Notes from the Wayside: Perspective: Look upon the Cross

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Perspective: Look upon the Cross

The following perspective is an excerpt from a sermon delivered at Quillen Manor Assisted Living in Fountain Inn, South Carolina on May 27, 2018. The entire sermon, titled “Born from Above,” will be posted on June 3, 2018.

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

If you find these thoughts helpful, please share.

Look upon the Cross

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

John 3:16-17 (NRSV)

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in His wonderful face

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace

From "Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus" by Helen Howarth Lemmel

Jesus once said to a religious leader named Nicodemus, “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”¹

In the Book of Numbers, we read that, at one point while the Israelites were journeying through the wilderness, many people were killed by poisonous snakes. The people begged Moses to pray to God on their behalf, and, when Moses prayed to God, God instructed him to craft a bronze serpent and to set it atop a pole. From that point onward, whenever one of the Israelites was bitten by a poisonous snake, he or she could look upon the bronze serpent and be healed of the snake's venom.²

Jesus, referring to himself as the Son of Man, told Nicodemus that He would be lifted up in the same way that the bronze serpent was lifted up in the wilderness. What He meant was that, in the not too distant future, the Sanhedrin – the very same council to which Nicodemus belonged – would conspire to get Jesus out of the picture. They would collude with the Roman Empire to have Jesus executed by crucifixion, like an enemy of the Empire. At a place called Golgotha, Jesus would be “lifted up” on a cross.³

When we look upon the cross, we see how messed up the world is, and we see how badly the world needs to be saved from itself. The prologue to the Gospel of John tells us that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.”⁴ In Jesus, God became a “son of man” and “descended from heaven” to live with us – and we killed Him. We might not have personally driven the nails into His hands and feet, but we are all complicit in His murder. We are all part of a world in which the One who embodied pure goodness and love would be brutally murdered. We would be fools to think that Jesus' crucifixion would not happen in our day and time, for we still live in a world in which those who cry out against the evils of society, as Jesus did, are persecuted and put to death, as Jesus was.

When the Israelites looked upon the bronze serpent, they were forced to confront the creature whose deadly venom had infiltrated their veins. They were also forced to confront their own sins, for they believed that the snakes were punishment for their impatience, griping, and lack of faith. When the Israelites looked upon the serpent they also found healing. Likewise, when we look upon the cross, we are forced to confront our sin and our sickness, but we also find healing for our souls.

When we look upon the cross, we see forgiveness, mercy, and grace. We see the One who prayed on behalf of those who had just nailed Him to the cross, saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”⁵

When we look upon the cross, we see the true nature of God. In the words of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death, Christ upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is.”

When we look upon the cross, we see how badly we need to be saved, and, when we look upon the cross, we see our salvation.

When we look upon the cross, we must not forget the end of the story. The evil of humanity put Christ upon the cross, but it did not defeat Him. On the third day, Christ was raised from the dead, and the decisive blow was dealt to sin and death.⁶