There is a Lenten hymn whose words have special meaning for me:

“There is a green hill far away, beyond the city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified, who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell what pains he had to bear,
But we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there

That has been the affirmation of the Christian faith for 2,000 years now, that although the crucifixion of Jesus took place a long time ago, at a location far removed from where we are, somehow in a profound way it was for us.

In what sense was it for us? Well, in order to deal with that question, we’ve got to go back to the beginning. The Bible says that in the beginning God created. He created everything that is. And, the supreme act of creation was the creation of human beings. The Psalmist said of us, “You have made him a little lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honor.” God created us very much like himself: able to think, to make value judgments, to make choices, to enter into relationships or not. God wanted creatures much like himself, creatures whom he can love, creatures who will respond to his love by loving him in return.

James Weldon Johnson expressed that beautifully in his poem, “The Creation”. He wrote:

“And God stepped out on space. And he looked around and said, ‘I’m lonely. I’ll make me a world.’” So he did. He created the mountains and the rivers, the oceans and the dry land. He created the world with all its living things. And God looked on all that he had made and said, “That’s good!” But, after looking at that world, God said, “I’m lonely still.” So God thought and thought ‘til he thought, “I know. I’ll make me a man!” And so he did.”

“I’m lonely,” God said. Perhaps you think that word, “lonely” is too human a word. But it comes as close as any word I know to describing why we are here. If God is love, and if love is not complete until it is expressed, that comes close to explaining it. God wanted to complete himself by creating us, and loving us, intending for us to respond to his love by loving him in return.

But God, in his wisdom, knew that love is real only when it is given freely. So, as soon as God created us, He set us free. Get that! We were created to live in a loving, trusting, obedient relationship with God. But so badly does God want our relationship with Him to be real, that as soon as He created us, He set us free to say “No” to that relationship. He set us free to turn our backs on Him and to live our lives as if God doesn’t even exist, if we insist upon doing that. Now I don’t fully understand that, but I surely do respect that – a God who takes us that seriously, to set us free!

I have to tell you my favorite story about freedom. A family went into a restaurant to eat: a mother, father, and young son. A waitress came to the table, took the order of the mother and the father, and then turned to the son. “What’ll you have?” she asked. “I want a hot dog,” he said. Both parents said rather emphatically, “No hot dog!” But the waitress was not listening to the parents. “What do you want on your hot dog?” she asked. The boy broke into a big grin and said, “Ketchup, lots of ketchup, and bring me a glass of milk!” “Coming up!” she said, and turned to go place the orders. The little boy followed her with his eyes, open wide in amazement. When the waitress had disappeared behind the swinging doors of the kitchen, he turned to his parents and said, “You know what? She thinks I’m real!”

I don’t know where that story belongs in the realm of family discipline. I’m not going to get into that. But there is no doubt where that story belongs in Christian theology: dead center, right at the heart. Because God thinks we are real. We are not puppets on a string being manipulated by divine power. We are not actors on a stage, going through some motions that have been choreographed in advance, speaking some lines written by some unseen playwright. No, we are real people making real choices, with everything at stake in the choices we make. God has placed us in a world where we can order hot dogs, whether they are good for us or not, and if we order them we will get them, together with all the side effects that come with them. We are real!

But that first story in the Bible accurately portrays the down side of all of that. From the very beginning we human beings used our freedom to say “No” to God and to go our own way. There it is in the story. And, by the way, the story is not just about a man and a woman named Adam and Eve. It’s the universal story. It’s the story of your life and mine. Here it is: God created us and placed us in a good world with everything we need to make life good. There is just one stipulation: God must be God! Of course, that is the very rule we refuse to obey. From the beginning there has been that rebellious streak in us. We want to do our own thing in our own way. We want to be God! In the Adam and Eve story that was acted out over the forbidden fruit. But if it had not been that it would have been something else. And the consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience was that they had to leave the garden. That’s just a poetic way of saying that they became separated from God, and separated from life as it was intended to be. Simply put, that is what the Bible calls sin. Sin, basically, is the condition of being separated from God.

So, that is why life has gone wrong. We were created to live in a loving, trusting relationship with God. But we used our freedom to turn from that. And, when we refuse to allow God to be God, when we put someone or something else at the center of life, then it all goes wrong.

Now, what is God to do about all of that? I suppose God could use his power to threaten us. He could use his strength to coerce us. But that wouldn’t work. God knows us too well to bully us. That would never accomplish God’s purpose. You can’t force someone to love you.

But God will never give up on us. The story of the Bible is the story of a God who, century after century, keeps pursuing us. He has reached out to us with prophets, priests, messengers. He has tugged at our hearts by his Spirit. He has whispered in our ear again and again, “You are mine, don’t you know that? I love you. Won’t you come home to me where you belong?” And, finally, when everything was prepared, God took a bold new step. He made his last, best effort to get through to us in the life, death, and resurrection of his son, Jesus. Through Jesus, God has spoken to us in the persuasive language of love.

When we read about Jesus in the gospels, we must realize that much of what Jesus said had been said before. His summary of the meaning of all the Jewish scriptures was a quote. But there are at least two emphases we see in Jesus that are new. First, in Jesus we are introduced to a seeking God - not a God who is in hiding and must be found, not a reluctant God who must be persuaded to love and forgive us. No, not that. In Jesus we are introduced to a God who actively seeks us out in all our favorite hiding places in order to draw us to himself and to give us the gift of abundant life. He is the good shepherd who goes out in the night seeking the one sheep who is lost. He is the father out there on the road, running to greet his son coming home, arms of love and welcome spread wide. That’s God, according to Jesus, the One who seeks us.

But, even more significantly, Jesus introduces us to a vulnerable God, a suffering God. Especially at the cross we meet a God who loves enough to suffer for those who are loved. Earlier in history we were told about a powerful God, a righteous God, a provident God, even a loving God, but this is something new. Paul called it a stumbling block, a scandal. Here is a God who loves enough to suffer.

Crucifixion was a terrible way to die. It was such a cruel death that it was reserved for the worst enemies of Rome. Typically it was days before death would come, mercifully bringing an end to the shame and pain. And often the bodies were left there for weeks or months as a warning to others who might be tempted to oppose Rome. Death was not caused by loss of blood. It was caused by exhaustion, dehydration, asphyxiation. The body was placed on a kind of wooden saddle so the flesh of hands and feet would not be torn by the weight of the body. But after hours of hanging there the chest would collapse and make it difficult to breathe. And the one on the cross would have to choose whether or not to lift himself up by his hands in order to breathe, causing excruciating pain, or whether simply to hang there, unable to breathe. Finally death came by asphyxiation. Jesus’ death came in a relatively short time. But just look at what was happening during that time. He cried out in pain and thirst. He prayed. He gave his mother over to the care of his friend, John. He made a promise to one of the thieves. He forgave his executioners. And finally, he commended his spirit to God, from whom it had come.

Never was a man treated more unjustly, more cruelly than was Jesus. All he had wanted to do was to love them. All he had wanted to do was to give them life at its best. But you see what they did to him. How would you expect him to respond to all of that? With a curse? With a threat? With a vow to get even? Such a response would be understandable.

But that is not what Jesus did. Through it all, he trusted his Father. Through it all, he continued to love. And, amazingly, he looked down at the very ones who nailed him to the cross and prayed for them, and for us. He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

There at the cross we see an amazing kind of love. We see a love that absorbs wrong, that bears wrong, and bears it in such a way that it takes it away. The good news is that “As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” “Father, forgive them.”

Now I don’t fully understand that kind of forgiving love, but I have experienced it. And I tell you, it’s the most liberating, the most exhilarating, the most life-giving experience I know! At this moment I know that I am loved. I am forgiven. I am secure in the Father’s care. My life is of infinite worth. I know that, I know that because I am one for whom Christ has died. And so are you!

I believe that is at the heart of divine strategy. We have been made in such a way that we cannot be reached in our depths by threat, by coercion, by force. No, God can get through to us and bring us back to himself only through the amazing, persuasive power of suffering love.

I remember reading somewhere about a man who had tried everything he knew to try to experience the best in life. He had looked in all the wrong places. And still there was that emptiness, that anxiety, that restlessness at the center of his life. He was so tired of playing games. He was so disappointed in all the failures he had experienced. Nothing seemed to work. Finally, almost in desperation, he had an encounter with the man on the cross and became a new man in Christ. From that moment on, everything was new. Life became the good gift God intended it to be.

When asked to describe his experience, he said something like this: “I just came to Jesus. And, much to my amazement, he didn’t scold me. He knew I had been scolded enough. And he didn’t give me any advice either. He knew I had had plenty of that. He just put his arms around my neck and loved me. And when the sun rose, I was a new man.”

That’s what happened to me when I met that man on the cross, that man with his suffering, forgiving

“We may not know, we cannot tell what pains he had to bear,
But we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there.”

It’s true. Jesus’ death was in some profoundly moving way, for us. Through that experience God’s love reaches out to us. And when it finally gets through to us, when it finally touches us in the deep places of our heart, it saves us, and we are never again the same.

Prayer: Loving Father, we are so very grateful for your amazing grace which comes to us from the cross. We are not worthy of it, but we are so very grateful for it. Help us now to know that we are of infinite worth because we are those for whom Christ has died. We share now in the pain and sorrow of his death, in the assurance that we will also share in the joy and power of his resurrection. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.