If you had been at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on Easter Sunday, 1939, you would have witnessed an open-air concert performed by Marian Anderson, who was an opera singer. But if later on you met someone in the know, who was able to explain to you what was happening, then you would have been given an explanation as to how significant this event was. This was not just a nicely organised open-air concert. No, this concert was taking place because Marian Anderson had been denied permission to perform a concert at Constitution Hall because she was black.
So that open-air concert at the Washington Memorial was not just a nice afternoon out, but a major protest against racial segregation and discrimination. Over the years, that event has been looked back on as much more than a recital, but as a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights.
I use that as an illustration of the need for us to have an explanation, and that’s what we need when it comes to the cross of Christ.
If you’d been walking by on the outskirts of Jerusalem on that Friday in April in the 1st century, you would have seen a sight which was quite common in the Roman world: a man hanging on a cross for a crime that he had committed. You would have walked by, perhaps shaking your head at the horror of it and the shame of it, but then you would have moved on.
But if you ran into the apostle Paul a few years later and you asked him what the explanation for what you saw on that day really was, he would have explained to you in the same way as he did to a church in Italy, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” or in another place what he said to a church in Greece, “Christ died for our sins.”
And then it would be the same on about Sunday in April. If you were walking again on the outskirts of Jerusalem and you saw a cave that was open and empty, you might have seen a significance to that empty cave. But if you met Peter, he would have told you that that cave and its emptiness was very significant.
Peter would tell you that that cave signified that Jesus rose from the dead, which means that Jesus defeated death.
