The Wonderful Cross

We sing the song in church every once in a while and I have to admit I cringe a little when we do. “O the wonderful cross…” we sing - such a melodic tune for such a violent and tragic image. My guess is Jesus wasn’t singing about the wonderful cross while he was dying on it and for us to sweetly sing of how wonderful it was negates the power of Jesus’ willingness to die for what he believed. It is to go from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday without remembering the hurt and pain of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

To think of the cross as wonderful can confuse our spiritual thinking. It can cause us to think maybe God sent Jesus to die on the cross. I believe God sent Jesus with the great hope we would listen to Him, follow Him and build the kingdom God put into His heart and mind. Jesus was the continuation of the covenant relationship God had whispered in the ear of Abraham, engraved on stone tablets for Moses and wrote on Jeremiah’s heart. It was God’s promise to always be our God and God’s demand for us to always be His people. The people were never fully able to remain loyal to the covenant relationship, so God sent Jesus to be a living, breathing connection to Him and His desires.

The cross came not by God’s direction, but because of the inability of those listening to Jesus to hear the word of God through him. His message threatened them and the religion with which they had become comfortable. It should remind us that crosses are never wonderful and are not the way God chooses to work with His people. God does not use crosses to test us or to get back at us for something we have done. Thinking this way distances us from the One who is always pursuing us that we might know His love. Crosses come not from God, but out of our shallowness, selfishness and sinfulness. They come out of our inability to see the vision of God for us.

The good news comes when God responds to the faithlessness and cruelty of the cross with the resurrection. God gives the life the world took from Jesus back to Jesus. And God continues to do so for us today. God still loves us through the hurts and difficulties of life; not making the crosses we bear wonderful, but manageable. The love of God helps us to live through the crosses to a new life – and not just a new life in the world to come, but a new life in the world we live in now.

You may have noticed crosses in Protestant churches and Catholic churches look different from one another. In Catholic churches Jesus is on the cross, while in Protestant churches the cross is empty. One recognizes the suffering of Jesus while the other emphasizes the resurrection. We should probably have examples of both in our churches, because both concepts are important for our faith. As the song says, “O the wonderful cross bids me come and die and find that I may truly live.” I hope the next time we sing these words, you will cringe a little with me.