E.C. Andercheck
Meditation- Embrace the Cross
Good Friday 2017
Let us Pray,
Lord please grant that we might faithfully
Meditate on your passion,
To know better thy Cross.
Amen
In all of human time, this moment, this Crucifixion,
most profoundly defines God’s unconditional love for us.
This is simultaneously a horrifying earthly event,
and a joyous heavenly gift.
It is a moment we are called to embrace,
In both its horror and in its joy.
In Roman times Crucifixion on a cross was for criminals,
It was a scandal to painfully die on a cross,
It was a horrible scandal for anyone who claimed to know god,
It was Infinitely more so for the one who was said to be God.
The Cross- For The Disciples
What a horrible moment for Jesus’s disciples.
What must they have been feeling?
Did they believe Jesus was dead, a mere victim
Did they believe all He taught died with Him,
Did they believe that this was truly the END.
What a horrific and frightening moment it must have been,
when the disciples first heard that Jesus,
whom they loved had been crucified.
“Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed.” 1st Corinthians 5:7
The Cross- for Christians
For Christians it is in this sacrifice on the Cross-,
that sin and love meet,
The Cross- represents sin released in blood,
which then becomes a divine wine,
flowing from His love on the Cross-,
it becomes our cup of salvation.
The Cross- for Jesus
For Jesus, His escape from death on a Cross, was simply for the taking,
Yet Jesus remained on the Cross,
He embraced the cross
His blood flowed on the Cross,
His suffering surrounded the Cross
His love blossomed on the Cross.
The Cross- was Jesus’s most Glorious Throne,
it was the birthplace of the means of Salvation for us,
His sacrifice on the Cross- gained us Eternal Life and Salvation,
Jesus embraced the cross for our salvation and joy.
Jesus was Victorious on the Cross-
The Great American Theologian Jonathan Edwards once said,
“Now, understand all of this carefully:
In no other act did Christ appear,
more like the glorious, enemy-destroying Lion
than when he was brought as the Lamb to the slaughter.
It was when he was most weak
that he was actually most strong.’
In the times when we are weak,
When we face fears, and doubts, and dire challenges,
Consider the Possibility that we are facing our own cross,
Possibly in these most dire of moments we even doubt God,
We might ask how can we endure these times?
We can draw hope from Jesus’s victorious embrace of the Cross-,
Hope that God has also given us a gift in each cross that we bear,
a gift of the pathway to a greater unity with Jesus Christ.
we are called to this unity, to Grace and to new life in Christ.
The Cross- for each of us
For us the Cross- is the birth of resurrection, and supernatural joy,
It is the embrace of a great transition to a deeper joy,
It is dying to ourselves,
it is dying to our earthly pleasures
it is dying to our own will,
it is dying to the worship of our own worldly goods,
It is the very antithesis of dying to Christ,
it is becoming alive in Christ,
and letting our own earthly values begin dying for Christ.
In this embrace ….We are Living into Christ’s death on the cross.
The Cross- for Saint Paul
Saint Paul lived his ministry illuminated by a divine image of the Cross-,
he told this to the Corinthians,
“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel,
and not with eloquent wisdom,
lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
In this letter, Saint Paul presents two possible pathways from the cross,
The first pathway, is one of seeing the cross as folly,
for those, this is the end of the story, simply a death.
The second pathway is the one of faith, embracing the cross,
this leads to eternal life,
the supernatural joy of Easter – and resurrection.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Let us embrace the Cross- this glorious throne of Jesus.
Edward Andercheck