The Crib and the Cross – by Greg Albrecht
Did you ever stop to think that Jesus did not start his “professional life” – ministering, teaching, comforting and healing – by posting a sign outside of a building announcing healing services and prophecy seminars? Jesus didn’t wait for people to find him. Instead, he found people in the midst of their daily problems, dilemmas, challenges and struggles.
Much of the time Jesus often arrived in people’s lives unannounced and unexpected. Jesus didn’t expect people to get in their cars or jump on their donkeys so they could travel to a holy piece of real estate where they would file into a holy building, take their places and wait for him to appear on stage. Jesus didn’t wear a religious uniform and he didn’t talk funny as if he had just escaped (or graduated) from a seminary. Instead of quoting dead theologians, Jesus told colorful and memorable stories.
The crib and the cross of Jesus are the primary ways he connects with and finds you and me! Here in early February our annual journey with Christ has us halfway between the crib and the cross – we are looking back at Christmas and looking forward to Easter, commemorating the death and resurrection of our Lord. The crib and the cross of Jesus are the bookends of the human, earthly life of Jesus, the greatest love story ever told. Let’s consider three ways in which the crib introduced, paved the way and prepared for the inevitability of the cross.
- The crib and the cross are linked in that they were both made of wood – they were both formed and fashioned by human hands, using a tree – something God alone can create.
To my knowledge, Martin Luther was one of the first to say that the crib and the cross were carved from the same wood – he didn’t mean the crib and the cross were literally formed and fashioned from the same precise tree, but he meant to emphasize the fact that the body of Jesus started and ended its earthly life in direct contact with a tree.
The crib and the cross were carved from the same wood in the sense that Jesus, in his incarnation, the Creator God of the universe, was placed as a baby in a crib made from a tree. The crib and the cross were carved from the same wood in the sense that Jesus was impaled and nailed to a cross, and as the poem tells us, only God can make a tree.
- The crib and the cross are linked by the divine decision, in the person of Jesus, to descend out of eternity into the corruption of our world. God determined, out of his love, to humble himself, descending from the exaltation and glory of immortality into the barnyard of this little piece of mud we call “planet earth.”
The crib and the cross are linked by the divine decision to be incarnated and then crucified. The crib and the cross both communicate the willingness of God to go as far as he needed to go in his loving pursuit of us. The crib and the cross are all about humility, dependence, impoverishment, and in the case of the cross – a place of shame.
The love of God was the motivating force behind the crib and the cross. God came to us in person. He didn’t write the greatest love story ever told in our hearts by sitting on a heavenly couch, playing a video game and wiggling a joystick that caused an animated Jesus to walk, teach and heal throughout first-century Palestine. Jesus was no animation on a video screen. In Jesus, he came personally.
The crib and the cross didn’t happen because God remained remote and aloof. The crib and the cross happened the way they did because God determined, out of his love for you and me, to enter into our reality and become just like us and experience life as we live it. He brought us good news which we call the gospel. He didn’t write a book, lick a stamp and put the gospel in a package and have the mailman or Fedex deliver it. He didn’t send angels or prophets – he brought the gospel himself, in person.
- The crib and the cross are the two most dramatic and intimate ways in which the love of our heavenly Father personally touched and embraced earth.
Adding flesh to his divinity, God in Christ humbled himself – he poured himself out – he emptied himself (Philippians 2:6-8). He didn’t hang on, for “dear life” as we say, to all of the divine, heavenly privileges he had. He accepted the humility of the crib and he accepted the humility and even shame of suffering on the cross like a common criminal.
When we wonder if God knows and cares – when we lose someone we love, when we endure a horrible illness or disease, when people betray us, when we are made fun of and mocked, when we are despised, when we suffer the indignation of poverty – the crib and the cross of Jesus tell us that he knows and cares. The crib and the cross tell us that he not only knows in an academic or cerebral sense, he knows in a participatory and experiential way. He’s here with us.
Jesus knows what it’s like to be homeless – he never had that little cottage with a white picket fence and rose bushes. The cross of Jesus tells us he knows what it’s like to suffer. The crib of Jesus tells us of his humility – born in a humble setting, to ordinary parents, coming into the barnyard swill of our lives, condescending to us without being condescending.
The crib and the cross are ground zero of how Jesus expressed God’s love to us.
That was God in that crib – the truly human God-man Jesus who absolutely, without reservations, identified with all that it means to be a human. He was not hiding or refusing to live life as we live it – he came, he saw, he lived it, he suffered with us and he died. That was God on that cross.
That was God in that crib – born into a world in which children are abused – then and now. God, in the person of Jesus, was born into a world in which children are killed by tyrants like Herod, despots who are worried about their grip on their power. God on the cross was suffering our shame and our guilt, accepting all human violence, hatred and animosity and returning good for evil. That was God on that cross.
The crib and the cross is for all of us and all of everything each of us is – down to every last hair on our head, every toenail, every callous on our feet, every last blemish and every shameful, embarrassing secret we hope no one ever discovers.
The crib and the cross is for butchers and bakers and candlestick makers…for doctors and lawyers and judges and for day laborers and gardeners and field hands who must slave in the sun while lacking legal documentation.
The crib and the cross is for serial rapists, pedophiles and sex traffickers…for pickpockets and beggars…for the elderly who lay in their own filth in nursing homes, unable to move…and for those who suffer and die on battlefields and in hospitals…and for those whose bodies are consumed by cancer. The crib and the cross is for wealthy and privileged millionaires just as much as it is for the impoverished and oppressed.
The crib and the cross is for women who have no options and must sell their bodies to feed their children…they are for drug addicts who will do anything to buy another fix. The crib and the cross are for young men and women who are trained in the name of Allah to be suicide bombers…and for slave owners and the slaves they “own.”
Jesus came to his crib and his cross: places of neglect, impoverishment, dependence, humility and shame. Jesus came knowing ahead of time that humans would respond to his love with hatred and violence. Jesus came knowing that we would kill him. Jesus could have come to kill all his enemies and he could have punished all the bad guys, but he didn’t.
He didn’t crucify anyone – but he willingly, as the Lamb of God, allowed himself to be crucified. He came to his crib and his cross for you…and for me.
That was God in that crib amidst the animal sounds and smells in Bethlehem, and that was God on that crosson the garbage dump just outside of Jerusalem. God in a crib – God in human flesh – God in diapers – defenseless, crying and fighting for breath. God on the cross, his flesh pierced and just as he was in his crib – defenseless and fighting for breath. The crib and the cross, carved from the same wood – only God can make a tree.
With you, I am giving thanks for Jesus, who is the center and core of all that we are! With deep appreciation for your prayers and support, I am…
Serving Him with you,
Greg Albrecht
Friend and Partner Letter from February 2015
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