I spent eight years living in a small town in Arizona called Cottonwood. The town didn’t have much. There was a Walmart, a Sizzler's buffet, a McDonald’s, and a small store on the edge of town we affectionately called “the hippie store.” The hippie store is exactly what you can imagine. It was filled to the brim with tie dye, Bob Marley & the Beatles merch, and all over it was the peace symbol that is attributed to the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s. You know the one that’s a circle with three lines.
For the longest time, I just thought this symbol simply meant “peace.” I didn’t know why it meant that, or where it came from, I just accepted it. Then I remember rumors spread in school that actually it was an upside down cross that was broken and it was satanic by nature. That explanation seemed to make sense since hippies seemed far from the vision of the Christian faith that I had grown to know.
It was not until adulthood that I revisited the symbol of the peace sign to learn its real origin and meaning. According to Britannica “The modern peace sign was designed by Gerald Holtom for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. The vertical line in the center represents the flag semaphore signal for the letter D, and the downward lines on either side represent the semaphore signal for the letter N. “N” and “D”, for nuclear disarmament, enclosed in a circle.”
It wasn’t an abstract. It wasn’t an affront to Christians. It was a call for the laying down of arms.
Our lives are filled with symbols, metaphors, and images that go unnoticed and unrecognized. We become accustomed to the meaning they inherit from what they are applied to without investigating their original intent.
On this Good Friday, we are confronted with a symbol that I fear many of us have forgotten or never learned the true meaning of—not just the meaning but the actual, true event that occurred, which is the climax of God’s story of salvation: the cross.
We wear crosses as jewelry, get it tattooed on our bodies. It sits on the top of our steeples or as a decoration in our homes. But a symbol of what? The Reverend Fleming Rutledge in her book The Crucifixion says,
“We are so accustomed to seeing the cross functioning as a decoration that we can scarcely imagine it as an object of shame and scandal unless it is burned into someone’s lawn.”
She says later in the same book,
“Even worse, when detached from its significance, it can and often has become a sign denoting allegiance to a cause that mocks the very One who died in that way — the cross of Constantine, the Crusaders, and the Ku Klux Klan.”
Tonight in this school auditorium, we soberly remember the true scandal of the cross. The two wooden beams we see throughout Christian churches were not originally meant to bring feelings of comradery, faith, or joy. These two beams were fastened together to be used as a form of brutal execution. The Roman empire used the cross to kill criminals, dissenters, that represented an affront to their kingdom.
Criminals, they wanted to make a spectacle of for all the people to see. To set an example of what happens to those who threaten their empire. The fact that the cross is now the image most associated with the Christian faith should shock us when we think about this fact. If Jesus came in this era, he may not have been hung on a cross, but perhaps electrocuted in a chair or received lethal injection. Imagine an electric chair hung on our church walls or a syringe filled with poison. This would be shocking, foolish, even scandalous.
In 1 Corinthians 1:20-25, Paul tells the church of Corinth,
“20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
The image of God hanging on a cross makes very little sense. In initial observation, it looks like weakness, like a God who gave up. But the foolishness of God is true wisdom. When Paul says the cross is a “stumbling block,” he uses the Greek word skandalon. This word is used to describe a trap, offense, or snare, not an accidental bump in the road, but something placed that would be used to cause someone to stumble, to trip, to be entrapped by something. It is the root of where we get the word “scandal.” Christ crucified is a SCANDAL that trips up our own human wisdom. It traps us in the gospel story. It scandalizes what we think salvation should be. What a God should look like. It’s easy to forget this because, whether you are a Christian or not, much of our culture and world is “Christianized” so much so that we have forgotten that the two wooden beams of the cross held not just a man, but God himself.
On Good Friday, we are confronted not just with a symbol, but with a scandal.
With an offense. A tool used on a man who did not deserve its function. The cross is central to the Christian faith not because of its form, but because of the one who hung upon it. So, who was this man?
In the gospel of John, when Jesus first arrives on the scene, a character by the name of John the Baptist, who had prophesied to the oppressed Jewish people a messiah/a savior was coming, sees Jesus Christ approaching him and says, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
The cross is a scandal because Jesus is the Lamb.
The Bible is filled with images and metaphors that show up regularly illustrating deeper truths of who God is and what that means for us. One of those primary images is the one of the “lamb.” Which is why it is important to pay attention to the fact that the first time we see Jesus identified in John’s gospel is as the “lamb.” This should trigger our memory of scripture, even after the readings we heard tonight.
The first scripture read was Genesis 22. It’s the confusing and shocking story of Abraham being called by God to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. When Isaac asks Abraham where the sacrifice is, Abraham responds in faith, “God will provide the lamb.” Abraham, though obedient, seems to have no doubt that God will ultimately provide what is needed. And before Abraham could follow through with God’s command, he is stopped and a lamb is provided.
In this instance, Abraham’s sacrifice is a sign of devotion and worship to the Lord. God does not ask Abraham for a sacrifice for the remission of sin, but as a step of obedience. It is similar to the type of sacrifice he asks of Cain and Abel earlier in Genesis. See, God does not need the sacrifice in order to be God. It is a sacrifice made in devotion so that Abraham may receive the fullness of God.
But, in the end, Abraham and Isaac do not make the original sacrifice. God provides the lamb. God provides both a better sacrifice and the blessing that comes from it. In this story, there is a substitute for Abraham’s son. In the story of Jesus to the cross, there is no substitute for God’s son. Jesus is truly the son, and truly the lamb.
The church father Origin says, “Abraham offered God a mortal son who was not put to death; God delivered an immortal son for [all] men.”
But this makes no sense. The idea that God would provide His own sacrifice is an irreligious idea. It stands in stark contrast to the entire framework of religious purification and worship.
This defies human understanding. In other religious practices and even relationships, sacrifice is looked at as a form of giving something up so that we would maybe receive something in return. My parents are pastors in Thailand where they regularly witness buddhists making monetary or service based sacrifices at temples so that they may receive financial blessing, health, or fertility. They scandalize themselves with the hopes that a distant god may help them.
But the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Ruth, and Mary, scandalized Himself in our place.
And this provided lamb is in an image of innocence. A lamb is a young sheep. It is a pure form of life. For a lamb to then be offered as a sacrifice, to be killed for the sake of something beyond itself, should stir up real feelings of tragedy.
For Jesus as the lamb, the punishment did not fit the crime. Even Pilate in our gospel reading says, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” Pilate could find no wrong with the man he would send to the cross. And so…
The cross is a scandal because the Lamb is innocent.
In 1 Peter 1:18-20 the church is told,
“18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.”
We are often told that Jesus is an image of the lamb. The lamb provided in Isaac's stead, the lambs used to protect the Israelites from death in the passover story. But according to Peter’s letter, the lamb was always an image of Christ. Jesus was not God’s plan B. He was the Word that was in the beginning. Present at creation. A witness of the fall of man.
The innocent lambs of the Old Testament are a prophetic image of the sacrifice made by Christ on the cross.
God gave the people of Israel a temporary way of reconciliation when there seemed to be no other way, that would lead them to the true lamb.
That leaves us asking then, what was the point of all this? Why did the innocence of God hang on a cross? Why the offense of that image?
It is as John the Baptist said in the gospel. “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
Sin is not only the white lies we tell or the wrongdoings we act on. Sin is a power that exists in this world whose presence brings only death and suffering. Sin is the power that draws us away from the goodness of God. It is the divisive tool that puts human against human and human against God. Sin is both a power and an act. When we commit sin, we are not punished by God, but by the sin itself. It harms our body and soul, it makes its way into our blood stream. Scripture tells us that the wages, the result of sin, is death. So the only cure, the only thing that could defeat death, is life itself. And the weight of our sin is too heavy for us to bear. Even if we wanted to atone for our own sin, we could not, and so… someone else had to. Someone that could hold the weight of all sin.
In the ancient world, blood was life itself. To spill blood was to lose life. A blood sacrifice sounds morbid, but the idea was that life was the only cure for death. And yet, something had to die to provide the life. In the passover story of Exodus, the blood of the lamb was painted on the doorposts of the Israelites to protect them from death. But it was momentary protection. The lifeblood would run out, and death would return, and new sacrifices would need to be made.
But the blood of Christ is not temporary. According to the Book of Hebrews the blood of Christ is a better word. A final word.
The cross is a scandal because it’s final.
John 19:30, Jesus says, “It is finished.”
What is finished? What has ended? Suffering, war, violence, oppression, injustice, tragedy, still exist. Death seems to loom over the world just as it did in the passover. What is finished?
All of history, past, present, and future, moves towards the cross, where it accomplishes all salvation. Jesus' final breath was CPR to a dying world.
The death of God, of Jesus, was the final scandal. The final injustice, the final suffering, the violent act against an innocent. All of time revolves around this moment. What we experience today is redeemed in the cross. The blood shed on the battlefields of Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and the life is redeemed by the blood painted on the cross.
The answer to why does suffering still exist if the cross is final, is not that we escape it in this life. The answer is that Christ, crucified, experiences our suffering with us. It is our only hope. With or without God, life is tragic. But in the shadow of the cross, we witness a God who bears all tragedy.
The blood painted on the cross is not a temporary protection, but a final word to the wages of sin.
Tonight, like Paul proclaimed, “we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” We preach a God who dies. A God who’s glorified in weakness. A God who sees each and every one of you and says, you are worth dying for…
I could stand up here and try to tell you, “It should have been you on that cross!” “We deserve this!” But we cannot atone for our sin. We cannot achieve our own salvation. We cannot work out our own righteousness. No matter how hard we try, how much we white knuckle our addictions, our lies, our anger, our vindictiveness. No matter how deep we press down our shame, our anxiety, our fear, our doubt. No matter how many times you say sorry, or how many days you live in regret.
No matter your past, your present, your future… the human condition persists.
Jesus did not go on the cross so God would punish Himself. Jesus was nailed to those boards because only the sinless, innocent, spotless Lamb of God could defeat hell, death, and the grave. Only righteousness itself could make all things right. Only the source of life can give life.
Sometimes we look at the cross and wish it was us up there. Wish we could take Jesus’ place.
But… Jesus is looking down at you from the cross praying you’ll accept this gift. Accept the scandal. Accept the love of God who would lay down His life for you, so that you may live in the abundance and freedom of reconciliation with Him.
So, will you accept it? Will you take your mistakes, your shame, all the lies, the masks you wear, the insecurities, the trauma, the addictions, the fears,… and nail them on the cross with Jesus? Will you stumble upon this scandal? Will you be shocked by it? Offended by its power? Will you recognize you cannot achieve your own salvation? Will you confess your sin to Him? Will you put your faith in the finality of the sacrifice made on this cross?
Tonight, we are witnesses to this scandal. We stumble upon it. We are trapped by the Lamb of God, the innocence of the Lamb, and the finality of the sacrifice. We are, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “the fellowship of the crucified.
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