The Rev. Dr. Patricia Ramsden First Presbyterian Church
The Cross March 13, 2011
I was having one of those uncomfortable lunch experiences with someone who was trying to convert my little Presbyterian soul. Finally, she got to the crucial question: When were you saved?
I sat there for a moment thinking back over my journey of faith. I knew she was looking for a day and a time when I had had an emotional conversion experience --- a moment when nothing was ever the same again, the moment when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and glory filled my soul.
Was it in my thirties when I said yes to the ministry because nothing was more important in my life than God? Was it when I made a commitment in my twenties to deepen my relationship with Jesus? How about in my teens when I was baptized and joined the church? Or maybe it was when I was 6 years old singing “Yes, Jesus Loves Me” for the very first time? There are so many moments when I’ve been overwhelmed by the glory, the majesty, the love of God and I knew I would serve Him forever.
But none of those moments, as life-changing as they were, answered the question she had asked: “When were you saved?”
I was saved 2000 years ago on a hill outside Jerusalem on a cross of shame and glory where Jesus suffered and died for my sins and yours.
You see, Presbyterians have a very high view of the cross. We believe that nothing we can do or say can save us --- not our good works, not the number of Bible verses we know by heart, not how much water was used in our baptism, not even our acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Our salvation was bought on the cross and it is the act of God’s love and grace and His love and grace alone.
No where do we see that more dramatically than on the cross itself.
There hangs Jesus, stripped, bloodied, flesh pounded into wood, fighting for every dying breath, when He whispers the words “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Now, notice something about this scene. No one had said “I’m sorry.” No one had said it was all a tragic mistake. No one had asked for forgiveness – not the crowd, not the priests, not the Roman soldiers. No one had confessed Him as Lord. Yet Christ forgave them even as He died for them. It was only after His death that one lone soldier, looking upon a grace that can never die, proclaimed, “Surely, this was the Son of God.”
Christ’s words of salvation, “Father, forgive them”, are meant for us all. Jesus died for us before we knew Him, before we recognized Him, before we bowed down before Him. And He died for all those moments when we still do not recognize Him. When we do not know what we are doing.
He died for us all. He died for the world --- not just Presbyterians or Baptists or Roman Catholics or any other church that calls itself by the name of Christian. We have no exclusive claim on salvation. Salvation belongs to God and God alone.
So if God’s grace and God’s love is His to give and He gives it even before we realize we need it, why a cross at all? What does it matter? Why did Jesus have to die? Why not just say, “You’re forgiven” from a cloud in the sky?
Over the next weeks, during our journey through Lent, we’ll be looking at some of the answers to those questions, although the sacredness of the cross and the sacredness of Christ’s death are too profound for us to ever fully plumb their depths.
But let us begin with this.
One of the basic reasons Christ died is that our sin makes a difference to the heart of God. Our acts have consequences and one of the consequences is that when we sin, when we turn our back on Christ, when we fail to live as He would have us live, we break the heart of God. We turn away from His love, and we wound our relationship with Him.
Think of it this way. As a parent, you set limits and boundaries for your children that they must obey for their own good. You don’t ask them to eat their broccoli, or go to bed at a decent hour, or do their homework because you intend to make their lives miserable or are an uncaring despot who just doesn’t understand. You do it because it’s what is best for them. And when they don’t do as you ask, when they say they hate you, it wounds your soul because it’s they who don’t understand how much you love them and how hard loving can be.
But still, you know you need to enforce the rules for their own good. You love them too much to let them do whatever they want whenever they want to, because you know it will hurt them in the long run. There’s a price that must be paid for not doing what they are told so they will learn and grow into the wonderful young men and women you know they can become. It may mean time out. It may mean no cell phone. It may mean no car.
But the price for our sin, our disobedience, our failure to live out of God’s love, is so great that we can never begin to pay it. We have damaged ourselves and our relationship with God in ways we cannot begin to repair. If we have to undo the damage and the hurt we have caused, it’s hopeless.
But God’s love goes beyond our hopelessness. And for us to understand that, for us to recognize that, for us to be changed by that, He did something beyond our wildest imaginations, He put Himself in our place. He said, “I will heal the breach between us. I will pay the cost. I will make it so we can begin again.”
That’s one of the profound messages of the cross. We can begin again. That’s why it is so important that we come to believe in what Christ did, what Christ does. It allows us to begin again. It gives us the opportunity to live life to its fullest, life as it is meant to be and to become the wonderful children of God we are created to be. Because of the cross, we can live in God’s love, out of God’s love, instead of being bound forever by our sins, condemned by the past.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosever believeth in Him might not die but have everlasting life, for God sent His Son into the world not so the world might be condemned but so the world might be saved through Him.”
The message of the cross comes from the cross: “Father, forgive them.”
