Belated quotations for Good Friday and Easter Sunday

Good Friday

To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination, to kill him is almost an act of murder: to crucify him is – What? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed.
(Cicero, Against Verres II.v.64, para. 165)

Our most merciful Father, seeing us to be oppressed and overwhelmed with the curse of the law, and so to be holden under the same that we could never be delivered from it by our own power, sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him all the sins of all men, saying: Be thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which hanged upon the cross; and briefly, be thou the person which have committed the sins of all men; see therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them.
(Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535))

If God, at His moment of clearest revelation and self-definition, took the form of a dying slave (Philippians 2:7-8), then what does that do to the ways in which we value (or fail to value) one another? Paul tackles that question head-on in 1 Corinthians 1, and it makes for radical reading. The world looks at the Cross and sees failure, foolishness, weakness, shame and disgrace. What it should see, says Paul, is the power and wisdom of God (v.24). Similarly, the world looks at the Christian Church and sees a bunch of low-class, low-grade, uneducated no-hopers. What it should see is a community of people chosen and valued by God. The Cross and the Church therefore constitute a challenge to the world’s way of looking at things, a challenge to the world’s values and assumptions and attitudes. What the world despises, God cherishes.
(Michael Lloyd, Café Theology (Alpha International, 2005), pp. 170-1)

All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell-deserving sinners’, then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.
(John Stott, The Cross of Christ (IVP, 1986), p. 109)

Now I saw in my dream, that the highway up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, “He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.” Then he stood still a while, to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked, therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks.
(John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress)

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship, we surrender our lives to Christ in union with his death: we give our lives over to death. Thus it begins: the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (SCM, 1959), p. 81)

Holiness stands revealed. Love stands revealed, a pure love; there is no love greater. Because of the cross we shall praise his goodness, the goodness of his justice, the goodness of his grace, through all eternity. At the cross, God turned evil against evil and brought about the practical solution to the problem. He has made atonement for sins, he has conquered death, he has triumphed over the devil. He has laid the foundation for hope. What further demonstration do we need?
(Henri Blocher, Evil and the Cross (Apollos, 1994), p. 104)

Let us abide hard by the cross and search the mystery of His wounds.
(Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

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Easter Sunday

Low in the grave He lay, Jesus my Saviour,
Waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!

Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever, with His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!
(Robert Lowry)

Christ is risen from the dead.

He has trampled on death through his death

and he has graciously bestowed life on those in the tombs.
(Chorus of the Orthodox Easter service (Kala Pascha), which this year coincided with the Western Easter Sunday)

First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!

Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Saviour has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.
He destroyed Hell when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
(Easter sermon of John Chrysostom (circa 400 AD))

Was it not most meet that a woman should first see the risen Saviour? She was first in the transgression; let her be first in the justification. In yon garden she was first to work our woe; let her in that other garden be the first to see Him who works our weal. She takes first the apple of that bitter tree which brings us all our sorrow; let her be the first to see the Mighty Gardener, who has planted a tree which brings forth fruit unto everlasting life.
(Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.
(Martin Luther)

It's quite clear what Paul is talking about, that he comes into town announcing that Jesus is Lord, as a royal herald. He is saying that the crucified Jesus is the Lord of the world. And this is not, "Here is a way of salvation. You might like to apply it to yourself." It's not, "Here is a new way of being religious and you might enjoy it." This is really an imperial summons: "On your knees!" Nobody ever went into a Roman town and said, "Caesar is lord and you might like to have this experience of acknowledging him as lord if that suits you." They said, "Caesar is Lord, get on your knees and we want the tax right now."
(N.T. Wright, as interviewed by Travis Tamerius for The Reformation & Revival Journal)

Even more memorable was German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. One time when I was preaching in Germany, he invited me to his office. Coffee was served, but before my first sip, he started in.

“Young man, do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?”

“I most certainly do,” I replied.

“So do I. If Jesus Christ is not risen from the dead, there is not one glimmer of hope for the human race. When I leave office, I’m going to spend the rest of my life studying and writing about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s the most important event in human history.”
(Billy Graham, Just As I Am (HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 688-9)

Now that I’m living as a risen child of God,
My every road leads to the cross.
(Matt Redman, ‘You Led Me to the Cross’)

'Seven Stanzas at Easter' by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
'''''''''''''''reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
'''''''''''''''eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
'''''''''''''''regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
'''''''''''''''faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
'''''''''''''''grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
'''''''''''''''opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
'''''''''''''''embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.


From Telephone Poles and Other Poems © 1961 by John Updike.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc.