My children love the library. They may have managed more trips to the library in their combined 7 years of life than I’ve had in nearly 5 times that lifespan. They should have loyalty cards not just library cards – the “free babyccino with every 10th visit” campaign is about to launch.
Recently, my kids took out a collection of Easter-themed children’s books and it makes for some remarkable reading. There are maniacal Easter bunnies running chocolate factories to the chagrin of the local chicken population. Then there’s the friendly superhero-spud, ‘SuperTato’, outsmarting a pernicious pea with an egg-thieving agenda. Sure makes for entertaining reading! I love a good story. What about you?
Easter has a story to tell, but it’s not about bouncing bunnies and egg extravaganzas. In fact, I think Easter is the most misunderstood moment in our calendar. For many, Easter brings to mind a well-needed holiday, eating too much chocolate and, if we’re lucky, a little less rain. Compare this to Christmas, for example. Most people have some vague recollections of what Christmas is about. If they look past the trimmings and trappings, they remember the virgin mother leaning over the manger with the baby wrapped neatly within. But at Easter, there are no primary school re-enactments, no dressing up and singing carols of little donkeys, no quiz questions about how many wise men brought gifts. Easter is misunderstood. This was brought home to me recently when a colleague remarked that they didn’t realise Easter was about Jesus at all; they thought it was just the name of the springtime school holiday and they were amazed to hear that Easter actually celebrates Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is not something in the consciousness of much of the world around us. Yet, Easter has a story to tell and there isn’t one greater.
Easter is a time to remember and consider the historical fact of Jesus’ death and resurrection. This very same Jesus – who was born a baby in Bethlehem, the one for whom the angels sang, the one for whom the bells of Heaven rang (if there are bells that is), the boy born the saviour of the world – miraculously came as God in the flesh and healed the sick, lifted the downtrodden, mended the broken, opened blind eyes and showed us what mankind was designed to be in every way. This Jesus performed His saving work by suffering under Roman crucifixion and being buried in a cavernous tomb. What juxtaposition, what humiliation. These are not scenes to be found on greeting cards or accompanied by mince pies. This Easter, we look beyond the bunnies and bank holidays and see the reality of God in the flesh hung on a cross and raised from the dead. This Good Friday, we consider the reality of Jesus’ death on the cross and all that it signifies for us who have put our trust and hope in Him.
This cross of Christ shows me His love and His victory, His grace and His righteousness, His beauty and His power. As I have been considering the cross of Christ this Good Friday, it is the humility of Christ and the Cross that I find especially impactful. The cross shows me something astounding about God: that He was willing to be humiliated and brought low for my sake.
Matthew Hosier said this about the humility of the cross:
“Easter is an intrusion upon our self-contained, self-confident lives. The image of a bloody saviour suspended on a cross interrupts our safe and sanitized existence. It is an offence, that image; and an offence that this is how the saviour appears. He doesn’t look like one of us. He looks like someone we’d never want to be, someone we’d rather pretend wasn’t there. He doesn’t look like a healthy and wealthy Westerner. Yet it is this very saviour who we are to imitate if we are to find true life. That, like him, we are to be generous, not selfish. That, like him, we are to be humble, not proud. That, like him, we are to trust in God, not in our own resources.”
Who among us could have imagined God’s strategy in Christ’s cross? God incarnate, God among us, come to save us from ourselves. To save us from our evil intentions, our selfish actions, our broken relationships, our crooked values, our prideful wills. Would He come with blinding glory? Would He come as a persuasive politician? Would He come as an overpowering invader? No. Instead, humble of heart He came. “He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.” (Phil 2:5-8 MSG).
Oh, what a Saviour!
This Good Friday let’s take the opportunity to survey the humility of the cross. Take a long look at our God who willingly gave His life for our ransom. Where the stories around us would take our gaze away from the reality of that cross, we look to Him there. We bow our knees at the feet of the one crucified: the innocent who was given our guilt, the righteous who was given our sin, the pure who was given our filth, the life who was given our death, the lover who was given our hate… here is the humility of the cross. Here I must acknowledge my need of such a saviour. It is the man, Jesus, on the cross that has conquered me – not by force or persuasion or glory – but by His incomparable love demonstrated in the humility of the cross. I pray each of us would follow that humble, generous, self-sacrificial way as we look to Jesus and consider all that it means that He died for us.
Selah: pause and think about this.
