Saturday, March 7, 1998

Cross losing its true meaning in today's society

By DR. E. RICHARD CHAFFIN

It has become fashionable these days to wear crosses, not necessarily as a sign of faith but as a trendy accessory. Crosses are hip now.

An anecdote someone recently shared with me tells of an encounter at a department store jewelry counter. The customer says she is interested in buying a cross, to which the sales clerk replies: "Do you want a plain one, or one with the little man on it?"

Take a moment to consider what the cross meant in Jesus' day. A hot topic these days is crime and punishment. How do we attempt to deter violence? The death penalty has been around for ages, and the Roman Empire in the time of Tiberius took it mightly seriously.

There wasn't a hot debate about lethal injection or other humane methods of putting someone to death. The Romans wanted execution to be excruciatingly painful and as public as possible. Thus, we find the Roman practice of death by crucifixion.

We often turn away from the horror of the cross. Sometimes we want to take encouragement from the fact that Christ died for us but skip over the messy details. This brief account, based on the gospels of Matthew and John, provides a sense of Jesus' ordeal.

During the trial before Caiaphas, the priests "spit in his face and struck him with their fists." Then "they bound him" and sent him to Pilate, who had him flogged; the usual procedure was to tie the criminal's hands to a pillar, strip the upper body and deliver up to 40 blows with a three-pronged whip.

Then, "the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head," after which "they took a staff and struck him on the head, again and again."

Weakened from the beatings he had received, Jesus was unable to carry his cross the whole distance to Calvary, as was customary, so an onlooker named Simon of Cyrene was pressed into duty by the soldiers.

Christ was then affixed to the cross by having large nails driven through his wrists and into the wood. In crucifixions, death came by suffocation as the weight of the victim made breathing progressively more difficult as they lost strength. It took six hours for Jesus to die.

Clearly, the solemnity of the cross is increasingly lost upon today's society. As Christians, we must never lose sight of the true meaning of the crucifixion.

It reminds us that the grace we stand in did not come cheap. JesusChrist paid a huge price for our salvation. All it will cost us is our pride and self-will. Sometimes it seems to us this is too great a price.

The extraordinary power of the cross is that no matter where we've been or how far we've wandered, we can stand in God's presence -- just as we are.

It serves as the bridge between a broken people and a holy God. When we place our faith in the power of Christ's death and resurrection, we then can cross that bridge into eternal life and peace with God.

(Dr. E. Richard Chaffin is pastor First United Methodist Church in Cross Plains.)