Sermon
Sunday 20th March 2016 – Communion
The Cross
Jesus never knew the fruits of sin until he became sin for us. And when he did, all the emotions of sin tumbled in on him like shadows in a forest. He felt anxious, guilty, and alone. Can’t you hear the emotion in his prayer? “My God, my God, why have you rejected me?” [Matt. 27:46]. These are not the words of a saint. This is the cry of a sinner – Max Lucado
The Cross lies at the heart of the Christian faith – without it we have no faith and there is neither Christianity nor hope.
The two passages we heard read [Isaiah 53 and 1 Corinthians 1:18-25] cut to the heart of both what Christianity is and who we are.
Let us take them and what Max Lucado says and journey a while together in order to understand:
- what is central to our hope
- what we do here today
- what we will celebrate over the next Easter week
Before the coming of Christ, Isaiah speaks about the suffering of God’s servant. Isaiah wrote these words we find in chapter 53 some 600 years before Jesus came to earth, yet they accurately reflect his suffering and what that suffering on the Cross accomplished!
He first of all highlights that His suffering will be seen as an act of injustice – someone who is good does not deserve the punishment and suffering that God’s servant experiences – according to Isaiah. Isaiah perfectly describes what happens to God’s Servant as “unbelievable.”
The Lord’s Servant is someone who is described as very ordinary in appearance – no celebrity figure here! He is very tender-hearted, kind, compassionate – He comes from a very ordinary background. His external appearance and background are not what is remarkable about Him! This is something that some of his contemporaries found difficult:
“43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, ‘Follow me.’
44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’
46 ‘Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?’ Nathanael asked.” [ John 1:43-46]
This how life has always been. We assume that a certain class of people with a certain education are those who are fit to lead. Those who have achieved celebrity status and/or are wealthy are the people who count. But here was someone ordinary who was neither attractive, beautiful or majestic in his appearance. He ended up being despised and rejected!
What is the lesson for us here? The world wants to draw us to the attractive, beautiful and majestic – to what often is the empty vacuous, ungodly and profane. This way cannot be for us. Our perspective is different – we are drawn to the One on the Cross – He is what lies at the heart of our identity as a people.
There is a profound danger that we become embarrassed by the “Crucified One” because that image does not fit with our success driven and orientated culture. But it is here at the Cross that we stand and derive our understanding of ourselves, God and finally, our hope.
Love is the overall message but its detail is profound – let us examine Isaiah’s words in some detail as he describes prophetically the meaning of the Cross.
“It was our weaknesses He carried.”
We are not comfortable with admitting our weaknesses to ourselves, God or other people. Yet we stand before the Cross and admit, “I am here because of my weaknesses – you are there because of my weaknesses. You are taking the responsibility for my failings and you are accepting the punishment for those sins I was too weak to overcome.” The Cross is a statement of our weaknesses and a remedy for them.
“It was our sorrows that weighed Him down.”
If we think about all the things we are sorry for – it is all of those sins that we have admitted to God that have weighed Him down – that was the burden He was carrying on the Cross. Not only those sins that we have admitted but those things we have said, felt and done that were and are wrong but we have not come to realise them as such.
“He was wounded and crushed for our sins.”
We seldom see ourselves as bad as we really can be and are – we do not grasp the perfect, righteous, holiness and majesty of God, and how imperfect, unholy, unrighteous and tainted we are in comparison to God’s original plan for us.
He was wounded and crushed for us – but not destroyed. The pain to Him was immense. His holy and pure soul felt the full force and ugliness and pollution of our sins and did this all so that we might have peace – the peace of knowing we are forgiven. Peace with God – a status and not a feeling.
All of what Isaiah predicts is indicative of the comprehensive work of Christ on the Cross:
Comprehensive : Total. Complete forgiveness and salvation – something that is absolute and irreversible.
Done by God out of necessity and love.
Paul comments on the Cross in the passage we read in 1 Corinthians.
The Corinthians lived in a very sophisticated society – a Greek society that prided itself on its culture, education, wisdom and philosophy.
To that culture, Paul speaks of the Cross which is the wisdom and the power of God – to the educated Greeks the Cross is foolishness and to the religious Jews it is offensive. It is still the same today.
- To our educated and sophisticated society the core message of the Christian faith is sheer nonsense – a foolish speculation!
- To the religious - to the Jews, Muslims and others - the Cross is offensive.
- BUT to those of us who believe it is the Power and Wisdom of God.
What happens if we are ashamed of this central core of our faith? It means we are ashamed of Jesus and His greatest act of love and we cannot be in the Faith. However, if you embrace the “Crucified One” you may be a fool in the world’s eyes, but you will possess ultimate hope and salvation.