Helen Mildenhall's recent Viewpoints statement (...It's very hard for me to accept that the only way God could rescue humanity required the bloodshed and brutality of the cross...), speaks to us all.
Not only is it hard to accept. By the New Testament's own testimony, it's impossible to make any sense of it at all on our own. The message of Christ's cross is foolishness and a stumbling block to our ways of thinking - that's St. Paul's terse summary of where our human ways of thinking leave us when confronting God's other ways of reaching us with rescue (I Corinthians 1:18 -25). If that were all there was to say, we would have every reason to follow your line of thought as you asked, ...Is this really the best story that ever could be told; or is it only the best story anyone could tell 2,000 years ago? Which means it's long overdue for an update."
But that's not all there is to say. The same apostle goes on to declare that the message of the cross, now empty since Jesus is risen, is nothing less than the power and wisdom of God. He proclaims, not debates, speculates, suggests, but proclaims the full meaning of the cross as good news that sin is forgiven, that transforming power for new life is underway, that a community is now gathering to live out the witness that faith has an anchor, hope is its sail, and the love of God is stronger than death.
How does that happen, that the cross becomes wisdom rather than foolishness, power rather than a stumbling block?
In a sense, Helen, you have provided a starting point by acknowledging that the repugnance of the cross is just that - hard to take. By facing up to that reality, you strip away sentimentalizing the cross as mere jewelry. You expose the hypocrisy of prostituting the cross by making it the symbol of unvarnished hate - Ku Klux Klan style. And most tellingly, your struggle with the cross is in contrast to the most common form of dismissing it - indifference. Think of that haunting question sometimes set alongside a crucifix: Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?
If we can be open to the wondrous mystery that God's best gift to us is hidden in the cross his Son endured, and stay with its promise to reveal the divine power and wisdom that transforms our relationship with him and others, then great things happen.
Two words stand out here, "hidden" and "relationship."
God's saving work is hidden because of the primal sin of pride that blinds us mortals to think that it's always others who need rescu - thus the elephant remains in the room. But when suffering, Christ's suffering, is received as God's own action of taking on the worst that is in us and beating it back once and for all, then the cross is no longer hidden. It's good news out in the open, where it can reach us in all the bad situations we know all too well.
That hidden Good News is at work in our world where it is the only power that finally avails. It's at work in the Holy Land where I've seen Palestinian Christians disavow violence and hatred and against all odds build new schools for Christian and Muslim kids to learn together despite daily dangers from all sides. I've seen the hidden power of the Gospel become evident among Eastern European Christians who have outlived the Marxist blight that robbed them and a whole generation of its spiritual heritage, whose renewed lives are visible signs of rebuilding battered churches and institutions of human care. I've seen the same in mainland China, especially in young men and women of faith who embody the Good News in word and deed for impoverished Chinese left behind in the rural countryside of the world's largest population. I know a Sudanese refugee, a Christian in Kenya, whose toughness in seeking a pharmaceutical education has now prepared him to return to Sudan to serve his people amidst genocidal horrors. I've seen the power of the word of the cross in these people and others and speak accordingly.
The cross is relationship. It is not that God is so mad at us that his vengeance demands blood. It is that God seeks us passionately through Jesus, standing with us and for us. The cross and resurrection - the two are inseparable - are God's power to make an end of all scapegoating, all bloody vengeance-seeking, all passive submission to abuse, all limiting of its grace to me alone. The cross is the fundamental relational moment of God's reconciling work, binding us to himself and to each other. We're baptized into that gracious relation upward and outward, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked by the cross of Christ forever.
Again, let me cite the miracle of hospitable welcoming and purposeful service experienced in a half century of ministering the word of the cross with people in our communities all around us, and in more recent years in places abroad. In this very time when fear keeps humans increasingly edgy and dangerously alienated, the power and wisdom of the Gospel moves in the opposite direction. Our Lord gathers diverse people together for worship, mutual acceptance of varied gifts, and partnership in bridge-building over troubled waters near and far.
The news that the world is a mess is old news, true but bad news nevertheless. Yet that's not the last word on the world, messed up as it is or our messed up lives within it. The last word is God's to speak, his and his alone. To be sure, his judgment on us shakes us where we need shaking. But God's last and great word is not judgment but grace - with a cross at the heart of it, to confirm that neither death nor life nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from his love in Christ Jesus.
