The Cross, A Space

In the cross, there is a space.

This week is often called Holy Week, though the early events commemorated seem anything but holy. A recounting of the false accusation, trial, torture, and execution of one of history’s brightest and most beautiful people goes against the grain of what we may call holy.

But if we think of something holy as something that is set apart, dedicated for special use or purpose, then the theology kicks in. This event, the injustice and savagery of it all begins to make sense.

Or does it?

The heart of Holy Week and Easter is in fact death and the relationships we as human beings have with death - including the power it has over us and the freedom from it within a story of resurrection.

But when we look at the cross through this lens, through the lens of our relationship with death, we find a space.

There is something about meeting someone who shares an experience with you. When I’m traveling to other states (or even other countries) I run into folks from who know a bit about Chicago. On a recent trip out of the country, we chatted with a couple who lived in St. Louis but were also familiar with Springfield, Illinois where Holley and I also lived for 3 years.

We had a far longer conversation with them because of our shared geography. We knew the same restaurants, the same attractions, even the same street names.

A space opened between us because we could nod and say, “Yep. I know that place too.”

Holy Week represents a great many things to Christianity and depending on what stream of the greater “river” of faith you swim in, there are a variety of different ways to look at Jesus being betrayed and executed and rising again from the dead.

Regardless of what conclusion we draw from Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, it is still one of the most compelling stories in religious history. The idea of God giving Godself up to death, for the sake of a mass of humanity who didn’t – and will never – fully grasp what that means? Mysterious and majestic.

And what makes it so compelling is that in the cross there is a space.

In the Easter story we see Jesus not just as other-worldly miracle worker and teacher, but also as flesh and bone, sinew and synapses.

We see suffering.

From his mouth we hear doubt.

In the story we see the same blood that flows through our veins flowing out of Jesus’ wounds.

The lungs that collapse on the cross are the same shape, fiber, and texture as the ones expanding and contracting within you as you read this.

In the cross there is a space, where for a moment we can look at Jesus’ bodily death and say, “Yep, I already know that place too.”

And into that space we are invited to bring everything human, deadly, and painful about our own lives.

There is space for our battle with cancer…

…our observation of a declining ecosystem…

…and our grief over children being shot in their schools because, candidly, the United States has made peace with the fact that this is just something that cannot be stopped.

Holy week is about a great many things, but most importantly it is about the hope within a hospitality of suffering. It is the place where we bring the ache of flesh and share that experience with a crucified Christ.

Regardless of whether we caused the suffering or it was inflicted on us, there is a table set for us to share these death rattles with One who is “well acquainted with grief.”

The great tendency of Easter is to look at death and resurrection in Jesus and see those two events as things that distance us from the Divine. Quite the opposite.

Jesus is perhaps never closer to humanity than in the lonely moment of physical pain, the abandonment of friends who got out before things got too “hot,” and the sorrow of loved ones who are forced to stand by and watch with no recourse or solutions.

In the cross, there is a space. In that space, we are welcomed.

As a matter of meditation and reflection, consider today what “deaths” we bring into the space of Holy Week.

Is it a form of faith that must die, one that we simply cannot continue to pretend to practice?

Has a particular sense of self, of our own ego, died because of age or circumstances and now it is time to lay it aside?

Are there little relational deaths that are awaiting little funerals, waiting for us to bless them and send them on their way?

Regardless of these or any other deaths we experience, there is one thing that is most true. The Crucified One, the Resurrected One, sits across from us in our little deaths and says:

“Yep, I know that place.”

 Photo by Ginny Rose Stewart on Unsplash