Three years ago, the talk of the town was Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ,” a film which graphically dramatized the story of the Passion. According to some reports, quite a number of people “came to Christ” through seeing this film. For that reason it may be that Gibson did an important work.

However…

When we read Luke’s account of the Passion, we are not treated to a blow by blow account of Jesus’ suffering, with the writer’s “camera” lingering over every whip wound. Rather, we hear the story from more of a distance, without the gory details, but with Jesus’ words of forgiveness and mercy taking centre stage. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, Jesus embodies the compassion of God. As he is led to his death, he reaches out to the women of Jerusalem. As he hangs on the cross, he reaches out to the repentant thief. As he dies, he reaches out to all humankind.

As Jesus lived, and as he died, he proclaimed forgiveness of sins to all who repent.

Who saw these events? The chief witnesses were those who had walked with him, and at the end “stood at a distance, watching these things.”

From the beginning, the cross has baffled, vexed, and scandalized people.[i] Faithful Jews recoiled from the idea of a Messiah who died a shameful death. “…anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.”[ii] The Greek world found the notion of a God who died simply foolish. What kind of God is that? Christians embraced the cross, seeing in it the power of God, but even we have mostly failed to make sense of this crucified God, this God who “emptied himself.”[iii]

People want things to make sense. We want the world to fit into some kind of neat order. We want “God in a box,” tame and predictable. But God—wild, unpredictable God—simply won’t fit into any box of our devising, or be captured through any work of our minds.

The cross stands as the symbol of God’s utter freedom, and of God’s limitless compassion. Stepping up too closely to the scene, trying to pick out the clues like some spiritual CSI, ultimately only leads us to put our own limits on God. Let us instead step back, and look at the whole story of God’s salvation of humankind. At the centre of that story is the cross—a human instrument of torture that became God’s instrument of compassion, a human symbol of defeat that became God’s symbol of victory.

Let us then not linger too much over the details of the story, but rather rejoice in the mystery of our salvation through the death of Jesus of Nazareth on that cross in Jerusalem.