The Cross Transformed

Craig Anderson

Brookside Community Church

 

I Cor.  1:18-25                March 24, 2002

 

                After a field trip a few years ago, I asked the confirmation class about differences they had observed between our sanctuary, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  We covered the most obvious points, and then somebody chimed in with: “Our cross doesn’t have the little man on it!”  Right!  I don’t remember whether I launched into an explanation, and indeed this morning I’m a little hazy on the details.  I can’t cite the original sources about why our cross is shiny and bare, while other churches put a suffering Jesus up there.  But I know enough to steer you to the Reformation, and how squeamish Luther, Calvin and Zwingli were about images and idols.  The first commandment says, “no graven images,” and I think we can be sure that the reformers, who zealously based church practices on Holy Writ, removed the body and left only the cross.  That’s my educated guess, but I can’t quote chapter and verse from Calvin’s Institutes or Luther’s Collected Works.  So much for the history channel this morning!

                If you were listening to what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, you heard additional evidence that the cross which you see before you, has indeed been transformed, and in ways which are more profound than removing the little man from it.  But before we get to that transformation, let’s start with what the cross was. 

                Instead of shiny brass, it might be better for us to display a noose up here on the wall, or a gurney with thick leather straps.  The cross lest we forget, was an instrument of state sanctioned terror, designed to strike fear into the populace.  Executions were public in the Roman empire.  Killing grounds were given prominent and permanent places outside of city walls, where the masses couldn’t miss the point.  That place outside of Jerusalem was called Golgotha, which translated means “skull,” perhaps because the place was shaped like one, but just as likely because of what the killing ground was littered with.  There are reports of roads into rebellious Roman cities being lined with crosses and corpses, hundreds, even thousands of them.

                So make no mistake, originally the cross was a grisly symbol of an authoritarian regime which maintained the Pax Romana with terror when necessary.  But one can’t help but notice at the beginning of Holy Week, only five days before Good Friday, that the cross has been transformed.  For us it no longer represents what Rome intended.  Something happened to this symbol.  We notice that the little man is missing; that rough timbers have been replaced by shiny brass, but what more does this transformation signal?

                First of all, this transformation began long before the Reformation.  It was, as Paul wrote, “a stumbling block (literally a scandal) to Jews, and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  Paul’s entire theology twists and turns on the cross.  To overcome the scandal, to transform the symbol, Paul saw the cross not as an tool of state sanctioned terror, but as an instrument of divine wisdom and power.  In his view, the cross set right an enormous wrong.  The sacrifice of Jesus was saving grace for humanity.  The Romans intended to silence Jesus, but the cross spoke of a higher power, and pointed beyond worldly brutality to God’s wisdom

                Can you imagine how this must have infuriated the Romans and empowered the early Christians?   Meant to intimidate and control, to wreak fear and submission, these early believers took the cross with Paul’s help, and made it into something quite other.  In effect, they said to the Romans, “You want us to be afraid?  We take your symbol of repression and mock you with it by wearing it on our chests and making it central in our worship!  If you can’t frighten us anymore, your power over us is broken.”  Again, I have no historical evidence, but can’t we imagine that when this first happened, the number of executions increased?

                Or maybe I do have evidence, only it isn’t historical.  It’s contemporary, as fresh as this morning’s newspaper, with one side trying to out-intimidate the other in Palestine and Israel.  The comparison isn’t perfect, but isn’t each side in the conflict trying to send a message to the other?  Isn’t each side trying to defy the other, and strike fear and urge submission in the other?  To send a message to those who harbor terrorists and suicide bombers, Israel sends its tanks and troops into West Bank cities and towns indiscriminately tearing down houses and bullying whoever they encounter.  In defiance, the Palestinians retaliate with their own pointless terror, and suicide bombers inflict their suffering upon Israel’s innocent.  In this case, both sides are trying to intimidate the other into fearful submission.  Without transformation, the spiral of revenge and violence leading nowhere escalates.

                The Romans ruled by fear.  Israel and Palestine use similar tactics still.  The Taliban and the Al Qaeda network sowed the wind of terror and now reap a whirlwind.  The early Christians however, transformed the cross.  But what has it been transformed to?  An ornament upon a wall which no longer violates the first commandment?  A piece of jewelry worn around our necks?  Doesn’t this symbol convey more than that?  Let me suggest when the cross was transformed from a symbol of Rome’s brutal dominance into a sign of Christian defiance, that a deeper movement was also signaled.  Once the cross symbolized the brutal stupidity of Roman imperial power, but then it came to represent the wise ways of God’s peaceable kingdom.  Once the cross represented the brutal world as it is, but looking more closely one can see a vision of the world as it might be.  The cross transformed: the world transformed.  If one could happen, perhaps the other might one day follow.

                At the beginning of this holy week, we are not satisfied with the world as it is, are we?   Don’t we too hope for a transformed world, a just and humane world, a world safe and fit for our children and grandchildren?  Do you ever catch yourself wondering what’s going to have happened fifty years  from now?  What state is the world going to be in for the coming generations?  Do you worry about the continuing degradation of our environment, the destruction of our supplies of air, and food and water?  Are you concerned about signs of political collapse and corruption?  Two-thirds of the rest of the world have despots running their countries.  Are we being vigilant enough about our politics and government?  Signs of social and moral decline extend from the boardroom to the ghetto, from the church to the accountant’s office.  To listen to some, you might conclude that markets mean everything and people nothing.  To listen to others a simple focus on social ills is the answer, while the role of personal responsibility is ignored.  And meanwhile, did you see this week’s satellite photos of the disintegrating polar ice-cap, right next to stories about delaying new standards for auto-emissions?

                Not fifty years from now, but in this very season, we are in the early stages of what may be our own transformation.  Religious and political zealots on airplanes struck at two of our nation’s most potent symbols: the Pentagon and the twin towers.  Our transformation also began in suffering, pain and sorrow.  After six months we are not there yet.  We are still mourning and grieving; trying to fathom what these events mean, and to fashion a response beyond retaliation.  How long this process will take, and what comes next isn’t entirely clear.  But take a clue from the fact that Paul wrote to Corinth about the scandal of the cross thirty years after Golgotha.  As we compress the cycle into one holy week, ask the question as some scholars do, “how many years was Easter?”  How long did it take to transform the cross into a source of inspiration and empowerment?

                We don’t know yet how we might be transformed, but there are encouraging signs.  Not only have we taken off our blinders to the reality of evil and to the threats which terrorism poses; but there are also glimmers out of the carnage and clean-up, of a refusal to give in to despair and cynicism.  As long as there is breath, there is hope.  This seems foolish given the evidence, but it is wisdom if our world is to survive.  I am also encouraged that we have been prompted not to dehumanize our enemy or make blanket judgements about the Muslim world.  Rather there been calls from many quarters for cross-cultural understanding, respect and sensitivity.  There is even a growing recognition that as we seek out wrong-doers to redress their evil, that we must also acknowledge and correct the wrongs we have done. We can’t simply fill up our tanks with Arab oil and neglect how Arab governments treat their people.  We can’t simply take one side in Israel and Palestine.  We can’t simply assume that everyone sees us as we see ourselves. On a more personal level, there is also the encouraging sign that having been witness to so much death and grief, that many are reassessing the importance of friendships, families, and career.  Maybe spending more time at the office isn’t the chief aim in life after all.

                So perhaps what bin Laden expected has back-fired.  That was true in ancient Palestine.  The cross was meant to intimidate and control, but Paul and the early Christians transformed a symbol of state-sanctioned terror into something quite other.  The cross as it stands before us, now symbolizes the way the world is meant to be, the way we would hope it might be:  that is, transformed, changed, a fit place for all humanity to prosper and live.  We’re not there yet, but perhaps we can reclaim and restore one killing ground at a time, not giving into cynicism or despair; finding all the while, encouragement and empowerment in this cross, transformed.