Sunday: Good Friday
Reading: The Passion of John
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

Crucifixion combined torture with slow asphyxiation. A condemned man would typically be beaten and then forced to carry the heavy cross to the place of death. His feet would be nailed either directly through the ankles or through the heel bone to the lower post of the cross. The hands or the arms would be nailed or tied to the horizontal beam. While Jesus typically wears something of a loincloth in artistic depictions of the cross, it would not have been unusual for the condemned to hang naked. Relieving himself would have been not only deeply shameful but would have attracted bugs. Crucifixion was a shameful, slow, and agonizing form of death. The condemned would not have died from bleeding out of the nail wounds or the open wounds on the back. Over time the exposure to the elements-hot sun, rain, the chill of night-and the gradual loss of breath would take its toll. The condemned would have died from suffocation, his body eventually not able to hold itself up enough to breathe properly. It was an agonizing death. [1] Compared to a typical crucifixion, Jesus died relatively quickly, in about six hours. We can speculate that that was due to the amount of pre-crucifixion beating he received (a well known criminal would have come in for special treatment). Crucifixion not only killed the condemned but stood as a stark symbol to others-deterrence as we would say. Crucifixion was the death penalty. 

The reality of the cross as death penalty was graphically brought home to me on Good Friday eight years ago when I was confronted by the stark vision of an electric chair sitting on the porch of my seminary chapel. Those were days when the injustice of the death penalty was very much in the news, just before Former Illinois Governor Ryan announced the moratorium on the death penalty in this state. A group of justice minded students had spent what must have been considerable time building a mock electric chair. These students knew what I just told you about the crucifixion and they were drawing a direct parallel to the electric chair. Jesus was an innocent victim of the death penalty, even Pilot said, "I find no case against him," and there were innocent victims sitting on death rows across our country. These students were calling on the cross to stand in judgment over all of the wrongful convictions and bad lawyers and the whole system of the death penalty. They knew that Constantine, the 1st Christian emperor, had abolished crucifixion in the 4th century in honor of Jesus. Perhaps the cross could cajole a new batch of political leaders into action.

But the cross is much more than the death penalty and there is a serious danger in the line of argument put forward by the builders of that mock electric chair. Their argument could lead one to be ashamed of the cross. If the cross is the 1st century firing squad, electric chair, gurney for lethal injection, tallest tree in town, then it is something to be scorned. We ought to replace it as the central symbol of Christianity with an empty tomb or a washed foot or a path through the hills. If we understand the cross as merely a torture device, then our understanding fails to be informed by Jesus' life and by the resurrection. Today's liturgy is not a funeral for Jesus. We are not here to mourn how Jesus was cut down in his prime, to wonder what he might have accomplished for justice and truth and love had he more than a brief three-year ministry. The cross was a brutal end for a man who was a thorn in the side of the powerful. But the cross is a great deal more than that. The cross is a symbol of a God who is fundamentally self-offering. We cannot get rid of the cross. We can't skip from Maundy Thursday's moral imperative straight to an Easter Sunday of champagne and painted eggs. We have to face the obstinate reality of the cross.

For the cross is a symbol of God's character. Jesus is the very revelation of God. The cross symbolizes how Jesus poured out his life on behalf of the other. The cross symbolizes a God who pours out God's life for the sake of the world. When the going gets tough, humans have this tendency to invoke the mightiness of God. But God is weak and powerless in the world. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Man's religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world... The Bible however directs him to the powerlessness and suffering of God." [2] We are prone to expect people to get what they deserve, to reap what they sow. Not the suffering God. Jesus took up the condition of those who can't save themselves, who can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps, who are defenseless. He didn't have to. He did it purposefully. "Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?" Jesus revealed on the cross that God would give of Godself for the world in the most radical of ways.

I should be quick to add that the cross can be terribly misused. The reading of the cross I am suggesting has been used to keep the downtrodden in their place. That's wrong. It is sinful to say that one should resign oneself to subjugation. The cross cannot be an excuse to keep women in abusive relationships or the poor in cycles of poverty. "The cross is rather a paradoxical sign of the greater life that can come from the most radical sort of self-donation." [ Understanding God through weakness is not weak. The discipleship to which we are called to is not impotent. The cross promotes ethical action. If God's very nature is constant and costly self-giving, then when we participate in that reality in community and in the Eucharist we must respond in kind. Taking on a cruciform discipleship God's self-giving nature becomes our reality. It is easy for us turn to a mighty God-one who saves the Israelites from the Egyptians. It is difficult to live cruciform discipleship. Thomas a Kempis said, "Jesus has many who love his kingdom in heaven, but few who bear his cross...many admire his miracles, but few follow him in the humiliation of the cross." If you hear that and still think cruciform discipleship is weak, that modeling oneself off of Jesus' self-giving nature will turn you into a doormat, then I am not preaching the Good News. Martin Luther King followed Jesus in the humiliation of the cross. He said, "Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive." He wasn't weak. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I quoted above talking about the powerlessness and suffering of God, followed Jesus in the humiliation of the cross. He took on Hitler. He wasn't weak. Humility is strong. Weakness can call power into question. The cross might have been invented as a form of deterrence and shame. God transformed it into a symbol of paradoxical power.

Oh, that cross is obstinate. It stood against the wisdom of the Greeks. It stood against the messianic expectations of so many faithful Jews. It stands against the death penalty and stands against those who reduce it to that. It stands against us when we to closely tie God with human comfort. God gives of Godself for the sake of the world. The cross is a symbol of that. Participating in the cross, taking on a cruciform discipleship, transforms us to transform the world. Thank God for the cross.

[1] This sermon leaned on Luke Timothy Johnson's article about "cross and crucifixion" in The Oxford Companion of Christian Thought (2000) and on information from the Frontline website devoted to the topic: pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953), 220. The idea to use Bonhoeffer came from Martin Marty's introduction to Haydn's Seven Last Words as broadcast on WFMT this past Wednesday.
[3] Johnson