The Cross No One Wants To See
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
Garbage truck driver, Craig Randall, brings his work home with him sometimes. There was that old-fashioned sewing machine he found. There were some books he rescued from the trash. And then there was that soft-drink cup that just happened to be worth $200,000. Neither Randall nor his fiancée really believed it until he drove his garbage truck up to the restaurant and picked up the check. Twenty-three-year-old Randall said he lifted the cup from a pile of trash while he was on his route in south Boston. He can't remember exactly where he found it (or he won't say). He began taking notice of those cups after he pealed another sticker from another cup earlier in the week. "I won a chicken sandwich off that one," he said, "so I thought maybe I'd get some fries to go with it." This time, however, the sticker said, "$200,000 winner." A treasure lifted from the garbage heap. It seems like an appropriate thought for our worship today. A treasure from the garbage heap -- for after all, it was from the garbage heap of humanity that our salvation was lifted.
In his book, Lift High The Cross, Robert Morgan tells about a most unusual cross that stood on the lawn of a Dallas church one Lenten season. The cross, which was about ten foot tall, created such a stir that pictures of it were carried by newspapers across the country and a television station in Dallas filmed it. It was an ugly thing -- made from weapons of violence and crime, most of which had been confiscated by the Dallas Police Department. There were guns and pistols, knives and bayonets, bullets, bombs, and broken glass. The cross rose out of the remains of an automobile that had been involved in a drunken driving fatality. An ugly barbed-wire enclosure, like they use at prisons, surrounded the whole thing. It was an ugly sight -- a thing of violence and death and it caused quite a controversy. The neighbors hated it -- in fact, they started a petition to have it removed. The congregation's members were repelled by it. They thought it was sacrilegious and had no place on the church grounds. The pastor just commented, "The reactions to our Lenten display are understandable. No one wants to be reminded of our inhumanity toward each other. But isn't that indeed the basis for the cross?"
It was a cross no one wanted to see. Much like the cross of Christ -- not a cross of guns and knives, bayonets and bullets. But a cross of suffering and shame. A cross of derision and death.
Matthew, in his gospel, simply writes that after the soldiers had whipped and flogged Jesus, "They took him away to crucify him." Matthew goes on to say, "Then they came to a place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull)" and there they crucified him. "Above his head they placed the written charge against him which read, 'This is the King of the Jews.' Two robbers were crucified with him also, one on his right and one on his left."
You know, it is ironic. Calvary is not that far from Bethlehem. The distance is really not more than seven miles. In fact, you could walk it in a couple hours, probably less time that it took for the events on the cross to be over that fateful Friday. The journey of a lifetime -- over in the span of a few hours. It was a cross no one wanted to see. And yet, we must join those faithful women and the disciple John and stand near the cross and see it.
For the first thing we need to see as we stand at the foot of the cross is that the cross was a place of shame. And even though in life throughout his ministry Jesus identified with outcasts and victims, the cross was a place of shame. And so it was intended to be. Those being crucified were the objects of derision. Led through the city streets, the Roman soldiers intended the experience to be physically exhausting and emotionally insulting. Made bloody by the whipping and flogging, prisoners were marched through the streets to the cries of the crowds. And for the crowd, it was great fun, a diversion in an otherwise unentertaining existence. No, a crucifixion was great excitement. Like a bullfight, blood was in the air.
And so it was for Jesus that fateful Friday. As he climbed the hill of Golgotha, as he ascended that "place of the skull," the cries of the crowd were filled with anger. The mocking intended to shame. "You saved others. Save yourself if you are the King of the Jews." Once at the cross, the soldiers nailed the condemned to the beams and a brutal, painful death awaited them. Stripped naked, exposed for all to see, the cross was a place of shame, for so it was intended to be.
Pastor Wayne Rouse tells the story of a friend of his wife -- a friend named Alice. Wayne's wife grew up with Alice in a small town where Alice's mother and grandmother had quite a reputation -- they were known for being the "worst of the worst." Drinking and sleeping around, they lived a terrible life of addiction and immorality and made life miserable for Alice and her brothers and sisters. One afternoon while in a drunken state, Alice's mother had all the children in the car and, crossing the town's railroad tracks, stalled the car. Suddenly, off in the distance a form appeared. It was an approaching freight train. Sitting in the backseat, Alice could hear the train's warning whistle but she realized that her mother was too drunk to sense the danger that faced them. So Alice took things into her own hands, as any child of an alcoholic knows well to do. She began pulling her brothers and sisters out of the car to safety. When they were out, she went back for her mother. Just as she had gotten her to safety, the train hit the car at sixty mph. Alice's love had saved her family, but unfortunately it cost her own. As the train smashed into the car, Alice was too close. It was thrown from the tracks right into her and she died instantly. Pastor Rouse recalls that story in telling the story of the cross. For like Alice, Jesus' extravagant love for the unlovely, his compassion for the wretched and the worst of the worst enabled him to endure the cross. He was hung on the cross no one wants to see. And there he saved our lives by giving up his own. He endured the shame.
But there is more. The cross was also a place of suffering and so it was intended to be. An upright wooden post with a crossbeam near the upper part of the post, it was an instrument of torture, a cruel form of death reserved for rebels, robbers, and criminals of various kinds. So cruel and painful was the practice that Roman law forbade its use on any Roman citizen. And even though the practice seems grisly to us today, crucifixion was commonplace in the ancient world, and death by the cross was made even more degrading by the fact that in many cases, the victim was left to hang on the cross in public view until the body rotted away.
The cross was a place of suffering -- it was designed to be so. That is the meaning of the cross itself -- an instrument of capital punishment, an executioner's device, like the electric chair or a hangman's noose. Death on a cross was a slow, agonizing, humiliating form of death, intended to torture its victims as much as kill them.
Only lowest of criminals were put to death on a cross -- thieves, murderers, and rapists. For it was anything but a noble death. Nails were driven through the hands and feet and, more often than not, the person being crucified died of asphyxiation as the very weight of their body crushed the lungs. It was a horrible thing, a thing of torture and pain of suffering and death.
And so it was for Jesus that fateful Friday. Bloody and bruised, mocked and derided, stripped naked and nailed to the cross, he endured the suffering and felt the pain. And the death he died was a death for you and me.
For the cross is more than a place of shame and suffering. It is also a place of love -- love divine, all loves excelling. And how we need that kind of love. Love -- not in abstract terms; love -- not in silly songs or rhymes. Love -- made real for everyone. Love -- for all to see. For even though this is the cross we don't want to see, at the cross we see God's love for you and me. The cross is love made concrete. The cross is love made real.
In the hit film, In the Line of Fire, Clint Eastwood plays Secret Service agent, Frank Horrigan. Horrigan is an elderly, nearing retirement age agent, assigned to protect the president. For more than three decades he has served in this role. But he is haunted by the memory of what had happened thirty years before. As a young agent, Horrigan had been assigned to protect the president on a visit to Dallas in 1963. There in the motorcade, Horrigan froze in shock when he heard the gunshots. And now, thirty years later, he wrestled with the ultimate question: Would he freeze again? Could he take a bullet for the president if so required? In the climactic scene of the movie, Horrigan did what he had been unable to do earlier: he threw himself into the path of an assassin's bullet to save the chief executive.
At Calvary, the scene is reversed. The "president of the universe" takes a bullet for us. The Son of God endures the suffering and shame for you and me. Such is God's love. For if we are able to look at the cross, there amid the repulsion, the loathing, and the disgust, there underneath its ugliness, is beauty divine.
As Jesus hung there on the cross that fateful Friday, he experienced it all -- the shame and humiliation, the suffering and pain, the weight of our sins and wrongdoings. And through it all, he also knew that by his wounds we would be made well.
Somehow he knew that his death was a death for us all. Somehow he knew that his innocent suffering would free us from ours. Perhaps he had read the words of Isaiah, 550 years before he was born, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his wounds we are made well."
In Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, there is a tomb dedicated to an unknown Union soldier who died fighting in the Civil War. When President Abraham Lincoln heard of it, he had the tomb inscribed, "Abraham Lincoln's Substitute. He died that I might live." And so we might inscribe the cross that no one wants to see; so we might say of the cross of Jesus, "He died that we might live." And that is why we must go to the cross that no one wants to see and there discover the wondrous love God has for us. In Jesus' name. Amen.
In his book, Lift High The Cross, Robert Morgan tells about a most unusual cross that stood on the lawn of a Dallas church one Lenten season. The cross, which was about ten foot tall, created such a stir that pictures of it were carried by newspapers across the country and a television station in Dallas filmed it. It was an ugly thing -- made from weapons of violence and crime, most of which had been confiscated by the Dallas Police Department. There were guns and pistols, knives and bayonets, bullets, bombs, and broken glass. The cross rose out of the remains of an automobile that had been involved in a drunken driving fatality. An ugly barbed-wire enclosure, like they use at prisons, surrounded the whole thing. It was an ugly sight -- a thing of violence and death and it caused quite a controversy. The neighbors hated it -- in fact, they started a petition to have it removed. The congregation's members were repelled by it. They thought it was sacrilegious and had no place on the church grounds. The pastor just commented, "The reactions to our Lenten display are understandable. No one wants to be reminded of our inhumanity toward each other. But isn't that indeed the basis for the cross?"
It was a cross no one wanted to see. Much like the cross of Christ -- not a cross of guns and knives, bayonets and bullets. But a cross of suffering and shame. A cross of derision and death.
Matthew, in his gospel, simply writes that after the soldiers had whipped and flogged Jesus, "They took him away to crucify him." Matthew goes on to say, "Then they came to a place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull)" and there they crucified him. "Above his head they placed the written charge against him which read, 'This is the King of the Jews.' Two robbers were crucified with him also, one on his right and one on his left."
You know, it is ironic. Calvary is not that far from Bethlehem. The distance is really not more than seven miles. In fact, you could walk it in a couple hours, probably less time that it took for the events on the cross to be over that fateful Friday. The journey of a lifetime -- over in the span of a few hours. It was a cross no one wanted to see. And yet, we must join those faithful women and the disciple John and stand near the cross and see it.
For the first thing we need to see as we stand at the foot of the cross is that the cross was a place of shame. And even though in life throughout his ministry Jesus identified with outcasts and victims, the cross was a place of shame. And so it was intended to be. Those being crucified were the objects of derision. Led through the city streets, the Roman soldiers intended the experience to be physically exhausting and emotionally insulting. Made bloody by the whipping and flogging, prisoners were marched through the streets to the cries of the crowds. And for the crowd, it was great fun, a diversion in an otherwise unentertaining existence. No, a crucifixion was great excitement. Like a bullfight, blood was in the air.
And so it was for Jesus that fateful Friday. As he climbed the hill of Golgotha, as he ascended that "place of the skull," the cries of the crowd were filled with anger. The mocking intended to shame. "You saved others. Save yourself if you are the King of the Jews." Once at the cross, the soldiers nailed the condemned to the beams and a brutal, painful death awaited them. Stripped naked, exposed for all to see, the cross was a place of shame, for so it was intended to be.
Pastor Wayne Rouse tells the story of a friend of his wife -- a friend named Alice. Wayne's wife grew up with Alice in a small town where Alice's mother and grandmother had quite a reputation -- they were known for being the "worst of the worst." Drinking and sleeping around, they lived a terrible life of addiction and immorality and made life miserable for Alice and her brothers and sisters. One afternoon while in a drunken state, Alice's mother had all the children in the car and, crossing the town's railroad tracks, stalled the car. Suddenly, off in the distance a form appeared. It was an approaching freight train. Sitting in the backseat, Alice could hear the train's warning whistle but she realized that her mother was too drunk to sense the danger that faced them. So Alice took things into her own hands, as any child of an alcoholic knows well to do. She began pulling her brothers and sisters out of the car to safety. When they were out, she went back for her mother. Just as she had gotten her to safety, the train hit the car at sixty mph. Alice's love had saved her family, but unfortunately it cost her own. As the train smashed into the car, Alice was too close. It was thrown from the tracks right into her and she died instantly. Pastor Rouse recalls that story in telling the story of the cross. For like Alice, Jesus' extravagant love for the unlovely, his compassion for the wretched and the worst of the worst enabled him to endure the cross. He was hung on the cross no one wants to see. And there he saved our lives by giving up his own. He endured the shame.
But there is more. The cross was also a place of suffering and so it was intended to be. An upright wooden post with a crossbeam near the upper part of the post, it was an instrument of torture, a cruel form of death reserved for rebels, robbers, and criminals of various kinds. So cruel and painful was the practice that Roman law forbade its use on any Roman citizen. And even though the practice seems grisly to us today, crucifixion was commonplace in the ancient world, and death by the cross was made even more degrading by the fact that in many cases, the victim was left to hang on the cross in public view until the body rotted away.
The cross was a place of suffering -- it was designed to be so. That is the meaning of the cross itself -- an instrument of capital punishment, an executioner's device, like the electric chair or a hangman's noose. Death on a cross was a slow, agonizing, humiliating form of death, intended to torture its victims as much as kill them.
Only lowest of criminals were put to death on a cross -- thieves, murderers, and rapists. For it was anything but a noble death. Nails were driven through the hands and feet and, more often than not, the person being crucified died of asphyxiation as the very weight of their body crushed the lungs. It was a horrible thing, a thing of torture and pain of suffering and death.
And so it was for Jesus that fateful Friday. Bloody and bruised, mocked and derided, stripped naked and nailed to the cross, he endured the suffering and felt the pain. And the death he died was a death for you and me.
For the cross is more than a place of shame and suffering. It is also a place of love -- love divine, all loves excelling. And how we need that kind of love. Love -- not in abstract terms; love -- not in silly songs or rhymes. Love -- made real for everyone. Love -- for all to see. For even though this is the cross we don't want to see, at the cross we see God's love for you and me. The cross is love made concrete. The cross is love made real.
In the hit film, In the Line of Fire, Clint Eastwood plays Secret Service agent, Frank Horrigan. Horrigan is an elderly, nearing retirement age agent, assigned to protect the president. For more than three decades he has served in this role. But he is haunted by the memory of what had happened thirty years before. As a young agent, Horrigan had been assigned to protect the president on a visit to Dallas in 1963. There in the motorcade, Horrigan froze in shock when he heard the gunshots. And now, thirty years later, he wrestled with the ultimate question: Would he freeze again? Could he take a bullet for the president if so required? In the climactic scene of the movie, Horrigan did what he had been unable to do earlier: he threw himself into the path of an assassin's bullet to save the chief executive.
At Calvary, the scene is reversed. The "president of the universe" takes a bullet for us. The Son of God endures the suffering and shame for you and me. Such is God's love. For if we are able to look at the cross, there amid the repulsion, the loathing, and the disgust, there underneath its ugliness, is beauty divine.
As Jesus hung there on the cross that fateful Friday, he experienced it all -- the shame and humiliation, the suffering and pain, the weight of our sins and wrongdoings. And through it all, he also knew that by his wounds we would be made well.
Somehow he knew that his death was a death for us all. Somehow he knew that his innocent suffering would free us from ours. Perhaps he had read the words of Isaiah, 550 years before he was born, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his wounds we are made well."
In Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, there is a tomb dedicated to an unknown Union soldier who died fighting in the Civil War. When President Abraham Lincoln heard of it, he had the tomb inscribed, "Abraham Lincoln's Substitute. He died that I might live." And so we might inscribe the cross that no one wants to see; so we might say of the cross of Jesus, "He died that we might live." And that is why we must go to the cross that no one wants to see and there discover the wondrous love God has for us. In Jesus' name. Amen.
