The Cross: Doorway and Key
Exaltation of the Cross Scripture Readings
Of all the paradoxes we encounter in our Judeo-Christian Scriptures, the cross of Christ is certainly the greatest. It’s precisely this instrument of torture and death that serves as the watershed point in human history. Its purpose, as we see in the gospels, was to put an end to Jesus and disperse his disciples. Instead, it was the beginning of a spiritual revolution. It was meant to mollify the Romans and save Jerusalem and Israel from destruction. Instead, it served as just another stepping-stone on the way toward that inevitable fate only one generation later.
The cross is, truly, the ultimate sign of contradiction: the symbol of death that brought rebirth, the symbol of condemnation that brought resurrection, the symbol of injustice that brought reconciliation, the symbol of failure that produced triumph. To meditate on the contradictions of the cross is to peer into the ineffable will of God and to find the power that can transform the chaos of human life into a new creation. The cross is the doorway that leads beyond the futility of human existence, and, at the same time, it’s the key that opens that door and welcomes us in.
Think about what the cross represents. It’s meant to be both a punishment and a deterrent to crime. “You do this to us, so we do that to you.” It’s the law of talion—the law of retaliation—which we call “an eye for an eye.” This is still our approach, as we search for a “just punishment.” Yet is there ever such a thing? Does someone’s doing wrong to us somehow, magically, give us the right to wrong them in return? Does any punishment ever change another’s mind and heart? It may modify their behavior for a time, but doesn’t it leave the so-called perpetrator in resentment, and mentally, emotionally, and spiritually worse off than before? Where people have experienced a true change of mind and heart, wouldn’t it be despite the punishment, rather than because of it? And what can we say about the “deterrent factor”? Aren’t most transgressions crimes of passion and impulse? And, even when crimes are premeditated, the threat of punishment doesn’t prevent them; it just offers them a challenge to find a way to get what they want done while avoiding the consequences. Regarding punishment, what Gandhi said is still true: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” The cross, then, represents the futility of punishment.
The cross also represents the tools of injustice, manipulation, and repression. None of the three crosses raised on Calvary was simply punishment for crimes. All of them were there as political statements. The Greek word we translate as “robber” or “thief,” ληστης (lēstēs), refers to a revolutionary or insurrectionist bandit. In fact, the Romans reserved crucifixion for insurrectionists, and that was the accusation against Jesus: “Anyone who makes himself king is an enemy to Caesar.” It’s most likely that all of these three men were actually tortured and killed for political reasons, and, especially, to serve as a warning to those who were still considering following in their revolutionary footsteps. Even the men crucified with Jesus recognized that he wasn’t an insurrectionist. Instead, one of them hoped to be taken into the kingdom where Jesus would reign because, assuredly, that kingdom had to be better than this one.
We can see, then, that Jesus’s “crime” was a political one. Yet it was a crime the authorities had difficulty dealing with. Jesus threatened the political establishment not through any violent confrontation or rebellion, and not even through non-violent non-cooperation as Gandhi did, but merely by telling and living the truth. The closest Jesus came to rebellion was when he stopped the temple sacrifices by removing the required money changers from the temple precincts. Even then, the authorities didn’t see it as rebellion, but as a prophetic gesture, since they asked him for his prophet’s credentials in response. They couldn’t condemn him for insurrection against Rome. The real charge against him was that he challenged the Jewish religious authorities who were in league with Rome.
Jesus knew about the authorities’ plotting against him and even their plans to have him killed. Remarkably, that didn’t deter him from saying and doing the truth and teaching his followers to say and do the same. His lesson to them and to us is simple: never allow intimidation to deter us from doing the right thing. Remember that the Letter to the Hebrews calls Jesus our “pioneer.” He’s the one who blazes the trail that only the spiritually strong and courageous will follow.
Jesus knew well how the authorities manipulated the system. I’m quite sure, considering his company on the crosses that day, that he wasn’t the first, nor was he the last, to be eliminated on trumped-up charges for political purposes. I’m also quite sure that Jesus understood well what crucifixion would mean for him. I hope you’ll excuse me if I spell it out for you. When a person was nailed to the cross, his arms were stretched out on a crossbeam laid on the ground, and nails were driven through his wrists. The nails cut into the median nerve,“…he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross,” which caused extreme pain. The crossbeam was then lifted up by soldiers and set on top of the upright, causing the body to sag and further jolting the median nerves. The feet were then raised from the ground and fastened through with a single nail into the upright. All the body weight now was on the wrists. As the crucified hung, the chest muscles would cramp so severely that the man could no longer exhale and had no choice but to force himself up onto the nail in his feet to relieve the pressure. After a while, their leg muscles would give out, and they’d have to relax and hang by their arms again. It wasn’t unusual for this to go on for three or four days before they were no longer able to raise themselves up, and asphyxiation would follow quickly. That’s why breaking their legs proved so effective at speeding up the process.
We’ve seen the cross as an instrument of retribution, an instrument of repression, and an instrument of torture. How then could we see the cross as the door and the key to a spiritual revolution? We can understand it that way because that’s how Jesus saw it and showed us how, as well. From the outset, Jesus’s public ministry was marked by a radical acceptance. We mustn’t think of his kind of acceptance as something passive. It’s anything but. Acceptance is a conscious decision made once and remade every day to live boldly in reality, refusing to live in the past or the future, refusing to live in dreams, plans, and hopes, refusing to live in the lament, “if only things were different.” They’re not, and they never will be. Acceptance, as Jesus lived and taught it, is understanding that things are the way they are, we’re not going to make them any different, so adapt. At no time in his life and ministry, nor in his passion and death, did Jesus struggle to change reality. Through his false arrest and mock trial, he stood in radical acceptance and spoke truth to power. He was, as Saint Paul wrote in today’s second reading, obedient—not only to his Heavenly Father, but to reality. He even chose the moment of his own death simply by allowing the inevitable to take its course.
There’s Jesus’s example. There he is as our pioneer, if we’re courageous enough to live in that same radical acceptance that he did, through malicious accusations, through political machinations, through terrible injustice, and even through a torturous death, yet through it all, never losing his trust in God. There’s the doorway to victory. There’s the key to living authentically. Jesus showed us how it’s done. Had he fought, had he struggled, had he resisted, the ending would have been no different. And there would have been no resurrection, for him or for us. He would have been no different from all those before and since who went to their deaths faithlessly, kicking and screaming. Rather, because he was the obedient Son of the Father, his acceptance revealed to us what comes after—that is, the resurrection—“…so that everyone who believes in him [and trusts in him] may have eternal life.” The cross is our symbol of acceptance in faith of things as they are with all their joys, sorrows, and pain…and even death. It leads not to a life of futility, disappointment, and despair, but to a life lived in courage, serenity, and confidence in our loving and faithful God.
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