{"id":1517,"date":"2012-04-01T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2012-04-01T00:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=1517"},"modified":"2022-04-07T21:03:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:03:28","slug":"53-the-cross-and-the-lynching-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=1517","title":{"rendered":"53. The Cross and the Lynching Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?<\/strong><\/span>” [Mark 15:34<\/span>].<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\" <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Matthias Gr\u00fcnewald, Crucifixion<\/em>, from the Isenheim Altarpiece.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Salvation is won through the Cross. On that we all agree.<\/span><\/p>\n

For every Christian, the Cross of Christ is the most powerful symbol of salvation. It is without doubt the most universal of all Christian symbols. The sad thing is, the Cross of Christ is, at the same time, the most desecrated.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Christians, the Cross locates us and teaches us who we are. It connects us to Jesus. Deep down, while Christians appreciate that the Cross is an instrument of torture, they nevertheless feel<\/em> strongly that it is the foremost sign<\/em> of God\u2019s mercy and Christ\u2019s suffering on behalf of sinful humanity. It is like a signing device through which we look at the world. The Cross is so much a part of our Christian consciousness that when we travel to a new place and we want to pray, we even look out of a hotel room and search for something that resembles a cross to render our focus – a telephone pole, a TV antenna\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, behind all this, we are ever conscious too, that Christians have always kept an ambivalent relationship with the Cross of Christ. Everywhere we turn, the Cross casts a shadow. We need only take a brief look at a few issues to see the shadow.<\/span><\/p>\n

[1] A Cross without Christ?<\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

First, there is a pair of seemingly innocuous and yet profound flip-sided questions. Can we have the Cross without the Christ? Can we have the Christ without the Cross?<\/span><\/p>\n

A few decades ago, long before the present day \u201ccommunist\u201d China has emerged as a towering economic giant that threatens the dominance and dampens the insolence of the \u201cdemocratic-capitalist\u201d West, Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to speak of the suffering Chinese people as those who had the cross without the Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n

The opposite, we are afraid, may more accurately describe the reality of faith-teaching and faith-practice in many Christian churches across the globe of our own time. There, professed Christians commonly want the Christ without the cross. Those preaching the prosperity-gospel and managing \u00a0\u201cblessed\u201d churches \u2013 \u201ccome to us and you will prosper\u201d type \u2013 are easy targets for criticisms in this regard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then you have those Christians, quite misinformed, who behave like grassroots zealots. They visit hospital wards seemingly doing corporal works of mercy. But when they come across a Catholic mother sitting at the bedside tending to a sick child, however, they would not hesitate to remind the wearied mother that it was not right to wear a crucifix – a cross that has Christ hanging on it – because, they vehemently claim, Christ has risen and is victorious. \u201cChrist is no longer on the cross at Calvary,\u201d you hear them insist.<\/span><\/p>\n

One ought to be able to douse such misinformed, hospital-ward-crawling zeal at two levels.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, at the coffee-shop or pedestrian level, one could return-serve these zealots with the flat retort that they should not be wearing a cross at all, because the wood of the cross on which Jesus was pinioned on Calvary has long rotted. In other words, even the cross is no longer at Calvary, never mind the Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n

At even this pedestrian level, one could already make the connection that the Cross or the Crucifix that one wears round the neck is meant to be a Christian symbol. As a symbol of salvation, what meaning can the Cross possibly offer without the Christ? A life of meaningless human suffering under the old communist regime, Sheen would say. In any oppressive regime, in other words, Christ is absent; God is absent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, at the theological level, therefore, our minds turn at once to the possibility of a deeper understanding of this primary symbol of our salvation. There, a key question inevitably surfaces: Why did Christ have to die on the cross? Hermen-Emiel Mertens, our professor of Christology at Leuven, Belgium, suggests that it\u2019s not the cross that we should focus on to get answers for salvation, but the One Crucified on the cross. His book on this topic is titled Not the Cross, But the Crucified: An Essay in Soteriology<\/em> [Louvain:Peeters Press; Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992]. Attention is wrongly focused when the target is the mere cross. Christians meditate on He who hangs on the cross. Without the Christ, the cross is meaningless suffering.<\/span><\/p>\n

We join hands with the \u201czealots\u201d in proclaiming that the Cross is truly beautiful. We would insist upon them to accept that the cross is not beautiful in itself. Foisted on Jesus of Nazareth, the cross represents the power of the Roman empire, a power that is always opposed to the way of Christ. Yet, we do insist that the Cross is truly beautiful, for the beauty is in the Crucified One who chose to endure unjust suffering, who chose the way of peace rather than violence, and who chose death in love, living to the full the depth dimension of God\u2019s will: For God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son [John 3:16].<\/span><\/p>\n

So now, we know, the tomb is empty, for the grave cannot hold God\u2019s Messiah down! We can begin to key into St Paul\u2019s teaching in Romans 5:10 \u2013 \u201cFor if, while we were God\u2019s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!\u201d In the Cross, we see the beauty in Jesus\u2019 life which models for us what it means to love our enemies even as it humbles us with the resounding reminder that we all were God\u2019s enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2] The Cross Is Meaningless without Suffering<\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Looking closely at the Crucified One on the Cross was what the artist Mathias Gr\u00fcnewald did. In his famous Isenheim Altarpiece of the early 16th<\/sup> century, he does not allow us to run from the fact that the crucifixion was cruel and evil. Christ did not die an easy death. It was not pretty! Gr\u00fcnewald demands that we look at that ugly picture and not turn away. As he portrays the Suffering Servant of Yahweh crucified on the cross, the artist wants us to make no mistake about the reality of the cross as dark, evil and harsh. This artist would turn in his grave were he to see people wearing huge crosses in gold or diamond-studded or colourfully and artistically designed purely for decoration and high-end fashion-commerce.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Isenheim Altarpiece<\/em> by Matthias Gr\u00fcnewald<\/a>, 1506-1515.
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The heresy of the likes of the preachers of the prosperity-gospel lies in its utter denial of the inevitable cross in every human life. An authentic Christian life has got to be modeled after the Paschal Mystery of the Lord \u2013 His suffering, death and resurrection. The journey moves from pain to hope, from suffering and death to resurrection. This is the Christian model. Good Friday is \u201cgood\u201d on account of Easter Sunday, but there would not be the Easter Resurrection without the Friday Cross. It is a counterfeit Christianity that claims Christ\u2019s victory but ditches his suffering. It is a con artist who lures people to Christ\u2019s blessings free from the cross.<\/span><\/p>\n

The modern day culture, however, makes for a sharp contrast with the Christian model. So Ronald Rolheiser observes:<\/span><\/p>\n