Several years ago, a friend and I were driving on a freeway that passes along one side of downtown Houston, Texas. As we approached the downtown area, there was a traffic jam and all the lanes of the freeway were almost at a standstill. Since it was not during either of those times of the day we have misnamed “rush hour,” I was puzzled as to why there was congestion.
I was concentrating on the cars ahead of me, but my friend was not and it was he who discovered the reason for the traffic problems. Off to the right of the freeway is Annunciation Roman Catholic Church, one of Houston’s historic landmarks. High atop that church’s spire is a beautiful gold cross. When we were passing that church, my friend cried out, “There’s a man on the cross!”
A workman was repairing the cross and everyone who passed was stopping to see. It was my companion’s exclamation and my own first glance rather than the subsequent explanation that left an indelible impression in my mind. I recalled the words of scripture, “If I am lifted up, I will draw all people to me” (John 12:32). Think of it; there’s a man on the cross and the city stops to see!
Why do we stop? Why do we come to the church during Lent and Holy Week and fill our souls with thoughts of the sorrow and death of Jesus?
We come because in Jesus we see a courage we would make our own in the face of trouble.
He went to the cross after a long period of inner struggle, after his friends denied and betrayed him, and after mockery and scourging at the hands of God’s elect. It was not easy. There was pain both of the spirit and of the flesh. Recognizing that we too must face times of pain and death, we come to see this man on a cross and draw courage. This sort of courage is necessary to live the life he calls us to live. It is more than we can call forth from within ourselves. We need our portion of his in order to take up our own crosses.
We come because in Jesus we see one who leaves an indelible imprssion on our lives.
Throughout our experience, the really tough decisions are wrought in prayer and deliberation. The choices and commitments we make call forth the greatest energies of the spirit. Bishop Walpole knew this when he counseled a friend about his ministry, “If you are uncertain about which of two paths to take, chose the one on which the shadow of the cross falls.” He was saying, “Christ died for you so that your life would count. Choose the way that has the impression of the cross on it. We know in our own experience how indelible this impression is when we encounter Jesus Christ on his cross.
We come because we still marvel that God has chosen this peculiar manner to bring salvation to the world.
We’d love to clean it up a bit. We’d like to think it wasn’t so messy, but it was. A man died in agony at a place outside Jerusalem. George McLeod’s famous words describe the place so well:
I simply argue that the cross be raised again
at the center of the market place
as well as on the steeple of the church,
I am recovering the claim that
Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral
between two candles:
But on a cross between two thieves;
on a town garbage heap;
at a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan
that they had to write His title
in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek . . .
And at the kind of place where cynics talk smut,
and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.
Because that is where He died,
and that is what He died about.
And that is where [the Church] ought to be,
and what [the Church] ought to be about.
This is the strange story of salvation. It is a story filled with pathos and irony and paradox. It is a story in which the Sovereign of the Universe becomes the Paschal Lamb. And, through this one act of self-offering, the gates of salvation are permanently opened for all people to enter.
There’s a man on the cross – drawing all people to himself.
That’s why we come.