Making Sense of the Cross

Paul Walton
15 April 2003

Every year, as Holy Week comes and Good Friday draws near, I wonder again about how to make sense of the Cross. It’s the same again this year. I think it’s because the way I learned it years ago no longer makes sense to me.

I thought of the disciples and the crowd that followed Jesus. It didn’t make sense to them, not at first; and it couldn’t have. How do you make sense of a good man crucified for no good reason?

Perhaps, like me, you learned a particular way of understanding this when you were younger. I was taught that we are sinners, who deserve to go to hell; in order to forgive us, God needs a sacrifice. We cannot be our own sacrifice for sin, because we are sinners; so Jesus, the sinless one, is sacrificed for us. God saves those who believe this. Nowadays, I find this is quite unsatisfying, and unconvincing. The god it presents seems to be subchristian, a god who needs a blood sacrifice in order to forgive sin. A god who could be accused of being a divine child abuser, requiring the Son of God to undergo unbelievable torments.

This Holy Week, I am conscious that people today have not outgrown this kind of mindset. Human beings seem preset to make gods who require blood sacrifice. Today's gods have names like ‘Democracy’ and ‘Freedom’, and their sacrifices are young men and women who are placed on the front line by those who stay well back; they are children, and those who cannot be treated because their hospitals have been ransacked; they are the wives and husbands and children and parents of the dead.

Yet if we believe that blood is required to bring about good, then we can believe that this is good, even willed by God. I have immense difficulties with this way of thinking.

Two thousand years ago, when the impetus came to make sense of the Cross, it came from the Resurrection. Once the Christian community grasped that Jesus was alive and amongst them, they had to make sense of the Cross. The presence of the risen Christ was life and hope and forgiveness. How could the Cross bring that about? Did the Cross have something of this life-giving power already? Was it the place of blood-sacrifice?

Despite the efforts of some Christian groups, the Christian Church has never said that any particular way of making sense of the Cross is the only way. We have several ways open to us. Let me just suggest what makes sense to me. It goes something like this:

The death of Jesus was not engineered by God. His death was the inevitable result of pure goodness confronting evil. Evil will have its way, often in the guise of doing good—it is better for one man to die than for the nation to be destroyed (cf. St John 11.50). The Cross is a sign of God’s vulnerability (God’s weakness is stronger than human strength!), and God’s willingness to join Godself to all human experiences, especially those that involve suffering (God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom!—cf. 1 Corinthians 1.25). Yet God can never be defeated, and God’s way will prevail. So the end result of the life of Jesus, and the death it involved, is Resurrection.

What has this to do with me? It reveals a God of infinite and inexhaustible love and compassion, who desires reconciliation with me and life for me and for all things. I know that if I were there with Jesus in the first Holy Week, I would deny him or betray him or—more likely—just run away. In faith, I have received forgiveness from Jesus Christ; I have committed my life to his way. I have to seek the help of the Spirit, because I still walk the way with stumbling, halting steps at best.

This may or may not make sense to you. But it’s one way of making sense of the Cross.