Christ Crucified

Today is Tuesday in Holy Week and the Epistle is from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians1:18-31. In it he writes, “For Jews demanded signs and Greeks desired wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” Paul often mentions crucifixion and it may seem strange that he focuses on it. On another occasion he even said, “I’m determined to nothing among you except Christ crucified.” What’s this about?

What we have to know to make sense of this is that Paul couldn’t separate resurrection from crucifixion. Whenever Paul mentions crucifixion, it’s shorthand for “and resurrection.” They are always linked for Paul and should be for us too. In their recent book, The First Paul, Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan help us understand this obsession of Paul for the crucifixion. I’m indebted to them for the following thoughts.

For Paul, “Christ crucified” was a reminded that his death was the action of Imperial Rome. Only Rome crucified; only the empire that thought peace was a product of war, war in which Rome was the victor. To say that Christ was crucified was to proclaim that Jesus died because he was against everything that Imperial Rome stood for. And the cross was Rome’s way of saying “no” to everything Jesus stood for. But, resurrection was God’s way of saying “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the powers that had killed him. It was a system of domination and violence that killed Jesus. It was a God of peace and love that resurrected him.

The wisdom of this world that Paul mentions is the idea a few, in this case, the rulers of Rome, should dominate the many. That wisdom also says that it should be done through violence and threats of violence. Peace, the Pax Romano, brought by Rome, was stability, but a stability through conquest and power. This is the wisdom that Paul calls foolish; in fact the word he uses is the root word for our word “moronic.” The wisdom of this world is stupid, moronic, and brutal, Paul says.

Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection have the effect of revealing a new way to a life of peace—not stability, but peace. We are called to this same dying and rising which Paul calls the means to life “in Christ.” As he puts it, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” For Paul, in our baptism, we symbolized our being “buried with him.” As we emerge from the baptism, we are raised from the dead so we might walk in newness of life. It’s similar to getting a heart transplant! But it is Christ’s spirit that is transplanted in us say Borg and Crossan.

I think they’re on to something. But, if all this has been too much a theological excursion and word game, let me break it down. Jesus came to reveal the nature and character of God. God had tried other ways to communicate with us, through the law and through the prophets, for example, but we didn’t really get it. Then he became incarnate in Jesus to perfectly reveal his character to us. Jesus’ crucifixion reveals God’s character as love and his passion as the re-creation of the world. He didn’t die in our place, he died for us, in the same way someone might plunge into a river to save a drowning person and in the process, drown himself. Just as this person died so the drowning person could live, Jesus died so we could live a new and different kind of life.

Paul sums it up this way in 2nd Corinthians, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!...All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Our task during Lent, especially during Holy Week is to search our lives. To reflect on the wonder of God’s immeasurable love for us and know that we do nothing to earn it except be alive. And it is to reflect on the agony and pain Jesus experienced, especially the last few days of his life, as he tried to make that as plain to us as he could. He died to give us life, to give life to the whole of God’s creation, to create new people for the New Jerusalem.

At the dawn of Easter, we might reflect on the wonder of God’s victory over creation—a victory not won by power and brutality, but by love and grace. And as we rise from our reflection, we will want to make sure that we are living the life that a person with the Spirit of God inside would live.

It's not so much about being good as doing good--doing what Jesus would have done. We will look for ways to give comfort to the comfortless, succor to those who suffer. We will wipe away tears from the eyes of those who weep, give the shelter of companionship to those who are alone. And when they come to us asking to see Jesus, as the Greeks did in today’s Gospel reading, we will be able to show them Jesus in us.

Peace,

Jerry+