When I Survey – The Sunday Next before Easter

When I survey the wondrous cross,

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

How can words express with greater clarity what God the Holy Ghost hath revealed in St. Matthew’s account of our Lord’s Passion? My words lack any insight, and can only offer the reader my sense of awestruck mixed with horror and tainted by the guilt of my sin, yet overcome with joy that God the Father should love this sinner to not spare His only Son – the faithful Son of God, Son of Man, who willingly offered Himself up on that tree.

Perhaps it is better to start with the epistle lesson, as St. Paul explains to the Philippians the sheer unfathomable act of God manifested through the incarnation, Good Friday, and Easter morn. St. Paul speaks to us today by calling us to change our mind from the worldly, the natural, the fallen, up to the heavenly, the spiritual, the true reality embodied in Jesus Christ: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5, KJV). What, praytell, is the mind of Christ that we should conform to?

Servanthood.

No, servanthood is too gentle a word and too overused in today’s modern conception of “servant leadership.” What God the Son has done and is doing, is servitude to our Father, who art in heaven. A service which we could not perform, and yet after Pentecost, a servitude which we are invited into so that we may be godly subjects to the Lord God Almighty.

For Jesus, “who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:6-7, KJV). It’s a reminder that Christmas is brought forward to Good Friday. Why, even before Christmas, during the Annunciation of St. Mary the Virgin, only a few weeks ago (March 25), we are reminded mid-Lent that God the Son became enfleshed within the womb of St. Mary to accomplish our salvation. The Lord Jesus Christ did not refuse to condescend and be made “a little lower than the angels.” (Psalm 8:5; Hebrews 2:7 KJV). Instead, He willingly knew before the creation of the world that He would be incarnated and not only become man, but would submit to death itself.

Christ did not boast in His Godhood and refuse to become man, but instead “being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:8, KJV).

Forbid it, Lord! That I should boast,

Save in the death of Christ my God:

All the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to His blood.

The cross. Rome’s preferred method of executing criminals, rebels, and non-Romans. The Son of God is killed brutally by the epitome of “civilization” in the most barbaric method possible. However, the cross is desanitized today. It appears to us as decor for the home, decorative for a church, and hangs as a necklace to claim one is a “good Christian.” It is meant to beautify the bodies of our homes, our churches, and our bodies. However, it is the brutal method of killing thousands during the age of Rome. There is no decorum in the Cross, only brutality and death. And yet the Cross is the method that the God-man, Jesus the Christ, willingly stepped out of heavenly glory into earthly dust and chose to die upon. Not the gallows, nor beheading, not by firing squad, nor the electric chair. The Cross. Nailed by hands, nailed by feet, crowned by thorns, and enthroned upon a wooden tree so the nectar of His blood might flow down the splinters and into the soil. There upon the wooden tree of a Roman cross, we find the fruit of the tree of life.

Read the rest at The North American Anglican: https://northamanglican.com/when-i-survey-the-sunday-next-before-easter/