An Inconvenient Cross: Proclaiming Christ Crucified

INTRODUCTION

These chapters had their origin in sermons preached on Communion Sunday mornings at Park Avenue. The Scripture texts which follow the chapter titles have been truncated for the sake of brevity. Prior to the preaching much more Scripture is read. I have kept as close to the original oral nature of the sermon as is possible in writing. I want to write to be heard not just read. Whether I have succeeded, only you, the reader, can tell.

George Whitefield, the eighteenth-century passionate evangelist of the First Great Awakening, was once encouraged to permit his sermons to be published. He had no objection, he intimated, as long as the lightning, the thunder, and the rainbow were also printed. He had a point. The lightning, the thunder, and the rainbow that one experiences in the preaching event can’t easily be achieved in print. But, I pray that you will hear something other than just the words I have written. One of my prayers is that the Holy Spirit will enable me to get the message out with the same passion as I felt it coming in. I desire you to hear the voice of the One who is present in all true preaching even though unseen. The message itself and that Presence are always more important than the messenger and the words uttered in fear and trembling.

The burden I sense as a pastor is the fact that people need the good news about Jesus. Every Sunday I preach to people who are between the cradle and the grave. On any given Sunday there will be those who carry heavy loads: students with serious God questions, parents with a severe family crisis to manage, couples whose marriages are in jeopardy, addicts under bondage to substance abuse, executives whose careers are about to crumble, and many who are just a paycheck or two away from bankruptcy. Add to this the pain of those who have just received the news that they are dying. Preaching is serious business. As Barbara Brown Taylor once said of the people in the pew, They may be the only ones in the house who know that the hearing of the gospel is a matter of life and death. All these realities are great challenges to faith but, also, these challenges are the contexts in which faith is really needed and where faith paradoxically makes the most sense.

May I add, what is needed is not more popular psychology but more good news about the cross. I deplore the empty moralism that characterizes much contemporary preaching. We don’t need louder moral exhortation; we need conversion. I want to proclaim the core elements in the gospel, not secondary issues on the periphery of culture. The gospel addresses something deeper than our felt needs. I am aware that many Christians are weak and immature. Many live carelessly and bring disrespect to the faith. They fail to honour God with their full devotion. It is sad to see. But I am convinced that mere moral exhortation, simply reaffirming traditional values and holiness codes, will not change the situation in the long term. We need to go back to the gospel. Martin Luther, the great reformer, once said, Others reform life; I reform doctrine. He knew that moralism was not the key to church renewal; the gospel was and is. So I go back to Paul’s exhortation in 1 Corinthians 1:23, to preach Christ crucified. I seek to proclaim Jesus as crucified for us. I want to follow Paul’s lead and know nothing except Christ and the cross.

I know this focus is narrow. Some Christian groups marginalize the cross. Not many theologians are atonement-focused today. Many prefer to emphasize the doctrine of the incarnation or highlight the social or political implications of the gospel. Others express more interest in personal religious experiences. But, I am in good company. In addition to the writers of the New Testament, for whom the cross is central, I could add modern writers such as John R. W. Stott, Leon Morris, and Donald G. Bloesch, whose ideas have helped shape my thinking in many ways. There are others also who believe the cross is central to our Lord’s understanding of his mission and the preaching of the early Christians. However, I am not writing for the classroom so I will leave formal discussions of theologians for another day.

Among the good company I would include you. You picked up this book. Maybe it was the title that caught your attention. I suspect it was the word cross. Maybe you sense the need to hear about it again. Maybe for you, as for me, it is an old familiar tune that brings a feeling of comfort about the good news that the cross was something done for us and in us. Maybe you are aware of the gratitude that wells up in your heart because of the greatness of the gospel of the free grace of God in Christ. Maybe you are simply tired of being preached at and loaded down with guilt. Maybe you recall that the cross is where you can lay your burdens down. I welcome you. I pray that you will experience freedom from guilt so that you may serve the Lord with a new sense of joy and gratitude. Preaching on the cross has done that for me and I desire to stay close to the cross. I was challenged to do this early in my ministry.

In July 1981 I was standing in line in a bank in Grand Falls, Newfoundland. I turned and saw an elderly minister in a grey suit, black shirt, and clerical collar. He was standing directly behind me and, as he looked tired, I asked him to go ahead of me. He did, saying, Thank you, young man, and we fell into a brief conversation. Rev. John Posno was getting ready to go to New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, to retire from the Presbyterian ministry. Like any young minister would, I asked him what he was going to do with his books. We laughed when he told me someone was ahead of me in line for his books.

He waited for me to finish my banking and we left the bank together. I told him I had just received an appointment to teach at Eastern Pentecostal Bible College in Peterborough, Ontario. This college has since been moved to Toronto and renamed Master’s College & Seminary. As we were standing at the light waiting to cross High Street, this humble man of God asked, May I pray for you? Let’s pray together. And laying his hands on my shoulders, in the bright sunlight of that hot July afternoon, John Posno prayed for me. He prayed for an anointing upon my ministry. He prayed for God’s blessing upon me and he urged me to remain faithful to preach the cross of Christ as the atonement for the sins of the world. He made me promise that I would.

That day, John Posno made me aware of the mysteries of the fellowship of the Spirit and the communion of saints. His prayer lifted me up so that I could see a broader, much grander view of the church. Suddenly the concept of the unity of believers in Christ took on a whole new meaning. Preach the cross, he said. Don’t move very far from Calvary.

I trust that, in my ministry and in this book, I have stayed close to the cross. It was a long time ago but I have never forgotten that little Presbyterian preacher and his challenge to me. He has been in heaven now for quite some time but when I see him I intend to say, Brother John, I kept my promise.

1

SEEING JESUS FROM A TREE

Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.

Luke 19:9-10 TNIV

Recently, as I was on my way to the funeral of a friend’s father, I passed through a town where I had lived between the ages of eight and twelve. I stopped at the old parsonage where I once lived and walked to the back of the property where a brook ran. I used to play there. Moses’ Brook is overgrown now and appeared much smaller than it did when I was a boy. Just across the brook was a large birch tree. Its limbs are now old and brittle. Some of its branches had been broken off. I used to climb the tree when it was young. I used to climb up high and sway back and forth. I always imagined that maybe Zacchaeus climbed a tree like that to see Jesus. I was always shorter than my classmates and found comfort in knowing that there was one short person in the Bible.

I loved this story of the short man who saw Jesus from a tree and, one day, I actually went to Jericho where this story happened. While there, I was reminded of a Sunday school chorus we used to sing:

Zacchaeus was a wee little man

And a wee little man was he

He climbed up in a sycamore tree

For the Lord he wanted to see

And as the Savior passed that way

He looked up in that tree

And He said, "Zacchaeus, you come down!

For I’m going to your house today.

For I’m going to your house to stay."

I like the story of Zacchaeus in Luke. The plot is simple: Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. What hindered him? He had inner personal struggles; he was short and his reputation was tarnished. There was the outside situational stuff of the crowd hindering him. What did he do about it? He ran ahead of the crowd and climbed higher than the crowd. He wanted to see Jesus. Jesus wanted to see Zacchaeus. What did Jesus do? He noticed Zacchaeus and spoke to him. He invited him to come down. Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’s house. Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus gladly. What did the crowd want? They wanted an exclusive Jesus. They all muttered, He has gone to be a guest of a ‘sinner’ (Luke 19:7). How did Zacchaeus react? He was not intimidated by the crowd. He stood up. He pledged to reform as a proof of the genuine encounter with Jesus. Note that Zacchaeus met Jesus before his promise to reform his life. How did Jesus respond? With an affirmation of salvation. Note the phrase Son of Abraham. A sinner is proclaimed as part of God’s family and God’s people.

The outline is simple, isn’t it? Jesus was intentional in his involvement with those people thought of as outsiders—as sinners. What is the application? It’s there in the text! Luke wants us to know the significance of the story. Its application is in the last words of Jesus, addressed to the muttering crowd: For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).

What application needs to be made now? The same one! There are still those people who want their own exclusive Jesus. We talk so much about Jesus as our personal Saviour—a phrase that does not occur in the Bible! We’ve even been known to mutter when others spend time with or go to places where sinners are. Note that the word sinners is often used to denote the attitude of those religious types towards those on the outside of their perceived circle. We must be intentional in our interaction with the people that our traditional religious types think of as sinners.

A story is told of a reporter on the West Bank in Israel. A suicide bomber had detonated an explosive and everyone panicked. Hysteria reigned. Then a soldier, holding a little child in his arms, ran up to the reporter. He begged the reporter to use the press vehicle to take the little girl to the hospital. Only a press vehicle could get through the security lines. So the reporter agreed and they went to the hospital. The child underwent surgery while the reporter and the soldier waited patiently. Finally the doctor arrived to inform them that the little girl had died. The soldier broke into tears and the reporter tried to comfort him. I don’t know what to say, he said. It must be awful losing your child. The man replied, It was not my child. I am an Israeli; she is a Palestinian. But there comes a time when we must realize that every child is a daughter or a son.

That’s what Jesus tries to get us to see. Those on the margins need to be brought in. The people on the highways and the byways need to be invited to the banquet. The destitute, the sinners, need to be brought near.

I don’t know how Zacchaeus heard about Jesus. Maybe someone told him. Maybe he had overheard a conversation. It doesn’t matter. He is curious and intrigued enough by what he has heard to do something about it.

Because he was short, Zacchaeus could have gone to the head of the crowd and stood with the children. Children get the front row at parades. But, Zacchaeus was an adult and a tax-collector. Tax-collecting was a notorious trade. Zacchaeus had become rich by cheating people. You don’t want to be in front of people you may have cheated— especially in a crowd! You don’t want to expose your back to those you may have