Thorns in the straw is the title of a song by Graham Kendrick. It is about the birth of Jesus and has the picture of the manger at its heart. But there is a twist: Mary sees a thorn in the straw by her baby's head and smells myrrh in the air, the fragrance of suffering.
I have been at Crieff Hydro this week for a minsters' conference. We meet every year just after New Year, a gathering of friends more than anything else. We always have a speaker and this year Sinclair Ferguson, one-time minister of St George's Tron in Glasgow and now living and working in the USA, came to speak. He taught us Philippians in 4 sessions and it was very good.
Philippians chapter 2, Sinclair says, is all about the gospel mindset, how we think as a result of the gospel. Paul tells us about the mind of Christ and how Jesus obeyed His Father by going to the cross. Our view of life, the way we think about God, other people and ourselves, has to be shaped by the cross-centred gospel. But that's not terribly popular, even in Churches.
It never has been. He quoted the great Roman orator Cicero: "Not only let the cross be absent from the person of Roman citizens, but its very name from their thoughts, eyes and ears." Phillipi was "Rome in miniature", a Roman colony; what Roman society liked today Philippi would like tomorrow; what Roman society hated, Philippi would despise. So the cross was abhorrent to Roman citizens.
Yet, says Paul, the Christians are to have their whole way of thinking shaped by the cross.
People love Christmas; but Easter... not so easy to love! Yet, Graham Kendrick sees something important: they are totally and completely connected. And, our view of life is to be shaped by the cross. We love the God who sent His Son; we trust a Saviour who was crucified for us; we rejoice in the love of God, demonstrated on the cross; we count others as more important than ourselves because that's what Jesus did.
Our society doesn't get the cross very easily; neither sometimes does the Church. We have to get the cross; otherwise we have nothing.
