Reading: Colossians 1.15-23
For the Romans, their cruel public execution designed to keep their subject races fearful and under control.
Cross? It happens to be the shape you get when you join two pieces of wood together. They are all over the place. Power poles all trace out the shape of the cross. It’s just practical, common sense. We can’t do without it.
Yet the cross - adorning neck or ears, on the front of a building, on the tombstone in the cemetery, marking the site of a fatal accident... Whether ornate or plain, it signifies and declares a faith for life, both here and hereafter.
Certainly, the cross was devised as a torturous death penalty - perhaps the worst devised in the history of humanity. It was transformed into a vigorous symbol of life because Jesus endured its death.
In our reading, Paul tells us that Jesus Christ is "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Col. 1.15-17).
He was fully divine and fully human. He lived our life and died our death. "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross" (vv. 19-20).
"Peace through his blood shed on the cross". "Reconciled... by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation" (v. 22).
The cross isn’t some kind of lucky charm - though perhaps for some people it’s little more than that. The reason that it has become the central symbol of Christianity is that it signifies and declares a faith for life, both here and hereafter.
While taking a prisoner from a Guelph, Ontario, correctional centre to be arraigned on charges of attempted armed robbery, police constable John Bolton noticed a cross around the neck of the convict. Knowing the man was not religious, he took a closer look. The prisoner attempted to conceal something protruding from the top of the cross. When questioned, he said it was a good luck charm designed to look like a spoon for sniffing cocaine. But Constable Bolton was sure it looked like a handcuff key. By experimentation he found that the protuberance would open most handcuffs. The discovery led to the exposure of an attempt by prisoners in the correctional centre to make a number of these cross-keys.
There is a cross that offers true peace, that sets people free, free from the bondage of the law, and that cross is the cross of Calvary. Unfortunately many are more concerned about freedom for the body than they are about freedom for the soul. Whether inside or outside prison, all people need the cross that sets us free.
| Prayer: Loving Father, you sent your Son for love of us, to give his life for us. Dying, he conquered death. Raised, he offers life. By faith we receive the life and peace you offer. Help us to channel your life and grace to others so that they too will know your gift of grace and live with the solid hope for which Jesus gave his life and in which, risen, he lives with us and in us. We pray in his name, Amen. |
Driving
carefree
down the highway
I saw it -
a white cross
tied to a post
of the safety barrier,
a white cross
named in black
garnished
with plastic flowers.
Someone has died,
I thought.
Another
tragic
highway loss.
A white cross -
sign
of grief and loss,
sign
of faith and hope.
For on a cross
crude and bloodied
died one
whose love
met human hate.
Arrogant
autonomous
barbaric
sinful
men
grabbed
the Gift of God
and nailed him there.
Crude
and bloodied
cross -
sign
of human
sinfulness,
sign
of divine
redemptive love
calling
appealing
offering
reconciling
forgiving grace.
By our cross
we mark
our human loss,
yet look
beyond
in faith
and hope
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