Cross Currents

By Rob Taylor

Jesus didn’t just endure the Cross, He embraced it! What did He see as He looked towards the Cross? What was in His heart as He suffered on the Cross?

As we listen to the conversations at the Last Supper, and as we explore Jesus’ words spoken from the Cross, we discover surprising new insights into the love, the character and the purpose of God.

Rob Taylor’s honest reflections on these currents of meaning invite each of us to embrace the Cross of Christ in a deeply personal way.

Rob Taylor is Minister in Charge of Christ Church Kenilworth in Cape Town, having previously served as Rector of St Thomas’ Anglican Church in Durban, Rector of All Souls Umhlali, and Rector of St Martin’s Durban North. He is married to Sue and they have two sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rob Taylor
• Release date: Aug 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005467012

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgements

Invitation

PART 1. The Night Before The Crucifixion

Introduction

The Glory Of God

The Triumph Of Life

The Revelation Of The Father

Protection For His Disciples

The Unity Of The Church

The Victory Of The Kingdom

PART 2. Jesus’ Words From The Cross

Introduction

Father, Forgive Them

You Will Be With Me

Woman, Here Is Your Son

Why Have You Forsaken Me?

I Am Thirsty

It Is Finished

Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit

Final Reflection

Notes

Acknowledgements

This book is about the Cross of Jesus and I am in no doubt that the first acknowledgement must be to Jesus who incarnates the love and the character of God and whose willingness to offer himself, through suffering and death, for our salvation is evidence of overwhelming grace. This book sets out to honour him above all.

I am wonderfully blessed to have a wife in Sue who is a friend, insightful thinker and formidable editor. Her help in shaping and reshaping this book has been invaluable.

I also wish to acknowledge the congregations of St. Martin’s, Durban North, St Thomas, Berea and Christ Church, Kenilworth in Cape Town amongst whom the insights set out in these pages have taken shape.

I have also been greatly helped in the editing and production of this book by Warren Veenman and the team at Reach Publishers.

Invitation

One of the great privileges of my calling to ordained ministry is the opportunity to preach. Of all the preaching occasions in the course of each year, always, the great drama of Holy Week and Easter stands out for me. Within that, I find Good Friday with its stark focus on the Cross of Jesus Christ has taken me to the deepest places of seeking to understand, and then expound, the heart of the Christian message of redemption.

It is a frequent practice within the Anglican Church to observe Good Friday with a three-hour service focused on the Cross. In many churches this is an unadorned service that is characterised by a series of sermons interspersed with periods of reflection and the singing of the great hymns of the Cross. In that very simplicity, I find myself drawn into deeper devotion.

Over the years of my ministry, as I have preached through the three hours of Good Friday, I have sought to approach the understanding of the Cross from a number of different vantage points. These occasions present me with a large canvas, so to speak, as I have sought to probe and develop the various profound themes of the Cross.

In doing so, I find I come closer to the heart of Jesus and the motives and convictions that brought him to those fateful hours on Calvary. I come also to a deeper understanding of what was accomplished there and how that addresses me, and humanity in general. The loving purposes of God the Father become clearer in the recognition that the Cross is profoundly a place of suffering for Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Time and again I have come to the end of these services with a deep mixture of elation, exhaustion and humble gratitude.

My hope is that you will join me in an exploration of some aspects of the Cross, and that you will be drawn more deeply into your own personal reflection and response.

Part 1

The Night Before The Crucifixion

Introduction

There can be little doubt that Roman crucifixion was a brutal process, devised with the intention of instilling such fear in the subjugated populations under Roman rule that they would be thoroughly dissuaded from any acts of rebellion. It was a very cruel form of execution, designed to combine torture and humiliation in a public display of Roman power. The Romans chose busy, open places for these crucifixions. Public executions have always held a degree of grizzly fascination and the mockery, jeering and perhaps random physical and verbal abuse meted out on the victims by the bystanders would have added to the suffering and humiliation of the victim.

Given all these horrendous physical elements associated with crucifixion, it is remarkable how restrained are the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ death. As I read them I see no intent to sensationalise Jesus’ suffering or to dwell on the physicality of his afflictions. This is in stark contrast to some contemporary depictions of the sufferings of Jesus which almost indulge a fascination with the blood and gore of Jesus’ flogging and agony on the Cross.

It seems to me that the writers of Scripture want us to look beyond the surface of the physical agony of Calvary to the deeper significance of who it is who is dying on the Cross, why he has to die, and what is accomplished through his death. Without this perspective the Cross simply presents us with more gratuitous violence and suffering to add to the over-abundance we already have.

The Cross of Christ constantly draws me to seek a deeper understanding of its profound significance, and one year, in preparation for Good Friday, as I thought about how to approach that quest, it occurred to me to step back and try to see how Jesus saw the Cross.

I realised that I had not really asked the crucial questions relating to Jesus’ perspective on the suffering that he knew was imminent. I turned to John’s Gospel and the chapters devoted to the night before Jesus’ arrest to see what I could learn about what Jesus carried in his heart as he went to the Cross. It seemed to me reasonably certain that Jesus approached the Cross very intentionally. If, then, I desire to honour his sacrifice, I need to listen particularly carefully to the prayer he prayed that night in the shadow of the Cross.

John takes us onto very holy ground as he enables us to listen to Jesus in intimate communion with his Father at this crucial point on the night before his crucifixion. Here we are invited to listen as Jesus opens his heart and reveals what is most important to him.

As I have thought about what that great prayer shows me about the way Jesus looked at the Cross, I have identified six major themes. It seems to me that these perspectives which Jesus expressed in his prayer to his Father should, surely, be the things that most deeply impact my own heart as I seek to respond appropriately to the Cross. The six themes I identified are:

The glory of God

The triumph of life

The revelation of the Father

Protection for his disciples

The unity of the Church

The victory of the Kingdom

In the section that follows I will set out to look at each of them in turn.

The Glory Of God

Jesus ... looked towards heaven and prayed: ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.’ (John 17:1)

‘And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.’ (John 17:5)¹

I have often let my imagination play over the gathering of Jesus’ disciples in the Upper Room on the night of his imminent arrest. The fact that John devotes fully five chapters of his Gospel to that single evening shows how significant it was. It was there that Jesus both demonstrated and enunciated the principle of servanthood as his model for human relationships and leadership among his people. It was there that he spoke most profoundly about his departure and sought to instil in his disciples a vision for the future. It was there that he sought to introduce them to the Holy Spirit who would come as his continuing presence among his people. It was there, too, that he inaugurated the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper so that whenever his people would intentionally break bread and drink from the cup, they would both know and proclaim his mystical presence in their midst.

All these matters of deep and abiding significance were established that evening against the backdrop of looming threat and peril, and the outworking of treachery and betrayal. As we, in our contemporary context, read these chapters of John’s Gospel, we know what that night and the next day would hold for Jesus and his followers. Such terrible things would be done on Calvary that the very sky turned dark and the deepest hours of Jesus’ agony were veiled from human sight.

Paying careful attention to Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, I am struck, not only by the profound truths which he taught, but also by his perspective on the events that were about to unfold and, particularly, the great significance of his death.

Despite all the factors that might have cast a pall over Jesus’ heart, I am amazed to find that the first ray of light that gives us a sense of what was in Jesus’ heart, emerges from the opening words of Jesus’ impassioned prayer to his Father: ‘Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.’ (John 17:1)

There can be no doubt that the first concern of Jesus’ heart was glory! Glory is all about the honour and worthiness and majesty of God. Glory is the very radiance of God’s greatness. It was this that filled Jesus’ heart as he began to pray – it was unreservedly his first priority.

God’s glory is often spoken of in Scripture. There is an utter uniqueness to this divine quality, to the extent that God is spoken of as being jealous for his glory – he will not allow it to be corrupted or denigrated by human or demonic artifice:

‘I am the LORD; that is my name! I will