Perspective: Holy Mockery

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

Holy Mockery

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings by becoming like Him in His death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:10-11 (NRSV)

In my lifetime when I'm disgraced

By jealousy and lies

I laugh aloud 'cause my life

Has gotten inside someone else's mind

From "Bullets" by Creed

I have amassed a nice collection of cross necklaces over the years. One of these crosses, a Christmas gift from my mother, is made of sterling silver. Another cross in my collection is a gift of love, made by hand and given to me by an anonymous gift giver. Another is made from olive wood from the Holy Land. My favorite in this collection, another Christmas gift from my mother, is a cross made up of three small nails.

It is not uncommon to see people wearing crosses on necklaces or as earrings. Some people have even tattooed crosses onto their skin. Not only do people adorn their bodies with crosses, people also adorn their churches with crosses as well. At my church, there is a large cross hanging at the very front of the sanctuary. In the same sanctuary, there is a smaller brass cross on the communion table. I live across the street from a church with a cross at the very top of the steeple.

Today, the cross is a religious symbol, but, in the culture from which it came, the cross would have struck fear into people's hearts. A cross is an execution stake that was used by the Roman Empire. A convicted criminal was staked to a cross by nails driven through the wrists and ankles. The cross was then set upright, and the criminal hung on that cross until death. It was a long, brutal, agonizing process. If the criminal took too long to die, the executioners might break his legs in order to expediate the process.¹

It is by this method that the Romans executed Jesus.

When Christians wear crosses, they wear replicas of the instrument of death used to murder their Savior.

It turns out that my favorite cross necklace is a representation of the instrument of death used to murder Jesus, made up of the instruments used to stake Jesus to that same instrument of death.

The fact that we use crosses as decorations is rather morbid if you think about it.

In the past couple of years, I have come to realize that, in order to fully enter into the hope and joy of Christ's resurrection, which is celebrated on Easter Sunday, one must enter into the despair and darkness of Christ's crucifixion, which is commemorated on the preceding Friday. When we remember the crucifixion, we essentially practice a form of ritualized hopelessness as we watch Christ defeated by corrupt religion, imperial brutality, the sin of humanity, and death itself. Our Messiah has died a horrible death; our God has forsaken us; and all of our hopes and dreams for salvation lie shattered in a pile on the ground.

On Easter Sunday we are filled with hope as we find and empty tomb and see Jesus appear among us, saying, "Peace be with you." We see that the victory of corruption, violence, sin, and death has been overturned and that Christ has conquered all in the Resurrection. We realize that our Messiah is alive and better than ever, that God was with us the whole time, and that our hopes and dreams are already being realized, though not necessarily in the way we first envisioned them.

This cycle of crucifixion and resurrection is not just a series of events that happened two thousand years ago that we commemorate every spring. Crucifixion and resurrection are things that we experience in our own lives. We all go through times in our lives that can only be described as godforsaken. Sometimes the experience is our own fault; sometimes it is the fault of someone else; and sometimes all we can do is to chalk it up to the fact that we live in a broken world. The Crucifixion reminds us that we all have heavy, ugly, gruesome crosses to bear in this life.

The Resurrection, on the other hand, reminds us that the cross was not the end of the story and that there is indeed new life beyond the crosses we bear. The resurrected Christ is proof of this new life. Sometimes we have the tendency to wallow in our own tombs of sin, guilt, shame, regret, and self-pity, but, just as Christ called out to His dead friend, "Lazarus, come forth!" Christ calls us to come forth from our figurative tombs and to embrace the new, abundant, eternal life He offers us.²

Because of the Resurrection, we are able to engage in a certain type of mockery.

As I stated earlier, the Church commemorates the crucifixion of Christ on the Friday before Easter Sunday. Do you know what that Friday is called on the Church calendar?

It's called Good Friday. Yes, the Church remembers the horrific act of violence and injustice inflicted on its Savior and calls it good.

Christians brandish crosses - symbols of death - as if they are symbols of life.

St. Paul expresses this same mockery as follows:

Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?³

Paul is doing something that we're generally taught not to do: he's making light of death. In fact, he's trash-talking death.

We wear crosses to honor our Savior, Jesus Christ, but in the process we mock death as well. The saving knowledge of Christ's resurrection and the assurance of the new life that it offers us allow us to look at that which frightens us the most and laugh in its face. The Resurrection gives us joy and strength in the midst of the forces that would threaten to undo us. Paul writes, "We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren't crushed. We are confused, but we aren't depressed. We are harassed, but we aren't abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren't knocked out."⁴

The cross reminds us that life can be difficult, even brutal, at times, but the Resurrection reminds us of the beauty that awaits us beyond the ugliness of life. Whatever difficulties you face right now, may you find the strength to keep going, knowing that the cross you bear is not the end of your story. May the story of Christ's resurrection give you joy and even laughter in the midst your circumstances.


Notes:

1. Wikipedia: Crucifixion
2. See John 11 for the story of Jesus' raising Lazarus to life.
3. 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 (NRSV)
4. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (CEB)