Of the Shameful Cross

I remember my grandmother giving me a cross necklace when I was confirmed. I was in the sixth grade. I wore it to school, and one of my friends asked me that if Jesus had been killed by a gun, would I wear a gun around my neck. I thought the question ridiculous at the time; my mother said the little boy “just didn’t know any better”; but now in hindsight, I’m afraid the question is a good one. Last year at the festival of flowers, just before Easter there was one exhibit consisting of displays of flowers all in the shape of  crosses. I thought to myself, no matter how hard we try to imagine it, there is nothing beautiful about a cross.

In the ancient Near East crosses were used as instruments of torture and death for those who committed what was considered by the powers that be the ultimate crime: sedition, betrayal of the state. Death by crucifixion was the most horrible punishment conceived in the mind of Empire, designed to deter anyone else from similar conspiracy. And to make matters worse these crucifixions took place outside the walls of the city, on the highway, so all passersby could see the horror lest they harbored ill will against the state as well. To be killed and buried outside the city walls was a shameful thing. It meant that the life of the victim was of no account, out of community, lost among the stony rubble, vulnerable to scavengers, dug up by the dogs. Crucifixion was as much about shame as it was about death.

And yet, still these crosses hang around our necks and adorn our churches. Ironies at best, that even amid the shameful brutality of our world, God is there in imaginative reverie begetting from the darkness, violence and shame… life and hope and dignity. It doesn’t add up, this irony, but it is in truth all we have to hope for. So in this season we embrace the ambiguity of the cross: It is a reminder of the dark brutality of our world that wounds and shuns and shames; and it is also an outward and visible sign of a fragile but certain promise that our God is in solidarity with us in our darkest hours, and with all who suffer; that God suffers with all the crucified of our world…still shunned, still broken and still shamed. The cross bids us to remember and acknowledge the injustice and violence still rife among us…and…and, lest we lose sight… it bids us to hold fast to the promise that the good will stand with dignity yet… even if on shaky ground….and there is something beautiful about that.