Tonight, I have decided to do something a little different.
With this being our last Wednesday together before Holy Week I would like to give a short meditation upon Jesus’ passion and death on the cross.
On Sunday we will hear the long passion reading from the Gospel of Luke.
In preparation for that dramatic reading, I offer this evening some reflections on violence, evil, and the cross.
I chose tonight’s sermon topic before the beginning of Lent and before the war in Ukraine.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine every evening as we turn on the news, we come face to face with great evil and violence.
But even before the war in Ukraine we are all well-aware that violence and evil acts are committed all the time.
The pain and the suffering never ends.
The pain and suffering of innocent people never ends.
Trying to make sense of all of this is an exercise in futility.
But this is where our faith comes in.
It is through the cross of Christ where God meets us in our pain and in our suffering.
Through the great evil and violence that Jesus suffered on the cross God was willing to go to the darkest place and most painful place for us.
The theology of the cross does not explain why there is violence and why there is evil in this world.
But what the cross does do is that it communicates to us how Jesus was willing to suffer for and with us.
Jesus experienced violence, evil, suffering, pain, and despair from the cross.
On the cross he said, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!”
Jesus even felt the pain of being abandoned by God.
And in that moment in time on the cross Jesus hangs there in a space between faith and doubt.
In the hymn, What Wondrous Love is This, which we will sing to begin our Good Friday service, we will ponder such a love that would take Jesus to the cross.
Jesus is the suffering servant who lived in a brutal and violent world.
Pontus Pilate was a harsh and unjust ruler.
He was a violent man – who sent Jesus to the cross.
It would appear now, at this point, as Jesus suffered on the cross that Jesus’ life came to an end in a final violent, evil act.
But we all know that this is not the end of the story.
Our faith does not end with such a conclusion.
Our forty-day Lenten journey takes us to this point – and to this very edge.
We follow Jesus to the cross.
We take up our cross and follow him.
We take a hard look at the violence and the evil in the world.
And then we give witness to a greater truth.
It is a truth that is more powerful than the forces that oppose it.
It may seem, at times, that evil has the last word.
It may even be for a time that evil does have the last word.
For three days Jesus’ followers believed that violence and evil had won.
But then something happened.
From the cross a true miracle happened.
On the cross Jesus surprises us.
On the cross he not only meets us in our suffering and pain but Jesus makes the cross the defining act by which he will sacrifice himself for our salvation.
Jesus becomes the sacrifice of love.
The cross does not explain why there is suffering, violence, evil, pain, or sin in the world.
What the cross does do for us though is it communicates to us that God is on our side and that God loves us.
Today the cross is a great critique and rebuke of all the senseless and terrible violence in the world.
In the cross evil and violence ends in love.
“Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree, when God, the mighty maker died.”
To see God in the crucified Christ means to understand that in the violence and evil of this world the hunger, the war, the injustice, the racism, the pain that God is alive and that God suffers by us, with us, and that suffering is in God.
In his suffering our suffering is changed and transformed by his love.
In the cross violence and evil have not won the final victory but rather on the cross Jesus puts an end to all crosses of death, to all the destructive webs of violence and evil in this world.
In the cross we come to see that God’s way of life is so much greater than our ways of death.
As Lent comes to an end and as we pray and fast during Holy Week and prepare our hearts to receive this great love and grace, we find our peace and our hope in the cross.
Let us pray:
