The Cross

Without a doubt it's the single most common symbol of the Christian faith. From t-shirts to jewelry, church windows to tattoos, bumper stickers to web blogs. And it's been around for years - from King's crowns to crusader's shields.

The cross shows up nearly every where you look.

And yet I can't escape the feeling that despite it's prevalence we are missing something here.

For many when we look at the cross we instantly think of Jesus. But what's interesting is Jesus was not the only person who was ever crucified on a Roman cross. In fact according to the Bible story he wasn't even the only person crucified that day.

For the Romans the cross was a symbol of power and a tool of violent oppression. It was their way of saying, "This is what happens when you challenge Rome." Countless people who stood up against the violence and oppression of the Roman empire found themselves hanging on a cross.

You don't take on a massive system of corruption and not pay for it.

Because that's the way the world works right?

The biggest and baddest guys with the most swords, guns, crosses and warheads get to do whatever they want and those who challenge them pay for it.

Why?

Because they obviously must have god on their side... and you better not question that.

That's why when people started saying that a dirty, smelly, homeless Jewish Rabbi was the "son of God" it caused trouble.

Because the gods were Romans, and Caesar Augustus was the son of god.

Jesus and his followers were making radical political statements about who God was and what He was up to, and consequently who God wasn't supporting.

The beautiful thing about the cross is that it was just one of many executions on Roman crosses.

Because in a world where it was believed that God was on the side of  whoever was the most powerful, Jesus on the cross puts God right in the thick of things with the people who are completely powerless.

On the cross Jesus finds himself in the very midst of the oppressed and the "least of these."

And it sickens me the way we have somehow turned everything around so that the cross is once again a symbol of power, and empire, and far too many times violence.

We've taken Jesus on the cross and transformed it from a critique of power into the symbol of it.

Instead of rupturing the status quot Jesus on the cross has somehow become a defense of it.

We parade our crosses like a victory banner as we silence and subdue those who disagree with us.

So when Jesus tells us in Luke 9 to take up our cross daily, he isn't telling us to pick it up and wave it like a banner. We are to die on it.

We are to die to ourselves.

In doing so we lay down whatever power the cross has meant for us and we identify with all the other people who died on crosses just like Jesus.

On the cross we abandon our claims to God's preferential favor to find ourselves bloody and humiliated with the suffering and oppressed. Because when we find ourselves with "those" people that's when we find ourselves brushing shoulders with God himself.

Grace and Peace