What causes you the most anxiety? When such moments occur, how do you feel when there is nothing you seem able to do to relax and calm down?
At one time or another, we have all struggled with how to find what will make us most complete. Or we fear losing what we have finally found. People obsess about keeping everything tied together and come unhinged when everything is pulled apart. Life is about what we are connected with and what makes us feel secure and how we respond when we lose the tie that binds.
We don’t have to look far to see people who are tense, angry, bitter, afraid, and at times we have been part of that crowd. The theological word we use for such moments is called “sin.” Sin is nothing more or less than whatever separates us from God and those around us. Sin is what makes us alone and the barrier that keeps important lost connection from being restored. It is like a wall that keeps us from being reunited with the blessings and loves of our lives.
The roots of our greatest pains in life have to do with our separation from God or those we love. It isn’t something we set out to make happen, but is as simple as when a child is so preoccupied with a toy in the store and suddenly loses sight of Mom or Dad in the crowd. Whether being separated from health, comfort, friendship, or a job makes no difference. So, what happens next? What can we do?
Whether the cause is intentional or not, schedules, illness, selfishness, grief, anger, poverty, hatred, insensitivity, and other realities of life create gaps or chasms or walls that separate and isolate. Almost every conflict has to do with the distancing we call sin. To be lost or separated is to be alone. And we are not meant to live alone!
Whether separated, empty or alone, one can obsess over the cause of such a gap in relationships, or can build a bridge that connects us to whom or what we are separated from. A bridge spans the empty gaps of life. Sometimes such a project is as simple as reaching out and giving someone a hug. It might be built through counseling, mediation, or admitting and confessing our role in any separation. Bridges are our solution to earthly separations.
But the longer we stay away from such a bridge, the harder it is to find our way back. The longer we live without the connection, the harder it is to remember the purpose for being connected. The longer we fail to live with the bridge, the longer we stay on our own side alone. And when we forget God’s solutions, it is worse.
For instance, our prayer life (which is one bridge to God) can become infrequent, and then nonexistent. Suddenly we can’t remember where that bridge is or how to use it. And there is nothing more painful than that loss. Life in an imperfect world is like that.
We are used to separations between nations, or between those with different political perspectives. We know how illness can change our lifestyle and anger can lose a relationship, or experience the tragic separation called death. And the greatest loneliness is to be separated from God and unable to find our way home.
One of the dangers of human separation is that we can become used to such darkness or too proud to remember there is help! Jesus sole mission of servant love was to reestablish a loving connection with God. In the miracles of Christmas and Easter, God has come to us. He is the one-size-fits- all bridge builder who has reached across the boundaries of life and death, and the divisions that we create and grieve over. Like a tremendous suspension bridge hanging over a chasm thousands of feet deep, God reaches out to us in love.
The cross is our symbol to illustrate God’s plan to bridge the gaps between heaven and earth, life and death, loneliness and the separation called sin. The vertical piece of a cross reminds us of the bridge from heaven to earth a construction project that only God can offer. Like Jacob’s ladder it is a stairway to heaven! In the gift of Christmas, heaven touched earth. In the miracle of Easter earth is lifted to heaven. A bridge has been built by God and ready to be used.
The horizontal piece of the cross reminds us of the bridge from one of us to each other (like a parent to child, a reconciling husband to wife, a stranger to neighbor, or even a democrat reaching out to a republican.) Such acts of servant love are gifts from God, bridges that are waiting to be crossed, and ready for those who see God rather than our weakness as the road to travel.
This is the stuff of what we call the Gospel. This is the good news Jesus offers. It is a simple story of love that is so well known it is easy to take for granted and easy to forget when we are in the depths of emptiness and fear. The cross is the perfect bridge. It announces the end to the barrier of sin and the separation called death.
Our world struggles daily and mightily with separation – and we are familiar with human efforts to build bridges that seek to bring together what we have lost or fear losing. We find cures for cancer and political compromises for difficult divides. Peace treaties to end wars and reconciliation can restore a marriage. But no matter how wise or strong we are, we cannot bridge the gap of death and many of our daily building projects are not always strong or complete enough to fix a world broken and separated by sin.
Never forget God has already done the impossible by destroying the ultimate separation called death by crossing that barrier with his own life. And in conquering the impossible, God makes living possible again. The good news is that we who have been expert at demolition of bridges are now given the ability to cross bridge that can never be destroyed. The barriers, empty gulfs, and losses we call sin are completely bridged by Jesus’ servant love and his lifetime example to show how that love works.
A student from the middle East was interning at the Bank of New York on Wall Street on September 11, 2001 when the second hijacked jet slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. In an interview he stated, “It was a moment I will never forget! “It was dark and fire was everywhere. You couldn’t breathe. We knew that at any moment we could die. So, I told a fireman who climbed out of a smoke-filled stairway, I don’t have anyone here, my name is Shahram Hashemi and just in case anything happens to me, let my family know.” The fireman said he would, embraced the unknown young man and then made the sign of the cross. “Christ protect you,” he said.” Shahram, a Muslim, said he wept, and after escaping the fire, never saw that fireman again. [1]
That is an earthly example of how the cross of Jesus changes lives.
In Romans 8, Paul explained it this way. “If Christ is for us who can be against us? Nothing can separate us from the love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It sounds like that covers everything! Christ is the bridge we couldn’t build and can never be destroyed. With him firmly in place, how awesome to know we never have to worry about separation again. And if nothing can separate us from God, just realize what a change to how we live and how we love!
[1] “Courage of the morning,” Amnesty Now, Winter 2001-2002, 12-13.