The real miracle of the cross

Christians tend to make a big deal about the physical suffering and death of Jesus. And it's not nothing. But it's also not so unique as to rewrite the entire story of history.

Countless people are willing to (or unwillingly do) suffer and die for those they love. A solider taken prisoner and tortured or kept in inhumane conditions by an enemy. A mother who puts off treatment for cancer to give her unborn child better odds at life. A stranger who puts themselves into a terribly dangerous situation to help another who they see in distress. We hear these sorts of stories often, and are touched by them-- maybe even shed a few tears, but most we forget within a few days, unless we were personally a part of them. Some stick with us, and we reflect on what an amazing sacrifice the person has made for a person, a group of people, or even a country that they love. So Jesus died for all of humanity-- wouldn't his sacrifice seem less valuable, by that accounting? If we are amazed when one person gives of themselves-- even their own life-- to save one other person, shouldn't one person be even more willing to save billions?

But the physical suffering and death of Jesus is not the whole story of the cross-- it's just a tiny little sliver of it, in fact, but perhaps that's what we focus on because it's what we can relate to, what we can see, what we can describe and represent.

But it is not the part that scratched our entire story up to that point and radically re-wrote our future.

No, the real miracle of the cross is that Jesus was willing to take on all of our sins and bear separation from God in order to clear the balance against us. We can maybe grasp this notion on some level, because all of us have felt far from God at some time-- but in fact, that separation was on our part, and ours alone. God has never turned his back on us. Yet Jesus went into that separation willingly, bore the agony of God turning his back on him, and wept, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"-- words that hark from the opening lines of Psalm 22:

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest."

Jesus is crying in anguish to a God who has turned silent.

But there's more.

These are not the cries of a created child abandoned by his creator. These are the cries of God himself. When Jesus tells us that he has been with the Father always, he does not mean since he was created, because he himself is God. The separation of Jesus from the Father is not an abandonment of the created by the creator, but a tearing apart of God himself. How the entire world did not come to a crashing end, is beyond me. But it was a sacrifice and a suffering beyond what any of us can imagine, and is a gift so beyond measure that none of us has the capability even to imitate it.

So we talk about the wounds in his hands and the precious blood of Jesus (yeah, our happy songs are often actually a little freaky, if you pay attention to the words) because it's easier for us to wrap our minds around, and so we miss the point. It's like pretending Christmas is just another birthday. Not to make light of the physical pain that Jesus endured on our behalf-- on my behalf!-- but in perspective next to the real suffering he endured that first Holy week, it seems so much less significant.

So this Lent and Easter season (and every day for the rest of our lives), what we really should be giving thanks for is that we do not ever have to face that kind of abandonment. We get to have a personal relationship with God, now and forever. He is ours for the taking, all because Jesus chose to give an even deeper closeness up for a time. He didn't have to. But he did. And I cannot think of anything more of a miracle than that.