The Cross Doesn't Pay a Debt. It Breaks an Empire.
The Edict of Divine Love and the Breaking of Empire
The Weight of the Cross
A beaten man walks through the city streets carrying the weight of his own death on his shoulders. The cross drags on the ground behind him. Splinters from the wood dig into his whipped back. His followers dot the street, weeping at the sight of their messiah walking toward his death. Others gawk at the sight of another of their countrymen who has been tortured by the empire that oppressed them all.
The man Jesus falls under the weight of abuse, torment, and exhaustion. Three times he falls, until Simon of Cyrene, a man from modern-day Libya in Jerusalem for the Passover, takes up his cross and carries it the rest of the way to the place of the skull where Jesus will be crucified.
Jesus is nailed to the cross, and hung like a banner on the hill. A plaque is nailed over his head stating his crime in three languages, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
The Full Rage and Power of Empire
At the crucifixion, the full rage and power of the empire rained down on Jesus. The three powers of empire are clear in this moment:
the force of the military,
the economic power of wealth and exploitation to give and take life, and
the tools of propaganda to name truth as it sees fit.
Roman soldiers drove the nails through Jesus’ flesh, declaring that a message of love and mutual aid was not free from the empire’s extraction of life from the people, and the sign over his head provided the propagandistic lie that those who want to be free from empire will be deprived of life.
Empire needs people to believe these lies for it to exist. Without the fear of the military, they have nothing. The problem is there is a limit to how many people they can kill. The threat of violence instills compliance and collaboration with them. If they kill too many, there will not be enough people to exploit and extract wealth from. If enough of us reject this fear and refuse to comply and collaborate with empire, they cannot control us. We see this in the Roman Empire with the Germanic Tribes, the Parthian and Sassanian Persians, the Caledonians (Scotland), the Jews, and the Nubians.
When we reject the economic power of empire, we don’t participate in the alienation, exploitation, and extraction their system requires. Mutual care, support, and aid are at the heart of the Gospel and set people free from the power of the empire.
Once we accept the truth that everything was created in original blessing, grace is available to everyone at anytime, and that truth arises from living in right relationship with ourselves and the world, we immunize ourselves from their propaganda.
At the cross we see all three of these powers broken. Jesus lays down his life, the military cannot take it from him. He forgives them and doesn’t mine his own suffering to extract vengeance and reprisal from his followers. He defies their propaganda through his humility and grace on the cross which is the opposite of the self-righteousness and wielding of power of a king. He takes the evil Rome poured down on him and transmutes it into forgiveness, grace, and life.
Father, Forgive Them
As he hangs from the cross asphyxiating, his mother and two disciples holding vigil, he says many things. The most powerful is this:
Luke 23:34
34. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Dividing his garments among them, they cast lots.
“Father, release them from this, because they do not truly understand what they are in the process of doing.” They know what they have done, but they don’t grasp the true meaning and weight of the action. These soldiers and the others subject to the whims of the empire have been blinded to the reality of their actions. They are just serving the machinery of empire.
This phrase is the culmination of the non-violent message of the Gospel of the Kin-dom: pour out grace and healing from your life without repaying evil for evil so everyone can enter into the restorative power of God to restore this world to the wholeness of the great banquet on the holy mountain through the true fast of liberating the oppressed, healing the sick, and giving to the poor.
The sacrifice at the cross is not a sacrifice made to appease an angry God. This is not a human sacrifice to pay a cost. Jesus receives hatred and gives back love. He receives condemnation and gives back pardon. He receives death and gives life. This is not substitution; it is transmutation.
The cross is the transmuting forge that consumes sin and releases grace. The power of the cross is that it would release grace even if there was no sin.
The Edict of Divine Love
On that day, Christ was nailed to the cross as an edict of Divine Love proclaiming the grace and the Kin-dom of Heaven.
The proclamation begins with forgiveness (Luke 23:34). Radical mercy is released onto the world in the midst of suffering. Spiritual and material blindness prevents people from seeing the ramifications of our actions. They have fallen for the lie of empire the prophet decried: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter (Isaiah 5:20)!” Those raised in this upside-down world have an upside-down view of the world that needs to be turned right-side up.
Jesus then reveals the immediacy of grace (Luke 23:43). Grace wells up instantly when we turn from the wrong way back toward life. There is no delay for the individual, even if the community must take time to discern the transformation. The person who honestly changes receives grace in that very moment.
Christ entrusts his mother to the faithful because she is our mother as well since we are the body of Christ (John 19:26–27). Mary as the mother of Christ is the font of all grace, the heavenly Jerusalem who is free (Galatians 4:26). In our devotion to our Mother Mary, we learn the ways of grace and are formed into the image of Christ.
Jesus doesn’t deny the anguish of suffering and how it can make us feel forsaken by God (Matthew 27:46 cf Mark 15:34). This is a quote from the twenty second Psalm, a plea for the end of suffering and hostility, the tools of empire.
When Christ says, “I thirst (John 19:28),” he continues to acknowledge the suffering of his body and the identification of the Divine with our pain. The work of the Gospel is to give water to those who thirst, but the empire gives him vinegar. The empire will not slake thirst, only exacerbate it.
Then Jesus says, “It is finished (John 19:30).” The edict of the Living Word has been brought to its goal. All that Jesus had to do is complete, the work is accomplished. His whole life lead to this moment, now his work on earth is done.
Finally, he says, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46).” Again, he quotes the Psalms (Psalm 31:5). He surrenders his life unto death, trusting that God will catch him. This final act of surrender is in so many ways the simplest statement of the Gospel. We surrender our spirit to God trusting the Holy One will add to us all we require in life.
Take Up the Cross
Christ said:
Luke 9:21-23
21. But he warned them, and commanded them to tell this to no one,
22. saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up.”
23. He said to all, “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
If we are going to follow the way of Jesus, we have to set aside the lie of alienated and isolated individualism and become living channels of grace, pouring joy, release, healing, and restoration into the world. Like Jesus on the cross, we return good for evil, and do not participate in the tyranny of empire.
We are called by the cross to transform our lives and our communities to be built on love. This is not a call to lose ourselves in this work but to grow more fully into our true selves, liberated from the control and harm of the empire.
As the body of Christ our suffering is united to the cross so the old may die for the new to be born, and our joy is yoked to Christ so we may live life abundantly.