Redemptorist Preacher

Numbers 21:4-9, Ps 78, John 3:13-17

The Scandal of the Cross opens our eyes to the presence of God in our World today.

For many years I had a great deal of difficulty with this feast day and with the cross in particular. I found it hard to reconcile a faith in a loving God with the chosen symbol for that faith being an instrument of torture complete with bloody corpse.

The cross has been sanitized to a great extent. Like violence on TV and in the movies, the general presence of the cross and corpus in our places of worship tends to desensitize us to its more gruesome reality. First Communion gifts of silver and gold cross pendants to be hung on the end of dainty necklace chains contribute to the same effect. In some churches the image of the crucified Christ has been replaced by a more optimistic image of the risen Christ often not even being attached to the cross but somehow removed from it as if the cross were only a footnote.

I don’t advocate the use of morbid violent imagery as I have seen in some prayer groups and in more recent movies such as Gibson’s, “The Passion of the Christ”. But on this feast day it is worth turning toward that sacred symbol and reflecting for a moment on what it has to say to us.

The cross is first and foremost a scandal. That an innocent man who stood only for goodness and justice should be murdered in such an ignominious way should make us weep for the injustice in the world which continues to take place all around us. While corporate profiteers make millions in bonuses, average people are losing their homes. While corrupt governments spend billions on weapons of destruction, poor citizens are pummeled by the bombs of so-called friendly nations. While barbaric clans sell opium for war funds, honest farmers must turn over life giving crops to supply the drugs which end up in our neighborhoods and schoolyards. This is the violence that the cross suggests, this is the injustice represented fully in an innocent man begin hung on a tree of torture.

But the cross has no victory. The Morning Prayer antiphons for this feast day say it more eloquently then I can.

“How radiant is that precious cross which brought us our salvation. In the cross we are victorious, through the cross we shall reign, by the cross all evil is destroyed.”

The cross is a scandal. That the injustice of the cross continues to have its roots in the world today is even more of a scandal but, that through the life of Jesus, we have faith that evil will not overcome our world. That is the Triumph.

I can look at the cross now and though I still feel anguish and revulsion (if I reflect on its reality), I also am aware that where there is injustice in the world today Christ also is there.

Where Christ is, there to we should also be for the invitation from the beginning has always been, “Come, take up your cross, and follow me.”

What does the Cross mean to you?

What crosses are you carrying with Christ’s help?

For what injustice will you offer the cross of Christ today?

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