The Mystery of the Cross
As we come to the final days of this season of Lent, we turn to the central events of the Christian faith. And it’s here that we need to name some really crucial points.
The Gospel, that is the Good News, includes the crucifixion and resurrection, but we cannot limit it to a transactional formula we simply slip over this weekend, like we would a warm sweater. In an earlier story from Holy Week, Mary pours perfume on Jesus’s feet, and he states, “Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
I would gather from this statement that communicating the gospel would include Mary’s story then, correct? It seems Jesus is already instructing us to tell a bigger and wider story, not a simple formula that can be summed up on a Twitter tweet or on a small card we hand out on the streets. That would likely lead to a transactional faith, one of lever pulling or a simple prayer of escape. And here, with a broken woman of ill repute, Jesus says the gospel ought to include her story whenever it is told.
Fascinating.
And if we simply say that Jesus loved, healed, fed, and then was arrested and killed on a cross, we are left with a pile of questions of why someone would kill a teddy bear like Jesus? But at the beginning of the crucifixion narrative, we have Luke telling a story that is far more helpful:
Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.”
Subverting the nation? Refusing to honor Caesar? Claiming to be king, which would also be saying that neither Caesar or Herod get that distinction, correct?
Jesus was much more than a teddy bear, as he called all to live in a way that subverted the systems and structures in which the nation of Israel, and Rome for that matter, functioned and operated. Jesus called out the general idea of empire, and provided an alternative way to live and move and have our being, which infuriated the powers that be, including Caesar and the religious authorities of his people.
Which is why I find it more than confusing when people say they don’t think the church or the pastor should talk about politics, “Just give me Jesus.” You mean the Jesus who subverted the ways of the governments in which he lived? The Jesus whose actions that made for, “That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies.” The Roman governor, Pilate, and the one known as King of the Jews, Herod, became friends over their mutual disdain for Jesus.
Fascinating.
So on this Good Friday, the day in which we reflect on the crucifixion of Jesus, I think it important we have a deeper and wider view of the cross. I am grateful for the writing of pastor Brian Zahnd, and I’ll turn to a piece he writes on how the cross is many things:
It’s the pinnacle of God’s self-disclosure.
It’s divine solidarity with all human suffering.
It’s the shaming of principalities and powers.
It’s the point from which the satan is driven out of the world.
It’s the death by which Christ conquers Death.
It’s the abolition of war and violence.
It’s the supreme demonstration of the love of God.
It’s the re-founding of the world around an axis of love.
It’s the enduring model of co-suffering love we are to follow.
It’s the eternal moment in which the sin of the world is forgiven.
The cross is not the appeasement of an angry and retributive god… The cross is not what God inflicts upon Jesus in order to forgive, but what God in Christ endures as he forgives. (From his book The Unvarnished Jesus)
My reflection is this. The gospel, that is the Good News, is Jesus rescuing the world and renewing, restoring, and reconciling all things to himself. When we make it about, “she is good, but he is bad,” or “he is kind, but she is mean,” then we shrink the good news to sin management. That’s simply too small. Jesus the Christ is as personal as perfume being poured on him, allowing a woman of ill repute to bathe his feet with her hair. And he is as cosmic as when he states, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne…”
His coronation on the cross is much bigger than you and me, while simultaneously including you and me. That’s the brilliant and overwhelming beauty of Divine love. And it’s the mystery of a cross that is at once sin soaked and blood covered, as well as washed in love and forgiveness.
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
I bless you Holy One for the love and forgiveness you have provided, even to a confused and messy humanity. I am grateful.
