Freedom in Lent - Day 13

There are some things that just don’t make much sense. Water doesn’t become wine, bread and fish don’t suddenly multiply, the lame don’t jump up and walk. And most certainly, dead people stay dead, especially those who experience the death of crucifixion! And yet, where Jesus is involved, things that don’t make much sense, happen!

In the early years of the Jesus Movement, followers didn’t wear crosses around their necks or hang them in places they worshipped. To be crucified was to be executed as a common criminal. Worse still, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, cursed was the one who hung on the wood of a cross. So, to proclaim “Christ crucified” was to proclaim something that didn’t make sense. It was indeed something foolish or offensive. Yet, Paul said otherwise to the church in Corinth. Jesus faced the worst the world had to offer, breaking through death itself, and leaving an empty tomb behind as witness to his glorious resurrection. 

Some things just don’t make much sense. Friends, the cross is one of them. Yet, the cross stands now and forever that it is God, not injustice, not suffering, not even death, that has the final word.

1 Corinthians 1:18-21

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.