Beliefs are a funny thing to try to pin down. If we are honest, they are slippery and largely unconscious. When enough of them get mixed together in a large enough group they build up force like a gathering storm. It makes you wonder, are any beliefs actually rational?
If Jesus did not die on a cross to cover our sin, then what was the purpose of him dying? What was the purpose of his life? Was it to show us how to simply be "good people?"
Dear Reader,
As a figure that has dominated Western culture and Christianity for over 2,000 years, too little attention is paid to Jesus' death. As Christians, we move swiftly from Good Friday to Easter/Resurrection Sunday. If more focus were spent on the reasons for his death and the systems of oppression that brought about his demise, violence against marginalized people would cease to exist. However, without the contextualization and accountability of the violence enacted upon Jesus, the cycle of violence continues.
In the year 33 A.D., Jesus was unquestionably a religious threat to conservative Jews because of his unorthodox views and practice of Jewish Law. He was viewed as a political threat to the Roman government simply because he was a Jew.
As an instrument for execution by Roman officials during Jesus' time, the cross's symbolic nature and its symbolic value can both be seen as the valorization of suffering and abuse, especially in the lives of the oppressed.
For those of us on the margins, a Christology mounted on the belief that "Jesus died on the cross for our sins" instead of "Jesus died on the cross because of our sins" not only exalts Jesus as the suffering servant, but it also ritualizes suffering as redemptive. While suffering points to the need for redemption, suffering in and of itself is not redemptive, and it does not always correlate to one's sinfulness. For example, the belief that undeserved suffering is endured by faith, and that it has a morally educative component makes the powerful insensitive to the plight of others, and it forces the less powerful to be complacent to their suffering – therefore, maintaining the status quo.
The cross is the locus of redemption insofar as it serves as a lens to critically examine and make the connections between the abuses of power and institutions of domination that brought about the suffering Jesus endured during his time - to the abuses of power and institutions of domination that brings about the suffering which women, people of color and sexual minorities are enduring in our present day.
When suffering is understood as an ongoing cycle of abuse that goes on unexamined and unaccounted for, we can then begin to see its manifestation in systems of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, to name a few, in our everyday lives. With a new understanding of suffering and how it victimizes the innocent and its aborts the Christian mission of inclusiveness, Jesus' death at Calvary invites a different hermeneutic than its classically held one.
When the Christian community looks to the cross, we must see not only Jesus but also the many other faces of God crucified as God's people today. In so doing, we see the image of God in ourselves, the image of God as ourselves, and the image of God in each other. We then deepen the church's solidarity with all who suffer -those who are Christ in our midst.
~ Rev. Irene Monroe
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