A Word from Pastor Jay

This month we enter into the season of Lent. Lent, of course, is the time in the church year calendar when we focus more specifically on the cross and on the great foundational events of our Christian faith. We know the story. Jesus told his disciples that he would undergo great suffering and die at the hands of the powerful. He then rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, the event we celebrate on Palm Sunday. Then he endured the passion: the arrest, the beatings, the trials and, finally, the crucifixion. After he died he was laid in a tomb. These are the familiar events which we recall as we journey through the season of Lent and focus once again on God’s amazing plan through which we have salvation and everlasting life.

When we think of the cross, however, what is it that we think, feel and believe? What does the cross mean to us? Is the cross merely a decoration for our stained-glass windows and altars, or a piece of jewelry which we wear because it looks nice, or is the symbolism and story of the cross still important to us?

Jesus foretold his crucifixion. Paul preached “Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” The writer of Hebrews looked at the crucifixion and proclaimed Jesus as both the sacrifice and the great high priest. Most of those around Jerusalem at the time considered the cross to be the end, the defeat of Jesus and his short-lived prophetic movement. The disciples of Jesus were crushed by his death, but later proclaimed the cross as God’s great victory over sin and death. Many still mock the cross as a relic of an ancient myth, while followers of Jesus today find in the symbol of the cross a powerful point of focus and a revealing of God’s love and mercy for all the world.

In the ancient world in which Jesus lived and died, sacrifice was a common element in many religions in the Near East and all along the Mediterranean. The sacrifice of animals was a prescribed way of remaining faithful to God and offering God a gift of thanksgiving in the Jewish faith at the time, with sacrifices asked during life events and at different festival times during the year. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would conduct sacrifice to God on behalf of the whole nation to ritually call for God’s forgiveness. It is no wonder that the early church, made up mostly of Jews, quickly combined the death of Jesus on the cross and the common idea of sacrifice to God together to envision the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for sin. The blood of the sacrifice (Jesus), as on the Day of Atonement, moves God to forgiveness.

While the idea of the cross as sacrifice is theologically intertwined with the Church’s self-understanding from the beginning, theologians today see other ways of understanding the cross and its meaning for us. One such understanding holds that the cross is a power play, and indeed is the most powerful thing that human authority can exercise. In other words, Jesus, in his ministry and teachings, butts up against human power and authority and injustice. In this case, Jesus taught a new way of understanding God and God’s actions and relationship with humanity through a God who becomes vulnerable, who enters into human weakness and suffering, who comes to us. These actions and teachings of Jesus were considered subversive by the power structures who ruled over Israel at the time, both Roman power and Jewish power. Jesus was seen as a threat because he taught a message of God which was accessible to everyone, didn’t need intermediaries, placed God in the midst of the marginalized, the poor, the oppressed, the sinners and the outcasts, and made the claim that this is where the fulness of God’s life is to be found. Jesus was seen by the worldly leaders as a challenge to both religious power and authority and government (Roman) power and authority, and so the decision was made to execute him as a subversive. The cross, then, was used to exercise the greatest power we humans have- to kill, to destroy. So, the human power structures do the most they possibly can do. They execute Jesus. They kill him on the cross. So, Jesus loses. The worldly powers win. Then we come to the first day of the week.