3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in ac-cordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
-I Corinthians 15:3, 4-
After a devastating typhoon battered Macao in 1825, John Browring, the governor of Hongkong, came to inspect the damage. He found building, smashed, houses devastated and the territory in ruins. All that remained of the cathedral which bore the brunt of the storm was façade, with the cross standing tall on its pin-nacle.
This reminds me after the tornado that occurred some many years ago in Parkersburg, Iowa. Two days after the tornado, Earlham Methodist Church Mission Team decided to do volunteer cleanup work in the area. As we entered the devastated area, we noticed that the only structure standing up was the church’s cross. It was standing in the middle of ruined and devastated houses including the church building.
Nothing is more central to all of Christianity than the Cross.
The Cross represents the best and the worst of humanity because you cannot look at the Cross without realizing that all of us have a collective responsibility for what happened, and all of us can find there redemp-tion and forgiveness because of God’s sacrifice. No wonder, churches the world over are topped with crosses.
Some of you attend Good Friday services, but some of you are so busy that you hardly have time to reflect what is good about the day, other than a weekend follows. May I encourage you to stop whatever you are doing and read the account of the Crucifixion in Luke 23 as though you were reading it for the first time. Read on as the hopes and dreams of Jesus’ disciples die when they place the bruised and broken body in a new tomb. Read the final chapter of Luke’s gospel as the light of dawn on Sunday morning shines into an empty tomb, proving that the body is not in a grave but that He is risen.
The story is so simple that it could never been fabricated. The One who died came back to life and forever changed the destinies of men and women. Christmas is wonderful, exciting and warm, but the event of the Cross and Easter are somber and meaningful. There is no person whose life is not enriched by the knowledge that life is not an endless grind, a machine-like existence, but every person is endowed with the breath of God and can find forgiveness and the hope of tomorrow.
Our culture substitutes Santa Claus for the manger, tries to ignore the Cross, and substitute the Easter bunny for the empty tomb. However, every graveyard, and every obituary is a reminder that Good Friday and the Resurrection on Easter morning give us life and hope beyond death.
John Browring, the Governor of Hongkong, saw the cross atop the one wall remaining of that battered cathedral, and was moved to write what is now a well-known hymn.
“In the Cross of Christ I glory,
towering o’er the wrecks of time.”
May it ever be!
NOTE: Now the Old Cathedral was rebuilt-a testimony to the indominable truth that the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church.
Pastor Gideon