Lenten Cross at St. Stephen's and the Incarnation
I’ve thought about the fact that Jesus was a victim of the death penalty many times, but this year I experienced something different. During the Good Friday service at St. Stephen’s, the choir sang a beautiful Taizé chant, “Crucem Tuam,” and then we all joined in singing a couple other hymns. Valentin walked around with a primitive-looking crucifix made with rope, screws and branches. It was time to venerate the cross. I was suddenly overcome by emotion. I could not stop tears from rolling down my face. I wanted nothing to do with this ritual.
My mind went back to the terrible night when almost a thousand of us stood outside Georgia’s maximum security prison to protest the impending execution of Troy Davis and the dozens of times I stood with far fewer numbers of people to protest the executions of many other prisoners. Many of those nights, we stood in a meditative circle along with family members of the person about to be killed by medical professionals and technicians hired by the state.
It is a very strange and terrible experience to bear witness, to pray, to sing, to stand peacefully in silence, surrounded by guards who are mundanely doing their jobs. I often imagined the sterile execution chamber that looks like a hospital room, except no one is put there to be healed. It is strange and terrible to know that a horrible act will be carried out in your name and under the guise of justice and civility to right the wrong of a killing. It is terrible to stand in solemnity when it feels more appropriate to scream, shout and insist with every fiber in your being that the calculated homicide be stopped.
Perhaps I was disturbed in the Holy Week service because I felt we were not disturbed by this symbol of state violence. Perhaps we’re not able to connect with what the cross really is all these centuries after Jesus’ execution. What would it be like to have someone walk around the sanctuary holding out a syringe full of poison for people to touch, to kiss or bow to? How could anyone feel comfortable doing that? Would people feel too repulsed to venerate such an object?
I think we’ve got it all wrong in having the cross be the central symbol of Christianity. This execution devise represents the most serious power ceded to government, the power over life. It is in direct contradiction of human rights and the very heart of God’s nature. God sent Jesus, a human model, to show us how to experience and live out his ethic of love and grace. In the face of evil, he modeled redemption and a restorative justice, burying a primitive and destructive philosophy of a vengeful justice. To me, the cross symbolizes humanity’s attempt to sabotage that ethic, but not that ethic itself.
Jesus died for our sins? Did he? That ties up the story of the worst act committed by humanity too neatly for me. I believe Jesus lived for the benefit of our souls and to enrich our lives on earth and beyond. But his message of how to live from the spirit of God’s transformative love was too radical. It demands we orient our thinking and our behaviors to question injustice and suffering and treat all people, even those beyond our own tribal group, as sisters and brothers. His message contradicted the status quo and started to attract followers. It was so threatening to the power of the religious elite and state government that he would not be tolerated.
The death penalty has always been about control. Control over slaves, hung for trying to escape or stage rebellions, control over those who would dare to kill white people or those in positions of authority, control over communities of color as part of a larger criminal justice system that controls the lives of a huge number of the poor and people of color in many ways, reserving the power even over their lives.
I have heard others view of the cross and what folks bring to the ritual of its veneration. I am not ready to go there, but maybe that viewpoint will evolve. For now, though, I would like for the cross to be brought in ceremoniously on Good Friday for congregants to dismantle and reconstruct as something beautiful for even useful. Perhaps we could lay out a set of tools, hammers, saws, crowbars, paint and anything else that stirs our creativity. I don’t mind remembering the cross and what humanity did to Jesus. But I want to be clear that we remember it because we must remember that God is calling us to a radical vision of love that often crosses the authority of those in power. He was willing to cross that line; therefore, we must be willing to as well. I think it is right for Christians to connect with the suffering of Christ, but I am deeply uncomfortable with the Mel Gibson gore-fest way of doing it. I am uncomfortable connecting with the passion as a way to feel deeply horrible about having a rotten nature or to motivate Christians to feel like superior truth holders who must “save” the world. I am comfortable having Jesus’ suffering in my understanding of God; but, I want it to be connected to the central focus of God’s vision and commandment to live a life rooted in a radical and life affirming ethic of love. For me, the message of Easter is that evil did not and still does not hold more power than God’s indestructable love.
I know that Holy Week usually stirs powerful experiences. Perhaps you have a different view of the cross. Perhaps other services struck you deeply. I hope you will add to the comments below to create a rich discussion!
I have a different take on the crucifixion. Yes, it was a terribly unjust penalty, a horrible way to die, an agonizing fate. That’s the whole point. If we stopped at the crucifixion, I would see the value of protesting it, but the crucifixion is followed by the Resurrection. God loved us enough to undergo the excruciating process of the crucifixion. While I personally oppose the death penalty, this was, to use an understatement, a special case. Jesus was not just a good and holy man, a doer of good works, a political prisoner, etc. He is the Son of God, who triumphed over death. Since Good Friday is followed by Easter, and I think that we need to remember that we are Easter people, the Good Friday experience, including veneration of the cross, has great meaning for me. As the old hymn says, I tremble to think of what Jesus went thru in order to give me eternal life.
Laura, your experience reminds me of one I had a number of years ago. On Good Friday, in the days before the Good Friday Liturgy came into the Prayer Book, the parish I served created a unique service of the Stations of the Cross. We trekked around the yard and the parish house, stopping at various stations which people had creatively interpreted. The final station, the burial in the tomb, was a simple placing of the Lenten cross (similar to the one we use at St. Stephen’s) on the altar. I knelt at the altar rail as the acolyte placed the cross on the altar, and others came up and joined me. For the first time it hit me that Jesus was someone I knew intimately. I was kneeling as I would do were his body laid out in a coffin and all my grief poured out for my dearest friend. I could not choke back the tears. His cross became one with him, and he one with it, so much so that cross and victim could no longer be separated in my mind.
You are one of the few people I have ever known who gets the cruelty of the cross. As Earl says, that is the point. Whatever troubles we may have with atonement theology, we can never allow the cross to become simply a tattoo or a piece of jewelery or a decoration. It is an instrument of shameful death. But it inseparable from the man who died on it. That is why to early Christians the cross was a “scandal,” a “stumbling block.” To call an executed criminal “Lord” was beyond radical. And to proclaim a resurrection was easy compared to preaching Christ and him crucified.
Laura – as a onceuponatime St. Stephens parishioner (in days of Fr. Wendt & Fr. Woodward) I am so moved by your sharing about Good Friday and veneration of the Cross…..As one of those who see lessons of Spirit from as diverse sources as Findhorn and the Dalai Lama, I have repeatedly been dismayed at how often the promise of new life is overshadowed by an all-too-ready stuckness in grieving the Cross (even in pop culture – Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, as well as Mel G.). I was so given to by your suggestion of a ritual of dismantling the cross and making the wood into something life-giving and useful: a cradle? a chair? a window? Lovely. I’m reminded of an exhortation by an Episcopal priest from those days: “We need to remember — Good Friday is not the end of the road for us — We are an Easter people!”
Laura: I am also really moved by your words, based on your experience. Wow. I have always thought about transformation when I think about the cross. That God could take this brutal, evil implement of destruction and make it an implement of eternal life is a miracle, literally. I have a lot more thinking to do about what you have written.
I have had additional time to think about this blog post, especially in its slightly revised form in Bread. I certainly agree that Good Friday is a highly emotional experience, and I can understand associating one form of capital punishment with others. However, we need to be cautious not to read too much of our personal agendas into corporate worship (I’ll say that that is always a risk with me!). Yes, the crucifixion was horrible, but the overriding message here is that God loved us enough to become a human being, experience an agonizing and unjust death, and then rise from the grave to overcome death. I’m not an expert theologian, but I believe that, if Christ had lived to be 85 and had dropped dead from a heart attack during a tai chi workout, the result would not have been the same!
I propose an analogy here. Certainly alcohol (which I don’t oppose in moderation) has caused a lot of human suffering and broken relationships. I have known co-dependents and adult children of alcoholics. I can imagine that someone in that situation would come into a Eucharist and feel horror that the cup of wine is being consecrated. What shall we bless next, the heroin syringe? I can certainly see that someone whose life has been ruined by alcohol would not have cause to celebrate. So, we can help this person individually and even corporately (by increasing awareness of alcohol abuse, by housing twelve-step groups, by working on community rehabilitation efforts). In the end, however, the overall message is to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus by eating his body and drinking his blood (think about that one for a moment!). In the end, we can love and empathize with the co-dependent, but anyone who can’t accept the wine as part of the Eucharist can always check out the nearest Methodist, Baptist, or Presbyterian church, where grape juice is used instead.