We preach Christ crucified

‘We preach Christ crucified.’ Says Paul of himself and the congregations he founds. I think all of us clergy do try to do that; but what is it that you actually do when you ‘Preach Christ Crucified’? We make sure that people understand that Jesus died for them, individually, personally: that is how much He loved them. And the response to that, the giving of oneself to Christ to be His, the seeking of forgiveness, the entry into the Kingdom of God that follows, the granting of life eternal. Through Christ’s crucifixion we lose everything and gain everything.

Preaching Christ Crucified is how we point the way to salvation, how we save souls, how we enable people to get to heaven, how we encourage people into the Kingdom, how we equip them to be the Body of Christ here in earth, how we transform society from top to bottom… and it is not a simple or easy thing to do. But it is what we, the Body of Christ, have to do, all Christians: not just us clergy.

To do that, we need to help people to see just who Jesus is, from the beginning of time, through His life on earth in totally human form, and from the time of his resurrection until now and for ever. We need to help people to understand about God the father… and to understand their relationship to Him. And we need to help people to understand about the Holy Spirit… and to expect to meet God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. That is the beginning of preaching Christ Crucified.

We need to help people to understand that God the father is not just the creator God. A god who simply set the universe going all those billions of years ago; and then went for a long holiday at some celestial Hamilton Island…He’d be no help to us. But you know, God is not on holiday; He created… and he has a plan. It is a plan He is bringing to fruition… and He’s doing that in a way that is truly just, for God is no despot, no Stalin writ large. Not only is He just, He is merciful. Not only is He merciful, He loves us…

He loves us so much that He is running towards us to welcome us even before we have managed to ask forgiveness. That is the scandal of the father of the prodigal son: he ran to greet his son before even the son had arrived to stammer out his apology and to seek forgiveness for the most appalling of sins against a loving father. Jesus told that story so that we would understand about the kind of love God has for us.

We need to help people to understand about Jesus, totally human… (how often we slip into the heresy of thinking of Jesus the man as sort of being God the Father in disguise… No, that is totally wrong, Jesus the man was exactly that, a man)… a man, feeling his way towards God, one moment sure that had been called, the next wondering whether that call was real, one moment terrified of what might happen to Him in Jerusalem, the next going to His death with the most astonishing outpouring of love the world has ever seen or ever will see.

We need to help people to expect the Holy Spirit to be active in their lives: for there to be a supernatural element to life and decision making… as a result of knowing Jesus.

It is only when people have the begin to experience the Love of God, only when they have the beginnings of an understanding of the damage done by sin, only then that it begins to be possible to talk about redemption. To talk about what Jesus actually did for each one of us on that cross. To begin to talk about what it means to believe, to begin to help people to understand that they owe their lives for all eternity to Jesus, for what He did for them that Easter so long ago.

Preaching Christ Crucified is not a sales job. It has nothing at all in common with the salesman who ‘gives’ a free computer away with the car he sells you… and although Life Eternal comes along with the acknowledgement of our sinfulness and request for forgiveness at the moment we believe… we are not responding to a ‘deal’ but to the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

I do try to preach Christ Crucified; but I’m not very good at it. I do not have the kind of mind that it needs to be good at it. Of course I’ve worked at honing the speaking and teaching skills you need to be an effective public speaker; but these skills are useless, counter-productive, if I do not have the mind of Jesus myself. I cannot talk of the love of God and be convincing unless I have the love of God in my heart; and that is only there if I have the mind of Christ, and I only have that if I pray and pray and pray and after that pray again. And that means showing the love of God in my life all day every day. Being kind and gentle and loving… going the extra mile, giving away what I honestly do not need. All wonderful, but it aint me.

No, what I am is grumpiness, crossness, pride, lack of love, laziness, foolishness: These are my problems, and are, ultimately, why my attempts to preach Christ Crucified appear to me not as effective as they should be: could be, if only I allowed the mind of Christ that is in me to grow until it filled me. But I must not be despondent; absolutely not. Now, listen up, this is the nub of this talk.

When Paul speaks of preaching Christ Crucified he is talking preaching about things one knows for oneself as a result of a lifetime of study and prayer and self-denial. You may think that you’d have to be a saint to manage that; and God knows I’m no saint. Uh oh; I’ll not get off that easily. I am a saint. So are you; we are ‘the saints’. We are called, all of us, to preach Christ Crucified, and none of us are up to it. But no matter, for if we pray, and preach, Christ who has redeemed us can and will redeem our flawed work, and souls will be saved. God who so loved the world that He gave his only Son has a plan that will not be thwarted by our unworthiness: He redeemed that when He redeemed us.

In fact, to refuse to ‘preach Christ Crucified’ because we are unworthy is a cop out. So, friends, let us together step out in faith, knowing that though we are not really up to it, Christ will use us: through Him we will preach Christ Crucified….and through Him, scary though it is, we will by the Grace of God change the society we live in.