Understanding the Cross

The one thing missing from the theology of many churches is the part that lifts up the cross.  One day a year on the Friday before Easter the cross is remembered, but just briefly.  I remember the advertisement for a Good Friday service some years ago which encouraged people to come by saying that it would be a brief thirty minute service which is likely more than enough for most folks who attend church.  Back in the day I was growing up in church preachers were commended for "stepping on my toes," but not today.  Today folks want a preacher who is entertaining and lets people leave feeling good.    

To stay too long at the foot of the cross is anything but comfortable.  If we allow ourselves to stay more than briefly, we will find our soul being troubled, our heart made heavy, and our mind being filled with mystery which cannot be understood.  Volumes have been written about the cross event, but it still remains something which is beyond the realm of complete understanding.  Anyone who says differently is not someone to be trusted to be a teacher of sound theology. When I finished seminary, I knew what happened on Good Friday.  I had it figured out and packaged it in sermons for years to come.  

Now after all those years of preaching and a few more to realize how little I really know, I am not sure.  I read the Word and know that something happened on that hill which changed history and which in the process changed the trajectory of human experience.  And, I know, too, that what happened was mostly about God doing something through Jesus and having affirmed this, I have already alluded to more than I can understand.  There are a lot of theological understandings of that event, or windows through which to see it and I have stood in front of many of them thinking that everything was clear.  Now, I just kneel before the cross with gratitude for the grace it has brought into my life.