A Way Around the Cross

 

O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow

The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace

O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind

O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart

O troubled dust concealing
An undivided love
The heart beneath is teaching
To the broken heart above

Let the heavens falter
Let the earth proclaim
Come healing of the altar
Come healing of the name

O longing of the branches
To lift the little bud
O longing of the arteries
To purify the blood

And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb

*******

Dear Kate,

I am going to work last night's piece backward, and arrive at the quote where I started.

Yesterday I asked, Why do we, Christians, not talk about the cross of Jesus?

Today I am asking, What do we, then, talk about, when we don't talk about the cross?

I suppose there are many things to talk about, a few I suggested last night already.  We could talk about feeding the poor, saving the environment, doing good works.

In fact, we can go ahead and talk about the cross too, how it works, how it works to our advantage, in our favor, all sound theology, as I said yesterday, "reliable formulations, corporate faith statements that cannot be easily contradicted," trump cards to clean the table of all curiosity and longing.  Now that Jesus has done the impossible to win the Father's favor on our behalf, we could focus on what we really care about: winning Man's favor.

Am I painting you a caricature of Christians?  I don't think so.

Seasoned believers, even this past week, told me, Jesus has done it all, so there is not much left for us to do.  To think otherwise is to succumb to a "work religion," "Old Testament" mentality, instead of a "grace religion" that Jesus has made possible this side of the cross.

And such religious game works around the other way too, that "my God will be the disturber of the social order, the one who calls me into freedom and into creative action - the God of the future, of the new and liberated humanity," and I must engage myself in the most fashionable activism to show my allegiance to God, solidarity with Man.

You can say these religious games have their own merits, and no one can say God is not going to work out His will through our gamesmanship.  So you can also say, Yes, in fact, we do talk about the cross, and make it sound sensible to ourselves and, as much as possible, marketable to the world.

But.

"...but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles."  And do you ever wonder how so?  The word "stumbling block" can be translated scandal.  Now, how does the crucifixion of Jesus trip you up, scandalize you lately?

It doesn't.  We wouldn't let it.  We walk around the block.

Say, in our church, we are talking about money lately, this Lent season, supposedly working our way to the foot of the cross.  It's a good topic, a hot-potato topic we say, self-humbling for sure, but self-aware enough to not descend to self-humiliation.  "Taboo" we could handle, but not scandal.  A taboo we can talk about, dance around it, point our finger and poke it at arm's length.  But to be scandalized, implicated in the death of the perfectly innocent, pure victim, washed up and exposed for who we are?  Why do you think Thomas put his finger in Jesus' wound?  What was he poking around for?

To make sure he couldn't find himself in it.

"It used to be fashionable..." that's how yesterday's quote starts.  We only do things that are fashionable, don't we?  More and more so now, don't you think?  We don't aim to be superficial but it just happens.  More convenient that way, easier to manufacture togetherness without laboring for the more precious elements of being human: laughter and tears.  Yes, talk about the cross we do, and with a straight face straight through it all.

Listen to the song above, and hear what you usually don't in church: intimacy.

Yours, Alex