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Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.
Are there any words in the Apostles’ Creed that even an atheist can affirm with a clear conscience?
Here are the best candidates: [Jesus] “was crucified, dead and buried.” Even historians with skeptical axes to grind acknowledge that there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet from Galilee, was executed on a cross around AD 30.
One of the truly unexpected developments in the history of religion quickly followed: A symbol of capital punishment became a source of comfort and inspiration.
Imagine wearing a decorative electric chair on a golden chain. Or a hangman’s noose. Or a lethal injection syringe.
Actually, those represent comparatively compassionate ways to take a human life. Crucifixion was designed to generate maximum pain and humiliation. It was the most terrifying torture imaginable – so dreadful that Roman officials were expressly forbidden to inflict it on fellow citizens.
Crucifixion was “a slave’s death,” and was fit only for enemies of the state or those on the lowest rungs of society.
Even though historians can cite numerous eyewitness accounts of crucifixions, we don’t actually know what one looked like. That’s because no work of art depicted crucifixion until at least a century after it was outlawed.
Crucifixion meant dying slowly and painfully. The word excruciating (“out of the cross”) was coined as a way of expressing something of its agony. The victim hung naked in public, covered in blood and flies. Scavenger birds picked at the face. Tormenters laughed, even while loved ones – unable to do anything to help – wept uncontrollably nearby. A merciful final breath might not come for two or three days.
In crucifixion, the Romans believed they had found the most graphic way to communicate to passersby, “Don’t do what this person did, or you’ll end up here, too.”
At one point the Romans occupying Israel crucified more than 10,000 rebellious Jews, lining the highways and byways of the Promised Land with their crosses.
In the minds of the Jewish religious establishment, crucifixion had an additional meaning. It connoted absolute failure. If someone aspiring to be the Messiah died on a cross, it meant the theological discussion was over. That candidate’s messianic hopes died with him. That’s because the Torah made it clear that anyone hung on a tree (or tacked up on crossbeams) was cursed by God.
End of story.
No wonder Jesus’ disciples fled the scene of Jesus’ death. They had apparently been wrong about him, and now everyone knew it. And if they displayed so much as a shred of sympathy or outrage, they just might end up crosses, too.
So put yourself in the sandals of someone living in the Mediterranean world of the first century. Here comes this Jewish teacher named Paul who is saying, “I’m representing the most important person who has ever lived. He died just a few years ago. On a cross.”
Let the laughter begin.
Marcus Cornelius Fronto, a Roman orator, observed that “the religion of the Christians is insane, in that they worship a crucified man, and even the instrument of his punishment itself.”
When it became clear that Jesus was headed for the cross, his accusers abandoned any pretense of respect. He was punched and slapped. “Who hit you?” they asked, mocking his reputation as someone who, by God’s power, might be able to discern a puncher’s identity even while blindfolded.
The physical brutality escalated. Roman scourges were leather straps sometimes embedded with metal shards. Eyewitnesses recounted beatings that removed so much of a victim’s flesh that his bones and organs became visible.
Why was this happening to someone who preached social justice, forgiveness for enemies, and heartfelt trust in God? Where was Jesus’ Father in heaven? Human suffering forces us to confront a host of difficult issues. Here’s a typical syllogism:
- The world is full of pain and suffering, much of which appears to be undeserved.
- A God who is powerful and compassionate should do something about this.
- Nothing has been done about it.
- Therefore, God does not exist.
Christians make no objection to the first two statements. They are reluctant, of course, to sign off on statement #4.
Their quarrel is with premise #3. Something has indeed been done about the world’s pain and suffering. It’s just not what anybody was expecting.
Jesus didn’t come to explain our pain. He came to share it. Against the expectations of those who hoped he really was the Messiah, he was not magically rescued from the cross.
In the same way, God doesn’t promise supernatural deliverance from every hardship we face. But God does promise supernatural utilization of the hurts that come into our lives. He “works in every circumstance for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).
God, in other words, never wastes pain.
Followers of Jesus believe that he died under the weight of the world’s suffering and that by dying as God’s innocent Son he defeated Death itself. He erased the curse that fell upon him, which would otherwise have fallen upon us. That’s the “something” that God has done about the brokenness of this planet.
And that makes the cross of Jesus a symbol like no other.
So-called “Christianity” is at its worst when the cross is co-opted as a symbol of tyrannical power – as when medieval crusaders wore the sign of the cross on their way into what they regarded as “the Lord’s battles,” or members of the Ku Klux Klan rally around burning crosses, as if God signs off on the hatred of certain people.
Jesus made it clear that God doesn’t fight evil that way. Such conflicts only turn us into agents of evil and suffering, too.
Instead, the cross should remind us of the words Jesus directed toward his torturers: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”
The cross is likewise a not-so-subtle reminder that the Lord is calling each of us to a kind of living death. “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Matthew 16:24).
This is not “seeker-sensitive” evangelism. This seems like madness. Imagine the impact that statement must have had on Jesus’ original audience. The only people in Israel lugging around crossbeams were on their way to capital punishment. Their own. Yet Jesus promises that crucifying our present lives – ruthlessly surrendering our “right” to always get our own way, choosing God’s ways instead – will allow us to enter what can only be described as Real Life.
Even though the cross is humanity’s most powerful symbol, it’s all too easy to transform it into a personal good luck charm – something to which we can assign our own meanings.
I might wear a cross as a private decoration. Or something that says, “I am spiritual,” or “I have values,” or “I go to church,” or “I vote for a certain political party.”
By all means, if you feel so led, wear a cross. But let it represent the richness of its original significance. Jesus’ cross is where evil did its worst – while at the same moment God was doing his best.
A few years ago I read about someone who was shopping in a jewelry store for a cross on a necklace. The young lady working behind the counter said, “Well, we have two kinds. Here are the plain ones. And over here are the ones with the little guy on it.”
It may seem incredible that Christians align themselves with an instrument of torture and death.
But our enduring hope is that the Guy on the cross has transformed, forever, the meaning of Life and Death itself.