A Shocking Reality
Posted by pastorbill09 on March 29, 2009
Well, it’s the fifth Sunday of Lent. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. We move ever closer to the commemoration of Christ’s death.
There are many who find that death objectionable, or at the very least offensive. That’s not new. Paul ran into that all the time. In Acts he’s reported to have come across a group in Athens who found the whole idea of someone like Jesus dying and rising from the dead laughable. They didn’t so much deny that it could happen, but that it would happen to someone so weak.
There may be some echoes of that in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. “We preach Christ crucified,” he tells them. “A stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.”
Most folks in the church, though, seem fairly comfortable with it. I ran across a nice quote from Dorothy Sayers who wrote, “In is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear the story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all.” We should find it shocking, shouldn’t we?
Yet here we are approaching yet another Palm Sunday, preparing to enter yet another Holy Week, and our attention is on everything under the sun except this horrible reality. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. Maybe the reality of it is too much to dwell on. Yet there’s no avoiding it. God dies. We can object to it all we want; we can ignore it all we want, but we cannot change it.
The question we each must ask within our own hearts is: How does God’s death matter to me? Listen to your spirit for the answer.
Peace,
Pastor Bill
Lucille Weaver said
Think I would phrase it a bit differently, how can the cross a symbol of cruelity and in some respects a triumph of evil be a a healing symbol for Christians? How do you understand the death of God in Jesus? As for the spirit being the answer to the posed question, I need more help than that…I need the understanding of others before me. See you Wed. unless I hear from you. Lucille
Bill Clark said
“When I survey the wondrous cross …”, as per Isaac Watts, I ingest the symbolism as follows:
(1) When Christ is on the cross, losing His blood, I am reminded of the failure of the Jews to attain lasting forgiveness for their sins by the repeated shedding of the blood of lambs and bulls and the dispatching of goats into the wilderness. But, then I see God’s almighty love by His sending Jesus to the cross, to hang there and die, so that my sins and those of others are forgiven and forgotten, forever. This is, for me, a healing.
(2) When the cross is empty, I am reminded of the unlimited power of God, the power that resurrected Christ, had Him circulate among the people for a few days to assure them that He had risen indeed, and, finally, sent our Lord heavenward. I am reminded of my belief that I will be with Him there, someday. This will be, for me, the ultimate healing.
(3) Finally, I am reminded that, thanks only to God and the Holy Spirit, I believe these most amazing and glorious things, and, most gratifying to me, others do and will. Amen.
Comment welcome. Bill.