[From Where God Sits] Familiar But Oblivious

[Herb Shaffer]

We are so familiar and yet so oblivious.

We can recite the circumstances and meaning but we fail to comprehend the depth of their significance.

We attend events and hear recitations but we are ignorant of the implications.

We have crosses around our necks, in our ears, on our key chains, on our bumpers and various other spots but we do not pause to consider the horror of the reference. Would you wear an electric chair around your neck? Would you put little lethal injection syringes? Or hang nooses in the sanctuary of your congregation? Or put a picture of a guillotine on your bumper?

We trivialize our sin by committing sin carelessly knowing that we are forgiven, treating the death of Jesus as marginally significant.

We even purchase chocolate crosses, place them into children’s Easter baskets along with eggs purportedly delivered by a furry mammal. We bite into the representation of a death instrument and savor the flavor rather than savoring the forgiveness and vowing to live up to Jesus’ death.

We are so familiar and yet so oblivious.

Please don’t read these words as blame. How can we not live in this culture without being very familiar with the symbols of the Passion Week? They are everywhere. But “familiarity breeds contempt” is the adage. When we see something a great deal we stop respecting it. It’s just the way we are.

But DO read these words as a challenge to change that! To bring us to the depth of appreciation requires deliberate effort. And Jesus deserves that.

Good Friday was not good. It was only made good by what Jesus did there and on Easter.

The cross was not good, but a cruel, torturous instrument of death. We sing about it, see a beautiful icon while in worship, we speak of it freely - and become so familiar that we are oblivious. It was only made good by Jesus’ work there.

Sin is not trivial. The violence of Jesus’ beatings and death reveal the brutality of our sin against God.

Why did the cross have to be so awful? Because of the awfulness of our disobedience to God, our sin. The price of our forgiveness could not be cheap because sin had turned this world completely upside down.

I CHALLENGE YOU to get a fresh glimpse of the cross this week. Watch “The Passion of the Christ,” or read an analysis of Jesus’ experience of suffering. Here are just a couple of the many available:
http://www.csun.edu/~hbeng151/icc/studies/account.html
http://www.thecross-photo.com/Dr_C._Truman_Davis_Analyzes_the_Crucifixion.htm

Is it wrong to have crosses all around us? Not if we are living the transformation that Christ died there to make. Not if we are reflections of the revolutionizing power grace, forgiveness, mercy, reconciliation and surrender that Jesus’ suffering released. Not if we wear them in awe of Christ rather than because they are nice. There was NOTHING nice about the cross!!

It IS WRONG to take Jesus’ work for granted. As Scripture says:

“How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?” Hebrews 10:29 (NIV)

Between now and Easter, would you join me in taking time to contemplate Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, mocking, beatings and crucifixion -- and how our sin sent Him there. THEN we will truly celebrate Easter!

Boldly, Herb

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Posted By Herb Shaffer to From Where God Sits at 4/05/2012 11:00:00 AM