Since most modern hearers are largely unaware of that, we must be intentional in making what has become so familiar strange again, helping them recover the scandal of the cross (1Cor. 1:23). Here’s how Fleming Rutledge does that in one of her sermons:
Not even the celebrated film by Mel Gibson, The Passion of the Christ, can convey the full ghastliness of crucifixion to a modern audience. We don’t understand it because we have never seen anything like it in the flesh. The situation was very different in New Testament times…. Everyone knew what it looked like, smelled like, sounded like – the horrific sight of completely naked men in agony, the smell and sight of their bodily functions taking place in full view of all, the sounds of their groans and labored breathing going on for hours and, in some cases, for days. Perhaps worst of all is the fact that no one cared.
We tend to associate the horror of crucifixion with agonizing physical pain – what Mel Gibson so vividly portrayed in his film. That was a major dimension, and it’s no accident that our English word excruciating is derived from crux, the Latin word for “cross.” Yet despite the unbearable physical agony, people in Roman times dreaded the shame associated with crucifixion even more. Since crucifixion was reserved for the dregs of society, outcasts, slaves, and common criminals, the fact that one was crucified defined him or her as a miserable, wretched being that didn’t deserve to exist. By pinning them up like insects, crucifixion was deliberately intended to display and humiliate its victims. (From Give Them Christ by Stephen Seamands, pg. 56-57)
While the electric chair and the syringe have replaced it as an instrument of the death penalty, the reality of the cross is still around. We live with "little crucifixions" every day: dying by violence, religious and racial discrimination, the agony of the poor. So much of the world's suffering is rooted in human failure: crimes of passion or greed, wars resulting from lust for power and domination, crooked governments, social injustices, humanity scourged by twisted motives. In the biblical view the taproot of it all lies in human sin, a deep-seated egocentricity, a bondage to selfishness that separates us from God, from others, and from wholeness. However distant in time, we know instinctively the way of the cross. A profound transaction took place on Golgotha that day. There have been various theories advanced to explain that transaction. The great preacher William Quick has written, “Simply put, God revealed in Christ's death His love for us and reconciled us to our Maker. Paul Tillich said, ‘The cross is the central manifestation of God's participation in the suffering of the world.’ The Apostle Paul said, ‘He gave Himself a ransom for all.’ Perhaps Jesus put it best of all, ‘greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down His life for his friends’” (“The Cross and the Crap Game”, Signs of Our Times, William K. Quick, pp. 74-5). However we come to this week called Holy, it is to the cross we march. Only through the cross can we arrive at the joy of Easter morning. I absolutely love the way the great hymnist John Bowring puts it:In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time; All the light of sacred story gathers round its head subline.
When the woes of life o’re take me, hopes deceive, and fears annoy, Never shall the cross forsake me. Lo! It glows with peace and joy.” (“In The Cross of Christ I Glory, Hymn No. 295, verses 1 & 2, The United Methodist Hymnal; words by Jon Bowring, 1825)
