I was asked recently (actually, not very recently, I started writing this ages ago, but it's Lent so perhaps now is a reasonable moment to drag it back out and try and make it vaguely coherent): "What does the cross mean to you?"
The question came from someone who thinks deeply about life, someone who grapples with faith and doubt, someone who is constantly seeking meaningful answers about our human existence. It also came when they were going through an exceptionally dark time in their life. For all these reasons, it mattered how I answered. In the space of a few seconds I wanted to come up with an answer that was both honest and helpful. Who knows whether what I said, to a degree, was (I can't even actually remember what I said); but it also prompted me, as these kinds of questions sometimes do, to write a longer, more considered response here.
To be honest, despite being the central tenet and symbol of the Christian faith, the cross is not an image that is the foremost part of my faith: there are other parts of the Jesus story that resonate with me more, other images of God which are more significant in my understanding of God's identity. Around the same time as the aforementioned conversation, in the church's lectionary was the gospel that includes Jesus asking his disciples "Who do you say I am?" to which Peter answers "you are the Messiah, the son of the living God". It is a question, "Who do you say I am?", what is the fullness of the identity of God?, that we used to regularly reflect on in our prayers at Carrs Lane and that I have explored in other ways, times and places too. "You are the Crucified / the God of the Cross" is only one facet of my very multi-faceted answer.
I think it is partly because I have been fortunate enough to never have experienced real, deep suffering. I fully appreciate that there are people who need this image of the cross more than I ever have, to need this God who suffers alongside, this image of com-passion.
I think it is also partly because of how much of the theology of the cross I have heard explicitly or implicitly taught which makes me feel deeply uncomfortable and doesn't sit easily with what I believe about God. The cross I believe in, and the theology that accompanies it, is not reflected in much of what I hear or see preached or practiced in the church. I often feel the need to premise what the cross means to me by first ruling out all the things it doesn't: I don't believe the cross was a punishment, substitutionary or otherwise, any more than I believe the suffering endured by millions around the world and down through history is a punishment. I don't believe God willed Jesus' suffering, any more than I believe God wills ours; I don't believe God / Jesus sought out suffering for its own sake any more that I believe we are called to do so when we are called to "take up our cross".
With that preamble aside, the cross does still have a place in my understanding of God: certainly the answer to the question isn't "nothing", even if it isn't always the part of my faith which is front and centre, and even if it isn't something easily expressed or explained. Like all words and images, anything I can say in answer to this question will, I know, fall short of encapsulating the incomprehensible mystery that I call God. At some point I have to stop trying to wrestle the uncontainable into words that will hold it, release those words to the world, and hope it sort of says some of what I want it to.
For me, the cross is primarily a symbol of the depths of love of which God is capable and of which we are called towards: not because suffering is ever willed or wished for by love but because it is the unintended consequence of great love.
We suffer because of who and what and how we love.
The cross is not about seeking suffering for its own sake, it is about loving to the point of being willing to suffer with or for those we love. And I believe we are called to this great love, which will inevitably hold within it great suffering. I believe this is what it means to go to the cross: to love so deeply, so fully, so completely that we will experience the grief and suffering of ourselves.
The whole incarnation story: birth, life and death reminds us that, however much we dress it up in theological language and fancy images, God's love for humanity isn't something theoretical and ephemeral. It is deeply real. The reality of that love doesn't start or end with the incarnation of God in human form: it is eternally true, but our little human brains struggle to grasp it. We still struggle, even when it is turned into a deeply human story, but it offers a glimpse we can perhaps begin to try and understand. The incarnation story, and inherent within it the story of the cross, makes visible God's love for humanity. In the incarnation God says "I love you so much I want to be you". On the cross God reminds us "I love you so much that this pain which you inflict on one another, you inflict it on me." The cross is a symbol that while suffering is not willed or wished for by love, it is an unintended consequence of both great love and of its absence. God feels the pain of the cross because of his deep love for the humanity that inflicted it and on whom it is inflicted.
Jesus died on the cross because something: political power, religious bigotry, a desire for order, ignorance, herd mentality, fear .... or all of the above, veiled the possibility of the love that would have prevented it. It stands as a reminder of how often the same continues to be true in the deeply broken world in which we live. It is a symbol of the depths of evil of which humanity is capable when we turn our backs on love. But it also makes visible how much that hurts. Far worse is the bland indifference to suffering. The things which should hurt but don't because we have lost sight of the relationships, the connections that would make us weep for the pain we witness. The cross is our reminder that God is never indifferent to humanity's pain.
When Jesus cries out "My God, my God why have you forsaken me" he calls out both from and to his own deepest self: he expresses a sense of abandonment even by his own essence and being. Perhaps those who have experienced intense physical pain or emotional torment can understand that more than I can. When he later says "into your hands I commend my spirit" there is a sense in the coming back to God of the coming back to self: a reminder that when we find ourselves, deep within we find the essence of God. It also offers up a mystery we perhaps know to be true even if it one we can never understand: that even though our deepest suffering is the consequence of how deeply we love, the response to suffering isn't to close off to that love but to open up to it even more. That even from the depths of a suffering that we only feel because we have loved deeply, we still have the capacity to trust in love.
For me, then, more than being a symbol of hate, suffering and death... and I acknowledge it is all three, the cross is an inspiration for life, a witness to why life is worth living. Not because of the resurrection, but in and of itself. This love which is the root of suffering is also the same love which enriches our human experience. The cross stands as witness that love is present and love is possible. That we can hold the other close enough that we will suffer with and for them, and that it will hurt, but it will be worth it.
