The Cross and You

Jesus Christ died for you: What does it mean?

There is a scene in Ingmar Bergman’s “White Light” in which the Church sexton, a horribly crippled man, tells his pastor that he doesn’t think the physical pain of Jesus’ Crucifixion was as great as the ongoing suffering in his own twisted body. The thing about the Crucifixion that really got to him, he said, was that Jesus had given so much, He had healed so much, He had loved so much, and nobody cared. Nobody understood. When He died, He seemed to have died uselessly, utterly abandoned. This, the sexton said, moved him far more deeply than merely reflecting on the physical pain Jesus endured.

But there is even more to it than this. Much more! From the very beginning, the Church has insisted that there was something unique about this death. Strange as it may seem, this death is a death that gives us life. Through this terrible Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, we can…