Good Friday: The cross tells no lies

Matthew 27

The cross. Today, we venerate the cross. It’s a strange thing we wear around our necks, put on t-shirts, and feature in our worship spaces. The symbol of our faith does not lift up the glory of the resurrection or the divinity of the incarnation but the uncertainty of Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s the thing that causes death, bursts barriers, and brings both joy and sadness. It is both/and. The cross doesn’t avoid suffering; it lives at the intersection of all that we lose and all that we gain.

            Most of all, the cross tells it as it is.

It shows us we are our mortal. You will die, it assures us. It whispers that you cannot save yourself. The cross suffers no heroes; instead, it is where heroes suffer.

So many things in our lives don’t tell us how it is. Almost everything we experience is marketed to us in a sugar-coated form, cleaned up, and exaggerated. The cross doesn’t sugarcoat a thing. Nothing about the cross is Instagram-worthy; it’s the kind of thing we would much prefer to avoid. The cross doesn’t tell you how to be a better you, and it doesn’t promise you things it cannot fulfill. Instead, it tells you that you are not enough.

The wonder of the Christian faith is that being not enough is precisely what we proclaim. We are not enough, so Jesus had to be.

            The cross tells no lies. It is the place where we admit our mortality, our brokenness, and our inability to choose rightly. We come here not because it’s the place we want to be, but because it is the only honest place left for us when all else turns out to be a lie. This is the low point of human history, and it is the most relatable for all of us. Because the cross does not gloss over true suffering. It does not minimize genocide, or starvation, or AIDS, or cancer, or car accidents, or war, or you name it. The cross takes it all; it lives in those moments, and it does not say, “Cheer up. It will get better.” Instead, it is the place where our Savior dies with us.

            Jesus didn’t come to make you better. Jesus came to die with you.

            That is the foundational principle of the Christian faith, and it’s really hard to say out loud, because it will never go well on a Hallmark card. The Christian faith is not a big comeback story. Jesus was not down 41-0 with 2 minutes left in the 4^th quarter and made an impossible. No, for Jesus it was game over. Instead of a comeback story, the cross is the pivot point on which the universe spins around, and nothing is as it seems. Death meet new life. Sadness meet joy. This is what happens at the cross. It is a weight that pulls us into the depths of the human experience, because God has gone their first.

            Unlike every other faith tradition I know of, the Christian faith is proved not in terms of glory but in terms of suffering. To suffer is to be human, and that’s where God promises to meet us. Today is good not because it is painless. It is as painful as you can imagine. No, today is good, because it’s the day—above all other days—that is completely honest. The only one. Because the cross tells no lies; it says, “You sinner, come and die.” And that’s a downer; it has to be.

            Memento mori, says the cross. Remember that you will die. And, yet, this is not the last word. The Christian faith takes us not only to the cross but through it; not only to death but through it. Jesus isn’t just waiting on the other side; he’s gone there first. Not only is the cross the only thing willing to tell you how it is, it is also unavoidable, which means you are being pulled toward suffering and death not without reason.

            Jesus meets you there with a promise of something more. You can’t understand the power of Easter without the crucifixion. We try. People avoid this day like the plague. They just don’t know how to deal with it, and it’s too bad for them, because Easter will never mean what it does without the cross. And you can’t fake it—you can’t have only one or the other. The cross gives Easter it’s weight, and it the source of its glory.

Every statement we make, and every stance we take, should honor this. We should understand the depths of suffering in the world, because the cross is not just some theoretical principle. It is there for real world problems that we’ve got, and others have got—perhaps even worse than us. Every belief we hold should stand up to the darkest night, because it is built on a foundation of a God who has been there first. And every path that leads us through life should be honest enough to know where it ends.

Each of us awaits our own cross. And only then, when we have admitted our own brokenness and insufficiency, will we meet the spark of a new day and what comes next.