After The Cross - Week Three
May 17, 2026
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Week 3: Kneel
Context:
For some of us coming face to face with
the cross will make us kneel. It is a physical
and often wordless emotional response. The cross has enormous power. It is a huge event that resounds throughout history. It happened once, but — like sound waves reverberating outwards — the cross continues to happen, ringing through the centuries. For the cross is at once deeply universal and deeply personal. To acknowledge the sacrifice, the love, can bring us to our knees, in awe, fear, gratitude and wonder.
Kneeling (literally or figuratively) before the cross, before Jesus, stops the cross becoming a mere historical artefact and roots it in our lives... Discuss!
Introducing the readings:
This week we continue to reflect upon the story of the road to Emmaus, looking at the revelation that brings about the desire to kneel. In our Luke reading, Jesus — still not recognised by the disciples — reveals the ongoing story through scripture that led to this moment. Cleopas and his friend are so moved they invite him to stay the night. They have caught a glimpse of the bigger picture and they want to know more. They kneel together at the table. Then, just as he did at the last supper, he breaks the bread and gives thanks and in that moment they recognise him as Christ. Key themes in this reading are: continuity, hospitality and revelation.
The Philippians reading also plays on this dual identity of Jesus: fully divine and fully human. Key themes in this reading are: divinity, humility and incarnation.
Read Luke 24: 27-32 and Philippians 2: 5-11
Response:
Last week we allowed the insight of Donald Baillie to encourage us to see the cross as a place of encounter with Christ where the shrug is transformed by the touch. This week we introduce to you John Zizioulas the eminent Orthodox theologian. Zizioulas saw the cross as the ultimate act of love that teaches what it means to be alive. For him kneeling in gratitude is the first act of entering into what he calls the ‘Eucharistic’ way of life itself. For Zizioulas the act of Communion is not just a memory, it is even more than an encounter with Jesus’ presence, rather it is an encounter that reconfigures our whole identity. For Zizioulas the revelation that comes through Communion doesn’t just change who we are
The group leader reads The Context to set up this week’s discussion..
— it makes us who we are. It may be that wee see the cross most clearly during Communion.
Kneeling before the cross is like the ‘heart
burning’ in Luke 24: 32. It is the moment
where our understanding turns into
adoration and worship and we become, in Zizioulas’s words, ’ecclesial persons’ born again members of Christ’s body.
Q: The disciples on the road were mourning a 'failed' Messiah. Yet, in the breaking of the bread, they encountered the Exalted Lord. In your own life, what is the difference between 'thinking' about the Cross, (which might lead to a shrug) and 'kneeling' before the Crucified One? How does the act of Communion help move us from the head to the knees?
Q: The disciples remarked that their hearts 'burned within them' even before they knew it was Jesus they were speaking to. Zizioulas reminds us that the Eucharist involves our whole being — bread, wine, body, and soul. If the Flinch and the Shrug are ways we keep the Cross at arm’s length, how does Kneeling signify a final 'surrender' to the mystery of God’s presence?
Q: Reflecting on the Philippians reading, how does the humility of Christ on the cross get under out skin and affect our own behaviour and how we treat one another?
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