The Ministry of the Cross and the Growth of the Church

W. Carl Ketcherside

     The cross! On that day it was a scandal, a badge of shame! The time would come when crowds would assemble to see crosses pinned on men, but that was in the dim and distant future. Today a mob had gathered to see men pinioned on crosses. And they did not know as they followed their divergent roads to the cross, that they would stand that day at the cross roads of history and of the world.

     The religious leaders were present, a sleek pack moving in for the kill. There were chief priests, the temple butchers who had grown callous from thrusting the knife into the jugular veins in the quivering bodies of helpless sheep. They were drawn together by the smell of warm blood, which spurted from jagged holes torn in the flesh by cruel spikes. It was a holiday atmosphere which they sought to create with their wisecracks and backslapping of the scribes and one another.

     Their taunts developed into a chant, a unified yell from a hysterical cheering section watching the grim and grisly game of death being played before their eyes. "Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may believe." And little did they realize that they were that day writing the words and setting the tune for the composition which would be the theme song of the chief priests in the temples made with hands twenty centuries after Golgotha.

     Let Christ come down from the cross! But he did not because it is written that one took courage and went to the Roman procurator, and asked for the body of Jesus, and took him down. Then he was taken down from the cross by a friend, but now he is taken down by his betrayers. For every generation crucifies the Son of God afresh at its own Place of the Skull. And every generation takes him down under the pretence of making possible belief in Him.

     Theories of incarnation which deny his quickening in a virgin womb, theories of naturalism which efface his signs and wonders; theories of pragmatism which explain away his doctrine; theories of atonement which belie the efficacy of his blood; theories about his own search for identity which make his death explainable by human standards; theories of his resurrection which result in making

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every apostle a Judas Iscariot--these are the intellectual crowbars, the rationalistic clawhammers which men use to pry and draw out the nails and take him down from the cross. It is easier for the sons of men to believe in a man on the earth, than it is for men on the earth to believe in the Son of God on a cross.

     There was a Joseph present when he was born, and a Joseph present when he died. Joseph of Nazareth helped to wrap him in swaddling cloths; Joseph of Arimathea in a linen death shroud. But there have been many others since who have also tried to wrap him up. Some have sought to keep him a perpetual infant, reproducing annually in their homes and temples the manger scene with the helpless child. They have hung on the walls of their hospitals and art galleries paintings of "The Madonna" and have created a cult which has elevated an earthly handmaiden to the throne of the Son of God in the heavens. The world is not saved by baby hands stretching forth from a rude crib, but by a man's hands stretching out on a rude cross. Jesus cannot be forever swaddled by our own infantile thinking.

     Others have sought to keep him enveloped in the shroud and have spoken long and learnedly about what might have happened to cause the frightened and forlorn disciples to think they had seen him after his sad death. But Jesus will not remain in the wrappings of men. Eventually all must be brought to confront him as he is, devoid of all the trappings with which they have bedecked and invested him. He will discard our theological habiliments and fold them up as he did the graveclothes in the sepulcher.

     Our present personal task is to explore the relationship of the cross ministry to the spread of the reconciling community over the face of the earth. What was there about the cross which would supply the motivation, the drive, the power, to penetrate every segment of society with the Message of grace in its redemptive fulness? How could unlearned and ignorant men, unschooled in philosophy, make an undying impact upon the very centers of Greek sophistication? How could those from a remote province move into the lordly core of the political arena and topple the pagan Caesars from their imperial thrones?

     What was the secret of the cross which captivated men of diverse tongues and divergent ways and welded them into an invincible army whose soldiers would conquer while shedding no blood but their own? In the second century, Justin Martyr declared, "There exists not a single race of men, barbarians, Greeks, or by whatever name they may be called, warlike or nomadic, whether they live in tents or wander in wagons, among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of Jesus the crucified, to the Father and Creator of all things."

     In a passage, which has become famous, Tertullian wrote to the Roman emperor, "We Christians are but of yesterday and we have filled your cities, your islands, your fortresses, your towns, your market places, the very camp, palace, senate, forum, and have left you nothing but the temples of your gods.... If we were to make a general secession, and betake ourselves to some remote corner of the world, you would be horror-struck at the solitude."

     It was the divine plan that the Good News should spread by radiation. The order of witnessing was to be first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, then in Samaria, and on to the uttermost parts of the earth. Radiation requires a center, a fixed point. And God fixed the center

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of the earth at Jerusalem. Hear the words of Ezekiel, "Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries round about her" (5:5).

     Of this passage. Dr. Faussett writes, "Here Jerusalem is regarded as the center of the whole earth, designed to radiate the true light over the nations in all directions. No center in the ancient heathen world could have been selected more fitted than Canaan to be a vantage ground, whence the people of God could act with success upon the heathenism of the world. It lay midway between the oldest and most civilized states, Egypt and Ethiopia on the one side, and Babylon, Nineveh and India on the other, and afterwards, between Greece, Rome and Persia. The Phoenician mariners were close by through whom they might have transmitted the true religion to the remotest lands; around them were the Ishmaelites, the great inland traders in south Asia and north Africa. Israel was thus placed not for its own selfish good, but to be the spiritual benefactor of the whole world. Compare Psalm 67 throughout."

     Professor Kurtz said, "Its own near approach to the most important channels along which the commerce of the world flowed, combined to establish it in the center of the activity of the world. The country was in this manner, specially adapted to become, at first, the silent and retired nursery of the kingdom of God; and afterwards to spread abroad, in all directions and among all nations, the great salvation, when the latter had reached the period of its maturity."

     When men wish to draw a circle they drive a stake into the ground and fasten a string to it. Using that stake as a center they can reach out in ever-widening areas by the simple expedient of lengthening the cord. The cross was God's stake driven into the earth with the invisible cord of faith attached to it. Philip reached down to the superstition-ridden city of Samaria and proclaimed the Christ unto them. Peter stretched the cord to include Caesarea, provincial capital of the Roman power, and took the message to the home of an army captain whose prayers had been interrupted by an angelic visitor.

     Paul took that faith from Antioch across to Cilicia, down through the rocky defile known as "The Tarsian Gate," across the miasmatic plains of Asia Minor and into the ancient city of fame and fable, Troy. Then, at the call of a night vision, he crossed over the sea to Philippi, "deathbed of the Roman Republic," along the Egnatian Way to sensual Corinth and intellectual Athens. At last with chains clanking on his wrists he brought it into the dark dungeon of the Mamertine Prison in Rome, and it broke free even while he was chained and captivated the hearts of some of Caesar's very household.

     If we are to walk in the footsteps of these soldiers we too must start at the cross, and wherever we go over land and sea we must feel the tension created by the fact that our faith reaches back and is fastened to the torture-stake of Calvary. The Christian can never be at loose ends. When he fails to feel the pull of the past, or the haul of history, he can be certain that he has no future.

     The earth was the scene of violence and the wretchedness of sin. Those who lived upon its surface were walking in the shadow of their own iniquity, those who slumbered in its bosom were mute witnesses in their narrow cells to the fatal effects of the venom. "The sting of sin is death!" But the cross was God's hypodermic needle driven into the quivering heart of the universe, conveying the antitoxin to evil and the serum, of life. And although the earth shook and writhed in convulsion until the sun hid its face, hope was restored and the flush of life replaced the pallor of approaching death. We live because he died!

     The cause of Christ grows by planting and cultivation. It is not mere chance which prompted the apostle, in the very context of the cross, to talk about planting and irrigation. To the community at Corinth he said, "You are God's hus-

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bandry." We would have said, "You are the field of God," or "You are God's ranch."

     The Greek term signifies land that is tilled or soil that is worked, in contrast with unbroken prairie or untrammeled forest. It suggests fruitfulness and productivity. The original proclaimers of the Word are pioneers who clear the fields, others come to scatter the grain, and still others to irrigate and cultivate. "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are fellow workmen for God; you are God's field, you are God's building."

     The cross is the implement of divine invention capable of doing all that is required to cultivate God's heritage. It is the power take-off which makes possible every operation. It is the plow which drives deep into the untouched soil of human hearts and cuts a furrow which turns them over toward God. It is the harrow which breaks up and pulverizes the clods of doubt and fear and works the soil into a mellow loam so the seed can fall on good ground.

     It is the reaper before whose blade the grain ripened by the grace of God bows and falls, and is made ready for the gathering in. And the cross is God's threshing instrument, winnowing and sifting the wheat from the chaff. The tribulation of the cross is more than mere semantics. The Latin "tribulum" means a threshing instrument and it is when men are confronted by the cross that they are separated from one another for the granary or the consuming fire.

     The community of believers advances when the army marches abreast. There must be straight paths for the feet. The valleys must be exalted. The hills must be brought low. There can be none looking down from heights of arrogance upon the many, nor the many looking up in adoration at the few. And the cross is God's great leveler.

     It is the "headache ball' that smashes incessantly at the high walls of pride, reinforced by the iron rods of selfishness, until we are brought down in a cloud of inglorious dust from our self-exaltation to the place of our beginning. In the beautiful twenty-third psalm the phrase "He restoreth my soul" in the Hebrew is literally, "He takes me back to the place of my beginnings."

     But there is the other side of the picture. So the cross is also God's elevated crane which dips down into the miry slough of despond and tugs and pulls me free of the sucking clay, and draws me up and out of my own despair and frustration. It is not in vain that we sing:

     "I want to live above the world,
     Though Satan's darts at me are hurled,
     For faith has caught the joyful sound;
     The song of saints on higher ground.

     The cross came into a world of human inequity, injustice and bigotry. Mankind was separated and segregated by racial, national, social and ritual barriers. Nameless slaves were given hope where despair and degradation had reigned, cruel taskmasters found their hearts melting under the influence of an irresistible heaven-sent influence. Those who had been filled with hostility were suddenly transformed until they thrilled with humility. The clinched fist gave way to the open hand. Unity prevailed where hatred had once dwelt.

     The cross made the world a neighborhood where all men belonged in a single category--those who need salvation. The earth became heaven's backyard where ethnic differences and cultural variations fade into nothingness when compared with the overwhelming concern for life eternal. And when those who had discovered the Secret touched the lives of those who had not, hope was restored and terror was banished. And the Way spread throughout the world.

     We dare not evade the implications of this for our own generation! How does it happen that, after twenty centuries, the cross-bearers are a shrinking minority? Why can we not repeat the

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glorious conquests of the long ago? All of us are aware of the replies of the skeptics who would relegate the power to the past, and confine the dynamic to the dead tomes of history. To them it is merely something to read about, but not to repeat.

     I deny their thesis! I deny it vehemently! This is not a post-Christian era. There is no such thing. I admit that what has been termed Christianity is now being rejected as helpless and senile. But this is merely the golden calf which was constructed of their jewels by the people of God and before which they have prostrated themselves. It is true that it may be ground into powder by the millstones of destiny and flung into the stream of time. But there is no real relationship between that with which God has endowed us and the image which we have created and projected.

     Actually, our task is not so much to defend the Way against its enemies as to rescue it from those who profess to be its friends. Let me suggest a few areas in which I think we need to revise our thinking if we would recover the power of God for our age.

     1. We must quit talking about the symbols of our faith and the images of the church, and begin to exemplify the reality of our divine-human relationship. It is not a crucifix on the wall, or a cross on the steeple, which will save the world. The cross is not something to be worn, but something to be borne. It was not meant to rely upon but to die upon.

     The things to which we point with such pride and exhibit with such pomp may be mute witnesses of the shallowness of our own hearts and the emptiness of our own souls. There is ever the danger that we shall become so wrapped up in our own concerns and the preservation of our own image that we may feast sumptuously while the world of suffering mankind lies at our gates begging for the crumbs which fall from our table. I have never known a people to be concerned about creating an image who did not end up worshiping it.

     2. We must relinquish the vain hope that we can conquer this world for our captain by a well-trained group of professionals who fight in the valley while the great majority languidly watch from the safety of the hills. There is not one command to fight the good fight of faith which applies only to a top echelon of elite troops. Every part of the Christian armor was designed to be worn by every soldier of the Lamb. One man cannot wear the helmet, carry the shield, or wield the sword for the whole company.

     We have employed enlistment gimmicks to increase our numbers and swell our ranks until they are now filled with soldiers who have no intention of fighting. We are spending our time pacifying and placating disgruntled troops, devising new means of pampering those who threaten to go "over the hill" when their sensitivities are offended or when they feel neglected. Our preachers are not so much leaders who take men into battle as they are "Bob Hopes" who quip and joke to keep the soldiers happy. It is questionable whether the Devil worries about how many we enroll provided they act like many of those who are already in. And it is obvious that a lot of our brethren are willing to live in a state of peaceful co-existence with Satan.

     We promote such unworthy and unhealthful conditions when we talk of certain ones going into "full time Christian service," thus making it appear that others are obligated to serve as Christians only on a part time basis. Every child of God is a soldier all of the time, at home or abroad, awake or asleep, in daylight or dark. We are not mustered in on Sunday morning and mustered out on Sunday afternoon. And the task of evangelists and bishops is to train and develop every member to become a seasoned veteran in his own right and his own field. Our places of meeting must become arsenals and training grounds. We must convert our structures into ammunition dumps. We are not a peacetime army. We are at war!

     3. We must develop a definite strategy

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for the recapture of those territories from which we have withdrawn and which we have forfeited to the enemy. Time will not permit mention of more than a few of them, but foremost among these is the field of advanced education. This is an intellectual age and young men and women of ambition and acumen are going to be exposed to every form of scholastic research. Whether they are guided by instructors who believe in God, or by humanists and secularists who become their own gods, depends upon our vision and foresight.

     We cannot indulge the luxury of withdrawal into our own partisan pillboxes, and sit in sectarian security while the world goes up in flames about our structures. We must recognize that the man who teaches biology, sociology, psychology, history or literature, in the state university, is God's minister, if he is a disciple of Jesus, the same as the man who stands in the pulpit and often speaks to a complacent congregation on Sunday morning.

     It is a sign of our weakness that we fear for truth in any encounter and look askance at those who feel called to bring an effective witness for Jesus in the legal profession, or as physicians, athletic coaches, or state university professors. Surely God needs men who can minister in all of these areas and we should be producing commandoes who can drop behind the lines and infiltrate every sector of our culture for Christ. We must either meet the intellectual world on its own level or "fold our tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away." God has not promised to keep enough people ignorant so the restoration movement can survive.

     Another surrendered area is that of science. Our own survival may depend upon our recovery of this region by men of Christian commitment. Science itself is neutral, but scientists are not, and if the power to destroy the universe is in the control of those who do not recognize the God of the universe, catastrophe beyond our power to imagine may occur. Science belongs to God and we need more Christian scientists--not the sectarian brand whose mother church is in Boston, but the committed kind whose headquarters are in heaven.

     In the field of race relations we need to move into hard core areas to make the voice of the Prince of peace heard amidst the strident clamorings of fanatics and extremists of all kinds. The world will be changed only as men are changed. Power has no color, and the Christian must never allow his judgment to be colored by prejudice, bias or hate. We must meet these problems not with hot heads and cold hearts, but with cool heads and warm hearts. But we must meet them and not ignore them. Jesus died for men of concern who hold their heads up, not for ostriches who bury theirs in the sand.

     4. We must recover our faith in the attested truth of God so that it may be built not upon human wisdom but upon the power of God. The man who quotes the Word with tongue-in-cheek or with fingers crossed, is a betrayer of the Christ as certainly as the covetous pretender who sold him for thirty pieces of silver. The one who masquerades as a proclaimer of the Good News while his own heart has been eroded of faith in Jesus by the wisdom of this passing age, is a greater deceiver and more dangerous than the avowed atheist.

     When the tattered forces of the American Revolution were surrounded by the enemy, Thomas Paine took a charred stick from the campfire one night and wrote upon the head of his drum, "Put none but Americans on guard tonight." And now, when the sheep of God are challenged by grievous wolves who enter in, not sparing the flock, it is time once more to be careful of those who shepherd them. The character of a mere hireling never changes with the passing centuries. Such a one "when he sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away, because he is no shepherd and the sheep are not his. Then the wolf harries the flock and scatters the sheep."

     Men who are frightened of their own

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theological shadow, who are wire-walking, fence-sitting compromisers of the faith, will sell the cause of Christ down the river to maintain their personal popularity. And any man who carries water on both shoulders should have one bucket knocked off or be made to spill them both. The preaching of the cross is a task for one whose eye is single and whose heart is undivided.

     Encompassed within the scriptural setting assigned to me is that lustrous gem of imperishable truth which declares, "There can be no other foundation beyond that which is already laid; I mean Jesus Christ himself." Upon this foundation I cheerfully build the house of my hopes and construct the citadel of my cherished dreams.

     He is the foundation of my faith and trust for this world and the world to come. I am in Christ Jesus by God's act, for God has made him my wisdom; he is my righteousness, in him I am consecrated and set free. I had to be made a fool to gain true wisdom, but now I know that the wisdom of this world is folly in God's sight. I am content to have it become so in my own sight.

     He is the foundation of my fellowship. No longer is that fellowship conditioned upon conformity with a cold legalistic code, manipulated by clever factional leaders who can make partisan puppets perform while keeping themselves concealed behind the curtain of contrived interpretations. I am one with Him and with every other person who has set to his seal that God is true, and who has bowed the knee to His sovereignty.

     He is the foundation of authority for my life. I am convinced beyond all doubt that He is enthroned at the right hand of my Father in the heavenly realms, that every thing has been put in subjection beneath His feet, and that He has been appointed supreme head of the body. Wherein I fail to follow His will it will be a sin of the head and not of the heart, it will be due to imbecility and not to intention. He is the center and circumference of my life. That which does not proceed from him has no validity; that which does not lead to him has no value.

     He is the foundation of my feeble service. I am no longer concerned with glorifying an institution or projecting pride in an organization. No institution could forgive my grievous sin, purify my iniquitous heart, and transform my wasted life. All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to him and I shall go where my heart prompts me to believe that he would have me go if every institution on this earth seeks to thwart me with threats or discourage me by detraction. I belong to Him!

     He is the foundation of my hope for the hour of my departure. When the cool breeze from the shadowy river is wafted through the cypress trees to fan my feverish brow; when the voices of loved ones fade and I stumble on toward the dim unknown, I want to know that he is there to take me by the hand. I want the voice which spoke to the tempestuous waves of Galilee to say to the turbulent Jordan, "Peace, be still!" And I will fear no evil if he is with me!

     The power of the cross is not lessened for him who still stands at its base and says in the words of the centurion of old "Truly this man is the Son of God." Let us willingly proclaim that which is foolishness to those who perish, but wisdom to us who are saved. If any man glory, let him glory in the cross of Christ, where heaven stooped low to touch the earth with the magic wand of grace, and the gentle voice of mercy whispered forgiveness to frightened and forlorn man as he stood trembling upon the step of the gallows erected by his own guilt.