And so we come to the crucifixion. The cross stands at the very heart of Christianity. It has come to symbolise Christianity the world over. We put crosses at the front of our churches, crosses on the top of our churches, we were jewelery in the shape of crosses and crosses form the cover art for many editions of the Bible. It is the one symbol that has come to mean Christianity to the world. Muslims even refuse to have a branch of the red cross, preferring instead to have their own red crescent organisation, since the cross is closely associated with Christianity. In popular thought the shape of the cross is so closely tied with Christianity that in myth and fable it can be used as a ward against evil. For Christians the cross not only stands at the very centre of what we believe it also stands at the very centre of history. And yet in all this do have we lost what the cross really stood for.
The cross was the cruelest form of death and torture available to the Romans. In our modern and western world were prisoners have rights and those Western societies which still allow death as a punishment are meant to make every effort to make it as quick and painless as possible, it is easy to forget that crucifixion was not just a method of killing people but that it was also a method designed to do it as painfully as possible. The victim was left hanging naked on a cross often for days to linger in agony before the body simply has no strength left death follows. It is possible to run through the gruesome detail of how crucifixion works, why it is so painful and so long, but we are not going to do that. You see there is another side to the crucifixion, it was also designed to be public, humiliating, degrading and offensive. Crucifixion was not just a way of dealing with criminals it was a way of holding down revolutionaries, a way of showing how utterly contemptible they were and that in the end they were miserable failures. It is very hard to keep your dignity when you are nailed to a cross naked and in agony and left to die a lingering death in full view of everyone and theres nothing you can do to resist. Worse in Jewish culture it was to be considered to be cursed by God to die in such a way.
And yet this is the way that God chooses to reveal his ultimate glory. By taking this suffering, humiliation and curse upon himself. It was the reason he became human, to go to the cross. We read about Jesus and God going to be glorified, but in the context in which Jesus was talking it refers to the place he is going that Peter cannot yet follow, but will later, the cross. The cross is where we find the ultimate display of God’s glory. This place of humility and shame is the place where God reveals himself most fully. It is in the cross that we gain a full understanding of who Jesus is and so who God is. In the gospel of John we are told of signs that will serve to reveal Jesus’ glory. The first is the water into wine. The second is the healing of a nobleman’s son. Third, is the healing of the paralysed man at the pool. Fourth is the feeding of the 5000. Fifth is the healing of the man born blind. Sixth is the raising of Lazarus from the dead. And now we come to the final one, the seventh, the crucifixion. John has repeatedly told us that when Jesus is lifted up, it will then be the moment of God’s glory shining through him at full strength.
This is completely counter intuitive. At the moment when Jesus is humiliated and seemingly the most out of control, a failure, most human is when he reveals God’s glory. Generally we don’t like to think about it being God on the cross. It caused quite a bit of comment when the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann published his book entitled God Crucified. I have even had people say, you can’t say God crucified, its Jesus who was crucified. Almost as if you can separate out the human part of Jesus from the divine, and the divine leaves the human part on the cross while it escapes. But John, is telling us exactly the opposite of this. It was God himself who came down, became flesh and was suffering and dying on the cross. In a very real was it was God dying on the cross. God the Son, was suffering and dying on the cross. And it was at this moment when Jesus and John claim that the ultimate glory of God was displayed.
Why? Yes, the cross had to be endured but surely the great miracles or the transfiguration or the resurrection or the ascension that would be were the glory of God would be shown. Why is it on the cross that God’s glory is shown. Because it is the cross, more than any other of these events, even the resurrection that shows who God is, that tells us what God is like.
The key is perhaps found in John 13:1. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.” In Greek it literally means he loved them to the very end, which is true but it also carries this meaning of loving to the uttermost, of showing him the end or the depths of his love. This is God showing how far he was prepared to go to love humanity. This was the cross as a demonstration of God’s love. I’m not saying that was all it was like some liberal Christians like to try and do. That somehow if we can just see how much God loved us then it inspires us to live better lives and that is all there is to the cross. No there is much, much more going on here. The cross was part of God’s way of dealing with sin objectively. It was about facing the reality and consequences of sin and dealing with them. Along with the incarnation, the life and ministry of Jesus, his resurrection and ascension it was dealing with humanities problems. But as the lowest, most painful and degrading part of the process it was also a demonstration of God’s love, that he would do whatever it took no matter the cost to achieve our redemption. He showed us the full extent of his loves by going all the way to the end for us. This is what is meant by the revelation of God’s glory that Jesus stayed on the cross for us and it only makes sense if Jesus was God. If Jesus was a mere man it does not demonstrate anything, he was caught and there was nothing he could do about the situation but he was not just a man.
One of my favourite TV programs is Babylon 5 and while I was in Portugal I watched one of the episodes that referred to this, in particular with regard to the Garden of Gethsemany. It was talking about how Jesus had the courage to stay, knowing that he was destined to be crucified, knowing that Judas had betrayed him and was leading the Jewish leaders and Romans to arrest him and kill him, he stayed and didn’t run away to avoid the painful death for a few more hours, days or weeks. Now the writer of this Joe Strachinsky, is an atheist but one who has read the whole of the Bible and is fascinated by it along with other ancient literature. His insight is good but he also misses one of the points of the story because he doesn’t believe that Jesus was anything other than an ordinary man, he refuses to see Jesus as God. Jesus death was not an inevitable outcome once he was arrested. He was God, at any moment he could have stopped it and set himself free. He said to Pilate you have no authority over me except that which was given you by God. He choose to stay and suffer because he loved to the uttermost. This is the glory of the God which we serve. He not only loved till the end but he loved to the uttermost.
It is ironic that Jesus demonstrates the full glory of God in his ultimate identification with sinful man, in suffering our death in our place, on taking on the full weight of mans sin, his alienation, the guilt, the shame. It is in this identification that he shows the glory of God because it demonstrates his love that he God would be willing to do this for us.
It also brings us one of the most challenging statements of the Bible. It was one we didn’t explicitly look at on Wednesday at the Bible study, we stopped just short of it in Chapter 13 but we looked at the idea, but it only comes to full fruition in light of what we have just looked at. Its John 13:34. “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” The command to love was not new but to love as Jesus, as God loved, that was new. A love that offered friendship even when it knew it was going to be betrayed, a love that would sacrifice everything to identify with the one to be loved, a love to the end, a love to the uttermost, a love that would display the ultimate glory of God. That is the love we are called to love with. Impossible, yes. But part of the reason for the crucifixion was to make it possible. To allow God to dwell within that we might love as he loved.
