Bothered

Good Friday, April 7, 2023

I am bothered by the cross. The brutality of it. A method of grotesque humiliation. A terror to shut everyone up about anyone who hung there. A blatant misuse of intellect to make the last hours of a life absolutely horrendous. I am bothered that this is what we do, again and again under the shadow of the cross. We bow instead to institutional demands, imperial forces, and messaging that rots us from the inside out. I am bothered because it demands questions about who and what injustices I ignore like they are not my problem. I am bothered by bedazzled crosses on the back pockets of jeans, accessories with no sense of reference to the profundity of what happened over a dump outside an ancient city today. Empty crosses stand boldly to the sky, they are a transformation of this terror into hope, an Easter declaration and a call to follow. But behind it is this, all of this: over five thousand words today, endless syllables of evidence regarding our being cracked about the head and sadly in need of mending.

I am bothered by the idea in fiction that crosses ward off evil. What does it mean that its power is present with no regard for the thoughts of the hero or the evildoer? If the mere material presence made the difference It seems to me there would be less to mend. Yet still, the cosmic wondering about what this whole weekend means for you, for me, for strangers, for enemies, for the past,for the future. It bothers me like someone I love but I don’t know how much I love them, and how much they love me just yet. The cross is a turning point of all the ages, consuming every debt and every sin in Jesus’ vulnerability. It is a new creation of how we understand everything, And I don’t think we really understand it yet.

German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded us that Christ lived in the midst of his enemies, And at the end he was left alone, surrounded by enemies. This is why he was born, and this is how he died. Following Jesus isn’t secluded from such vile bothersome brokenness, but in the middle of it. Bonhoeffer reminded us of this his whole life. 78 years ago this Sunday, Just days before the liberation of the concentration camp where he was held,he was hung on a nail on a wall for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. The call of his cross is to not cover our eyes,to never just obfuscate or run away. Thiscross is not to assume someone else will strive or speak or dare in God’s name, but to enter the mud and muck of everyday hatred and evil doing. This is the way of the new creation, an utter emptiness and ultimate power that is the same as what was before the beginning began. A sacrifice that calls us to more than we can ask or imagine: A sacrifice that obliterates and shreds every sin and debt. It is the cross of Jesus.