Why the cross?

What is the most recognisable symbol of Christianity? The cross.

Has it ever struck you as odd that the Church has adopted an instrument of torture and execution as their symbol? Other faiths have much brighter symbols: the Star of David, the crescent moon of Islam, the Lotus blossom of Buddhism.

So why the cross? What did Jesus actually achieve on the cross?

To answer this question the Bible uses a whole mixture of ideas and images, because no one single idea could fully explain what happened at that first Easter. Just like a group of jigsaw pieces builds up to reveal the overall picture, so these different perspectives build up to give us a fuller, three-dimensional, understanding of what Jesus achieved on the cross.

Today, on Good Friday, and on Easter Sunday, we are looking at the cross from three of those angles. And the first one we’ll find in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Let’s read Roman 5.1-11.

Does he care?

Isn’t it interesting how many contemporary films often explore fairly deep spiritual questions? In the movie Fallen, a police officer, played by Denzel Washington, has to do battle with a demonic force, which is claiming lives on his patch. The demon passes from person to person by touch and Denzel is struggling to figure out what’s really going on. Questions are forming in his mind. And one night he gets into a conversation with a fellow cop played by John Goodman. Denzel asks him: “What’s the point of life?” John answers, “The point of life is that we catch bad guys.” “Yeah,” says Denzel, “that’s what I used to think, but it’s not good enough. What are we doing here? Do you know what I’m saying? Why do we even exist – us?” John ventures, almost sarcastically, “Maybe it’s God.” Denzel replies, “Yeah, could be. But I have a hard job believing we’re part of some huge moral experiment – you know, conducted by a greater being than us. I mean, if he’s a greater being than we are, why does he care about us? You know, there are five billion of us. We’re like ants. Do we care what ants do, from a moral point of view?”

This sense of meaninglessness, emptiness, is nothing new. Back in the sixties President John F Kennedy said, “Modern American youth have everything – except a reason to live.” The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Here we are, all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our precious existences – and yet there is nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.”

For some people, this feeling of meaninglessness or emptiness is quite natural when you look around. Scientists tell us that our sun is one of perhaps 500 billion stars in the Milky Way, a medium-sized galaxy among two hundred billion others, all swarming with stars.

Can one person – one ant – on a speck of planet in a tiny solar system in a mediocre clump of a galaxy really matter to the Creator of the Universe? As the star-gazing psalmist said, “When I consider your heavens, what are men and women that you care for them?”

You don’t have to gaze up at the stars to get this feeling. Just watch the evening news. Another explosion in Israel. More white farmers murdered in Zimbabwe. Disease and tragedy, pain and suffering. And none of us are exempt from suffering, are we? Do you ever think, “If God is so powerful, why doesn’t he do something?” Does he care about us or not?

 According to Denis Rodman, the American basketball player, the answer is “no.” He says, “If there is a supreme being, he/she/it has a heck of a lot more to worry about than my stupid problems.”

But what does the cross say?

A window to God.

Paul writes, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (8). The cross reveals that God – the same God who created the universe – does love us. But how? How does Christ’s death on a cross demonstrate or depict God’s love? Three ways. Look at those words, “Christ died for us.”

First, it is Christ who died for us. If God had sent a human – some prophet – to help us, or if God has sent some angelic being, we’d be very privileged. But if God had just sent some innocent, unfortunate third party to suffer for us, how would that demonstrate God’s love? So instead, God sent Christ. God sent his Son (10). And in sending his Son, God was not sending some creature he’d made. He was giving himself. God was demonstrating his own love for us.

Secondly, notice that Paul says that God demonstrates his love for us in that Christ died for us. If God in Christ had given himself only to the point of becoming a human being, living with us, teaching us, that would have been very generous. But God did more than that. He was prepared to serve us even when it hurt – especially when it hurt – to the point of dying for us. God’s response to the presence of evil and suffering in our world is not to offer us any glib explanations but to enter our world and join us by suffering with us, for us.

Thirdly, God demonstrates his own love for us in this: Christ died for us. In everyday life, it would be exceptional for someone to die for a good person. But would you consider dying for a bad person? Yet Paul says, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God gave himself for sinners, for selfish people who put themselves before others, for undeserving people who don’t trust in God or love him. In other words, God gave himself for me and for you.

Mary Craig in her book, Candles in the Dark, tells of an incident in a German concentration camp during World War Two. The camp’s deputy commandant was Karl Fritzsch, a cruel, evil man. He had personally supervised the first mass murder of prisoners by means of cyclon B gas, a gas which had originally been manufactured for the extermination of rats.

One day Fritzsch has the prisoners assemble and he wordlessly walks down the lines, selecting ten men for execution. As the ninth prisoner is selected, the man cries out in agony, “My wife, my children. I shall never see them again!” His choking sobs pierce the silence, but the scarecrow prisoners just stare at him, unmoved. For them the ordeal is almost over. Nine down, only one to go. So they hold their breath.

But suddenly a small, slight figure, wearing round wire-rim spectacles, detaches himself from the ranks and walks briskly towards the commandment. The men stir. This is unheard of – to step out of line. Surely the crazy fool will be kicked senseless or shot on the spot. But he isn’t. He turns to the distraught man who had cried out and asks the commandment if he can take his place.

In amazement, Fritzsch asks him, “Who are you?” “A Catholic priest,” he says. Incredibly, and incredulously, Fritzsch nods assent, and gestures to the reprieved man to return to his place in the line. A Gestapo agent then ordered the chosen men to remove their shoes, and sent them off to be stripped of their rags, and buried alive. Next to last in line was a man by the name of Raymond Kolbe, a Catholic priest, following in the footsteps of Jesus. Maybe the only difference between the Catholic priest and Jesus Christ is that Christ took the place of everyone, every prisoner, every undeserving sinner in the world, including the commandment, Karl Fritzsch.

So the cross is a window to God. It is in the suffering and death of Jesus, that God most clearly reveals his character and his attitude towards each one of us. At Easter, the curtain was torn away. The cross stands as historical, objective proof that the God who made the universe does love us. We are special to him. Our lives have meaning because God cares about us and he cares about what we do.

A mirror for us.

But when light shines into a room, what was a window can become a mirror. In the cross we not only have a window to God, we also have a mirror of ourselves, a reflection of what God had in mind for us when he created us in his image. Jesus, in loving us to the point of dying for us, reveals just how far we miss the mark.

Look at New Zealand.

There’s lots of talk today about the need to become a just or fair society. Helen Clark wants to “close the gaps.” The Act Party wants to reduce welfare fraud. Everyone wants to shut out child abuse.

But how are we going to do that? How can we achieve a moral or good society in New Zealand? A political response might be to impose higher taxes for high-income earners, outlaw the spanking of children, and extend affirmative action programmes. But Bruce Logan, from the Maxim Institute, is critical of this approach. Why? Because, he says, you can’t enforce morality. Rules and laws will not create good people. Force won’t create a moral society. What we need is a moral example to inspire us, to show us the way to live.

We need a Nathan Astle, a Peter Blake, a Raymond Kolbe. And that is what we have in Christ. He shows us how we are meant to live. He shows us that the way to real life is to die – to die to our self-centredness and to put the needs of others first, even – especially – when it hurts. In other words, Jesus shows us that the only road to self-fulfilment is self-denial. The way to the crown is to take up a cross.

I chatted with a lady this week who has been doing just that. She excitedly announced to me that she had just come back from visiting the hospital facility where her husband had lived in the weeks before he died. Now the last thing she wanted to do was to go back there and face a load of painful memories. But she felt that God was nudging her to go and visit some of the patients. So she went back. It was really hard for her. But some of the patients recognised her – people with Alzheimer’s – and they were so grateful for her visit that they begged her to return. She will. Because she’s following Jesus’ example of serving others, even when it hurts 

Today most people in New Zealand don’t really know about Jesus, do they?

They haven’t read the story.

They haven’t seen his example.

They don’t know about God’s love.

So who will be their moral example? Who will inspire our nation and show the way? It has to be us, the local church. We know Jesus. We have seen his example. We have heard his call to service. It is up to us to respond to it. And as we do, we’ll be pulling the curtain away to give others a glimpse of the cross, a glimpse of God’s love for them, a glimpse of his good purpose for us all.