The Horror And Godlessness Of The Cross

"The Horror And Godlessness Of The Cross"
John 19:13-18
1 Corinthians 1:18


To understand the cross and the Crucifixion rightly, we need to first view it as first century people viewed it.  We have gilded the cross with silver and gold.  We have decorated the cross with ornamentation.  As the poet Emily Dickinson wrote, somewhat sarcastically:

A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary--

To note the fashions--of the Cross--
And how they’re mostly worn--
Still fascinated to presume
That Some--are like My Own--
(poem #561)

Dickinson points a finger at others who have made the Cross into a fashionable jewelry statement--including herself.  First century people would not have made the cross into jewelry.  It wasn’t that kind of symbol.  In fact the early Christians were more attached to the symbol of the simple fish as a sign of who the were and whose they were.

The Cross has not ever been as important as the one who was nailed there.  From the very first, the Christian faith has distinguished itself from other religions by its worship of the crucified Christ.  In order to really understand what and who we are worshipping, we must go back to that day.

In Jewish understanding, someone executed by crucifixion was rejected by his people, cursed by God, and excluded from any kind of fellowship with the people of faith.  The Jewish law was clear, as stated in the book of Deuteronomy:
And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance.  (21:22-23)

Anyone who is condemned by that law because they spoke irreverently about God, suffers such a death.  That person becomes cursed.  That is what Jesus’ accusers meant at his trial when they said, “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God” (John 19:7).  The only option open to a faithful Jew in regards to the cross, and Jesus’ crucifixion, is to turn one’s back on it all--turn your back on Jesus.

To Roman humanistic philosophy, the view of the cross is all together different.  To the Roman’s the crucified Christ and the veneration of the cross was an embarrassment.  Crucifixion--the punishment of escaped slaves and rebels against the Roman Empire--was regarded as the most degrading kind of punishment.

Roman humanism always felt the “religion of the Cross” to be unattractive, unrespectable, and perverse.  The Roman historian, Cicero, once wrote, “Let even the name of the cross be kept away not only from the bodies of citizens of Rome, but also from their thought, sight, and hearing.”  It was regarded as an offense against good manners to speak of this hideous kind of death in the presence of respectable people.  In the Roman’s humanistic and philosophical search for the good, the true, and the beautiful, the Cross and the crucified Christ was not a valuable or tasteful symbol.

Think of the Greek gods that were worshipped by the Roman people.  These gods were the super humans who dwelt on the clouds and made sport with mere mortals.  These gods were that day’s equivalents of Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, and the others who we read in comic books and graphic novels.  They were the beautiful, sensuous, and the strong.  The immortals.  The idea of a “crucified God” to whom veneration and worship were due was regarded in Roman and Greek culture as being totally inappropriate and laughable to a god.

Thus, Christian belief in the crucified Christ--a crucified God--was bound to produce, in either Jews or Romans, the effect of horror, scandal, ugliness, and blasphemy.  The early Christians had to constantly defend themselves against the charge of being irreligious or sacrilegious.  At that time, the Cross was not the sign of holy orders and honors; it was a sign of contradiction and outrageous disgrace.

This kind of contradiction has nowhere been better illustrated than by a comment made by current day rock star, Madonna.  She wears a number of crosses and other religious jewelry as part of her onstage presence.  In an interview she was asked about this and in her answer she said:
I think I have always carried around a few (crosses) with me.  There was the turquoise--colored one that my grandmother had given to me a long time ago.  One day I decided to wear it as a necklace.  I thought, This is kind of offbeat and interesting.  I mean, everything I do is sort of tongue-in-cheek.  It’s a strange blend--a beautiful sort of symbolism, the idea of someone suffering, which is what Jesus Christ on the crucifix stands for, and then not taking it seriously at all.  Seeing it as an icon with no religiousness attached to it.

Madonna does blatantly what so many do, maybe without thinking: of seeing a cross, kind of know what it represents, but then not “taking it seriously at all.”  Such is the present day attitude towards the Cross.  We have become far to used to such “off beat” attitudes towards the Cross of Christ.  We have surrounded the scandal of the Cross of Christ with roses and turquoise.  But that is not the Cross.

That is not the Cross which has become the central symbol of the Christian Church.  That is not the word of the Cross.  That is not the Cross, which has become a map--the “stations of the Cross”--by which pilgrims follow the course of Jesus’ passion, and meditate on the reasons for his suffering and the redeeming effects of his death.  That is not the Cross, which has revealed to us the divine depth of suffering and emptying of God to fill a fallen world.

So what should we see, when we look at the Cross of Christ?  What is going on there, in the contradiction and the shame?  What is the power struggle between God and evil that is being played out in the suffering and death of Jesus on the Cross?

When we stand at the foot of the Cross of Christ, we are facing the darkness of the real, ultimate and inexplicable absence of God.  Here is the apparent triumph of death, the enemy, the anti-God, the lawless state, the blasphemer and liar, the soldiers.  Here Evil apparently triumphs over God.

Our faith, which must begin with the Cross, begins  at the very point where the Godlessness of this world suppose that it has all ended.  Our faith begins with the bleakness which is the deep night darkness of the Cross:  abandonment, temptation, and doubt about everything that exists.  Our faith must be born where it stands alone from anything we have known as real.

A radical return to the origin of Christian faith--the Cross of Christ--makes those who believe, homeless not only in the religious world, but also in the “anything goes” world of present day, cafeteria styled beliefs.  Both the Jewish attitude of the exclusion of the Cross, and the Roman humanistic attitude of the tastelessness of the Cross, are alive and well both outside and inside the Church.

The reason I know such attitudes are alive and well in the church is because of the church’s, and individual Christian’s unwillingness to distinguish themselves from the rest of contemporary society.  I talked in Sunday School last week about the Gallup poll that looked at American people’s opinions about many social issues.  Then at the end of the survey questions, people were asked about their beliefs and church attendance.  The shocking--at least to me--conclusion was that there is virtually no difference of opinion between non-believer, non-church-goers, and believing church-goers.  That’s unsettling to me.

A Christianity which doesn’t measure itself in belief and practice by the event of the Cross ultimately loses its identity and becomes confused with the surrounding world.  It is a faith that becomes the religious fulfillment of the prevailing social interests, or the whimsy of those who dominate society.  Such a faith becomes a chameleon which can no longer be distinguished from its surroundings.  But the Cross is a chameleon killer.

A Christian who applies to his or her faith and practice, the criterion of the Cross of Christ, cannot remain who they are.  The Cross, as it did for the first century onlookers, creates the experience of crisis of identity, in which who you are and how you see yourself in the world as it is, is broken down.

The more radical Christian faith can only mean committing oneself, without reserve, to the crucified Christ.  This is dangerous.  The Cross doesn’t promise the confirmation of your own ideas, hopes and good intentions.  Instead, the Cross promises, first of all, the pain of repentance and fundamental change.

The Cross offers no recipe for success. Instead, the Cross casts us into, as Henri Nouwen calls it, a spiral of downward mobility with Christ.

The Cross is not positive and constructive.  Instead the Cross is from the first encounter on, critical and destructive.  The Cross brings a confrontation with the truth about who we are and what the world really is.

The Cross doesn’t bring us into better harmony with ourselves and our environment.  Instead the Cross brings us into contradiction with ourselves and with the world.

The Cross doesn’t create a home for us and integrate us better into society.  Instead the Cross makes us homeless and rootless, and makes us odd to our environment.  But thus, the Cross liberates us to follow Christ, who was homeless and rootless--especially on the Cross.

The Cross doesn’t elevate us or edify us in the world’s sense, but scandalizes us as weird people with horrific beliefs.

Most of all, the Cross brings a certain unbalance to our relationships with those who once were our people, but are no longer our people.

To a society that has been constructed on the principles of achievement and enjoyment, where pain and death are private matters, there is nothing as unpopular as making the crucified Christ an ever present gauge of one’s faith.

The symbol of the Cross in the church points to the Christ who was crucified not between two candles on the table, but between two thieves, in the place of the skull, where outcasts were taken, outside the gates, away from the beautiful people.

The Cross is a symbol which should lead us out of the church and out of culturally tied religious feel-goodism, and into the world of the oppressed and abandoned and lonely.  At the same time the Cross is a beacon which calls the oppressed and the godless into the church, and through the church, into fellowship with the crucified Christ.

Whenever this meaning of the Cross, and its revolution in religious values is forgotten, the cross ceases to be a symbol and becomes an idol.  The Cross as an idol no longer invites a revolution of faith and behavior, but instead becomes a stroker of self-infatuation.

I would dare say that the Cross of Christ, and what will come in a week, are the two most disorienting events that have ever been--that you and I could ever face.  They, together, demand a reorientation of every closely held belief and value the world has known.  These two events evoke the most fear, because they demand the most change.  But only by courageously opening ourselves up to the “nonsense” of the Cross will we then be able to restore the crucified Christ to his true position to change our lives.