Cries From The Cross Series

In 1940, Clarence Jordan, a farmer-theologian, founded Koinonia farm in Americus, Georgia, to promote racial unity and cooperation. Soon after that, a pastor gave Jordan the red-carpet tour of his church. The pastor proudly pointed to the rich, imported pews and luxurious decorations. Then, with darkness falling, they stepped outside where a spotlight shone on a huge cross atop the steeple.

“That cross alone cost us ten thousand dollars,” the pastor said with a satisfied smile.

“You got cheated,” said Jordan. “Times were when Christians could get them for free” (Michael Jinkins, Itasca, Texas, Leadership, Vol. 5, no. 3; www.PreachingToday.com).

Some Christians today have lost their appreciation for the cross. They see it is a decoration for their churches or jewelry for their bodies, but forget that it was an instrument of horrendous torture and death.

Recently, a Franciscan University in Ohio posted a series of ads on Facebook to promote some of its online theology programs. Facebook, however, rejected one of the ads because it included a representation of the crucifixion. The monitors at Facebook said the reason for their rejection was that they found the depiction of the cross "shocking, sensational, and excessively violent."

The Franciscan University of Steubenville responded with a blog post that no doubt surprised Facebook: they agreed with Facebook's assessment! The Franciscan university posted:

“Indeed, the crucifixion of Christ was all of those things. It was the most sensational action in history: man executed his God. It was shocking, yes: God deigned to take on flesh and was 'obedient unto death, even death on a cross' (Philippians 2:8). And it was certainly excessively violent: a man scourged to within an inch of his life, nailed naked to a cross and left to die, all the hate of all the sin in the world poured out its wrath upon his humanity.”

They went on to say that it wasn't the nails that kept Jesus on the Cross but his love for [humanity]:

“He was God. He could have descended from the cross at any moment, [but] love… kept him there. Love for you and for me, that we might… have eternal life with him and his Father in heaven” (Rebecca Manley Pippert, Stay Salt, Good Book Company, 2020, pp. 132-133; www.PreachingToday.com).

If only we could go beyond seeing the cross as a decoration. If only we could fully appreciate what Jesus went through on the cross for us. It would deepen our love for Him and transform the way we live our lives.

So, how do we come to fully appreciate the cross? How do we grasp the full weight of its anguish and pain? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to John 19, John 19, where John gives his eyewitness account of Jesus’ crucifixion. We’re not going to look at the whole chapter, just the middle of it, where John records three of seven cries Jesus makes from the cross. Those cries capture the essence of His agony, and they help us appreciate what Jesus did for us on the cross.

John 19:25-27 Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home (ESV).

Jesus sees His distraught mother, standing with John, the disciple He loved, and He asks John to take care of His mother, to be the son He can no longer be. Mary was probably a widow at this time. Her other children are in Galilee, far to the north. So Jesus is the only one left to care for His mother, but now He’s dying.

They didn’t have Medicare in those days, so Mary would have been left destitute without a son to care for her. That’s why Jesus asks John to be her son. It’s a tender moment, a sorrowful moment, as Jesus says good-bye to His mother. The cross brought real emotional pain to Jesus and His family. So to appreciate what Jesus did for you on the cross…

FEEL ITS SORROW.

Sense the anguish Jesus and His mother felt. Suffer the grief of their loss.

On the scenic foothills of the Alatoo Mountain Range in northern Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz people have built a great monument complex, called Ata-Beyit, overlooking city of Bishkek. Ata-Beyit means “grave of our fathers.”

Now, usually, people build monuments to commemorate national victories and grand achievements. However, the Kyrgyz people built this monument to commemorate magnificent defeat. Specifically, they remember three heartbreaking defeats on that scenic hill.

The first defeat happened in 1916 when Tsar Nicholas II decreed that all Kyrgyz men be conscripted into the Russian army to fight in the First World War. On that mountaintop some 100,000 men died when soldiers massacred them, or they were lost in the brutal winter.