The Wood Between the Worlds

Sunday we will be taking up Mark's account of the triumphal entry (Mark 11:1-11). We will be looking at both some of the major themes of the Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, as well as some of the more minute details that Mark includes.  

Of course, Palm Sunday is the inauguration of what is commonly known as Holy Week, the last week of Jesus' life on earth, culminating in his crucifixion and resurrection. Over the coming week (as well as throughout the year) we will have these familiar words on our lips, we will talk about them with our children and we will commemorate Christ's death and resurrection as a community. Crucifixion and resurrection, I thought it might be good to remind us, lest we become too casual with these terms, of the overwhelming significance of both. Brian Zahnd helps us with the following:

The Romans crucified hundreds of thousands of people, most of them slaves and rebels. Crucifixion was horrific but not uncommon. From the point of view of those who passed by Golgotha on Good Friday, there was nothing unique in the crucifixion of the Galilean who hung in the center of three crosses. What is unique is Easter. Christ the crucified is also Christ the risen. When we speak of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ it is always in light of the resurrection. It is the light shining from the empty tomb that illuminates the cross so that we can understand it correctly. When we speak of the crucified Christ, we always mean the crucified-risen Christ. To properly interpret the crucifixion and the resurrection they must always be held together. What Saint Peter said to the Sanhedrin is the foundation for understanding the cross: “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5:30). The tree of Calvary is the wood between the old world dominated by death and the new world animated by resurrection.* 

We do indeed live between two worlds. There is the world of Adam, Cain, Molech, the Romans and their crosses, Hitler, Pol Pot, Hussein, and so many others. This is our here and now world. It is a world of death and soul-sucking destruction. But there is a world to come. A world where every tear is wiped away and there is no more curse. Death is done away with and life is celebrated in the presence of the Lamb. And as Zahnd so beautifully intimates, it is the tree on Golgotha that stands as the wood between the worlds. It is the blood of Christ, willingly shed, that stains the cross and turns an instrument of death into one of life. It is this cross, along with the opening of the tomb that offers a portal between the world of death and the world of life.**  

 * Brian Zahnd - The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross
** C.S. Lewis uses this concept of the "wood between the worlds" in The Magicians Nephew  as the place where one can connect from one world to another.