The symbols we live with, the images and the objects, profoundly affect the way we think about our lives.
For example, this wedding ring is not very costly. In fact, my wife bought it on sale, and I knew then I had found the right partner—a thrifty shopper. A wedding ring doesn't cost a great deal, but it binds two lives together in commitment, a covenant of caring and giving for all of life.
Or that red, white, and blue flag. It may be a bit faded, perhaps even tattered, and yet that flag, as the flag for every nation for the citizens of that nation, has the power to call for the utmost loyalty and sacrifice because it is a symbol of freedom and justice, the hope of our life together as a nation.
The cross is one of those symbols that also has the power to energize and change the way we think about our lives, the way we understand God, the power of love in the world. It can transform the way we live each day and meet the difficulties of our lives.
If Madison Avenue were to select a logo for the church, they would never select a cross. Can you think of Nike going to their ad agency and saying, "We'd like to have a logo that will be appealing and attractive to people that will make them need to buy Nike shoes?" It's a bad symbol for Madison Avenue's purposes, and yet the church has placed the cross squarely in the center of its worship, its doctrine, and its life of faith. Why?
For one reason, it was a necessity at the beginning because the One that the church worshiped as God's Messiah was crucified on a cross. The church has some explaining to do.
The practice of crucifixion came from the Phoenicians and Persians. It was taken over by the Romans to punish slaves and foreigners. It became the ultimate symbol of God's curse. It was a terrible death. Sometimes people would last for days on the cross until finally one strangled by the sagging weight of the body. It was the worst punishment one could conceive of, and this Jesus whom the church called the incarnate love of God, the presence of God in the world, this Jesus ended up on a cross no better than a common criminal judged to be a felon and worthy of death. The church had to deal with the cross. There was no way around it.
There are two reasons that the cross is important to us. The first is that the cross acknowledges there is a tragic side to life.
Jesus's miserable suffering on the cross, the one who lived the love of God and God's care and concern and grace for everyone—how could he end up this way? That scene on Golgotha is a scene of betrayal and desertion. How could those who knew him best and were closest to him melt into the darkness under a time of stress and accusation? Why did they not stand up for him?
The cross is a reminder that there is moral failure within human life. To be a human being means we are conflicted, we struggle with darkness. People whom we expect to be visionary and generous, sometimes turn out to be petty and selfish. We're disappointed in public figures whom we had thought would have the strength to resist temptation. We despair when we see ourselves hurting the very ones we love the most. We're caught up in the fleeting passage of time and opportunity, and shaken by the fact that life is passing before our eyes. We struggle with the reality of the chaotic threat of evil that threatens to swamp the world.
To put the cross in the center of our lives means that we dare to acknowledge the fact that tragedy is a part of life. There is evil in the world and there is evil in us, and we must contend with both if we are to find our salvation.
But there's another reality that carries the cross to the center. It proclaims the fact that in the shadow this cross casts across the land, we find refreshment.
As a runner on a hot day stops to be revived under the shade of a tree, so we in the midst of the journey of our lives find that we live in the shadows of the cross, we experience the profound love deep as God. The cross draws us. It heals us. It renews us.
From the cross, we see a new dimension of the depth of love. Love that comes from God, which goes "all the way."
John put it this way in the 13th chapter: "Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and to go to the Father. And having loved his own who are in the world, he loved them to the end." That's the story of the cross. It signals a love that never leaves us, a love that goes all the way, a love that refuses to allow anything to interpose itself between us and God's grace.
Jesus could have turned back from the cross. He knew what was coming. He pressed his case. He opened his arms to those whom religious leaders considered outcast. He proclaimed the grace of God that was as wide as the sea, love that was deeper than anyone could imagine. He portrayed an image of God which was so radical that the religious leaders of his time could not live with it. Jesus could have slipped out under cover of darkness. He could have trimmed his message. He could have pulled back from Jerusalem, but because he wanted to say with all of his life that love will triumph in the midst of the worst human being could do, he went to the cross. We believe it was God's love all the while. Love for each, no matter how unworthy.
We hold to the cross because the cross brings life. Jesus's cross, its shame and tragedy apparent, has become the way back to God for millions of people through the generations. Those who have been alienated and hurt and broken in a maelstrom of life have found, in the cross, new life.
In these forty days to Easter, as we think about the upper room, and the Garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus before Pilate, and the scene on Calvary, I invite you to hold the cross, love the cross, learn from the cross, and be healed by the cross of Jesus Christ.