28th July 2015

What an admirer of Taylor Swift (TS 1989) sees as a cool hoodie with the singer’s initials and birth-year, is not the same as what a military person in China sees. What else could it be, but a subversive reference to the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. Poor Taylor. She’s probably also copped some flak from the ‘Technical Support’ division of Lucent Technologies which had its start-up in 1989. Funny how two people can look at the same thing, and come to opposite conclusions.

I think that holds true when it comes to the Cross. When some look at the Cross, all they can see is religious obligation, and feel exposed and guilty and the glare of threatening judgement. Yet others look at the Cross and see grace, and a gift given, and the very gateway to heaven. To be sure they also feel the pang of guilt and their true spiritual condition exposed, but they also see the way for their guilt to be relieved and their sin to be atoned for.

That certainly seems to be what happened in that first hour of the Cross. Two men looked at the Crucified One and saw different things. One of them saw nothing but another subversive whom the State had caught and crushed. But the other man saw the way to be forgiven and the very door to eternal life. Pity the one who sees J.C. 33AD as a reference to an Audio Description for a Jackie Chan movie. There’s something much better to be seen!

DM 28^th July 2015