What Are We Actually Doing When We Think About the Cross?

The Rev. Eric Randolph, Pastor

We’re almost there.

One more week, and we walk together into the most sacred days of the Christian year—Palm Sunday’s strange and hopeful procession, the hushed table of Maundy Thursday, the stark silence of Good Friday, and then, the wait. The long, still wait of Holy Saturday before the world turns again on Easter morning. But we’re not there yet. We are here—right here, on the threshold. And I feel we need to pause together for a moment, before we cross it.

Because Luther, that ornery, brilliant, restless (and flawed) reformer, wrote something I think we need to hear this week. In 1519, he wrote a short meditation on Christ’s Passion, and in it, he said something that might make us a little uncomfortable. He said that most of us, when we think about the suffering of Jesus, are thinking about it all wrong. We look at the cross, and we think about Judas. We think about Pilate. We think about the crowds who shouted. We find someone to blame—someone who is not us—and we feel the sad, safe distance of a bystander.

Or we treat the Passion like a performance we watch once a year. We feel something—maybe even something genuine—and then we go home. And nothing changes. Luther says: that is not enough. It is not bad, exactly. But it is not enough. Here is what he invites us into instead: a moment of honest reckoning. Not guilt tripping. Not self-flagellation. Just honesty. The kind of honesty that can only happen when you are standing in front of something real.

Luther says—and I want you to hear this gently, because he means it gently–you are there at the cross. Not as a villain. Not as a monster. But as a human being whose fears, whose small cruelties, whose moments of cowardice, whose hunger for control, whose willingness to look away—these uncomfortable things to admit are part of what the whole human story has cost. The cross is not a story about them. It is a story about us.

Now, I know that can feel heavy. And I’m not writing this to add weight to lives that are already carrying plenty. You know what you carry. The regrets you replay at two o'clock in the morning. The relationship that fractured and never quite healed. The way you sometimes protect yourself by hardening just a little. The gap between who you want to be and who you were last week. Luther is not asking you to wallow in that. He is asking you to bring it with you to the cross. To stop pretending it isn’t already there. Because here is the turn—and this is the whole thing, really—the cross is not the end of the story.

Luther’s meditation does not leave us in grief. It carries us through grief into something else. Because the same Jesus who suffers is the same Jesus who rises. And his resurrection is not just a happy ending tacked onto a tragedy. It is the declaration that the worst thing is not the last thing. That death does not get the final word. That whatever you have carried—whatever we have carried—is not too heavy for grace.

The Passion, he goes on to say, becomes a pattern for our lives. We will have our own moment of suffering, our own small deaths—losses, disappointments, endings we did not choose. And the invitation to Holy Week is to discover that we do not face those moments alone. We face them with a God who has already been there. A God who did not stay behind the glass partition, watching from the stands, but who walked straight into the worst of it—for love of us. That is the heartbeat of everything we are about to celebrate: “For God so loved the world...”

So, as we step into this final week of Lent, I want to extend the invitation to do something simple. Not dramatic. Just this: let the story be real this year. Let it land. When you hear the words of the Passion read on Palm Sunday, don’t just listen as a witness. Listen as someone who is in it—beloved, complicated, forgiven, and free. Let Holy Week do its work in you. Let the grief be real, so the joy of Easter morning can be real. Let the cross be honest, so the resurrection can be liberating.

We’re almost there. And we are going to walk through it together—every last one of us—held by grace that is stronger than anything we have done or left undone.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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Footnote: Martin Luther's writings, including "A Meditation on the Passion," were deeply influential in shaping our theology and devotional practices. However, it is essential to acknowledge that some of Luther's works contain anti-Semetic language that is incompataible with the Gospel's call to love our neighbors and seek justice. His perspective on the Jewish people evolved over time to include more harsher and condemnatory views.

While his views were not uncommon in late-medieval and early modern European society, they nonetheless perpetuated harmful stereotypes and attitudes that have had enduring consequences, well beyond his lifetime. As Christians reflecting on his legacy, we must denounce and grieve the ways his words contributed to prejudice and division.

This acknowledgement does not diminish the theological insights he offered in other areas but reminds us that no human teacher is without fault. As we engage with his works today, we are called to approach them critically, holding fast to the truth of the Gospel, which proclaims reconciliation, justice, and love for all people without exception.

See: A Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community