Gracious God, help us to look upon the Cross and see
the love that makes all things well. Amen.
This Holy Week, the sermons have all been focusing on one character each day. By focusing on the very real people of Holy Week, we find our place within the great drama of our salvation that unfolds this week. On Good Friday, we fix our attention on Jesus.
Theologian
James Cone said that the Cross of Jesus Christ has a “terrible beauty.” The Cross
is the most horrific of things, as it is an instrument of humiliation, pain,
brutality, and death. As we heard the prophet Isaiah say, “Just as there were
many who were astonished at him – so marred was his appearance, beyond human
semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals.” Look into the psychological and
physical aspects of crucifixion and your stomach will turn. Indeed, the Cross
is terrible. And yet, it’s also the most beautiful of all images, for in the
Cross of Jesus we see the truth that God will survive our sins and failings.
The Cross becomes the place of Jesus’ glorification and of our salvation. This beauty
is why the Cross has stood at the center of our iconography and faith for two millennia.
The
beauty and grandeur of God’s love are amazing and wonderful – there’s no issue
there. But why the terrible part about the Cross? Could God not have dealt with
Sin and Death in some other way? Sort of like how the rainbow is a sign of God’s
mercy after the Flood, couldn’t God have given us a new symbol for our forgiveness?
And could not the eternal One who created all things have overcome the power of
the grave in less terrible way? To be clear, those are questions above my pay grade.
You’d have to speak directly with God Almighty for a response. It could be though
that a less transactional line of questioning might be helpful.
When
Christians think about the Cross, so often we think in terms of what the Cross
does – that through it, Sin is atoned for and Death is defeated. And I believe
that to be true with every fiber of my being. But I’m not sure that’s the only
thing the Cross means. Because more than how it functions at a theological
level, the Cross also reveals something to us on a pratical level. Put another
way, the terribleness of the Cross is not simply an unfortunate detail in the process
of our salvation but rather there is a deeply important and holy truth in that
something so terrible can also be so very beautiful.
The
Cross shows us that God and suffering go together. Our God is not an Olympian –
a deity who is unmoved or uninterested in the affairs of humanity. God is not
unable to experience pain or death, but rather there is something about the
nature of God that is deeply compatible and resonant with suffering. One author
speaks about the suffering of the Cross as something like a recently felled
tree. When we look at it, we notice a very dark ring and might think that is a
scar from where the ax cut into it. But the reality is that the ring runs all
the way up and down the tree. Suffering was not something that God dealt with
for three hours one Friday afternoon outside the walls of Jerusalem. No; suffering
and God are not opposites, which means that in our suffering God is not absent
and hope is always well-founded.
Earlier
in Holy Week, Jesus points us to this truth. As far as we know, Jesus never
gave a systematic theology lecture about the Cross, but he did offer a short
parable that helps us to see the Cross through his eyes. Jesus said, “Very
truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Through
death, new life comes. Through suffering, redemption becomes possible. The
worst thing becomes the place of grace.
In
2019, journalist Anderson Cooper sat down to interview Stephen Colbert and it’s
an incredibly powerful interview that I’d recommend you find and watch online.
Cooper’s mother had died recently and he begins by thanking Colbert for a
letter that that he wrote him. Colbert comes from a big family; he’s the tenth
of eleven children. When he was a child, Colbert’s father and the two brothers
closest to him in age died in a plane crash. It was a terrible tragedy that
changed the course of his life. Speaking about this, Colbert said, “There isn’t
another timeline where this tragedy didn’t happen and the bravest thing you can
do is to accept with gratitude the world as it is.”
Cooper,
then visibly moved and barely able to get the question out without choking up,
asks, “In an interview, you said that you have learned to love the thing that
you most wish would not have happened. You went on to say, ‘What punishments of
God are not gifts.’ Do you really believe that?” Colbert responds, smiling
compassionately, “Yes. It is a gift to exist and with existence comes suffering.
There is no escaping that. I don’t want that plane crash to have happened, but gratitude
is for the whole of life. Suffering leads us into a deeper love which is about
the fullness of humanity. It’s not about being the best human, but the most
human. Tragedy gave me the gift of being more fully human.” Or, the worst thing
becomes the foundation of grace.
Just
as is true when we suffer or have a loved one die, it is terrible. But there is
a gift that comes in suffering. And it’s not as if this gift is a consolation
prize or a byproduct. The gift is the main thing, just as being more fully
human is the main thing. It’s just that the road to get there is the way of the
Cross. There is no shortcut to the gift that goes around suffering. The terrible
and worst thing becomes the beautiful place where grace springs from.
Another
cultural example that points us toward this truth comes from the recent documentary
about Michal J. Fox called “Still.” Remember back to the 80s – Fox was one of
the biggest actors in the world. He won five Emmys, four Golden Globes, two
SAGs, and one Grammy. He was, in the eyes of many, on top of the world. But at
age 29, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. For seven years, he hid the diagnosis.
He would hide the tremors in his left hand on set by making sure he was always
holding something or doing something with his hand. Fox says, “Actors don’t
become actors because they are brimming with self-confidence. An actor’s
burning ambition is to spend as much time as possible pretending to be somebody
else.” So when he could not hide his illness and could no longer depend on
acting to assuage his feelings of inadequacy, he turned to alcohol and dopamine
pills which he says he “popped like candy” to manage the stress and symptoms.
After
one particularly bad night, he woke up terribly hungover and his wife, a movie
star in her own right, Tracy Pollan, asked him “Is this the life you want?” He
said “No” and began the journey towards healing. Fox says that the first year
of honesty and sobriety was brutal, but he’s thankful for all of it. One way to
tell the story of Michael J. Fox is through the lens of the theology of the Cross,
to apply the logic shared by Stephen Colbert – “What punishments are not gifts?”
Fox
says that if it were not for his Parkinson’s, he’d probably be divorced and
either dead or in rehab. It’s not that he would have chosen to have this
illness, but he says that the reason why he still has his wife and kids is because
this disease, the very one that will kill him, is what saved him. So often the
thing that we most wish would not have happened is the very thing that saves us.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a
single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The worst thing becomes the
place of grace.
From
the Cross, Jesus recites the first verse of Psalm 22. In the Jewish tradition,
by quoting one part of a Psalm is to evoke the meaning of the whole thing. So
when Jesus quotes the first verse, testifying to the worst thing and says “My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?” he is also calling to mind the final verse
of grace, “They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving
deeds he has done.” Through the terrible forsakenness of the Cross, the grace
of God is made known to a people yet unborn, a people that includes you and me.
God
saves us not from hardship, but through it. One preacher has said that what God
gives us is maximum support and minimum protection. Maybe we’d like to adjust
the balance to have a bit more protection, but that’s not the world we live in.
Suffering is the price of love. CS Lewis tells us that to love at all is to be vulnerable.
Anytime we open ourselves to the beautiful power of love, we are also opening
ourselves to the terrible consequences of Sin and Death. Lewis says that the
only way to protect against such suffering is to lock our hearts away and let them
become cold, hardened, and lifeless. Love and suffering are not opposites, but
are what it means to be made fully human in the image of God.
James
Cone, who I mentioned earlier, notes that “suffering is the inevitable fate of
those who stand up to the forces of hatred.” In other words, if we are going to
be people of justice, mercy, and compassion, then we will encounter suffering
as the pushback from hatred, division, and indifference. The worst thing becomes
the place where hope, grace, and Resurrection come from.
“The
love which made Jesus suffer is as much greater than his pain as heaven is
greater than earth,” so says Julian of Norwich. The Cross of Jesus declares for
all “the world to see and know that things which have been cast down are being raised
up, and things which have grown old are being made new, and that all things are
being brought to their perfection and made well by him through whom all things
were made: Jesus Christ.” Love is stronger than death. Mercy is more enduring
than Sin. Peace perseveres more than division. Hope is more real than our
fears. Grace redeems the worst thing.
On
Good Friday, Jesus shows us the grain of the universe, which runs alongside the
grain of the hard wood of the Cross. Jesus helps us to come to love the things
that we most wish would not happen because, in the terrible, we receive the
gift of the deep and redeeming beauty of grace.
