sweat of necessity

Christian piety has trivialized the passionate God of Golgotha. Christian art has turned the unspeakable outrage of Calvary into dignified jewelry. Christian worship has sentimentalized monstrous scandal into sacred pageant. Organized religion has domesticated the crucified Lord of Glory, turned him into a tame theological symbol. Theological symbols do not sweat blood in the night.
~Brennan Manning

How easy it is to forget just how real Jesus was. . .is. There is, perhaps, only one distinction between how the cross is viewed: either as horror or as beauty. To those who are in the church, the cross has long been sentimentalized into something that is to be revered and adored. Many of us grew up singing things like, "so, I'll cherish the old rugged cross. . ." which is a fine hymn of faith but nevertheless indicative of the cultural shift within the body toward a less violent view of the cross - for instance, no one who ever witnessed a crucifixion would ever think of cherishing such a thing. Then there are those who see nothing more than the violence of the cross. These folks may be easily found in those reactions to "The Passion of the Christ" that could see no possible plotline other than Jesus getting beat up for ninety minutes.

This rather harsh dismissal of the cross should come at no surprise to us when we see that such people have no belief that something greater and deeper is happening in the story anyway. They do not see their own part nor do they see God at work It is, quite simply, a tale about a beating. Yet somehow the story of the cross calls out to them, drawing their hearts in a way which they have never felt. And they find it hard to force themselves to ignore it.

On the church-end of things it has become apparent that so many have 'overfamiliarized' themselves with the cross to the point of having very little understanding of it at all. The impact of this scandalous event is lost deep within the many doctrinal lines of salvific necessity.

As is so often the case, we need to strike a balance between these extremes. Yes, the cross is a theological necessity which benefits us to better understand each day. But not at the cost of forgetting the extreme cost it issued. At the end it comes down to a gastly murder - one of the worst and most cruel ways humankind has ever devised to destroy itself - which we so carelessly adorn with gold and silver and wear around our necks. Presented with the real cross. . .spintery, old, cracked, bloody, gross. . .most of us would run away.



Beauty that
we left behind
how shall we
tomorrow find

Set aside
our weight in sin
so that we
can live again*

"I Shall Not Walk Alone" by Ben Harper