Cross and Resurrection - Christianity Today

What one sees depends on where one sets up one’s shop. Mine is at the entrance of the empty tomb.

W. Paul Jones, interview at ParacletePress.com

The man in Christ rose again, not only the God. That is the whole point.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Christian faith lives from the raising of the crucified Christ, and strains after the promise of the universal future of Christ.

Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope

The story of God’s self-sacrifice … is the story with a cross at its center but not at its end: its plot moves toward the upsetting of all things, the Great Reversal in which the dead Jesus was raised from the tomb, and along with him our hope that death be swallowed up by life eternal.

Donald McCullough, The Wisdom of Pelicans

How fair and lovely is the hope which the Lord gave to the dead when he lay down like them beside them. Rise up and come forth and sing praise to him who has raised you from destruction.

Syrian Orthodox Liturgy

Grant, O Lord, that in your wounds I may find my safety, in your stripes my cure, in your pain my peace, in your cross my victory, in your resurrection my triumph, and a crown of righteousness in the glories of your eternal kingdom.

Jeremy Taylor, in The Westminster Collection of Christian Prayers, compiled by Dorothy M. Stewart

After calvary, peace was no longer to operate on the thin blade of truth or in the court of law, but in the torn heart of a God who had become human for us in Jesus Christ.

Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert

The cross has become a piece of jewelry, a beautiful decoration in a church, a symbol of faith. It is difficult for us to pass back through the centuries of tradition to see crucifixion as a form of capital punishment so horrible that polite people would not so much as mention it. … If the idea of crucifixion was abhorrent to decent people in the ancient world, imagine the difficulty of trying to convince them that a god—indeed, the God—had willingly endured such a punishment.

Thomas Schmidt, A Scandalous Beauty

His wounds are not the sign that suffering is good, but that some things in life are good enough to put up with the suffering that may come as we live into them.

Robert C. Morris, “Suffering and the Courage of God,” in Weavings

The message of the Cross of Christ is not that God will shield us from suffering, but that we can encounter God in our suffering, even as God has encountered us in human suffering. God knows our suffering. Coming into God’s presence as sufferers, we can learn who we are, in our suffering and beyond suffering, and we can learn who God is, the God who suffers and the God who both transcends and transforms suffering.

David Rensberger, “Suffering Together before God,” in Weavings

Every time real preaching occurs the crucifixion is realized again: for no preacher can bring anyone to the light without having entered the darkness of the cross himself.

Henri Nouwen, Creative Ministry

Compiled by Richard A. Kauffman