Sunday
Sunday
The Centrality of the Cross
I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
1 Corinthians 2:2
Anybody who investigates Christianity for the first time is immediately struck by its emphasis on the death of Jesus and, as we have already seen, especially by the disproportionate amount of space that the evangelists devote to the last week of his life.
The Gospel writers had learned this emphasis from Jesus himself. On three separate and solemn occasions Jesus predicted his death, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things … and … be killed” (Mark 8:31). It must happen, he insisted, because it had been foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus also referred to his death as his “hour,” the hour for which he had come into the world. At first he repeated that it was “not yet,” but at last he was able to say that “the hour has come.”
Perhaps most striking of all is the fact that Jesus made deliberate provision for how he wished to be remembered. He instructed his disciples to take, break, and eat bread in memory of his body to be broken for them, and to take, pour out, and drink wine in memory of his blood to be shed for them. Death spoke from both elements. No symbolism could be more self-evident. How did he want to be remembered? Not for his example or his teaching, not for his words or works, not even for his living body or flowing blood, but for his body given and blood shed in death.
So the church has been right in its choice of symbol for Christianity. It could have chosen any one of several options—for example, the crib, symbolizing the incarnation; or the carpenter’s bench, speaking of the dignity of manual labor; or the towel, symbol of humble service; or others. But it passed them by in favor of the cross.
The choice of the cross as the supreme Christian symbol was all the more remarkable because in Greco-Roman culture the cross was an object of shame. How, then, could the apostle Paul say that he gloried in it? This is the question to which we will seek an answer this week.
For further reading: 1 Corinthians 1:17–25