It Was My Sin That Held Him There

Author Carson McCullers was born in Columbus, Georgia, and lived a terribly unhappy childhood.  When she graduated from high school at 17, she left.  Years later, when she was preparing for a rare visit, her cousin asked why she was going back to a place which caused her so much pain.  McCullers answered, “I must occasionally go home to renew my sense of horror.”

Communion, the Lord’s Supper, Eucharist – whichever term you prefer — is a Christian’s way of going back.  And we do it for the same reason McCullers did; we need to renew our sense of horror.  We remember a garden, three prayers and sweat.  A trial, three denials and the lash.  We remember a hill, three crosses and a crown of thorns.  A hammer, three nails and a spear.

The horror which is renewed by remembering the crucifixion, however, has more to do with who we are than with how Jesus died.  If the Son of God had to suffer like this to liberate us from sin, then our sin must be unspeakable.  Which is probably why our culture has evolved a completely new and, often, impotent moral vocabulary.  It is painful to speak the word sin in reference to behaviors, attitudes and lifestyles we have come to love.  So all the old definitions have been decommissioned.

That makes Communion more important than ever.  Memory is a beaten path in our brains and when we walk it week after week, all of our waxy rationalizations melt away in the honest heat of the cross. We see sin for what it is and it nauseates us.

But it isn’t enough just to recognize the horror of sin in general.  Going to the cross forces us to remember our particular sin.

During worship one Sunday when I was a child, I leafed through my little Bible looking at artist depictions of key events.  I must have been somewhere in the Gospels, because I landed on a picture of three Roman soldiers escorting a tired-looking Jesus to the cross.

I stared at the picture a long time, focusing on the soldiers.  They wore red capes, black boots and gold helmets.  Dark, day-old whiskers stubbled their faces.  And one of the soldiers looked exactly like my father — who was leading singing that morning.  I didn’t have this phrase in my vocabulary at the time, but I experienced nothing less than an existential crisis.  I was so unsettled by the picture that I asked my mother, “Did Daddy crucify Jesus?”

She laughed and said no.

But now, I know she was wrong.  My father did put Jesus on the cross.  My mother did, too.  And so did I.  And you.  Sin in general did not nail him there.  It was sin in particular.  Yours and mine.

No wonder we sometimes mindlessly nibble the bread and quickly wash it down with a swallow of juice.  This is an exceedingly painful memory. But it is better than forgetting his pain.  Because if we forget his pain, if we do not renew our horror, we can never know his love.