A number of years ago I came across a great reader’s theater piece for Lent called CrossExaminations, a reader’s theater series that reflected on the meaning of the cross. Now out of print, I have brought it out of my library to reuse here. However, since we do a 12:10PM short service for working folks over lunch, it is too long use. So what I have been doing is writing short reflections on the theme and in looking them over, I think its a good discipline to get me back to more regular posting on Wired Jesus as well as some fodder for some short podcasts as weekly meditations. So here is last week’s and I’ll post today’s shortly. Let me know what you think as I’ll likely do the second as a podcast experiment. I’ve been mostly about being out in the wired world but maybe some reflections like this would be a good addition and a resource for many of you.
Feb 22 – The Grace of God Revealed
Throughout Lent we are going to reflect on the meaning of the cross. The cross has become the most common symbol of our Christian faith. Today we find it not only smeared on the foreheads of God’s people but also painted, carved from wood, shaped out of metal, decorated with precious stones, and with intricate patterns.
All of which seems to miss the point. After all, none of us walk around with noose around our necks or sculpt an electric chair for display in our homes. That would be gross. After all, the cross is an instrument of death created by the Romans to kill revolutionaries as a public example. To decorate the cross can cause us to forget what the cross is, a tool for a cruel death.
But we in the church have chosen to remember the cross, not simply because Jesus died, but because we know what is on the other side. The cross points us not to death but salvation, not an end but a new beginning with God for us all.
The cross is a sign of God’s love made visible, which is not a comfortable thought. The cross is stained with blood and violence, an agonizing death that makes it ugly. But the mystery is that in ultimate ugliness there is ultimate beauty. Two pieces of wood fastened together to stick a man up until he died. But the mystery is that it was also used to stick God up, so that God the Creator could explore sin, death, and being human from the inside. So as Martin Luther put it, the cross of Jesus is a kind of a mask, the mask of God.
It is hard to see God in the cross, in fact it seems to be pure foolishness to most people, both two thousand years ago and today. But through the cross we see God’s open door to life. The cross is the mask behind which God hides so that we might fully see his love.
It goes back to the is said in the Old Testament, that no one can see the face of God and live. So God hid his face so that we could see him and yet live. That is grace. So instead of coming in glory, God hid in a baby’s birth in a stable. Instead, of a king’s splendor, we saw the humility of a carpenter. And yet behind it all, we sense the face of a gracious God, and that is grace, revealed.
This mask of God still seems foolish and gets us into trouble. The apostles were killed for preaching the Gospel of God masked in Jesus. Early Christians were killed, even nailed to crosses themselves for faithfulness to Jesus. We would like to think it doesn’t happen anymore but it does. This morning the government of Iran ordered the execution of a Iranian Christian pastor because he would not convert to Islam. Its happening elsewhere, and not just the Middle East. Not crucifixion but it is the cross. But even here – people are ridiculed for faith in Jesus; excluded or shut out for faith or not the “right†kind of faith; some are ignored, counted as worthless. A physical cross is missing but the pain is real, inflicted by those inside and outside the church.
But the cross is there, the mask of God is there, hiding God’s splendor so we won’t be devastated but revealing an infinite love and compassion. It is God’s gift to us and its God’s gift we are to share with others.
In the coming weeks we are going to look hard at the cross – not its shadows, not as jewelry. Two crosses of real wood that we can see and touch. Signs of the cross we carry as those baptized into the death of Jesus. Signs of the cross that gives us life in the resurrection of Jesus. The truth of unconditional love and forgiveness, the truth of the cross, the truth of the mask of God. Amen.