Monday, April 29, 2019
650 - The Foot of the Cross
Spirituality Column #650
April 30, 2019
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
The Foot of the Cross
By Bob Walters
I heard a couple of good Easter weekend messages about
“living at the foot of the Cross.” I know they were good because I couldn’t
stop thinking about them.
I hope Pastor
Rick Grover at East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis doesn’t mind
if I riff on his ideas a little bit.
The basics
of Rick’s Good Friday message centered on a question: “Are you living at the
foot of the Cross?” What a perfect topic as we looked toward Easter
Sunday. Jesus died on that Cross to
defeat sin and death and then arose from the tomb in a proclamation of
salvation and eternal life.
Jesus of
course had proclaimed that message in various ways throughout His ministry to
His disciples, crowds, sinners, foreigners, Samaritans, Pharisees … anyone who
would listen. Some loved it, some hated
it, some dismissed it, but the evident fact is that nobody “got it” – not even
Jesus’s mother Mary or His close, close friends Peter and John – until they saw
the empty tomb. Yet even having seen the
vacant grave, it took time for them to complete the circuit of understanding
that all Jesus said was true; all His promises would be kept.
One of the
greatest potential disappointments in all history was witnessed at the foot of
that Cross on Calvary. It was followed
by history’s undeniably greatest victory – the risen Christ. Humanity finds its love, hope, joy, truth and
eternal promise emanating out of that empty Easter tomb; it is at the foot of
that cross where our life’s struggles, our sacrifice of love, our obedience,
and our worldly challenges are confronted.
Rick’s point was that living at the foot of the Cross was not easy, but
that it provided at least two undeniable opportunities: what we can leave at
the Cross, and what we can find at the Cross.
Got that? How we live there, what
we leave there, and what we find there.
That’s what
got me going.
What we
leave there – I’m paraphrasing – are our cares and failures; and what we find
there are our courage and purpose. On
Easter morning, Rick used the wonderful example of Tyler Trent (his grandmother
Cathy Campbell is an E91 member) who bravely faced his own recent death with an
astounding witness of courage and grace in Christ for the world to see … especially
the American collegiate sports world, Purdue University, the “Big Ten” league,
and even Indiana University. Grace
abounds.
It occurred
to me that Tyler did what few do at the foot of the Cross: He wasn’t thinking
about himself or his pain; he was displaying his love for others and talking
about his Lord. He was thankful for the
opportunity his awful cancer provided for him to love things beyond himself,
and to witness for the saving goodness of Jesus Christ.
Though remarkably
smitten with the power of Tyler’s story and the ferocity of his friendship, few
in the national sports media really “got” or reported the truth of what Tyler
was saying. It called to mind the timidity
of so many at the Cross and Tomb.
Those media understand loyalty and
bravery and perseverance. They see it in
sports every day. Tyler’s shone to an
extreme degree, but they were ill-equipped to tell this story from the dangerous
but true perspective of the foot of the Cross.
I did sense, however, that among the athletes, students, staff, and
fans, many “got it” indeed.
Tyler “got it,” and more
importantly “gave it” to anyone with ears to hear. Amen.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was assistant SID at Purdue in the early
1980s.