Theology of the Cross

“Why did we have to change Palm Sunday?” she asked the Pastor, with some sadness in her tone. “It used to be such an up-beat Sunday! A lot of us were confirmed on Palm Sunday! Now we sing a few ‘Hosannas’ and then, almost immediately, we bow our heads in sorrow at the cruel death of our Saviour.”

“Actually,” said the Pastor, “our worship on Palm / Passion Sunday reflects a very important Lutheran teaching! Rather than trying to explain that teaching, let me tell you a story. I don’t know where I heard it – but I like it!”

It’s about an old rocking-chair that sits in the office of a high school principal in southern USA. When visitors ask the principal about it he explains that it belonged to his grandma. She used to rock him in it, whenever he felt ill. Sometimes the principal tells the whole story – that just above the chair a crucifix hung on the wall. How one night his grandma told the little boy, now-principal, the story of Jesus, and how Jesus died nailed to a cross like that one.

The little boy didn’t sleep well that night; the story of the cross troubled him, a lot. So, early the next morning, before anyone else was awake, he climbed up and took the crucifix off the wall; using his grandma’s letter-opener, and he tried to pry the nails out of the hands of Jesus! When he couldn’t do it, he cried and cried, and that was how his grandma found him. She hugged him as he sobbed and said, through his tears, that it was wrong, cruel, that Jesus should die that way. So she told him, lovingly, some more of the story. She tried to help him understand: she promised that, as he grew older, he would come to understand more about the bad things in the world, and also in our own lives; but also about God’s deep, deep, love; and how Jesus was willing to suffer and die for us all. When you understand all that, she said, the cross will become for you a beautiful sign of the greatest love there is; and you will be happy to wear it; even to mark it on yourself with your own hand, just as a minister did when you were baptized.

As Lutherans, we understand that it is tempting to want to only celebrate what seems like the ‘good stuff” – we often call that a “theology of glory.” Sometimes that is what Palm Sunday feels like. But the rocking chair story reminds us that “the really good stuff” is the Passion story. Or, as we often say, “The Theology of the Cross.”

Text: Philipians 2: 5-11

Rev. Phil Heinze, Eastern Synod Director of Public Policy