The Cross of Jesus says otherwise

Dear First Pres SLO Family,

Grace to you and peace, in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the one who lived and loved and continues to challenge us, even today.

In the traditional church calendar, today is the Feast of the Holy Cross. In the early 300s Saint Helena traveled to Jerusalem to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. She found what she believed to be pieces of the Cross, and eventually those relics made their way back to Rome. The holiday dates back to the 7th century, and celebrates the completion of the church built on the traditional site of Christ’s death. Here’s a picture from inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The cross is the universal symbol of the Christian faith, but I wonder sometimes what the earliest followers of Jesus would think of how we see it today. For them it was an instrument of death—they would remember crosses just outside the walls of their cities, with gruesome reminders still hanging on them.

Those images were reminders of the ultimate authority of the Roman Empire.

Rome used crucifixion as a way of killing their enemies, but with the added “bonus” of humiliating them first, and terrifying those who witnesses their deaths. It was a brutally effective way of keeping people under their control. It was a brutally effective way of ensuring that only the power of Rome and the gods of Rome would be feared and respected.

But that’s not how it worked out for them.

There are all kinds of theories of why Jesus died on the cross, but the fact remains that he did. The Messiah, the Son of God, took this instrument of humiliation and oppression, and turned it into a symbol of hope and love and grace and sacrifice.

Every time we wear a piece of jewelry in the shape of a cross, we remind ourselves and others that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Lots of things try to separate us from that love (I’ll pause while you think of your own list). Lots of things try to tell us that we’re not worthy, that we don’t matter, that we could never be loved in that way.

The Cross of Jesus says otherwise.

And so today, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, remember that we celebrate the Cross not because of the way the Romans used it, but because of the way God transformed something so painful and ugly to be a sign of hope and love and grace and sacrifice. God did that for you and for me and even for the people we don’t like. So powerful is the love of God in Jesus Christ.

Here's a prayer you can say today, let it prompt you to offer thanks for the love of God in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.

Almighty God,

who in the passion of your blessed Son

made an instrument of painful death

to be for us the means of life and peace:

grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ

that we may gladly suffer for his sake;

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Blessings to you and yours. Stay safe and healthy.

Pastor John