Crucial Passages

This last Sunday during his sermon, our pastor used the phrase "crucial passage" in referring to the scripture he was quoting. "Standing by the cross of Jesus was Mary..." (John19:25). I'm not sure whether our pastor realized that the word he chose, "crucial," comes from the word "cross" in Latin: "crux." Every passage about the cross is crucial, in essence. And herein lies the crux, the turning point, the essential, supremely critical point of every matter, or all that truly matters.

All that is crucial is cross-like. From this root word also comes "excruciating," for the pain experienced on a cross is excruciating. The cross is the crossroad of the avenues of truth and reality. Here Heaven intersects with Earth; God with Man. The crucial passages are those that bring Man closest to God, yet the result of that encounter may be excruciating. For on the cross such pain far surpasses any comforting.

Crucial passages inherently imply pain. The pain of dying to ourselves. The pain of being at one time or another forsaken because of the ways we are separated from God. We need to heed the crucial passages and let their words impale our hearts. "But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately there gushed water and blood." (John 19:34) This is a crucial passage...

But there arises another sense of the word "crux." For the crux of a matter lies within the turning point, the pivotal point, the fulcrum point. Within the subject of mechanical physics taught to our fifth-graders, we teach a unit on Levers and Pulleys. Levers are wonderful tools to make work easier, in fact, in some cases some kinds of work are impossible without levers. A lever can be quite simple, yet every lever has a load arm, a force or effort arm, and a fulcrum. The fulcrum doesn't move, but it is around that central point that levers do their work.

The physics behind levers demonstrates that the closer the load is to the fulcrum, the easier the load is to lift, and the further the effort or force is from the fulcrum, the lighter the load feels. The spiritual ramifications for this image can be staggering. For you see, the crux of the matter, the fulcrum of our shared history and destiny as the human race is the incarnation of Christ and Christ on the Cross. The crux of the History of Humanity stands planted in the ground of Golgotha. The closer that we move towards this Fulcrum of Salvation, the easier it is to lift the load: to have the load of sin and alienation lifted from us. The closer we stand by the cross, even as Mary stood by the cross, the easier it is from Him Who is the Still Point of a turning world to lift our load of sin, guilt and shame, of our rebellion and despair, of our brokenness and alienation. And Who is at the other end? So seemingly at an infinite distance from the fulcrum so that every burden can be borne aloft? It is the Father Whose effort lifts our burdens. It is God Who necessarily had to distance himself so far from the Fulcrum that the Fulcrum cried out in lonely anguish: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

We are at one side of the Fulcrum, but God is on the other side---so like a giant seesaw he lifts us up... Some of the most sublime truths can be discovered on the playground. Who would have believed that a simple image of a child's play equipment might be for us a model to understand God's forsaking the Fulcrum of History in order to bring about our Salvation and the Lifting of our burdens.

And some people scoff the wisdom of ensuring a few minutes of recess for our children.

Crucial passages. May they lead to our ReCreation.