The Experience of a Lifetime

Three experiences have marked Christianity from the very first days of the church: experiencing the cross, the resurrection, and life in the church. If you experience all three, you cannot help but have the experience of a lifetime. We will set out to realize such an experience through our April and May worship services.

First, we will experience the cross as we move toward Easter where the church focuses on the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Then we will experience first the resurrection and then life in the church as we move from the resurrection toward Pentecost, the beginning of the church through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection.

The small coastal town of Arroyo Grande, California, has recently been disturbed by events surrounding the theft of a cross that weeks later was discovered set aflame outside the bedroom window of a 19-year-old woman of mixed race.

The 11-foot wooden cross was stolen from Saint John's Lutheran Church in Arroyo Grande, California. The cross was later found burning after being erected in a neighbor's large front yard adjacent to the house rented by the woman and her mother. Now authorities are investigating the case as a theft, arson and hate crime.

The cross has created controversy since Jesus first announced to his followers that he would go to Jerusalem to die. In fact, in one of the passages we shall study about the cross, Paul says that the “message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” and he calls “Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentile.”

The cross was even controversial before Jesus died. Each time during his ministry that he predicted his own death, someone tried to talk him out of it. There must be some other way, they were saying, and they tried to urge Jesus to find it.

Yet God has chosen the cross as the symbol of Christianity and as the cruel means by which his only Son would die. John Stott writes in his book The Cross of Christ that Christians could have chosen any of seven symbols that he names as a suitable pointer to some aspect of Jesus’ ministry. “But instead the chosen symbol came to be a simple cross.”

Why would God choose something so brutal, so terrible, so controversial as the means of his Son’s death and the symbol of his followers? The answer is both simple and complex: a sacrificial death by the perfect Son of God is the only possible path to salvation and eternal life for imperfect, sinful people.

So, we will once again look at the cross during the first three Sundays of April and then we will share in its power during our Good Friday service before turning our attention to the Resurrection. We will find that both provide us with the experience of a lifetime.