A New Perspective of the Cross

All week long, a Stephen Iverson prayer chant has been running through my head: 

Can I take this weight from my shoulders, Lord, and leave it here at the foot of the cross?

So I began thinking about the cross...

It's Holy Week, so there's been a lot of talk about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins.  I'm not diminishing his sacrifice or the love that led him to the cross for me, for you, for all.  But I needed to take it further - or in a different direction - this year.

"Sin" is an archery term.  It means "to miss the mark" or "to miss the target."  Usually when we hear the word "sin", we think of things that we've done wrong - like lying or cheating or gossip.  Some have a grading system for sin where lying isn't as bad as murder.  But the truth of the matter is that sin is sin.  It doesn't really matter what "degree" or what the sin.

But if sin means missing the mark, then isn't everything that isn't as God intended it to be sin?  When I'm not my true self - the person God created me to be - isn't that sin?  If I do something out of character for me because I want to impress someone or please someone, isn't that sin?  When I see something that is out of sync in nature, isn't that sin?  Isn't poverty and injustice sin?  Anything and everything that is broken and fallen in our world is sin -not just the things that we would deem as "bad."

When I see the brokenness in the world around me and experience that brokenness in my own life, it weighs me down.  It often seems so overwhelming.  There doesn't seem any possibility of restoration...

Yet, it's not up to me to restore the world.  It's not even up to me to restore my own soul.  It is impossible for me to do anything about all this brokenness and sin.  Jesus died on the cross for all sin - to redeem and restore everything that is broken and out of sync with God.  My job is simply to take the weight of the world (or at least what I see and know of the world) and to leave it at the cross, to leave it with Jesus.  In doing so, I accept what Jesus did on the cross - not only for me, but for the world.  In doing so, I trust Jesus with everything that is wrong and dark in this world.  I trust that on Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection, I can also celebrate the restoration that is taking place bit by bit because of the love and sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.  In leaving the weight of the world at the foot of the cross, I also can celebrate in the life of the resurrection - life that is within me and that leads me to bring a little bit more life, hope and restoration to my corner of the world each day.

So on this Good Friday and throughout the day on Holy Saturday as we wait to celebrate the resurrection, linger a bit at the foot of the cross or at the tomb.  Consider all that is broken, and allow yourself to admit your brokenness and the brokenness in the world around you.  Take it to Jesus and leave it at the foot of the cross where Jesus' blood can wash over it.  And trust that Jesus will be proclaimed risen on Sunday - risen and actively at work in our lives and in our world to restore what is to what was meant to be and what will one day be again.