The Cross
This morning, I was in a Good Friday service with all of you (except Carter – we missed you)! Being Good Friday it was somewhat focused on the cross. The songs, I guess the message, and certainly the act of communion took us to the image of the cross.
The cross. It is one of the most ubiquitous “brands” in the world. I have travelled to almost all the continents of the world, many countries, and in each place, I have seen the cross. I see it adorned on people each day. I am not always sure what it means to people… which is one reason I do not wear a simple cross on my chain. I don’t want to add to the cultural malaise regarding the cross.
The cross has a unique history. In the time of Jesus, the cross and crucifixion was a symbol of power and might. The cross was not used to kill common criminals but was reserved for the worst of offences. Today we would use words like terrorist, or seditionist. It was reserved for those who posed a threat to the Roman rule of order. It demonstrated, “publicly the power of the empire to not just kill, but to dehumanize.” [1] Often when we think of the cross, we think of something which must have been rare and exotic. Almost weird. A spectacle of some sort. But the cross was common in the Roman Empire, a horrific reminder of the power of Rome and the kingdoms of this world. It is one of the mechanisms by which people were guided into loyalty to the empire.
In about 4 BC a general named Varsus crucified 2,000 rebels at Sepphoris. Just a mere 4 miles or so from Nazareth. The roads were lined with crosses.
In 70 CE/AD during the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman army so many people were crucified they ran out of trees.
The goal was to drive people into subservience. To remind them of the power of Rome to rule and to reign in people’s lives.
Its for this reason that the cross was not the symbol of the early church (interestingly, more common was a Pelican piercing her side to feed her young, or a simple fish). The cross was a symbol of power, might, ruling, empire and Kingdom. The cross was slowly adopted as the symbol of Christianity after the emperor Constantine recognized Christianity in 313 CE/AD and adopted it as the official religion of the Roman empire about 10 years later. After 323 CE/AD the cross, in simplest terms was a political symbol melding together faith and power. It was placed on the front of soldier’s uniforms, it was placed on flags, it became the symbol of both faith and Roman might.
Today the cross is ubiquitous in culture and the church. For some it has great meaning, or it can be a memory or symbol of a distant connection to a past faith, and for others it is the equivalent of a charm, almost a superstitious belief in the good luck or protection it can bring. And for many it is a connection to a story, a tradition, a belief. For many in the Church today it is the centre point and purpose of why Christ came. To quote many different people, “It reminds us of why Christ came… ‘to take away our sins.’”
So, I thought this morning at the Good Friday service, I want to tell you what the cross means to me. Yes, the cross, the crucifixion and the life of Christ have something to do with sin. For sure! And for the last two hundred years people have argued about the cross and Christ, sin, death, and hope. Literally millions of pages have been written trying to understand what happened that day (beyond what a journalist would report i.e. a guy was convicted and crucified with two others – all on charges of treason, insurrection, or something similar).
All these theories have elements of truth in them no doubt. I don’t believe we will ever fully understand what all the cross means while living in this visible world. At the same time, one thing I am certain of… the cross was and is an invitation to choose between two different ways of living. Those ways of living can look remarkably similar, but they are absolutely different at the very centre of their beliefs. The first is the kingdom of this world or the realm of the visible world. And the second is the Kingdom of Jesus.
The kingdom of this world is all around us it operates within a closed system and understanding of reality. What we see is what there is. It is in many ways a harsh life. It is unforgiving. It pays little heed to the heart of people. It operates based on power and influence. It is loud, its visible and its easily accessible. It judges, condemns, shames and places value on that which is ultimately temporal. The kingdom of this world is present all around us… it’s the way governments work, it’s the way the church through history has worked too many times (think slavery, colonization, LGBTQ+ issues, etc.). More personally at the core it requires full obedience, disempowers, provides incomplete justice, and leaves us running in its pursuit of its values – judging people by how they look, what they do, or don’t do, deals with people through policy, rarely asking about the heart. And it tends to focus in on the absurd. And its loud!
The kingdom of Jesus is different. It operates on the assumption that there is an invisible world. That at the centre of this invisible reality is the Trinity. And we as people carry the image of the Trinity. The invisible world welcomes us into a relationship with this divine reality (Trinity, the first mover, God, etc.). The bible is the story of how God has pursued that relationship with us.
So, for me the cross is the place that:
Answers human suffering… the answer to suffering is not more suffering but rather God joining humanity in its common experience of suffering. As such no one suffers alone or forgotten.
The cross is at the centre of grace and forgiveness. It is a full-frontal condemnation of the principalities and powers of this world. It chastises systems that hurt minorities, leaves people dehumanized and does so under the guise of ‘justice’ or ‘ with an appropriate level of force.’ It challenges a world that seeks to scapegoat the one person or a group of people.
It points to all that is dehumanizing in our visible world and focuses a light upon it, offering a redemptive option that recognizes the divine in the midst of each person.
It acts as a reflection of the world whereby the world can see the end result of this visible world. The dark reality that our world and its kingdoms tend to not be places of justice and goodness; but rather that the kingdom of this visible world tolerates the destruction of the innocent, the poor, the lonely, the different and the other…for the sake of wealth, power or as its commonly called today ‘security’.
It is the one time that God loudly pursues us, providing a picture of life in His kingdom. A kingdom that is described in Matthew 5 through 7. A kingdom that seeks not visible glory and honor. A kingdom that promises (and I can attest delivers) a sense of inner peace, of joy, of servitude. Its a kingdom that doesn’t crucify the innocent, scapegoat the different, and seeks to restore to people their ability to live in freedom or as the Jesus calls it “with abundant life”.
The cross shows the reality of a kingdom where mobs of people (either in person, through the news, culture, or social media) determine what is right absent any required sense of truth or absolute value and demonstrates what can happen when the mob turns against one – pray it is never you!
At the end of this very long post let me summarize…. The cross for me is Jesus invitation to continually seek to live in His kingdom. To enjoy God (and I really do… 😊), to remember that this world is temporal, to live by a set of values that can be challenging to live by and routinely criticized. it calls me to seek justice for the poor, the disadvantaged, the addicted and the outcasts of our day. And because of my constant need for forgiveness and new beginnings, it allows me to offer others, to the best of my ability, the same graces and goodness I have been the recipient of. It is an invitation to live a quiet life of following Jesus in the ways and means of His kingdom.
It really is in my experience true what Jesus said in John, “I have come that they may have life and have life abundantly.” It does not mean I am not a part of this world – there are laws to follow, rules to obey, bills to be looked after. BUT with each I realize that in the end I do not give allegience to a government authority or the powers of this worlds kingdom including culture. I seek to live in full submission to Jesus. Full stop. It means practically, that while I seek to be wise in this world, I am just saddened many days as I see the values of the kingdom of this world inflicted on people (Israel, Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, famines, poorly enacted justice, and I could go on for pages) – all one has to do is read the headlines each day to see the end result of the Kingdoms of this world.
The cross is as Brian Zahn puts it, “The Wood Between the Worlds”. A stunning and beautiful invitation to live in a world marked by justice, mercy and love rather than a world where the innocent are crucified, the poor are scapegoated and the marginalized are pushed out of the city.
Jesus on the cross was a picture of a different kind of power, an invisible power and kingdom that promises more than what this visible world ever could or can. The cross is God’s warm invitation to all people to live in relationship with a God who welcomes each into a different Kingdom!
[1]Rutlidge, Three Hours, 2019
