Ash Wednesday - The Cross

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon
Ash Wednesday Service, February 22, 2012

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Are you in shape? I always felt that was a question all the people who were in shape liked to ask the people who weren’t. I always feel guilty. I’m always like, “Oh, well, round is a shape.” I always try to get back to the reason why they ask the question, though. They want to know have I been putting in what is necessary to be able to have a healthy body? Do I have what it takes? Am I jogging? Am I running? Am I walking? Am I lifting weights? Am I doing what’s necessary to be physically strong inside, to have my body be that place where I’d say that’s a healthy body?

Those are important parts that we want to look at, because when we look at what it means and what it takes to be able to get to that healthy body, it’s hard work. It takes a lot of work to be able to say, “Alright, I’m going to have a healthy body. I’m going to have a healthy outlook. I’m going to have a healthy shape.” You have to do a lot of work in order to try to place all of those eggs in that basket, to be able to say, “I have to make time to go to the gym. I have to make time in order to work out because this shape thing? I don’t want to be round.” I’d like to say I’m in shape.

We look at the pieces on what it takes to be in shape. What it comes down to, though, is all of us are being shaped by something. We’ve talked about health but when it comes down to it, all of us are shaped by something. We are being shaped currently by something.

What is it that shapes you? When we look at the shape, we say what is the one thing that you think about constantly? What’s the thing that you love to talk about? What’s the thing when you have a chance to think about anything you want to, that’s what you think about? When we start to identify those things in our own mind, we start to say what is the thing that’s shaping me right now? It’s the thing that’s controlling me, the thing to be able to say, “This is what I would claim as my thing that I love, the thing that shapes me.” It’s the thing you’re passionate about, the thing you would do anything for. You start to set everything up around it.

Let’s just look, for instance, at a career, your job. If your job is the thing that’s shaping you, if your job is the thing that you’re passionate about, if your job is the thing that everything centers around, then all of a sudden, your schedule for your family and everything else gets played into that.

Maybe it’s not a job. Maybe it’s a relationship and that single relationship is the thing that continues to catch your attention, the thing you’re passionate about. Even when we start to look at it, even if it’s not so much self focused, even when we start to look at personal agendas, things that I attach myself to, even when I’m serving other people, that can start to be one of those things that shapes us. None of that is bad. None of that by itself is something we would say, “Wow, that’s something you shouldn’t do.” But it goes back to an even greater purpose. The apostle Paul in Corinthians says, “I pass this on to you of first importance, that Jesus died for your sins.”

When we look at first importance, when we look at the thing Paul says, it should be the center of our lives. It should be the thing that shapes us. It should be the thing we focus on, that we’re passionate about, the thing that fills our thoughts in every moment in time, the thing that grabs our attention, the thing that shapes us.

Yet, so often, we also look at the cross itself and we’d say, “Well, it’s secondary. I have important other things.” When those things start to take control, those are the things that shape you. When we start to walk down this road, when we start tonight in the season of Lent, we start to say, “What’s of first importance to me? What should be the central thing to my faith?” We’d say, “It’s the cross.”

The cross itself is central to the Christian faith. The cross itself should be absolutely the thing that shapes us because it shaped Christ, because it’s also the thing that Jesus says to His followers, those who would come after Him, “Take up your cross and follow after me.”

What I want to look at first is not how it shapes us, but first and foremost, how it shaped Christ. Jesus talks a lot about the cross. The cross wasn’t just the first thing He identified, like it was an accident. Jesus didn’t somehow trip and fall into the cross. The cross itself was always before Jesus. Everything He did, His mission and His vision was towards the cross.

I want you to look at, I want to take you back to some earlier parts in His life, even before He was born to show you exactly the vision and the mission that Jesus had in His life. I take you first to Luke 1. This is His mother, Mary, and Mary is told about Jesus’ birth and this is what’s called the Magnificat because all of a sudden, she says, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” but listen to what she says after concerning this child who is in her womb.

“My soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for He has looked on the humble estate of this servant, for behold from now on, all generations will call me blessed, for He who is mighty has done great things for me. Holy is His name. His mercy is for those who fear Him. From generation to generation, He has shown strength with His arm. He scattered the proud and the thoughts of their heart. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones. He has exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich sent away empty.”

When Mary’s looking at this child who’s growing in her belly, she says, “Look what God is doing.” This isn’t just some ordinary, run-of-the-mill child that’s being born. She says, “Look at what is going to be happening when this child walks on this earth, when those who fear Him, generation after generation, His strong arm will be scattering the proud. He will lift up the weak.” This child is not like every other child. This child, Jesus, is also God. That’s the difference here. Jesus, even before He is born, the mission has been set for Him. The vision is in front of Him. He knows the cross is there.

We listen to the next part because we also look at right after that when Mary gives birth to the child and when they’re in the manger, they’re visited by a couple of people. First, the shepherds but then the Magi. So the three kings, sometimes they were called even though there were probably more than three, we see are there and they visit the Christ child and they bring Him three different kinds of presents, gold, frankincense and myrrh. Now we know the story of these things, but we also find out, in this gift giving, they’re showing who this Christ child is.

Gold is the gift for a king. Frankincense is the gift for a priest, as it’s incense to be burned in the temple. And myrrh is for the funeral procession; it’s the spices they need to bury somebody. We look at three different pieces of who this is they are saying through their gifts. This child is the king, is a priest, is a high priest, and is also going to die and a much bigger death than anybody else could ever have died. In that very nature of things, we find out that this child is not like all other children. When they see the child, they know He’s destined for something greater.

We’ve been going through the gospel of Mark in our sermon series on the weekends. In the gospel of Mark, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, if you’ve been reading through it alongside of the messages, but every so often along the way, Jesus will do a miracle or He’ll say something and it’s miraculous and right at the end of it, He’ll say, “But don’t go telling anybody.” It’s always an odd statement. You’ve changed somebody’s life and you’re telling them, “But don’t say anything.”

If somebody affected me, changed my life in the way that Jesus changed these people’s lives in just a word, in a touch, how is it they couldn’t speak to somebody else? Why is it that Jesus would really want them to be quiet about it? It was in the nature of this that Jesus knew that the more things progressed, the more they caught wind of who He was, He knew where He ended up. He knew where the story was going to climax, at the cross. It was always before Him, always on His mind, always on His heart. There was never a moment that went by in Jesus’ earthly ministry that He was thinking, “Wow, there might be another outcome.” No, He knew that the cross was His destination.

We find out, as we look at one of the most famous passages of all Christendom, in John 3:16 and we find out not just in 3:16 but in following, listen, it says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” Why did God send Him? It follows up in 17, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” Whoever believes in Him is not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he is not believed in the name of the only Son of God. Jesus, His death on the cross, was necessary for us.

We look at it in the very nature of John 3:16, “God so loved the world that He sends His only Son,” that whoever believes in Him will not have just life, but eternal life, and the whole world might be saved through Him. It wasn’t just a good man who was dying on the cross. It wasn’t just an act that said, “Ah, we see a guy and He’s going to go to this.” It wouldn’t have mattered if a good guy had just died. Jesus, being in the very nature of God Himself, was able to capture that, to be able to say, “In this death, it means something much greater than just me dying.” On the cross, He justified us because in the nature of Ash Wednesday, the very nature of what we find is that we highlight sin. We highlight sin and we say, “The reason that Jesus had to die in the first place was because of me, because of my sin, because of your sin.” If we had never sinned, Jesus never would have been on the cross. We come to a place to be able to say, “Because of my sin and your sin, Jesus had to die.” Jesus’ mission was always before Him. He never shied away. He never said, “That’s never going to happen.”

Even when we see in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He says to His Father, “If this cup can be passed from me, if there is any other way, then let it happen,” but Jesus is still ready to face the cross. So often, we look at the shape of the cross and we see how it shaped Jesus’ life. Then we try to find our way out, that we don’t ever have to view the cross again. We try to find a way out and say, “Well, that’s such a vicious way to die. Why would we celebrate? Why would we have that be our central piece to who we are in Christianity? Why would we find such a violent act to be something that we celebrate, that shapes us?” It’s the very nature of the cross that we find the depth of God’s love. It’s in the very nature of the cross that we can be shaped by that same love.

What shapes you? Everybody is being shaped by something. We attempt to find our way out. We attempt to try to take the cross, the forgiveness of our sins out of the equation, but something will always shape you. Let us be governed this day by the truth. By the truth of the gospel. Paul said in 1 Corinthians, “Let this be of first importance to you.” Let it be central to who you are, that Jesus has forgiven you of your sins, life and salvation are yours.

But we can’t move beyond the cross. The cross is always before us. The cross is the central thing that we understand the forgiveness of our sins and that’s the reason why Jesus Himself does call all of His followers. He says, “Take up your cross and follow after me.” Now He’s not saying for us to physically pick up a cross, but He’s saying to His followers, “When you follow after me, there might be suffering. There might be pain. Know that up front.” But know that cross will continue to be the piece that we can go back to. It can continue to be the piece where we know our sin is forgiven. We face the cross because it shapes us. It’s where we find our own sinfulness, but it’s also the place where we flee. We flee to Jesus as the forgiver of our sins. We can’t have a theology that takes the cross out because the cross is our theology. Amen.