The cross is not a sword, but a key, and it opens the heart
By Gavin Ashenden, Anglican Ink:
I was walking through Gatwick airport yesterday morning at about the same time as the bombs were going off at Brussels’ airport. The people who died in Belgium would have been sipping their very early morning coffee about the same time as I was mine, before setting off for their flights. I was luckier with my airport than they were with theirs. So I am still here; and they are not.
This is a special week for Christians. We call it ‘Holy Week’. It covers the week before Jesus’ own death. It’s a study in power relations.
If Jesus had been at all like most other revolutionaries, he should have entered Jerusalem on a horse with armed followers. But he turned the norms upside down by lurching in on a donkey, and without any weapons.
He set an example which was going to involve forgiveness for his killers, and love for his enemies. Instead of warning his executioners that they were going to be in SO much trouble in the moral hereafter, he asked God the Father, the cosmic enforcer of justice to forgive them, because he thought they had no idea what they had been doing.
This was either a despicably weak failure that was going to get nowhere, or it was the key that was set to unlock and heal the human heart.
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