Approaching Easter: Where Love and Sorrow MeetScot Bower - 19 Apr 2011
When I survey the wondrous cross...
What do you see when you look at the cross?
A place of suffering and humiliation? That’s what the Romans designed it to be.
A place of shame and exclusion? That was what the Jewish council hoped it would become.
Or do you see a place of hope and freedom? A place where love fought our battle and triumphed for all time. A place that says: It. Is. Finished
I am with you
Some years ago my family travelled with some good friends through North-eastern Europe. We were driving 2 battered old campervans around the Baltic Sea in order to pray and listen to the whisper of God for this corner of our continent, much of which had been part of the communist block. What was He saying? What was He doing?
We met with friends planting 24-7 communities and made friends with folks passionate about prayer. But God, as is often the way, was more interested in talking to us, about us. He drew alongside and walked with us. When we woke one morning to find one of the campervans, in which our friends had been sleeping, had been vandalised during the night he whispered: “I am with you”. When we were broken into and had so much of our ‘stuff’ stolen he again spoke: “I am with you”. Later when we had to cut the trip short to fly a very sick child back to the UK all I could hear, all I could expect to hear, was “I am with you.” And that promise, right there, was enough. Is enough. Always enough. And that is what I see when I look at the cross; the place where Jesus determined always to be with us. Whatever the cost.
A Hill of Crosses
As we travelled into the ex-soviet state of Lithuania I saw that same promise illustrated just outside the small town of Siauliai. I’m sure Siauliai is a beautiful place when the sun shines, the day we visited however the sky was a deep brooding purple and within minutes of arriving we were being drenched by a colossal downpour which sent most of the international crowd of pilgrims rushing back to their air conditioned coaches for shelter. We though, zipped up our waterproofs and began exploring this small hill which is both a place of prayer and pilgrimage and a sign of resistance and defiance, thankful for the rain which gave us the place very nearly to ourselves.
For two hundred years prior to the Second World War pilgrims had come to Siauliai to pray and by 1940 there were 400 wooden crosses punctuating the rural landscape.
When Lithluania became part of the Soviet Union after the war, the communist regime tore down the crosses as they began to persecute the church in an attempt to rid the region of foolish religion. 3 times during the communist era the crosses were torn down and destroyed, yet each time the locals came back bringing their crosses as an act of defiance. They refused to give up their national identity and their identity in Christ. When the hill was guarded by the Russian army they simply went up stream and floated their crosses down towards the foot of the hill!
Today thousands upon thousands of crosses cover that hill, giant oak images and tiny crucifix’s left by their owners with a prayer. Orthodox and Catholic icons, Franciscan prayers lying next to Lutheran and Anglican messages.
For the people of Lithuania the cross had become a symbol of hope, the presence of God in their struggle for freedom.
What do you see when you look at the cross? What will you give thanks for today as you gaze at that place of execution that for millions around the world represents freedom, hope and the love of God poured out so that He might always be with us.
The words of the 18th Century Hymn by Isaac Watts helps us think about this utterly astounding act of love:
When I survey
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.
See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then I am dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Amen