God's foolish weakness and why we're not scared

The cross is a prominent image for Christians. Like the Star of David for Jews and the crescent moon for Muslims, it’s the symbol that identifies the faith. But during Holy Week, the cross looms larger, as it should. It still lingers in mind for me the week after Easter. The crosses we commonly see are ornamental, works of art or fine jewelry, so it’s hard to imagine what seeing a cross meant to a person in the Roman Empire during the 1st Century. Like the guillotine or the hangman’s noose, the cross was a tool of death by execution. If you were an ancient Roman who emerged from a wormhole into our world, wouldn’t it be a bit odd to see a cross adorning the reverent space of a church? Wouldn’t it be like seeing an altar with an electric chair or a bloody machete? It just seems a little weird.

How Jesus died is incredible – by crucifixion, easily the cruelest form of torture and death ever devised. Being nailed to a cross was a more painful and agonizing death than the tied-on method, but that’s just the physical suffering. Jesus’ spiritual suffering was more heartbreaking than we could know. There’s a glimpse of both in David’s prophetic Psalm 22, written generations earlier. You should read it.

Why Jesus died means everything. God’s holiness means there had to be a penalty paid for our sin, but his love means he would visit the sentence on his son instead of on us. Heaven’s bargain was conceived while we knew nothing about it: Jesus would take God’s wrath and pay with his life, while we would be spared that wrath and receive eternal life. Paul summarizes it perfectly, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Cor 5:21.

Each time I acknowledge my sin and realize I ought to die for my offense, the cross is there to declare, “No, it’s okay, you’re forgiven. The price has been paid.” Done deal – I can move on again. The cross makes sense. It was God’s tool to restore to his children the righteousness we forfeited in the garden. The cross deserves to be above the altar.

I am struck by Paul’s comments that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:18)  As in his day, a cross can be a horrifying symbol of execution, an absurd religious object, or worse – an irrelevant logo. Paul continues on the message of the cross:

It's written, “I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.”

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb – preaching, of all things! – to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle – and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself – both Jews and Greeks – Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't begin to compete with God's "weakness." 1 Cor 1:19-25 The Message

Nearly four years after Susan was found to have terminal brain cancer, we still “pray all the time, hope for the best, and are ready for anything.” Why? It’s the cross. We know that we’re saved, why we’re saved, and who saved us. Not only that, we’re brimming with anticipation about what he saved us for.

Think about the span of time between when Jesus was laid in the tomb and when he walked out of it. Pretend you don’t know about the resurrection. In that moment, Jesus is a failure and God is a joke. The people who believe in him are fools. But we have the gift of knowing that tomb is empty. If God can work his ultimate miracle out of the failure, tragedy, and death brought by the cross, I’d say we’re right where we need to be. Hope is marvelous.