When I survey the wondrous cross, I am horrified.  Tattered and torn skin…blood matted hair…pain induced quivers…the death of God.  A man so battered and betrayed that words fail.

When I survey the wondrous cross, its beauty startles me.  The life.  The love.  The compassion of the death of God.  It, no, He summons me to feast upon that which I gaze.  For some unresolved reason I accept the offer.

When I survey the wondrous cross, I am haunted.

For my soul knows…

my inmost being bows in contrition…

compunction convicts.

My hands, my thoughts, my eyes betray the reason for the death of God.

When I survey the wondrous cross, I am mystified.  I search for its meaning; for its understanding; for the “why’s” of what I see.  What was God doing on the cross?  There are so many answers.  The more doctrine digested, the more elusive and yet, simultaneously adjacent the death of God becomes.

Peter, why couldn’t you have kept it’s meaning to yourself?  “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”  Why must you involve us?  Why must you summon me?  As if we want to.  As if I am willing to follow the example of Christ and His cross.

The cross is an example, an intricate design, on which we lay the transparent parchment of our lives and sketch our feeble outlines.

The cross is to be followed, like tracks in the snow.  We step high and sink in deep to the openings made by The One who has gone before.

Excruciare.  Latin for “out of the cross.”  Excruciating People—those who live life out of the cross.  Christians—those who have accepted the invitation to live an excruciating life.  The cross is a way of life—an ethos—mores not just morals.  The cross is a culture for pain-absorbing, price-paying, peace-making, love-wielding, cup-drinking people.

When I survey the wondrous cross, I am terrified.  For what I see and what I know demands my soul, my life, my all. 

Musician Amanda Palmer’s thoughts on, “The Art of Asking” are profound.  As I watched the video I found myself processing it on a personal and transcendent level.

Personally

Much of my life as a pastor is about asking.  Would you like to follow Christ?  Will you teach the next generation in children’s ministry?  Will you support our missionaries so they can keep doing their great work?

Amanda says, “Asking makes you vulnerable.”  I get that.  As a pastor I can’t make anyone do anything.  All I can do is ask and then marvel at how God’s people respond in such sacrificial quantities.

I was also intrigued by her take on how the internet is changing our view of success.  It used to be that artists dreamed of hitting it big.  That meant that you could be famous and removed from everyone.  Now, Amanda says, “It’s about a few people loving you up close and about those people being enough.”

I’d love to hear your reactions…

Transcendent

This also makes me think anew about the vulnerability of Jesus.  Born in a manger he needed to be be fed, changed & taught.  He was the God of the universe who could demand anything yet he requested that we, “Follow him.”  He too was stripped bare then beaten, pierced and crucified–powerless.  When he rose from the dead, with all authority in heaven and on earth given to him, we find him asking Peter, “Do you love me?”

God asks.