Reader 1

The key to this paragraph lies in the words, ‘engaged to confess the faith of

Christ crucified and to be his faithful servant’. Three times the BOU refers to

Christ as the crucified one, and in particularly, in Para 3, as ‘the risen crucified one’. In his Heidelburg disputation, some 500 years ago, Martin Luther spoke of a theology of the cross and a theology of glory. By a theology of glory, Luther meant having a belief that focusses on human ability, achievement and triumph as God’s image creatures.

 

Reader 2

In his Heidelburg Disputation Luther wrote, “Because people do not know the cross and hate it, they necessarily love the opposite, namely, wisdom, glory [and] power”.

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Theologians of the cross, by contrast, base their faith on God’s revelation of

Himself in Christ crucified. A theology of the cross, like Jesus’ crucifixion,

always stands in stark contrast to the attitudes and aspirations of human

culture. Love and suffering are contrasted with self-interest and prosperity.

 

Reader 3

Luther again:

“The love of God which lives in a person loves sinners, evil persons, fools,

and weaklings in order to make them righteous, good, wise and

strong…This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which . . . confers

good upon the bad and needy.”

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Reader 1

While we do live in the power of the resurrection and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the reality is that, even today, Jesus continues to be rejected and

crucified in his body of believers. Through them he is still taking the way of the cross by living among the poor, bearing the burdens of the sick, disabled and dispossessed, and speaking courageously against evil powers in the world.

 

Another theologian, Karl Trueman, says,

As Christ demonstrated his kingship and power by death on the cross, so

the believer does so by giving himself or herself unconditionally to the aid

of others. We are to be, as Luther puts it, little Christs to our neighbours,

for in so doing we find our true identity as children of God.

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Reader 2

Paragraph 13 recognises that it is the Holy Spirit, by taking what belongs to

‘the risen crucified one’ and revealing it, who ‘endows ‘members of Christ’s

Church with a diversity of gifts’. And in a theology of the cross, ‘there is no gift without its corresponding service’, i.e. service that involves self-sacrifice and sometimes suffering.

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Reader 3:

Elders, for example, are not to be those renowned for throwing their

weight around, for badgering others, and for using their position or wealth

or credentials to enforce their own opinions. No, the truly Christian elder is

the one who devotes his whole life to the painful, inconvenient, and

humiliating service of others, for in so doing he demonstrates Christlike

authority, the kind of authority that Christ himself demonstrated

throughout his incarnate life and supremely on the cross at Calvary.

(Trueman)