A Letter from Bishop Chris (April 2023A)

Friends, 

There is a deep conundrum at the heart of our faith. And it’s this: no one wants a cross.

Lest you think I’m writing nonsense, think about your own life for a moment. Do you like to suffer? Do you take delight in injustice? Do you want to be betrayed and abandoned? Are you happy to be degraded, violated, and shamed? Of course not! No one, who is sane, wants these.

And yet, these things are the cross. The cross of Jesus is not an abstract idea or a religious impulse. The cross is the brutal degradation of our innocent Savior on our behalf. It’s the place of God’s suffering substitution. It's the naked, public dehumanization of the Son of God. As Morna Hooker writes, “(In the cross) all the evil impulses of the human race came to focus in him.”

Isaiah 53 prophetically describes the suffering Servant of God by saying, “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem… we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted…he was pierced…he was crushed…He was oppressed and afflicted…he was taken away…he was cut off…he was punished - though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.”

In her book, The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge writes:

"Susan Sontag, who suffered for years from the cancer that eventually killed her, wrote this: 'It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.’ Here in a few words is a fundamental insight with which to view the crucifixion. If Jesus’ demise is construed merely as a death - even as a painful, tortured death - the crucial point will be lost. Crucifixion was specifically designed to be the ultimate insult to personal dignity, the last word in humiliating and dehumanizing treatment. Degradation was the whole point…"

This is deeply disturbing to me as I reflect on these words during this Holy Week and in light of Paul’s description of the cross as being, “the wisdom and power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:23-24) How can the degradation of the cross be both God’s wisdom and power? Paul answers by saying that while, “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, to us who are being saved it is the power of God…For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach (a crucified Savior) to save those who believe.” 

The Gospel is that on the cross Jesus, the Son of God, willingly, voluntarily, and purposefully absorbed all the diabolical hatred of every human heart who has ever lived, including yours and mine. He put himself willingly into the condition of accursedness on our behalf and in our place. For our lawbreaking, he suffered. For our rebellion, he was crushed. He offered his life and blood in our place and in so doing, he made atonement for us. He reconciled us to God by satisfying the demands of the Law. He rescued us from death by entering into death himself and ripping out its teeth.

In a mystical and very real way, Jesus intentionally took into himself all the suffering of every sickness and every disease all at once. He knew every sorrow; experienced every shame. And it literally wrecked him - physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. Paul says that as he bore the magnitude of our sin, it had some kind of ontological effect upon him: “though he knew no sin, he became sin on our behalf” (1 Corinthians 5:21). He fully knew and experienced the desperate and hopeless condition we face in our judgment apart from God. It’s no wonder the words spilled out of him in his cry of crucified dereliction, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani” - My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

It’s true: no one wants a cross. But it’s equally true that everyone needs the Cross. On this Good Friday, may you reflect deeply on the Cross of your God. May you forsake every false path of religion or morality as an attempt to achieve righteousness on your own. May God grant you the grace to see that he endured the cross and scorned its shame because He loves you. He is utterly and completely committed to you. He has done everything to make you His own. All you need to do is to see your need for Him, and turn, and trust Him. Trust that the Cross was enough. The penalty has been paid. You cannot add to His accomplishment.

And remember this, Easter is just a few days away. The cross will lead to the empty tomb. And death will be swallowed up in victory!

Blessings,

+Chris