Sermons

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The Cross
May 2002
Bethany Briefs
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

You and I have both experienced it: The “I-Never-Noticed-That-Before” Syndrome. Once something gets your attention, it pops up everywhere.

I remember the last time we bought a car. We were looking at older Volvos. Suddenly, I couldn’t drive down the street without seeing an old Volvo. Go to a Husky game? The parking lot was filled with old Volvos. Picture on the front of the newspaper? Old Volvo in the background. Crossing the street? Nearly run over by an old Volvo. Everywhere.

Over the Lent and Easter season, the Syndrome hit me when I started preparing a class on “The Cross of Christ.” Suddenly I saw crosses everywhere. Jewelry, tattoos, bumper stickers, books, buildings. I looked in the mirror and remembered that I wear a cross around my own neck. I hadn’t noticed it or thought about it for quite awhile. Suddenly I did.

Since the second century, the cross has been the defining symbol of people who have faith in Jesus Christ. The first century church seems to have used slightly more clandestine symbols, perhaps to avoid persecution or attention.

Pictures of doves or palms were used extensively in Christian circles. Images of boats (Noah’s) and lions (Daniel’s) proliferated for awhile. The “Christian fish” that you see on automobiles today was popular as well, using the Greek word “Icthus” (fish) because its letters were the acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” Before long, though, the cross became the predominate symbol of Christian faith.

Isn’t it interesting that a Roman method for shamefully and publicly executing serious criminals would become the major sign of identity for Christians?

Not a sign of power, but weakness. Not an image of life, but death. Not a commemoration of Jesus’ birth or teaching or service or miracles, but his humiliating execution. To those outside of the faith, it is a great puzzle. Surely Paul was right in saying “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” The cross is radically antithetical to all that the world values as important.

Yet it is undeniable. The cross literally dominates the New Testament. It stands at the center of the Christian faith, and encompasses all we believe. It encompasses human sin (the Messiah’s condemnation), God’s willingness to enter human history (the incarnation), God’s intense love for us (even unto death) and desire to restore relationship (atonement). Jurgen Multmann’s book title is provokingly descriptive: “The Crucified God.”

Certainly, there is great mystery in the cross. As the Presbyterian Confession of 1967 details, the images of atonement in scripture are many:

• the sacrifice of a lamb
• a shepherd’s life given for sheep
• the atonement by a priest
• the ransom of a slave
• the payment of death
• the satisfaction of a legal penalty
• a victory over the powers of evil

All of the images picture the reconciliation of people hopelessly estranged from God. Exactly how this happens is part of the mystery. But that it happened on the cross is undeniable. Stephen Neill says that the cross of Christ, for the Christian, “is the central point of history. Here all the roads of the past converge; hence all the roads of the future diverge.”

Perhaps all of this strikes you as redundant for a Christian. Why am I writing about it in the Briefs? I guess I wanted to invigorate the “Syndrome” for you. The cross must not be taken for granted. Yet it is a very real danger in our self-described “postmodern” era.

John Shelby Spong is a retired Episcopal priest who has written many bestselling books on faith. Perhaps the most popular is “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Here is an excerpt:

“The view of the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.”

Unfortunately, I believe that Spong’s views are that of a modern day heretic. (He also dismisses things like the presence of God in the world, original sin, the resurrection and the authenticity of scripture.)

Spong is by no means alone. I regularly have people ask me about him and many others who write and teach about a faith without the cross. Usually these theologies are connected to a view of God which is very impersonal. Almost always, human sin is thrown out along with the cross. If there is no problem, then there’s no need for a solution.

All of this is articulated in Richard Niehbuhr’s critique of a prevailing theology in America:

“A God without wrath brought people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

Niehbuhr wrote these words in 1959, but it seems to fit even better in 2002.

The cross of Christ is not a piece of the Christian message, it encompasses the Christian message. When we want to understand God’s compassion, his unmerited grace, his love towards us, his willingness to sacrifice for our sake . . . we look at the cross. I Peter 2 combines all of these things nicely:

“He himself bore our sins on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”

The cross sets us free from sin, and frees us to live.

I once had a professor who only slightly facetiously said it would be good if all Christians wore a little cross around their neck, “but preferably one angular, not smooth, so it constantly pricks you and reminds you.”

I need the reminder. I’m hoping this week that you’ll notice the crosses which, thanks be to God, are still fairly prevalent in the American landscape. I’m hoping the Syndrome works. I’m praying that each cross you see will remind you not of the church, bicep or car that they appear on, but of where your truest identity comes from. The cross of Christ shouts out “You are beloved of God!”