Today is Palm Sunday and as we enter the final week of Jesus’s life and focus on His death and ultimately on His resurrection, we are aware that we are entering a mystery we can never fully comprehend. The fact that Jesus chose to suffer and die for the sins of the world is at the very heart of the gospel as we saw on Thursday; we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling-block for Jews and foolishness for Gentiles, but Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24). Nonetheless, it is only as we embrace the paradox of God that we can enter in to salvation; as Eugene Peterson comments ‘death and glory do not seem to be natural bedfellows. But in Jesus they are.’ (‘The Word Made Flesh’, P 218)
This week, we will focus our gaze specifically on the cross and on the words that Jesus uttered on the cross. The ‘seven words from the cross‘ of Jesus are often preached about and commented on, for every word that Jesus uttered helps us to see the Father heart of God more clearly and bring life and truth to our lives. As we pray, it’s good to have the prayers of Jesus to guide us and lead us. It’s also notable that although the death of Christ is unique in bringing salvation to the whole world, He does require His disciples to take up their cross daily, deny themselves and die to self in order to be able to follow Him. (Matt 16:24) Rom 6:5-11 makes it clear that we have to enter into His death in order to be able to enter into His life. ‘Death is a nonnegotiable element in being a human creature,’ Eugene Peterson writes. ‘It is also nonnegotiable in being a follower of Jesus.’ (ibid., P 242) Most of us squirm at this thought. Doctors and society as a whole do their best to keep physical death at bay; we believe that if we follow this diet or do that exercise, we can postpone the inevitable. Many disciples are interested only in success and victory, rather like the crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with great enthusiasm, but who were unprepared for a Messiah who would die within the week. We have to understand that paradox is at the very heart of the gospel, that the way to life inevitably must pass through death.
‘Cross and resurrection are the south and north poles, true gospel polarities of a single, undivided, salvation world,‘ Eugene Peterson goes on to say (ibid. , P 242-3). As we contemplate the prayers of Jesus on the cross, we are reminded that His obedience even to the shame and suffering of the cross led to joy. (Heb 12:1-3) That, too, will always be the case.