THE CROSS OF CHRIST ...
EMPTY, BUT ALWAYS FULL ...
Dr. David L. Haun
Hope Christian Church
Tamarac, Florida
Today is Easter. Today we remember, celebrate, and give God praise for that resurrection morning. All over the world today, people will gather to celebrate the empty tomb. There were crowds out at the beach today as the sun peeked over the ocean, singing and sharing in celebration. In churches across our land, the largest crowds of the year will gather for worship.
However, as vital as is the empty tomb, there is another factor of the Easter season that is even more important for our Christian life. For equivalent to the empty tomb on this Easter morning is the essential importance of the Calvary Cross.
People don’t tend to want to dwell on the cross, especially at Easter. Easter, for most Americans is a day for bunnies and chocolate eggs. Easter’s a day of joy and celebration. As the Anglo-American poet, W.H.Auden wrote, Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith. (1)
In the Bible, the apostle Paul stated that truth a different way. For he wrote in First Corinthians that what we preach is "Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to
Gentiles,(2) The Jews could not believe that anyone would preach about the Messiah dying on a cross. After all, the Old Testament said in Deuteronomy that anyone who dies on a cross is cursed by God.(3)
The Gentiles felt that believing in a crucified god was utter foolishness. In fact, the Greek word translated foolishness was moros, from which we get our word "moron."(4) To the western, Gentile mind, one would have to be a moron to preach and believe in a dying savior.
So, it is natural for people to reject the concept of a suffering, bleeding Jesus and the horror of the crucifixion. One outcome of the Protestant Reformation and the separation from the Roman Catholic Church was to remove Christ’s body from the Crucifix. We Protestants stress that our cross is empty.
However, in American society at least, the point came that any reference to Christ’s death on the cross must be clean, inoffensive and attractive. Film Critic Robert Ebert shares that in the movie "King of Kings," made in 1961, Jeffrey Hunter, starring as the Christ, was required to shave his armpits and re-shoot the crucifixion scene, because preview audiences objected to Jesus’ hairy chest and body.(5)
Good Friday services, in which the church commemorates the cross of Christ has a much smaller interest and attendance than will be in churches today for the Easter celebration. People like to come on Easter. The meaning of Easter all like to hear is the empty tomb. However, it is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ that is the defining moment in human history.
Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham, writes: "Our calendar dates from Jesus’ humble birth. Our hope is in His miraculous resurrection and glorious return. But our salvation rests in His sacrificial death on that old rugged cross, where He atoned for the sins that otherwise would separate us from a holy God. That’s why we call him Savior." (6)
Because of this, I believe it is meaningful on this Easter Sunday morning to consider not only the resurrection, but the cross that hangs in our sanctuary. Because the truth is that the cross of Christ, while empty, is always full. Let’s consider together on this Easter morning the symbolism the cross portrays.
Our sanctuary cross contains five symbols: the golden center, the red border, the crown of thorns, the crucifixion nails, and Pilate’s sign of announcement.
I.
The very center of our cross is gold. This symbolizes the eternal worth and divinity of this one who came for us. This one who died on Calvary was a human man. But he is more than man. That day on that Calvary cross hung the very presence of God in His eternal love.
Jesus was not merely an adopted son. Jesus was and is God incarnate -- the presence of God on earth. Let me repeat that, because the greatest lie that Satan has tried to foster in the mind of humanity is that Jesus was merely a man chosen and used by God for His message. Not True. Jesus was and is God incarnate -- the presence of God on earth.
We’ve considered the Scriptures: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."(7)
There are those today -- just as there were those in that first century -- who deny the divinity of Jesus. But the cornerstone of Christian faith as the Bible describes it, is that "...Christ Jesus who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient (even) unto death, yea, the death of the cross.(8)
This gold center on our cross symbolizes the eternal truth that we who follow Christ have received in the very center of our being the blessed eternal presence of God. We are not our own. We were bought with a price.(9) We do not stand alone. We live within the very presence of Almighty God and His Spirit. What a meaning that gold can have for us on this Easter morning.
II.
Here in our Sanctuary cross, the golden center is surrounded by a blood red border. This symbolizes the blood Christ shed for us during those last hours of his earthly life. Jesus did shed blood. Unlike what many wish to believe, Jesus did not carry his cross to Calvary that day with a few superficial bruises and minor scratches. He had been beaten. His body was torn. And he bled.
The author Lee Strobel has written a book titled God’s Outrageous Claims. In it he writes these words: "Jesus was tied to a post and beaten at least thirty-nine times – and probably more – with a whip that had jagged bones and balls of lead woven into it. Again and again the whip was brought down with full force on his bare shoulders, back, and legs … At first the heavy thongs cut through skin only. Then, as the blows continued, they cut deeper into the subcutaneous tissues, producing first and oozing of blood from the capillaries and veins of the skin, and finally spurting arterial bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles. The small balls of lead first produce large, deep bruises which are broken open by subsequent blows. Finally, the skin of the back is hanging in long ribbons, and the entire area is an unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissue. One witness to a Roman flogging gave this description: "The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles and tendons and bowels of the victim were open to exposure." (10)
Several years ago in a town named Oshawa, in Ontario, Canada, George and Vera Bajenksi’s lives were changed forever. The date was February 16, 1989. It was a very normal Thursday morning when the phone rang at 9:15 a.m. "There’s been an accident involving your son Ben."
As George and Vera approached the intersection of Adelaide and Simcoe Streets near the high school, they could see the flashing lights of the police cars and ambulance units. Vera noticed a photographer and followed the direction of his camera lens to the largest pool of blood she had ever seen.
All she could say was, "George, Ben went home -- home to be with his Heavenly Father!" She later shared that her first reaction was to jump out of the car, somehow collect the blood and put it back into her son. "That blood, for me, at that moment," Vera said, "became the most precious thing in the world because it was life. It was life-giving blood and it belonged in my son, my only son, the one I loved so much." (11)
To me, one of the most touching moments in the movie "The Passion of Christ" followed the scourging, when Jesus’ mother and the other Mary knelt on the stones trying the wipe away the bloody results of Jesus’ torture.
So the red border on our cross represents the depth of God’s love - God’s willingness to make a total sacrifice that we might have forgiveness.
III.
At the top of the cross hangs a crown of thorns. They symbolize the willingness of the Christ to suffer humiliating cruelty and total rejection. (12) As John recorded it, "The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face." John 19:1-3 (NIV)
A pastor, Keith Linkous shares two truths about the crown of thorns. (13)
A. Thorns were a result of mankind’s curse. In Genesis 3:17-19, God said to Adam, "Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. All your life you will sweat to produce food, until your dying day. Then God, in love took our sins on himself, and through Christ freed us from the curse of Adam. "For he hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:21). What better symbol could there have been than a crown of thorns?
B. In Mark 4 Jesus tells a
parable of a farmer and planted seeds. Some of the seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns killed it. Jesus identified the thorns that choke our faith, as worries and cares of this world. Later, Jesus identified those thorns in his parable to our worries and cares. So that crown is a symbol for us that the thorns of fears and concerns have been stripped of their power through God’s love at Calvary. That’s why the Scriptures can say: "The Lord will perfect that which concerns me." (14) Whatever it is in your life that struggles against a meaningful relationship with God, that crown of thorns gives witness that Jesus is King over it. That’s what the Bible means when it says, "Cast they burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain the." (15)
IV.
The fourth symbol on our sanctuary cross are the three nails of crucifixion.
Notice, each nail is driven into the golden center. For it was the very divinity of God that day which poured itself out for us. What an amazing willingness does our Heavenly Father display to free us from our sins.
As the Bible puts it: When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (16)
Small wonder that after that first Easter morning, it wasn’t long before the cross - the most shameful of all means of dying - became a symbol of pride and commitment. For it was through the nails on that cross that God redeemed us, forgave us, and accepted us.
V.
Finally, near the top of our cross is a small sign containing four letters. Those letters symbolize the charge against Jesus: "The King of the Jews."
When Jesus reached the hill of Calvary, he was nailed to the cross and raised above the crowd. There was also a sign nailed to the cross that day. John writes of it: "And Pilate posted a sign over him that read, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." The place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and the sign was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, so that many people could read it. Then the leading priests said to Pilate, "Change it from ’The King of the Jews’ to ’He said, I am King of the Jews.’ " Pilate replied, "What I have written, I have written. It stays exactly as it is." (17)
Pilate recognized the kingship of Jesus. Did Pilate ever personally accept the Lordship of Christ. I don’t think so. You see, it’s possible to recognize God’s reality, and still refuse to follow him. The Bible indicates that even the demons recognize God’s reality, and tremble (18). Pilate may never have believed, but he recognized the truth.
However, recognizing truth is not what Easter is all about. The message of the empty tomb and the purpose of the Cross is a call for commitment. And each one of us must make that decision for ourselves. Will you believe? Will you accept? Will you follow? Those are the questions that the symbols of the cross in our sanctuary ask us.
FOOTNOTES
(1) Auden, W.H., "Friday, Good," A Certain Word. (1970) SermonCentral.com
(2) 1 Cor 1:23-24 (NIV)
(3) Deut. 21:22-23.
(4) Chilvers, Roger. "Beware of the ’Cross-less Gospel’, Decision Magazine. March 2004. p. 10.
(5) Roger Ebert "Current Reviews," Chicago Sun Times 2/24/04.
(6) Graham, Franklin. "The Point of ’The Passion,’ (Decision Magazine, 3/04) p. 41
(7) John 1:1-3 (NIV)
(8) Phil 2:5-8 (ASV)
(9) I Cor. 6:20
(10) Strobel, Lee. God’s Outrageous Claims (Zondervan Press) 172- 173 (11) Victor Knowles, Peace on Earth Ministries, Joplin, MO. George and Vera Bajenski minister with Global Missionary Ministries, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. SermonCentral PRO
(12) Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: New Modern Edition, Hendrickson Publishers. 1991. PC Bible Study.
(13) Linkous, Keith. "The Crown Of Thorns." SermonCentral.com.
(14) Psalm 138:8
(15) Psalm 55:22
(16) Col. 2:13-15 (NIV)
(17) John 19:19-22 (NLT)
(18) (James 2:19).
