The Way of The Cross

The dramatic and hopeful story that began heralding highways through the wilderness ends on the narrow, dusty path to Golgotha.  Here on this hill we find the subversive Nazarene struggling to carry his own death stake, alone and abandoned on the journey, an enemy of imperial Rome and her Jewish collaborators.  Reaching the place of execution, he is stripped naked for the third time, exposing himself to public ridicule and shame, and then forced to lie on the ground while both forearms and wrists are nailed to a wooden beam.  Naked and betrayed, Jesus is finally, and almost mercifully, raised up onto the cross where he will die a slow and agonizing death.  According to historians, Roman crucifixion poles measured only seven feet tall, allowing wild animals to tear the convict apart as he slowly dies of asphyxiation. This form of execution was so heinous, it led Cicero in 63 B.C. to write “If we are to be threatened with death, then we want to die in freedom; let the executioner, the shrouding of the head, and the very name of the cross be banished from the body and life of Roman citizens, from their thoughts, eyes and ears!”  But for Rome, the message is clear, oppose us and our power structure and we will publicly humiliate you, destroy you and feed your remains to the dogs.  Roman crucifixion is the public and political manifestation of imperial triumph over anyone foolish enough to dare revolution.  Ironically, only the women in Jesus' circle of disciples brave an appearance at his death, showing their solidarity to the bitter end...

And yet, this instance of divine humiliation marks the cosmic moment when the rulers of this world are finally overthrown, not through coercion and power, but through defeat and death. The cross is Jesus' ultimate political statement, warning all who come after Him that this way of suffering isn’t some pithy expression of bourgeois self-denial, it is the acknowledgment and belief that choosing His path requires upon us the sentence of death. 

Christ’s affliction becomes the physical exhortation to see the world through the lens of Golgotha, refusing even now amid our desire to carve out our piece of the political pie, to compromise the politics of the cross.  But who of us is honestly willing to accept that by remaining there, by submitting Himself to the unjust authorities, by resisting the urge to call upon Elijah, Jesus ultimately shows all mankind the road to liberation. Our personal, social and political liberation does not come from coerced Constantinianism. Living in the political shadow of Christ's cross does not allow us to engage in punitive or coercive action with our social and political enemies, as we demand our voices by heard, not matter how vitriolic and bitter they sound. This will to power is antithetical to Christ, aligning us more with what and who we hate instead of the one who has shown us a new way, this way of deference and shame.

The way of the cross, the way of salvation and cultural transformation isn’t achieved via position and authority. It is experienced through sharing his cup of suffering.  Mark's Gospel  underlines this point rather dramatically by positioning two bandits ‘one on his right and one on his left’, the positions of honor requested by James and John, with Jesus on Golgotha.  The message is crystal clear: 'if you want to join me and my kingdom efforts, pick up your cross, carry it to Golgotha, and climb up on it and die'.  After all, a slave isn’t above his master, and if the teacher is despised, what will become of his students?  If the world hates you, remember it hated him first.  And in those moments, resist the temptation to protest, to demand equality, to seek your inalienable rights.  On the contrary, model Christ's humility; “when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.”

Few Christ-followers choose this path, his road of anguish and tears.  And yet here Jesus is, bearing our stripes, receiving our wounds and uttering not a word in return.  If this story is true, and if there is the cosmic chance of God’s kingdom coming on earth, in this space and in this time, it will only come when Christ-followers abandon the propensity to persuade through power and embrace the cup of constant sorrow willingly and joyfully, pointing back to that historic day when the sovereignty of this world was handed over to the divine Human One in the death of God’s suffering servant.