We Focus On The Cross (Resurrection Sunday)

On Sunday, March 31, at River Corner Church, Pastor Jeff McLain looked at the power of the cross in his Resurrection Sunday sermon message We Focus On The Cross. The problem of sin is that it pollutes, has power, has a penalty, partitions us, and has pain associated with it. We focus on the cross because it is the method Jesus overcame all that looks to imprison and define us. The cross reminds us that neither sin nor death has a final word. As followers of Jesus, the cross reminds us of God’s love, forgiveness and pursuit of humanity. The cross is what gives us the power to overcome the places sin’s pollution, power, penalty, partition, and pain holds place in our lives. Lastly, we also focus on the cross because it reminds us of the life we are called to live.

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Who we are together.
River Corner Church is a growing church community of everyday people who gather to worship God, follow Jesus, and journey through life together.

What we practice together.
Our small church community is uniquely caring, simple, laid-back, and intergenerational. As a church, we want to be a welcoming, safe, and healing community for those who are seeking, hurting, or need a place to belong. Our practices are contemplative (reflective) charismatic (Spirit-driven), conversational, and informative. The times we share together are intentional and intimate, and a mix between modern and traditional. We want to be a place in which love and honor are lived out, where humility is central, and where hospitality is woven into the threads of our community. There is room at the table.

When we gather together.
River Corner Church gathers weekly on Sunday mornings at 10:00 AM to worship and experience God, study the scriptures, journey through life together, and partner with the Holy Spirit. We meet in a simple worship meeting house at 524 River Corner Road in Conestoga, Pennsylvania. You are welcome as you are, just be yourself. There are other times that we hold small groups, events, and more.

Our Pastoral Leader.
As the pastor of River Corner Church, Jeff McLain leads our church community and helps others to think differently about Jesus, life, and everything in-between. Jeff also serves as the Director of Pastoral Ministries at Water Street Mission, where he works with those facing homelessness and poverty. Jeff, Katie, and their three wander-filled daughters look to lead quiet lives. Committed to lifelong learning, Jeff is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry at Kairos University and completing a Master of Business Administration with a focus on Executive Leadership at City Vision University. These academic pursuits complement the two masters he completed earlier at Fuller Seminary. Jeff has a passion for baseball, boardwalks, beaches, bays, and books, but above all, his greatest joy lies in spending time with his family and guiding our church community on our journey of faith together.

Learn more about us at rivercorner

Transcript

This morning we celebrate Resurrection Sunday. It is a time in which we remember and celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead. We remember that there is life that is yet to come after this one. Even more there is more to life than this now as a result. In light of the resurrection, we remember that God has created this life and earth with an eternal purpose for us to discover. Through his resurrection we discover that purpose. Though we will experience God’s purpose fully in the eternal, we can also begin to experience God’s abundance and plan here and now as we anticipate the fulfillment of God's eternal purposes. Through Jesus’ life, through his death, through his resurrection, and through his promise of the Spirit of God, we begin to experience God’s eternity here and now. As it was in the beginning, God’s intended way, it will be again in the end, in eternity, but we begin to taste that now. Jesus empowers us to live in a way gives others a forestate of what is yet to come. We are trailers for the movie. We are the appteser for the main feast. The hope of Resurrection Sunday is that because of what awaits us in eternity, our lives now change and matter in new ways. We live into a new vision. Jesus tells his followers to live in a way that they should "rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven" (Matthew 5:12). As a result, in this life, we are to live differently, we "sell our possessions and give it to the poor. [we] Provide purses for ourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail" (Luke 12:33). Through his Resurrection and Acension, Jesus has promised us that he has gone "to prepare a place for you," and that "I will come back and take you to be with me that you may also be where I am" (John 14:2-3). That sense of heaven, the place of God, isn't a place or a future event, rather even now Jesus says, "the Kingdom of God is in your midst" (Matthew 6:10). As we saw in our last series, Jesus taught us to pray heaven to earth by praying, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). In this prayer, we begin to bring about the future restoration here and now. This is what we celebrate on Easter.

Resurrection Sunday is often a time in which we often celebrate the power of the resurrection. We usually talk about the purpose of Jesus’ death the Sunday, or Friday, before. Holy Saturday, the day in-between reminds us that God’s silence doesn’t always mean his abscence. This morning though, I think to understand the hope of the Resurrection, it is important for us to understand why Jesus died. Tranparently, I think the Resurrection story is one of the hardest to do in a Sunday morning time. Too often we trim it down to nothing but a “Jesus overcame death, and you too can expeirence new life in your life.” Othertimes, we make it a heady explanation of theologies that teach us the way Jesus’ death was foretold in the Old Testament, or the ways Jesus’ death makes sense. Then there is the pressure of making this same story, an annual celebration of the story, feel new and encouraging each year. This morning, rather than focusing on the foretelling of Jesus’ death, or the moral and ethical promise of life from death, or the theological reasoning of Jesus’ death, I want to unpack an appreciation for Jesus’ death. I want us to hopefully appreciate it, and why we should appreciate it, but also what it means for us in response to how we live.

In July 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz, and as a reprisal the Gestapo selected ten men arbitrarily to die in a starvation bunker. And one of the men selected, his name was Francis Gajowniczek [Guy-ov-nicheck]. And when he was selected, he cried out. He said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘my poor wife and my children – they’ll never see me again!’ And at that moment a little guy, a Polish man in glasses, wire frames, stepped out of line, he took off his cap, and he said: ‘Look, I’m a Catholic priest, so I don’t have a wife or children.’ He said, ‘I would like to die instead of that man.’ That priest knew Jesus had lived a life of sacrifice, that Jesus had called us to do the same, and that Jesus carried the weight of our wrongs to the cross for us, and as a result wanted to live faithfully to that Jesus by dying for this man.

To everyone’s amazement, his offer was accepted, and he was taken to the starvation bunker. And on 14 August he was the last one to die. Seemingly God has sustained him, the way of God kept him alive for awhile. He kept up an amazing atmosphere, apparently, people remarked about his witness. He got them singing hymns and praying. But on 14 August they needed the bunker for other people, and they gave him a lethal injection of carbolic acid, and that’s how he died. They forced death on him, because he was proving that man doesn’t live by bread alone, but rather on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Forty-one years later, the fruit of his death was put in its proper perspective. There, in a crowd of 150,000 people, and army of church officials, in St Peter’s Square, Rome, where the people spoke about the way that little Polish priest stood in place for another. In that crowd was Francis, the man he died in place of. The peope sharing the story there said, that he modeled a  “a victory like the one won by our Lord Jesus Christ’: because he gave himself – he gave up his life out of love. The man he died for, Francis, died at the age of ninety-three: he’d spent the rest of his life going round telling everybody about the love of this man who died in his place. 

If you expeirenced the sacrifice of another person in this way, it would redefine your life. You would want to live with a new appreciation for life and for others, because someone showed such appreciation for your life, and the value of your life. The pope was right, this priest died in a way like to Jesus, but the victory was not the same. That victory was temporary, but it did model sacrificial living. In an even more amazing and wonderful way, Jesus died on the cross, because  the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me.

There are many symbols that have come to present Christianity. First, there is the fish.The Greek word for fish is "ichthys." As early as the first century, Christians made an acrostic from this word: Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter, i.e. Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. The fish has plenty of other theological overtones as well, for Christ fed the 5,000 with 2 fishes and 5 loaves (a meal recapitulated in Christian love-feasts) and called his disciples "fishers of men." Water baptism, practiced by immersion in the early church, created a parallel between fish and converts. There is the dove. This is a symbol of peace and of the Holy Spirit. It brings up the images of the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus at his baptism. The dove is also a symbol of peace. In Genesis 8 after the flood, a dove returned to Noah with an olive branch in its beak, revealing the end of God's judgment and the beginning of a new covenant with man. Sometimes you will see a crown of thorns. Jesus wears a crown of thorns on his head during the crucifixion. In the Bible thorns often represent sin, and therefore, the crown of thorns is fitting—because Jesus would bear the sins of the world. But a crown is also fitting because it represents the suffering King. There is a symbol of fire. Also a representation of the Holy Spirit, and the way that God’s Spirit at work within us purifies us. Light represents the presence of God and guidance of God, such as when. God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and the Israelites in the pillar of flame. There is a symbol of a Lamb.  The Lamb of God represents Jesus Christ, the perfect, sinless sacrifice offered by God to make right the sins of man. Lambs don’t war, they are pure and soft. There is the symbol of the Crown. Jesus proved to be the King of the Universe. 

There are many other symbols as well, but perhaps most recongized is the sign of the cross. The cross is the mode in which Jesus died at the hands of man. Some depict the cross, or the crufix, with Jesus on it, to remind them of the suffering he endured, perhaps to remind them of the suffering of others, and others depict the cross empty, to remind us of the hope of resurrection. It is perhaps our most sobering symbol. The cross represents a brutal, violent, traumatic way to be executed by the state. It was not a quick execution like lethal injection, it wasn’t a quick suffering like an electric chair, the cross was a drawn out, bloody, painful and public way to be executed. 

Anabaptists tend to chose the dove over the other symbols. Many churches choose to display the cross. Little symbols used by the church ironically represent the resurrection. Depending on what stream you are from, you are driven towards one of these symbols. For me, and my background, I connect often with the dove and fire. I read an article this week in which the author, Susie Lowen, said the Cross should remind us,  or should drive us into appreciation, that “God has shared human pain and death, they have been overcome and are in the process of being overcome, so that sin and death and violence don’t have power over us anymore. These “powers” don’t have the last word anymore.” Though a broken man, Theologian, John Howard Yoder states in his book The Politics of Jesus, the cross reminds us that “No powers can separate us from God’s love in Christ.” Rather, “The cross has disarmed them.” The cross though gruesome has become a sign of hope and freedom for the church.

To learn appreciation for this cross, I think we as followers of Jesus have to ask the question “Why did Jesus have to die?” It is not an easy question to answer. It is easy to wonder if Jesus could have accomplished the same means by a different method. The truth is, I am sure God could have ordained another way. Answering the question about why Jesus had to die, has resulted in many attempts to theologically explain why. These theological attempts to answer this question are often called “Atonement Theories.” There are probably 7, maybe 8, most commonly given theological answers to explain. In most of Evangelical and Protestant Christianity people belong to Christus Victor and The Penal Substiutionary Atonement. In Christus Victor theory, Jesus Christ dies in order to defeat the powers of evil (such as sin, death, and the devil) in order to free mankind from their bondage. Some people argue this sets up a argument for universal salvation. In Pensal Substiutionary Atonemnt Theory, Jesus Christ dies to satisfy God’s wrath against human sin. Jesus is punished (penal) in the place of sinners (substitution) in order to satisfy the justice of God and the legal demand of God to punish sin. The problem with this one is that God beats up Jesus in our place. There are many other ways theologians have argued to explain, including the Ransom Theory, where Jesus’ sacrifice has bought back humanity from the slavery Satan selled them into, and I think there are many problems and many strengths to a lot of these Atonement theories. Another time perhaps we can explore what works and what doesn’t in these theories. Sadly, the church has allowed these theories to divide them. My own approach leans towards Christus Victor, but incorporates some other ideas. Anabaptists as a whole have given into something called Moral Improvement Theory, “In this view, the purpose and result of Christ's death was to influence mankind toward moral improvement.” The cross needs to be more than just us living a moral and ethical life. Jesus’ life alone models that.

The truth is, and I think we as Christians needs to be willing to admit this more, we don’t know why Jesus chose this way. And it’s hard to wrestle with sometimes. Nicky Gumbel, founder of the Alpha movement says though, the cross is like a diamond. Over time, you learn to appreciation each side of the diamond and it’s beauty in new ways. 

Though, especially depending on where we are on our faith journey, we may not be able to fully answer why Jesus chose this way, we do now the scriptures speak from day one about the power of blood. Throughout the Bible, from the Old Testament sacrificial system to the Passover lamb and Isaiah's prophecies, the theme of Jesus' death and the shedding of His blood is intricately woven, culminating in the New Testament fulfillment and teachings - in the life and death Jesus lived and died. Jesus' death mirrors the sacrificial system, where His blood serves as the ultimate atonement for sin, as symbolized in the institution of the Lord's Supper during the Last Supper. This is where it can all get heady and theological, and that is important. However, that is not the purpose of the message this morning.

What we can appreciate, and what we do know, is this - the problem of sin. I know people who aren’t religious who know sin exists. Evil, injustice, pain, suffering. All of this exists in the world and we don’t know what to do with it. We try to make laws, peace, punishment, cures, we try to adress peoples mental health, and more - and at the end of the day, there is still a problem with sin. It seems to grow rather than decrease. In the scriptures, we are told that "For all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 1:23). John, the follower of Jesus, writes "If we claim to be without sin, we deceieve ourselves" (1 John 1:8). Sin is, for James the brother of Jesus, simply knowing "the good we outght to do and don't do" (James 4:17). We all sin. Our sin has a cost, Paul says to the church in Rome, the costs of our sin is death (Romans 6:23).

I think sometimes I don’t like to talk about sin, because it was used in the church I grew up to keep people subdued and in fear. That is a problem, but we shouldn’t swing the pendulum too far the other way and never talk about it. The idea of sin gets thrown around a lot in today’s time.We call Las Vegas, "Sin City." Ice Cream is sometimes described as "so good it's sinful." I’ve heard people say things like to “Drive that car would be a sin.” A little while ago, I saw an article taling about a politicans understanding of the First Amendment as sin. That's not sin. I think somehow we have downplayed the significance of sin, or misunderstood what it is. Sin implies brokenness, it is missing the mark (it’s actually an archery term). But missing the mark has significant implications (Lampeter Fair, Axe throwing, missing the mark would be deadly).

The truth is sometimes sin is hard to name because we like our sin. It feels good. It tastes good. But it is still deadly, and ignoring that reality doesn’t help us. I am a diabetic and I love doughnuts. If I would have a dozen donuts from Factured Prune, one of my favorite bakeries, located in Ocean City Maryland, I would probably die. No matter how good the mint or cocnut donuts I like there taste good, the truth is, they are still deadly for me. Sin, or Missing the mark has affects.  Sometimes sin is also hard to see because we don’t like to accept responsibility. We blame what we do as a justifiable response to others. This is what the story of the garden is all about at the beginning of the Bible. Blame is how our politics work, it is how we get out of things we don’t want to be responsible for, including our sin. Sometime we have to be willing to accept responsibility and confess our shortcomings. If we never admit to our sin, we never overcome it. There is power in getting it out in the open. Sometimes we have to work against it too, right Paul tells us to take every thought captive. Sin is hard to talk about because we want to be justified in our wrongs by blaming the sins of others. Recently I dealt with a situation at work where someone wrongly accused me of something, of a lot of things, and I wanted her to pay. I mean really pay. Honestly, her tresspases should have been fireable. However, I had to be responsible for the hate the hurt in my heart developed. So, I started overcoming this temptation of sin in my life by praying blessings for her, and that hurt, because she hurt me and here I was trying to ask God to do good things for her, to embrace her with love. Sin is a very real, sometimes easily seen and sometimes not, part of our life.

We also know this, everything Jesus did was motivated by God’s love, we know that “For God so loved the world that he sent his son so those who believe in him will not perish to death, and to the consequence of their sin. Right after that, Jesus states that he didn’t come in the world to condemn it, or damn it, but rather that those trapped in the imprisonment of sin can be rescued, liberated, healed, and made whole. Nicky Gumbel, founder of the Alpha Course, famously has said “If you had been the only person in the world, Jesus would have died for you. He loves you that much.”

The Alpha Course has explained the problem and power of sin through an Alliteration. Sin pollutes, has power, has penalty, and is a partition. I would add a fifth P, it is pain.

1. Sin pollutes. It muddies the good in our life (chesapeake bay clean). We keep trying to fix the pollution on our own power, and we end up just adding more pollution to the mix, because our ways or corrupted. This is why John describes the act of confessing our sins as "purifying us" (1 John 1:9).
2. Sin has power. It rules and reigns in our lives. It will become our slave master. Jesus himself said, "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (Romans 7:14). Paul tells us that Jesus liberates us from our sin, and when we sin again, we become "burdened again by a yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1). 
3. Sin has a penalty. It affects us. There is a cost to it. In the Old Testament, Ezekiel says "the one who sins is the one who will die" (Ezekieal 18:20). Paul says, "For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). We are trapped by our brokenness, a contract to life and with life, gets broken when we sin.
4. Sin has a partition. It separates us from God. We partition our life, or parts of our lives, off from God. Isaiah warned the people of God, "your sins have seperated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you" (Isaiah 59:2). In James, James tells his churches and disciples, friendship wth the world makes you an enemy of God. Our relationship with God, and God’s relationship with us becomes severed. 
5. I would add Sin has Pain. James says that when we give into our sin, "when it is full-grown in our life, it gives birth to death." Colossians tells us that we are to put to death whatever is left of our earthly nature so it doesn't put us to death. Peter tells us, our sins wage war against our soul. David wrote that sin created "no soundness in his bones." Isaiah tells the people of God, "there is no soundness-only woulds and welts and open sores" because of their rebellion.  There are stories of God's people needing to repent to expeirence God's healing and wholeness. It is for this reason Jesus says we need a doctor (Matthew 9:12-13). We are unable to heal ourselves any other way. Sometimes, not always, sin manifests in our physical health. 

We appreciate the cross, because it reminds us the pollution, power, penalty, partitioning, and pain of sin no longer has it’s grip. We can live a different way, the cross provides that different way. The reason the cross has become such a center symbol to our faith is because it is on the cross that victory is had.  Jesus died in order to defeat the powers of evil (such as sin, injustice, death, and the devil) in order to free mankind from their bondage. Jesus came in the God the Father’s love, intentionally to prove he knows our struggles, to intentionally show us how to live our lives, to intentionally teach us a better way of life with God, and to die the deaths we die, and to die in as a result of our sin. This intentional act was so we have a restored relationship with God. Paul tells us, "God demonsrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). This was something predicted throughout the story of God and God's people, though mankind didn't see it, Paul says it's there when you realize it, "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3). Another follower of Jesus, Peter says, Jesus "bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed" (1 Peter 2:24). The things done to us, those things we have done and blamed on the actions of others, those places we just screwed up lose their power, and death is no longer the result. Seperation with God is no longer the reality. We can’t do it on our own power, nor do we have too. John writes that we weren't in a place of truly loving God, but depsite that "he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10).

When Jesus died on the cross, he showed us a messanic expectation many didn’t see in the scriptures. The messenger Jesus sent would illuminate all of the old testament stories in new ways, and would live into expectations - over 300 of them - in undeniable ways. Through the cross, Jesus first proves his divinity and that he was sent by God the Father. Even more, when Jesus died on the cross, he showed he alone has the power to overcame everything.  There is nothing that can define us quite like death does. When we die, it seems final. Yet, Jesus died and showed us that death is not final. Jesus overcame death. In doing so, he proves he has also overthrown everything that defines us and leads to death. 

• We focus on the cross because it is the method Jesus overcame all that looks to imprision and define us.
• We focus on the cross because it means neither sin nor death has a final word.

When Jesus died on the cross, he proved there is a way back to right relationship with God. God has "reconciled us to himself through Christ...not counting people's sins against them" (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). Jesus paid the price. (Bible Alpha) 

This is why we appreciate the cross. Jesus offers us forgiveness. It is Jesus’ blood and act on the cross that “cleanses us from all sin.” It puts us back with access to the God we have walked away from. We not only experience forgiveness, and through restoration we experience God’s presence through the Holy Spirit, but we also have the ability to tap into Jesus’ power to overcome sin and it’s effects in our life. We are not just restored, we have liberation from our sin that we can access. We need that access because the truth is there are areas of our live that sometimes remain closed. Where the partition remains. 

• We focus on the cross because it reminds us of God’s love, forgiveness and pursuit of humanity.
• We focus on the cross because it is what gives us the power to overcome the places sin’s pollution, power, penalty, partition, and pain holds place in our lives.

Yes, the work of the cross was a one time thing, but we are learning to let the truth of it integrate into every area and arena of our life. Sometimes we experience the power of the resurrection, forgiveness, and something just stops. For me it was my anger, though there is still a struggle at times, what anger drove me at one time disappeared when I came home to Jesus. Also, our eternal separation from God is no longer. That was dealt with instantly, when Jesus said “It is finished.” However, there are other areas in our life that we are still learning to experience the power of the cross. For me, I struggle with discontent, and I can want to look good in the eyes of the world. There is a need for continual forgiveness and integration of God’s forgiveness and restoration into every area and arena of who we are.

We also focus on the cross because it reminds us of the life we are called to live.

The last thing I want to say is this, when we as followers of Jesus, we focus on the cross not only because it symbolizes the forgiveness and restoration we have received but also because it exemplifies the sacrificial life we are called to live. Jesus' death on the cross not only provided forgiveness for our sins but also showed us a way of living. He taught us that being His disciple means denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Him, living sacrificially for the sake of others and the Kingdom of God. Through Jesus' sacrifice, the pollution of sin in our lives is cleansed, the power sin holds over us is broken, and our relationship with God and others is restored. We experience God's forgiveness and have access to His healing and restoration through His Spirit. Jesus' death on the cross illustrates God's love for us, revealing the depth of His love and calling us to love others sacrificially. Just as Jesus bore our guilt and shame on the cross, we are called to extend forgiveness and love to others, reflecting the love and sacrifice of Christ. 

Like the Polish priest who offered his life for another in Auschwitz, we are called to live lives of sacrificial love, giving of ourselves for the sake of others, just as Jesus did for us. As ambassadors of God's presence and love in this world, it is our responsibility to embody the message of the cross, living lives of love, humility, and service, and sharing the transformative power of Christ's sacrifice with others. We are called to forgive others, to love others, to go to the ends of life for others, because Jesus did that for us.

There are many sides to the diamond that is the cross. Through the cross, Jesus revealed what true love is. True love is not just a feeling. Love involves more than words; it involves actions. And Jesus showed us the supreme example of love, by sacrificing himself for you and for me. On the cross, we find a God who is not sitting in a hammock in heaven overlooking all the suffering down here, but rather one that modeled he has come to suffers alongside of us.

The cross reminds us the Son of God, Jesus, sets us free. I don’t know what sin or weight of sin you are carrying. It’s time to let go both sin, or the effects of that sin we are carrying. And if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. We need to be ready for what I think is coming, for the revival and work of the Spirit. We need the cross, to remind us of sin, but we also must see that sin affects us all in different ways. For some of us, it brings shame. For others it brings a sense of powerlessness. For others dishonor. I don’t know what sin you are struggling with, and I don’t know it’s effect. I don’t know if you are feeling shame, or dishonor, or powerlessness. But through the cross sin has been legally wiped clear, God has brought place for those intrapped by shame, and he has given the Spirit to those who feel powerlessness. This Resurrection Sunday, we truly can experience new life, by accepting the work of the cross. And we get to live in a way that we set others free, no longer hurting others in our brokenness, because we have experienced a new way to live. This morning, let go. That is the promise of this sunday. It is finished. 

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