Stuck At The Cross

UPDATING OUR FAVORITE IMAGE OF JESUS

BY PERRY C. BROWN

There are things and people we prefer to see as they were, not as they are now. We give the past such preference that it dominates the realities of today. My father took hundreds of pictures of our family growing up. In them I see myself and my sister missing front teeth, my parents active and healthy, our extended family gathering at a reunion in a hot park in July under massive shade trees. Everyone in those

pictures has changed. Some have aged, and some have died. Yet those frozen images in my dusty photo albums still predominate.

And truthfully, the past may be where we’d remain given the choice. The good old days can be romanticized and their best memories skimmed off and pasted in our scrapbooks. Sure, we have painful memories, but they are not what we’d prefer to remember. Even if the good times are not plenteous, they tend to surface more readily and repeatedly.

In a strange twist on that truth, I wonder if we have done something similar with Jesus. I wonder if we have become stuck at the cross. We return to the cross again and again not because it is pleasant, but because it is so wondrously captivating.

But if we are going to fix a picture of Jesus in our minds, would not Jesus on the cross be the ultimate image of Him? After all, it almost instinctively seems that the battered and bloody body of Jesus horrifically nailed to a cross for my sake and for my sins should predominate. I admit that the pathos of that scene readily brings me to my knees emotionally and spiritually. And isn’t that pathos the heart of

true worship? That’s why some denominations intentionally nail Jesus on His cross front and center in their sanctuaries.

To this day I have Christian friends who tear up at the mention of the film “The Passion of

the Christ” precisely for this reason. Jesus on the cross has become the predominant image

in their worship.

Memory is a gifted photographer but a poor journalist. It captures a moment brilliantly, but it often forgets to report what happened next. That’s true of both family photo albums and our mind’s eye picture of Christ. There is much more to both stories. And in the story of Christ the New Testament does not leave Him on the cross, nor in the tomb, nor resurrected and appearing to astonished disciples, nor even ascending in the clouds to the Father’s right hand in heaven. He is now exalted and glorified, a spectacle that floored even the beloved Apostle John:

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampshades, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a f lame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of

many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died , and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.” (Revelation 1:12-18)

This is Scripture’s final portrait of Christ before His return, yet it is probably not readily encouraged as the focal point of our contemporary worship. The One who died for our sins now reigns with all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). He holds “the keys of Death and Hades.” This is not merely

the Christ who once suffered for us. This is the Christ who reigns over us today.

The Apostle Paul’s preaching centered on “Christ and Him crucified,” but it never got stuck there. He repeatedly reminds us that “if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). Perhaps that is because he received a clear vision of who Christ is right now (2 Corinthians 12:1-11) and he never recovered from it.

I do not wish to suggest that being stuck at the cross is entirely wrong, just that it is not entirely current. The pathos of the cross may certainly elicit worship, but I silently wonder if we are looking at Jesus through an outdated lens. How would our worship change if the exalted and glorified Jesus of heaven were in view rather than the bloodied and crucified Jesus of Calvary?

Looking back through my old photo albums, I realized something. Many of those photographs were taken on long road trips through the American West. The Grand Canyon wasn’t where we lived. It wasn’t even where we were headed. It was one magnificent stop along the way. Had we pitched our tent there, we would never have seen Yosemite or the tower ing redwoods that awaited us farther west.

Everything leading up to the cross pointed to Calvary. Everything afterward points beyond it to the empty tomb, the ascension, and finally to the throne, where the Lamb who was slain now reigns in glory. We need never leave the cross behind. But neither should we stop there.