Christ, Crucified

Stephen Steele writes about sculptor Gillian Genser who was experiencing headaches, vomiting, hearing loss, confusion, and suicidal thoughts. For years, doctors were baffled by what was afflicting her. They asked if she was working with anything toxic, and she assured them she wasn’t. She told them that she only worked with natural materials. They prescribed antipsychotics and antidepressants, but nothing seemed to help.

Finally, she saw a specialist who tested her blood for heavy metals and found high levels of arsenic and lead in her system. She was shocked, but still confused—how had she ingested those dangerous compounds? Finally, she talked to one doctor who was horrified to hear that she had been grinding up mussel shells for the past fifteen years to use in her sculpture. She had no idea that mussels can accumulate toxins over years of feeding in polluted waters.

The most fascinating thing about the story is who the sculpture was meant to be. It was Adam, the first man. Genser recognized the irony herself. She said: “It’s very interesting and ironic that Adam, as the first man, was so toxic. He poisoned me. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Steele comments,

And it makes perfect sense, because that is what Adam, the first man, did to all of us. He poisoned us. He rebelled against God – and we are contaminated by that rebellion. The message of the Bible, however, is that a second Adam – Jesus Christ – has come to cleanse us from this in-built corruption, as well as the other poisonous thoughts, words, and deeds we add to it during our lives. It doesn’t mean those who trust him will be perfect. Like Gesner, we will suffer the effects of Adam’s poison for the rest of our lives – but it will no longer define us forever.

The movie Hacksaw Ridge tells the true story of a young man named Desmond Doss. Doss grew up as a follower of Jesus who had strong beliefs about not killing, even in war. So, he became a medic. He was openly harassed for this decision. He even faced a court martial before all charges were dropped.

During the Battle of Okinawa, Doss’ unit was told they would have to join the fight to secure Medea escarpment, or Hacksaw Ridge. Many lives were lost. Doss, however, did not leave as he continued to hear the cry of injured soldiers. Doss sought out the wounded and carried them to safety. Then he would pray, “Lord, help me to find one more!”

Just after daybreak, and fleeing from the enemy, he made it to safety among the U.S. troops at the bottom. He was muddy, sweaty, bloody, scarred, and exhausted. He could barely stand. But for someone who had been in the thick of rescuing the dying all night from the throes of the enemy, what would you expect? To rescue, you have to be willing to get in the muck and mire.

This is what God does. He doesn’t abandon the cry of the dying. This is what makes the Triune God different than all other gods. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. This meant he had to get in the muck and mire with us and our sin.

Despite the presence of several acclaimed breweries, restaurants, and the last remaining Blockbuster video rental store in America, the town of Bend, Oregon features another illustrious tourist attraction garnering local attention – a giant rock.

The large rock, which locals refer to as the Big, Obvious Boulder (or BOB for short), is roughly three feet tall and three feet wide. It sits near the entrance to a parking lot, and gets attention when oblivious drivers collide with it and their vehicles require rescuing. Bob’s claim to fame is that it is a magnet for cars, which end up high-centered on the boulder and need to be rescued.

Not only is Bob itself often affixed with stickers and signs warning drivers, but it’s become something of a local phenomenon, with its own Facebook group. Former Bend resident Terry Heiser, claims to have had the first run-in with Bob back in 2002. He said:

It was about 9 p.m. on a weekday and I was heading downtown to meet some friends. I decided to stop in at 7-11 and I took the turn into the parking lot as I had done dozens of times. I wasn’t driving crazy or fast. It was just an innocuous turn and next thing you know chaos happens and my truck ended up on its side.

I had to climb out of the passenger window to get out. I immediately called my buddies and they came down with an even bigger truck to help get me off of Bob. It was such a stupid but hilarious accident that I haven’t lived down to this day.

You can view the famous boulder here.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Christ, life of; Stumbling; Stumbling blocks - In his lowly life and death, the person of Jesus Christ was also a stumbling stone. People overlooked his significance and stumbled to their harm. 2) Attention; Carelessness - As we go through the routine activities of life, it is important to stay focused on what lies directly before us. When we become distracted by more trivial affairs, we are more likely to experience trouble, misfortune, and/or heartbreak.

In an issue of CT magazine, Megan Hill tells her unremarkable conversion story which initially left her with doubts of its genuineness.

Megan has no memory of becoming a Christian. She says, “I didn’t pray a prayer, or walk down an aisle, or have a eureka moment. My Christian testimony of how I came to faith, is downright boring.”

She was raised by godly Presbyterian parents, gave thanks before meals, and recited prayers at bedtime from the children’s catechism. Church attendance shaped the weekly rhythms of her life. By the time she was age three or four she embraced the knowledge that God was her Creator, Jesus was her Savior, the Spirit was her helper, and the Bible was her rule. Megan writes, “But it took me most of my life to appreciate just how extraordinary was the grace I had received in ordinary circumstances.”

In fifth grade, I began to attend a school where dramatic testimonies were a regular part of morning chapel. Week after week, speakers—a drug addict, a party girl, an atheist—told of God’s rescue. But I am baffled that I never once heard a testimony like my own. And so I began to fear that I hadn’t really been saved … at all. Perhaps I was floating on other people’s convictions, happily living in a Christian environment without actually being a Christian.

Yet I was thankful for the church that had validated my testimony. In December 1989, I approached the elders of the church and asked to become a member. They, who had heard all kinds of stories from all kinds of people, declared my testimony to be a work of God. A few weeks later, I stood in front of the congregation and received the right hand of fellowship from those who had been lost but now were found. My testimony may have been boring, but it was welcomed. And I was also thankful for grace.

It wasn’t until I became a parent, at 27, that I began to see that in all testimonies, it is not the outward circumstances that are amazing. It’s the grace. There is no dull salvation. The Son of God took on flesh to suffer and die, purchasing a people for his glory. As Gloria Furman writes, “The idea that anyone’s testimony of blood-bought salvation could be uninteresting or unspectacular is a defamation of the work of Christ.”

For myself, I cannot point to a specific day of spiritual awakening. I can point only to my Lord, who says, “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37). My Jesus, I come. Every day in need of grace. And I find myself not cast out.

It might be hard to imagine a world without cell phones, but there was most definitely a time when they remained the stuff of science fiction. That is, until 50 years ago (4/3/23), to be more exact. April 3 marks a half century of cell phones, albeit it took a little while for the technology powering Motorola engineer Martin Cooper’s DynaTAC cell phone to become a ubiquitous facet of everyday life.

Affectionately dubbed “the Brick,” the DynaTAC—short for Dynamic Total Area Coverage—contained 30 circuit boards, stood nine inches tall, and weighed 2.5 pounds. As Smithsonian Magazine notes in its own retrospective, the first truly mobile phone took approximately 10 hours to fully charge. Even then, conversations were capped at around 35 minutes before the Brick needed to refuel.

It would take another decade for Motorola to release a commercial cell phone. Not many could afford it at a $3,500 price point (roughly $10,600 by today’s standards). Four decades on, and there are now more phones than humans, with 18 billion devices estimated in service by 2025.

After 50 years and billions of phone calls, it might still be difficult to beat the very first cell phone chat from Cooper himself. As Smithsonian Magazine also recounts in its look back, the engineer and inventor allegedly called up the lead cell phone engineer at Motorola’s rival, AT&T. “I’m calling you from a cell phone. But a real cell phone! Personal, hand-held, portable cell phone.” His competitor’s reported response? Stunned silence, along with allegations that the phone call never took place.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The 50th anniversary of the cell phone reminds us of the tremendous communication opportunities now available to us. This technological marvel gives us instantaneous access to people all over the world for a monthly fee. This April also marks the 1,990th birthday of our superior connection to God (April 5, 33 AD). We have instant around the clock communication to confidently speak directly to God through our risen Lord (Heb. 4:14-16), with the added benefit of it being a lifetime prepaid plan (Heb. 9:11-27).

When police officer Cpl. Annette L. Goodyear holds up her hand to direct traffic in front of the local middle school, drivers usually stop. But when one driver didn’t, Goodyear didn’t have time to get angry or offended--she was instead focused on the girl crossing the street.

Cameras caught Goodyear as she pushed the child out of the way and was instead struck by the car herself, landing hard on the pavement. Goodyear said, “It was strange. As I’m lying there, I’m thinking to myself ‘this actually did happen.’ It didn’t seem real as it was happening.”

Authorities cited the driver for multiple infractions including negligent driving, failure to stop for a pedestrian in the crosswalk, and an expired registration.

Despite her hard landing, Goodyear was not significantly injured. She was in good enough spirits when she left the hospital that she immediately went to check on the student, who while not injured, was too shaken up to go to school.

Goodyear said, “She saw me standing there and as she was walking toward the door, she was getting teary-eyed. And when she got teary-eyed, then her dad started getting teary-eyed, and we all started at that point. I was just so thankful she was standing there and that she was OK.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When you put your safety on the line for the benefit of others, you embody the sacrificial love that God has for all humanity which he showed in his Son on the Cross.

In the Middle Ages the sea route to India seemed an impossibility. it was often discussed in the great economic and political centers of Europe. They used to wonder whether there would be a route around the bottom tip of Africa to that rich land of the spices. Many had tried and all had failed. The tip of Africa had become known as the Cape of Storms.

Then an explorer called Vasco da Gama decided he was going to try again. He succeeded. Ever since he returned to Lisbon it could never be doubted again that it could be done. He proved that to use that treacherous way wasn't inevitably disastrous. The Cape of Storms eventually became known as the Cape of Good Hope.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus has done that for death. The treacherous route has been transformed. Jesus suffered and went through death and rose victorious. This means that his people follow, and likewise the storms of death hold no fear for us. He has conquered.

Pastor and author J.D. Greear writes:

I remember a Muslim asking me when I lived in Southeast Asia, why would God need somebody to die in order to forgive our sin? He said, "If you sinned against me, and I wanted to forgive you, I wouldn't make you kill your dog before I forgave you. Why would God require some kind of sacrifice to forgive?"

Here's how I answered him:

Choosing to forgive somebody means that you are agreeing to absorb the cost of the injustice of what they've done. Imagine you stole my car and you wrecked it, and you don't have insurance and or the money to pay for it. What are my choices? I could make you pay. I could haul you before a judge and request a court-mandated payment plan. If you were foolish enough to steal my $1.5 million Ferrari (No, I do not actually own a Ferrari), you might never pay it off, and you'd always be in my debt.

But I have another choice. I could forgive you …. What am I choosing to do if I say, “I forgive you”? I'm choosing to absorb the cost of your wrong. I'll have to pay the price of having the car fixed. ... You have no debt to pay—not because there was nothing to pay, but because I paid it all. Not only that, I'm choosing to absorb the pain of your treatment of me. ... I'm choosing to give you friendship and acceptance even though you deserve the opposite.

This is always how forgiveness works. It comes at a cost. If you forgive someone, you bear the cost rather than insisting that the wrongdoer does. And that is what Jesus, the Mighty God, was doing when he came to earth and lived as a man and died a criminal's death on a wooden cross.

In her book Ten Fingers for God, Dorothy Clarke Wilson writes about Dr. Paul Brand who worked with leprosy patients in India.

Sometimes they would all gather together in fellowship. One evening, Paul joined them, and they asked him to speak.

Dr. Brand had nothing prepared, yet he willingly stood up, paused for a moment and looked at their hands, some with no fingers, and some with only a few stumps. Then he spoke: "I am a hand surgeon, so when I meet people, I can't help looking at their hands. I would like to have examined Christ's hands. With the nails driven through, they must have appeared twisted and crippled. Remember, Jesus, at the end, was crippled too."

The patients, on hearing this, suddenly lifted their poor hands towards heaven. Hearing of God's response to suffering had made their suffering easier.

Author Russell Moore writes:

A few years ago, I stood at the grave of Thomas Jefferson, and I was prompted to give thanks for his life and legacy. After all, if it weren’t for Jefferson and his majestic Declaration of Independence, there might not even be a United States of America, and certainly not a country quite like it is now.

But standing at Jefferson’s grave prompted me to realize that Jefferson is, well, in a grave. Jefferson’s anti-supernaturalism is seen in visual form in his famous Bible, with the miraculous parts cut out, most significantly the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I love Jefferson for standing up against King George, but not for standing up against King Jesus.

And yet, two hundred years later, belief in the resurrection of Jesus persists. Just days after I was at this hero’s grave, Christians from all over the world, despite all this science and all this progress and all this technology, confessed what the earliest believers in the catacombs of Rome cried out: “Christ is risen indeed.”

Thomas Jefferson is still dead. I thank God for him, but standing at his grave reminds me how limited even his legacy can be in the grand scheme of trillions of years of cosmic time. It also reminds me of the contrast with (the One) whose monument isn’t a house or…even a simple grave-marker. It’s instead a borrowed tomb that isn’t filled anymore.

That empty tomb is, itself, a declaration of independence. By raising Jesus from the dead, God declared him (and all who are in him) to be free from death, free from the curse, free from Satan’s accusation. I suppose you could say that Jesus was endowed by his Father with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness … except that these blessings don’t end in a graveyard.

With hundreds of things to see in Berlin, few tourists pay attention to what lies under their feet. The four inch by four inch blocks of brass embedded in the pavement are easy to miss. But once you know they exist, you begin to come across them with surprising frequency.

Each stone is engraved with the name and fate of an individual who has suffered under the Nazi regime. They are known as Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones.” There are over eight thousand of them in the German capital, and tens of thousands of them are spread across European countries, making it the largest decentralized monument in the world.

The idea was first conceived by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 to commemorate individual victims of the Holocaust. Each block, which begins with “Here lived,” is placed at exactly the last place where the person lived freely before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror and was deported to an extermination camp. Unlike other holocaust memorials that focus only on Jews, the Stolpersteine honor all victims of the Nazi regime, including Jews, the disabled, the dissident, and the gays.

Although not everyone supports the drive, Michael Friedrichs-Friedländer, the craftsman who makes each Stolperstein, spoke in support of the project. “I can’t think of a better form of remembrance,” he says. “If you want to read the stone, you must bow before the victim.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In his lowly life and death, the person of Jesus Christ can also be a stumbling stone, or the stone that was rejected by men that is precious to God.

Richard Dawkins is the author of The God Delusion. He was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He once debated John Lennox who is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. They debated the existence of God. At one point Dawkins says of John Lennox:

He believes that the creator of the universe, the God who devised the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics, the physical constants … that this genius of mathematics and physical science could not think of a better way to rid the world of sin than to come to this little speck of cosmic dust and have himself tortured and executed so that he could forgive.

That, says Dawkins, is profoundly unscientific. Not only is it unscientific, but it doesn't do justice to the grandeur of the universe. Why would God bother entering into our small and broken planet? Dawkins chided Lennox and all Christians for believing in that kind of God.

God’s only and eternal Son on a Roman cross? Despised and rejected by men on this tiny planet. It’s like being blind-sided in the subway station on a Friday morning in Washington DC in a hurry to get to work and you pass by one of the most brilliant violinists in the world playing some of the most beautiful music in the world on one of the most expensive violins in the world. You don’t expect to see the master violinist performing in such a dirty, undignified place. But that is the very point. Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners.

Charles Price in his sermon: “God's Power in Unexpected Places,” PreachingToday.Com (March, 2014)

We do not always get a simple, satisfying answer to all of our questions about suffering. In a 2014 testimony about his experience with a debilitating disease, former Wheaton College Provost Stan Jones provided a helpful perspective on all the questions about our suffering that we find it difficult or even impossible to answer. He said:

Long ago, I read a book about suffering, and the author made a point that I have had to return to time and time again. He said most of our why questions about suffering are ultimately unanswerable. God does not seem to be in the business of answering the why questions, and most of our philosophical responses to the question of suffering amount to various forms of taking God off the hook for the problem of suffering. But this author pointed out that God doesn't seem to be interested in getting off the hook. In fact, the answer of God in Jesus Christ to the problem of suffering is not to get off the hook at all, but rather to impale himself on the hook of human suffering with us in the very midst of our suffering.

When trouble comes and places a giant question mark over our existence, we should remember Jesus and the empathy of the Cross.

There have been many famous deaths in world history; we might think of John F. Kennedy, or Marie Antoinette, or Cleopatra, but we do not refer to "the assassination," "the guillotining," or "the poisoning." Such references would be incomprehensible. The use of the term "the crucifixion" for the execution of Jesus shows that it still retains a privileged status. When we speak of "the crucifixion," even in this secular age, many people will know what is meant. There is something in the strange death of the man identified as Son of God that continues to command special attention. This death, this execution, above and beyond all others, continues to have universal reverberations. Of no other death in human history can this be said. The cross of Jesus stands alone in this regard. … There were many thousands of crucifixions in Roman times, but only the crucifixion of Jesus is remembered as having any significance at all, let alone world-transforming significance.

In 1996 two military strategists, Harlan Uliman and James Wade, started advocating a more focused approach to war. Uliman and Wade argued for engaging the enemy with an overwhelming show of force that will destroy "the adversary's will to resist before, during, and after battle." They titled their book Shock and Awe.

Shock and Awe, also known as Rapid Dominance, is defined as "a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power, dominant battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight." The goal is to render your opponent impotent by using "superior technology, precision engagement, and information dominance."

Shortly before the first Iraq War, Uliman described what would happen with this Shock and Awe approach: "You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."

In response to human sin and evil, God could have used Shock and Awe. He could have employed Rapid Dominance to crush us with his "overwhelming power, dominant battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force." Instead, the God of all authority and power, chose a radically different strategy: redemptive love, being delivered into the hands of sinners and then laying down his life at the cross. No wonder Paul had to acknowledge "the foolishness of the cross."

Karl Barth preached regularly to the inmates of the prison in his hometown of Basel, Switzerland. Knowledge of that context adds poignancy to the sermons. Here was an audience of people who had been officially judged and condemned as guilty. One of the sermons is based on Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God." He illustrated by retelling a Swiss legend:

You probably all know the legend of the rider who crossed the frozen Lake of Constance by night without knowing it. When he reached the opposite shore and was told whence he came, he broke down horrified. This is the human situation when the sky opens and the earth is bright, when we may hear: By grace you have been saved! In such a moment we are like that terrified rider. When we hear this word we involuntarily look back, do we not, asking ourselves: Where have I been? Over an abyss, in mortal danger! What did I do? The most foolish thing I ever attempted! What happened? I was doomed and miraculously escaped and now I am safe!

In the same way, everyone who is trusting Christ for salvation by grace alone can say, "I was in mortal danger. I was doomed but through the cross of Christ I miraculously escaped and now I am safe!"

On his 39th birthday, poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable form of blood cancer. He wrote frankly about the agonizing effects of his illness and the treatments.

I have had bones die and bowels fail; joints lock in my face and arms and legs, so that I could not eat, could not walk … I have passed through pain I could never have imagined, pain that seemed to incinerate all my thoughts of God and to leave me sitting there in the ashes, alone.

When the diagnosis came, Wiman was a rising star in the literary world and the editor of a prestigious poetry publication. Though Wiman confessed his Christian faith had "evaporated in the blast of modernism and secularism to which I was exposed in college," the diagnosis started a journey that ultimately led him back to God. It wasn't a particular doctrine that drew him back to the faith, but Wiman found a friend in the suffering Messiah.

I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me." … The point is that God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering. I am a Christian because I understand that moment of Christ's passion to have meaning in my own life, and what it means is that the absolute solitary and singular nature of extreme human pain is an illusion. I'm not suggesting that ministering angels are going to come down and comfort you as you die. I'm suggesting that Christ's suffering shatters the iron walls around individual human suffering.

In the face of brutal, isolating pain we don't really want answers. We want a person. At such times there is simply no substitute for the presence of Christ.