Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 10, 2009

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.

It doesn't make any sense. It is a mystery beyond final comprehension. Paul called it a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. The cross of Jesus Christ ought to be a scandal. The cross ought to have been the end of it all. It should have been a crushing conclusion to the whole Jesus movement. It should have meant that his whole project was a total, abject failure. He'd lost. The Romans swatted him down like an annoying gnat, and just as easily. And make no mistake about it. It was the Romans who did it, not the Jews, two millennia of Christian anti-Semitism to the contrary notwithstanding. They saw him as a threat, or at least an annoyance, because he told poor people they were God's favorites. Because he taught nonviolence. Because he contradicted the teachings of their Jewish collaborators in the temple. He had a following, and the Romans didn't like people with followings. People with followings caused trouble. They got people listening to someone other than their Roman rulers, and the Romans didn't like that at all. So they killed him. They had killed hundreds, maybe thousands, before him for much the same reasons. They killed thousands after him for much the same reasons. It worked. We don't know who any of those other people are, except for maybe one or two. Getting yourself crucified meant you had failed and the Romans had won. The cross should have meant that there was no more Jesus movement. That's what the Romans wanted. That's what they expected. Only with Jesus it didn't happen that way. Within a few years his followers were saying with Paul that they proclaimed Christ, and specifically him crucified. It doesn't make any sense. It shouldn't be. But it is, and so we have to ask why.

Certainly Christ's Resurrection is part of the answer to why. I, and I'm sure Sarah and Peter, will have a lot more to say about his Resurrection in a couple of days. Yet the Resurrection isn't the whole answer because while Christians did and do proclaim Jesus resurrected, they also proclaim him crucified. The central symbol of our faith is not an empty tomb. It is a cross. A cross, as a mere physical object, is a terrible thing. It is a Roman instrument of torture and death, an instrument of terror and murder. We should be repelled by it. We should recoil from it. But we don't. We wear it around our necks. We put it up front in our churches, and on top of them. Clearly there must be, for us Christians, something more about the cross than that it is an ancient torture and death device; and, indeed, there is.

For us the cross is life. The cross of Christ is life precisely because it is the cross of Christ. As John says, Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10 The cross is life because God is in the cross. The cross is life because on it God shares with us our common lot, the lot not only of life and joy but also of suffering and death. The cross is life because in Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh, on the cross we see that God does not scorn our suffering and death. God does not withdraw from our suffering and death. God does not judge our suffering and death. Instead God enters into our suffering and death and shares them with us. Where is God when we suffer? The cross answers: In the suffering. Where is God when we die? The cross answers: In the dying. With Jesus we cry My God, my God why have you forsaken me?! The cross answers: I am with you in your feeling that I have forsaken you. The cross proclaims: “Thus says your God: I am with you in your suffering, for I have suffered too. I am with you in your dying, for I have died too. I am with you in your feeling of abandonment, for I have felt abandoned too. All of those things I know, because I felt, lived, and died them all in Jesus on the cross. Do you want to know where I am? Look to the cross of Jesus. That’s where I am. That’s where you can always find me, in the suffering, in the abandonment, in the dying.”

Paul was right, of course. It doesn’t make any sense. It is foolishness to us Gentiles. We aren’t Jews, but it is a stumbling block to us too. We don’t want God to be with us in our suffering and in our death, we want God to prevent suffering and overcome death—here and now. In this life, not in some uncertain future life. But the cross says: That’s not God’s way. That’s not how God does it. The cross doesn’t tell us why that’s not how God does it, but it shows in the clearest possible way that it isn’t. Rather, God deals with suffering and death by being present in them. With God, that’s just how it is.

And that my friends is extremely good news indeed. It is extremely good news because God’s presence is never just presence. The God we know as Three in One is always dynamic, always in motion, always overflowing with amazing grace and endless love. God’s presence is never just presence. It is always solidarity with God’s people. It is always God not being just with God’s people but being for God’s people. God’s presence is active, extending grace, extending love, and seeking always to pour into us the fruits of the Spirit—peace, courage, comfort, and even joy. God is always there as an unfailing support. God is always there as an unfailing help. Not help that makes suffering and death go away. We are creatures. We are mortal. For us suffering and death are not going to go away. God’s help is help to live as we must live, in the good times and more importantly in the bad times. God’s help makes life possible, not easy. The cross was anything but easy for Jesus Christ. But some of us know because we’ve been there, some of know because we’ve experienced it. We know God is with us in the bad times, and we know that it is God and only God Who gets us through those times. We know it because we’ve lived it, and we know it because we know Jesus Christ and him crucified. We know it because we know the cross.

Today we commemorate the cross. We do not romanticize it. We do not minimize it. For Jesus too it was a terrible instrument of torture and death. Yet in faith we know that the cross is more than that too. We know that the cross is life. It is life because it is the sign and symbol of God’s unfailing, gracious, merciful presence with us in everything that comes our way. So as we mourn Christ’s death and contemplate the nature of human sin that would crucify the Son of God, we also give thanks. We give thanks with heavy hearts, because that for which we give thanks was bought at a terrible price. Today is the day for acknowledging that price. Today is the day for remembering what God did for us when God in the person of Jesus died on the cross. So let us mourn. Let us weep. Let us weep for Jesus and for sinful humanity. And let us give thanks for the unfathomable mercy of God whose love for us did not stop short of the cross. Thanks be to God. Amen.