Week 13—Friday Hebrews 9:13-14
Hebrews 9:13-14
LIFE LEADS US TO THE CROSS
If the cross is more than a martyr’s death, just what does it mean? A Japanese minister was a communist while a student in the university. All his “comrades” had been sent to jail. It was the cross that brought him back to Christianity—one dying on the cross for a cause. He started there and then was led to the very core of its meaning and became a Christian. Some of the followers of Gandhi, during the days of struggle for independence when many were going to jail as nonviolent non-cooperators, said to me: “Now we know what you Christians mean by the cross, for we are carrying it.” Many went from that to the real thing—went from martyrdom to atonement. But many stopped at martyrdom, failed to get to the Real and fell away. For the cross of martyrdom holds your admiration, but not your allegiance. It gets your mind and emotion but not your committed will. If you say, “There is a man on a cross,” you may run to see the morbid sight. But if you say, “There is a God on a cross,” then you kneel in wonder, or like the centurion, smite your breast in contrition.
He could not die in a room, confined to four walls. He had to die under the open skies, with the universe looking on and the whole earth shaking in a cosmic shudder. For the cross had the marks of a cosmic struggle—God dying for us.
And the cross brings to light, full light intimations here and there of a God who would die for us. The Aztec gods were seated around a fire, creating the universe. To create the sun was too big a task until one god threw himself into the fire and the sun came into being. A pelican will pull out her feathers with the blood and give it to her young in times of drought and scarcity.
O Jesus Lord, all these words of sacrifice become the Word of Sacrifice made flesh in you. You gathered up these broken lights and at the cross made them into the Light of the World in yourself. They were candles; you are the sunrise. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall bear the cross as my attitude, then I shall know the cross as my affirmation.