God made him who had no sin to be sin for us … (2 Corinthians 5:21)

At the heart and center of the Christian faith and life hangs a crucified man.  And around that terrible image some weighty and wonder-filled words have gathered: atonement, reconciliation, ransom, forgiveness, redemption, restoration, substitution, sacrifice, blood, victory, along with many others.

We wonder: how are the image and the words connected?  How can a crucifixion, a terrifying, appalling, horrifying, dehumanizing means of capital punishment, possibly “accomplish” all those godly, “spiritual” words?  That’s what this new sermon series, “The Cross,” will start to explore.

Most everyone likes and admires Jesus.  We like him as “a good example,” as a “great moral teacher,” as a bringer of “enlightenment,” as an advocate for justice, even as a representative or messenger of God.  We may even revere him as “a martyr for his beliefs,” or for “the truth” or something similarly vague.

But it is very hard to admire a crucified man.  The Romans did not invent crucifixion, but they certainly practiced it frequently.  Crucifixion was reserved for the lowest of criminals, slaves, the worst traitors, the most dangerous terrorists.  Crucifixion was not merely a means of killing; it was, more importantly, a way to erase the condemned from human history. Crucifixion was the way of showing who’s in charge: Rome.

Crucifixion was not a sign of any kind of success.  It was the ultimate picture of failure, of forsakenness—anyone dying by slow, agonizing degrees on a cross was obviously forsaken by both man and God.  There was nothing remotely “spiritual” about it. In fact, if you had claimed, or been thought to be any kind of messiah, crucifixion was the ultimate, final, unanswerable sign of failure.

And yet: this week, we are reading words written around 20-25 years following that terrible crucifixion.  And that most ignominious of deaths is being proclaimed as the pivot point of history, as the most important thing that ever had, that ever could, happen: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (verses 18-19).

God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  The first thing the cross teaches us is the gravity, the weight, the power of Sin.  “Sin” does not mean I have broken some petty rules; Sin is a Power that enslaves me, turns me into its agent, and hands me over to its partner Death. It is the conquest and destruction of the Powers of Sin and Death by means of Jesus’ death upon a cross that makes all those wonderful words—atonement, redemption, reconciliation and the rest—possible.  Before the cross, there is nothing to say about any of these things; after it, there is no end to what needs to be said.

It’s a bit more than a month until Good Friday and Easter.  This is a good time to grapple afresh with the “good” in Good Friday.  Some reading might help. Walter Wangerin’s Reliving the Passion is a wonderful guide to the “what happened” and the “why.”  It follows Mark’s Gospel through the final week of Jesus’ life by providing a short (3-4 page) daily devotional/reflection.  Highly recommended by Brian and Kathy!