THE CRUCIFIXION
Today is my third and final reflection on picking up our daily crosses. I’d like to look at how Jesus’s prayer life and what He taught manifested itself at the time of His crucifixion.
First He went to the Garden of Gethsamane to pray and He separated Himself from His disciples so that He could PRAY QUIETLY ALONE. “Then Jesus went with His disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and He said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray” (Matthew 26:36). This is in line with His teaching about praying alone in quiet places. At Gethsamane we see He was modeling what He taught when we recall He had previously said, “When you pray go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6) Because Jesus always modeled what he taught, He must have modeled this completely at Calvary as well.
When He said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” (Luke 23:34), we see He forgave just as He taught on countless occasions.
Knowing He always lived what He taught, we can trust He had to have given thanks and believed as well. Last week we reflected on Jesus teaching the importance of giving thanks and believing our prayers have been heard and answered. He, therefore, had to know that in spite of what it looked like, He would conquer death. This belief could only have been the result of much prayer and years of believing that He would conquer it…and He did. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” (John 19:30), He knew that all He believed that had to be accomplished in order for us to be saved had been completed even though His death looked like the opposite. Three days later He rose. His prayers were answered. He won. He had the relationship, and in growing closer to the Father, He came to know His will and greatly desired to conquer death. He prayed, trusted, forgave, hoped and believed. Those are the lessons of how we should act when we carry our crosses. Let’s not embrace fear like we so often think of the cross as being, but instead take on a view that it will make us conquerors. “In all things we have complete victory through Him who loved us!” (Rom 8:37).
Some may question this because they know that Jesus asked that the cup be taken from Him. “Father,’ he prayed, ‘My Father! All things are possible for You. Take this cup of suffering away from Me. Not what I want, but what You want” (Mark 14:35-36). Wanting the suffering to be taken away did not mean He wanted to drop His mission. How often do parents express that a situation they find themselves going through is not what they signed up for? How many times do they say if they had known, they wouldn’t have signed up? The truth is they would have. They greatly love their children and would go through anything for them. When a great desire is in our heart, it is best not to know all that will be required to achieve it. At the foot of the mountain, we enthusiastically say yes to being a parent. Knowing what we may encounter on the path going up the mountain may prevent us from even trying. When the cross comes, we may want it to be taken away, but the bottom line is we would never want it if it meant a door of harm to our children would be open. Love sacrifices and the cross teaches us. “No greater has a man that He lays down his life for a friend” (John 15:13) is foundational to being able to act as conquerors when carrying a cross. We know that as hard as things can get, when we choose poorly, God always takes free will and uses it for good. Trust in that truth and how sacrificial love plays into it is what Jesus modeled. He may have wanted the suffering to stop, but not His sacrificial mission of love. The desire to save us was there. It was being realized. He loved us. He would see it through if that was how the mission was to be a success because He knew His Father ultimately uses all bad for good.
Adding to Jesus’s ability to see it through was the added comfort in being able to remember when His Father intervened when He was in Nazareth and some in the community wanted to kill Him. “When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were filled with anger. They rose up, dragged Jesus out of town, and took Him to the top of the hill on which the town was built. They meant to throw Him over the cliff, but He walked through the middle of the crowd and went His way. (Luke 4:28-30). It was not His time to battle against and conquer death. If Good Friday was not the time or means by which He would do battle, He knew the Father would turn it around and intervene just as before. He had prepared for this in so many different ways because HE HAD A RELATIONSHIP THAT WAS STRONG DUE TO HIS PRAYER LIFE. It didn’t just happen. He worked at the relationship and that made Him free to love and conquer.
Some may say that their cross came out of left field had had nothing to do with their purpose. I would argue that in some ways they always do because we are where we are at any given moment because of our choices that are made because of who we are. Simon of Cyrene is an example of this. Scripture tells us, “The soldiers led Jesus away, and as they were going, they met a man from Cyrene named Simon who was coming into the city from the country. They seized him, put the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus” (Luke 23:26). It is said that Simon was coming from the country or fields. Perhaps he worked there and was heading home. His home and his way of making a living all brought him to where he was at that time. It is also said that he and his family converted to Christianity. God wins. Did Simon pray and believe? Perhaps he prayed for the salvation of his family. He received it through a cross that was unexpected, but He was a conqueror in Christ Jesus. In all crosses, we are given the opportunity to be victors.
Jesus gave us the formula. Pray so as to be close to God the Father and believe. We know in our mission/vocation, it will be hard, but we know that “in all things God works for good with those who love Him, those whom He has called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28).
What about death? While we can learn much from Jesus when those difficult times come, we can also see that the crucifixion showed us the pain of the cross at death. While we may not die on a cross, we often find that at death the cross comes in the form of a bed we cannot get up from when our mission is complete. In the end, it is not death, but the ultimate victorious conquest. It is that hope that always gets us through. On the other side of the cross is a victory for those who believe. While this is true of all crosses because they present us with the opportunity to lose our life in some way so it can be saved, it is never more powerfully seen as when we die and go to Heaven.
How different we would be if we looked at the cross through the lens of hope, of believing what we pray for is being accomplished and that good will be the fruit. How different it would be if we saw ourselves, not as victims, but as conquerors filled with love just as Jesus was even while experiencing unimaginable pain. This can only happen by seeing the cross not as a weapon of defeat to be feared, but as an instrument that brings us to our form of a wonderful resurrection because with each cross we know that “the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us” (Rom 18:8).
PRAYERFULLY REFLECT ON THE FOLLOWING:.
Are there crosses in your life now that you can embrace as Jesus did by being close to the Father, trusting, believing and hoping? Can you see that sacrificial love is foundational to it in some way? Not seeing it does not mean it isn’t somehow a means to desire you have based on love. If you cannot see the sacrificial love behind it, offer the cross up as a prayer. In that way you will make what you cannot see, seen.
Can you see the good that has come out of past crosses? Did it ever turn out that a cross was the means to getting a past prayer answered? In looking back, can you see former crosses can now be seen as a means to give you courage and strength for one you may be experiencing now?
Last week we reflected in the practice of giving thanks to God in advance for answering your prayers. Have you been practicing that? Are you living as if your prayers have already been answered or are you living in fear and worry? How do you think this practice may have helped Jesus in leading up to the cross and experiencing the crucifixion? In light of this prayer practice, how do you think Jesus felt about all His thankfulness and believing being manifested at His resurrection?
Prayerfully reflect on the scriptures cited above and bring in any cross you may be carrying currently. Talk to Jesus about these.