Many of you know or have heard that I have cut my hair. It’s to the point now that if you haven’t seen my haircut I know that we haven’t been interacting that much. It’s a new look for me. This week I got another “new look” in that I updated my glasses. The update is pretty much the same style that I’ve been wearing so without my telling you, you probably really wouldn’t notice. The prescription is also not immensely different, so it’s not like I’ve been noticing huge chan
ges there either. But sometimes, we need something to put in front of our eyes that makes things clearer.
The old hymn “Abide with Me” begins its final stanza, “Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes.” There’s an interesting consideration there. The Cross, when lifted to our eyes, helps us to see things in greater focus. We see both Law and Gospel through the Cross, which serves as the lens that lets us see these things clearly. Without the Cross, Law and Gospel get fuzzy, perhaps they even run together. Without the Cross, Law is just the oppressive rules of a divine control freak. Without the Cross, the Gospel is just warm fuzzies that don’t really mean anything at the end of the day.
But even more interesting is how the Cross brings our visions together corporately, but in an individual way. That’s the tension we’re talking about in our sermon series and really throughout this “We Are the Body” focus year – does being a Christian mean being a Christian individually, or does it mean being a Church corporately? The answer is, perhaps frustratingly, yes.
The Cross clarifies this for us as a good pair of glasses will. The Cross serves as our individual prescription – our individual sins and personalities and lives are addressed in the Cross. But those things are not addressed for the sake of themselves. Rather, they are addressed so that we can see clearly through them to see God. Our frail human nature is our weak eyes, the Cross the corrective, and but the focus is God – and that focus, the thing that we’re looking at, we all share that. We need our weaknesses addressed individually so that together we can share in the joy of seeing.
This week, imagine that Cross stretching over your line of sight, and look for what of God is being brought in focus by that Cross, and celebrate together with those who are able to see the same thing because of the “new look” we have been given.