Coming Into Focus
THE LAST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Jeremiah 23:1-6 • Colossians 1:11-20 • Luke 23:33-43
On the scale of Cross to Empty Tomb, where do you like to stand? It is a silly question, of course. We know that one cannot have meaning without the other. The cross is incomplete without the empty tomb, and Easter has no power without Good Friday. But today’s gospel lesson—the crucifixion of Jesus—which we hear on a Sunday when we celebrate the kingship of Christ, asks us to consider more deeply where on that spectrum we look to find salvation.
Sometimes Christians focus so much on the cross that we obscure the significance of Easter. Preachers, poets, and hymn-writers commemorate the sacrifice of Christ with such enthusiastic, bloody detail that the glory of the resurrection feels more like a denouement. In pulpits where that approach is used, Jesus’ death is often described in transactional language—as the means by which the price of our sins was paid. But, when Christians talk about the cross as if God’s Son took our place, we might wonder why we even bother with Easter.
Other Christians, including many preachers from our own tradition, prefer to skip over the cross in order to rush to embrace the victory of the empty tomb. In part that is because the transactional approach leaves us with a depiction of God that we cannot reconcile with the rest of our faith. If God’s wrath can only be satisfied when taken out upon the innocent sacrifice of God’s own Son, where are we supposed to look to find the God who loves us and calls us God’s own? Honestly, the cross raises lots of questions that are hard—if not impossible—to answer. But, when we skip over it because we don’t know how to make sense of it, Easter becomes a victory over what—an historical bump in the road to salvation?
I don’t have the answers to those difficult questions, but today’s gospel lesson gives us some important insights into how to see the crucifixion as the place where Jesus’ kingship becomes most clear. Luke describes a scene in which the one who is killed by powers of this world is also the one who manifests God’s power to them. Hearing this story not on Good Friday but at the end of the church’s year—on the Sunday before Advent—gives us the chance to think about the cross as both the culmination of Jesus’ earthly ministry and the lens through which we anticipate the coming reign of God.
Jesus himself helps us hear that in the first word he speaks from the cross: “Father.” “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing,” Jesus said, invoking God with the same intimacy that he had used throughout his ministry. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” Jesus said in Luke 10. “When you pray, say, ‘Father, hallowed be your name,’” Jesus taught his disciples in Luke 11. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” Jesus said in Luke 12. To call God “Father” is to emphasize the closeness, the oneness, the intimacy, between Jesus and God. And to use that word from the cross reveals that, even in his death, Jesus affirms that he belongs to God.
We often think of the cross as the manifestation of humanity’s refusal to accept God’s will, yet Jesus speaks from the cross in a way that affirms its centrality to God’s salvific plan. In ways that defy our logic and anchor our faith, this moment embodies both. As Jesus confirms the continuity of his relationship with God, he shows us that not even his execution can thwart God work of salvation. The tragedy of Good Friday, therefore, is not an empty accident or an unredeemable mistake but the place in which we see and hear God’s saving love coming into focus.
Luke helps us understand that by recalling Jesus’ words of forgiveness uttered in the midst of his suffering: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Similarly, Luke remembers Jesus promising that one of the criminals who was next to him will be with him that day in Paradise. In both instances, Jesus shows us that his salvific work is not only accomplished through the cross but also proclaimed upon it. It is not only his death that saves us but his love for us generously offered despite his suffering. We need not wait until Jesus breathes his last to see God’s work of salvation being carried out upon the cross.
But, to see that work taking place not only in Jesus’ death but also while he hangs upon the cross, we must allow our understanding of what salvation looks like to change. The leaders scoff at the one who would call himself Messiah. The soldiers mock the one who would call himself King. The first criminal derides him as one powerless to save himself. And yet we must see in the crucified one the fullness of God’s power, the fullness of God’s reign, and the fullness of God’s perfect plan coming together for our sakes. Easter may confirm those things for us, but they are as true upon the cross as they are in the empty tomb, and I think that scares us.
The cross of Christ makes us uncomfortable because we know that, if it says something significant about who God is and how God’s salvation comes to the world, it must also become operative in our lives in the very same way. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to suffer like that. I want my faith in God to save me from suffering, but that’s not what it means to be a Christian. Instead, what it means to believe in Jesus is to believe, as St. Paul’s writes, that the crucified one makes us “strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power [that we may] be prepared to endure everything with patience.” In Christ we do not escape hardship. We are given the power to endure it.
It’s a lot easier to look at the cross of Christ and see the antithesis of God’s will than it is to behold within it God’s perfect love. It’s a lot easier to reject the crucified one as one who has failed to accomplish God’s will than to see in him the fulfillment of God’s salvific plan. It’s a lot easier to skip ahead to the joy of Easter than it is to linger in the shadow of the cross. But those who know real suffering in this world know that the power of God is not manifest in the absence of hardship but in its center. They know what it means to look upon the one who hangs upon the cross and see in him the hope of God’s arms reaching out to them in love. They know that Easter is more than a happy ending just as they know that Good Friday is more than a transactional exchange.
We come to the cross to see something more than our debts being paid. We come seeking more than a brief setback on the road to Easter. We come to behold the one who suffered to redeem our suffering. We come to be near the one whose struggle gives strength to our struggle. We come to worship the King of kings, whose glorious reign comes not on a heavenly throne but on the hard wood of the cross. To that king be glory, honor, and power, now and for ever. Amen.
© 2022 The Rev. Evan D. Garner
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas