts it this way, "We are not saved by the physical death of Jesus, we are saved by the absoluteness of a love which did not count death too high a price ... a love which prevails in suffering."

Roger Nichols, a pastor in Missouri has a child who had multiple surgeries, mostly neurological, before she was 5 years old. Each left scars, on her head, her forehead, her chest, her abdomen.  Some were always visible. He and his wife were discussing the risen, yet still wounded Jesus at supper one night table.  The little girl, seven or eight at the time, suddenly said, "You mean Jesus still has scars like mine?'' This very young child who had already experienced her own share of suffering, saw her story, her life, connected with Jesus and his wounds.

The preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, pictures Jesus in that room with his disciples compelling them to look at his hands and feet. She writes:

"His hands and feet were wounded now. They had holes in them, sore angry-looking bruises that hurt to look at, only it was important for the disciples to look, because they had never done it before. ... They had fled, hiding themselves away where they could not see the bleeding nor hear the pounding of the hammers.

Look, he said to them afterwards, You can look at them now. He wanted them to know he had gone through the danger and not around it. ... Some of us wish he had come back all cleaned up, but he did not. He left us something to recognize him by-his hands and feet, just like ours, or almost like ours. ... When the world looks around for the risen Christ, when they want to know what that means, [they look] not at our pretty faces and not at our sincere eyes but at our hands and feet-what we have done with them and where we have gone with them."

By God's grace, and by the companionship of Christ, we too, can go through danger, loss, and fear and not around it. And in doing so, we too can experience the grace that has come to be called "resurrection."