John Stott suggests our approach to worship, and thus the cross, may be filled with too much levity.  What do you think of his comments:

Unhappily, even in the church we seem to have lost the vision of the majesty of God.  There is much shallowness and levity among us.  Prophets and psalmists would probably say of us that “there is no fear of God before their eyes.”  In public worship our habit is to slouch or squat; we do not kneel nowadays, let alone prostrate ourselves in humility before God.  It is more characteristic of us to clap our hands with joy than to blush with shame or tears.  We saunter up to God to claim his patronage and friendship; it does not occur to us that he might send us away.

It must be said that our evangelical emphasis on the atonement is dangerous if we come to it too quickly.  We learn to appreciate the access to God that Christ has won for us only after we have first seen God’s inaccessibility to sinners.  We can cry “Hallelujah” with authenticity only after we have first cried “Woe is me, for I am lost.”

As Brunner put it, “where the idea of the wrath of God is ignored, there also will there be no understanding of the central conception of the Gospel:  the uniqueness of the revelation in the Mediator.”  Similarly, “only he who knows the greatness of wrath will be mastered by the greatness of mercy.”

If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it.

John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ, 110, 111.