Somewhere in Rome, in a building dating back to ancient times, is the earliest known picture of the crucifixion; some believe it may be from the 2nd century CE. It’s not a devotional image, but a graffito scratched on a wall, showing a man with a donkey’s head strapped and nailed to a cross. Next to the cross is a human figure, and scribbled below it, “Alexamenos worships [his] god.” Presumably one of Alexamenos’s buddies, perhaps a fellow-slave, had created the graffito to make fun of him and his god.[1]
In our sanctuary, there’s a cross on the table, and the outline of a cross in the baptistry window. In the world of Paul and the early church, a place of worship was the last place you would expect to see a cross. Imagine coming into a church and being faced with a large picture of an electric chair or a lynching noose. You find the thought shocking? That’s the kind of shock first-century Jews and pagans would have experienced. If you don’t find it shocking, perhaps even worthy of prayerful reflection, it’s likely because your imagination has been shaped by the gospel of the crucified Christ.
Crucifixion was generally regarded as the most degrading and shameful of deaths in the Roman repertoire of execution.[2] It was a form of public torture, generally reserved for slaves and those who resisted the authority of Rome. The crucified person was often denied burial, with the corpse left on the cross to rot or as food for scavenging wildlife.
Crucifixion was an obscenity not to be discussed in polite company. In a speech defending a Roman senator against a murder charge for which the prosecutor was not only seeking the death penalty, but apparently suggesting crucifixion, Cicero sought to sway the jury, declaring, “The very word ‘cross’ should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.”[3]
Paul, of course, did the exact opposite: he held up the cross for all to see, in all the cities where his mission took him. The cross was at the center of his proclamation, and he did all he could to make it the center of life in the assemblies of the believers. Paul’s gospel was an insult to the sensibilities of educated men and women: he proclaimed Jesus, God’s crucified Messiah. To Jews, his proclamation bordered on blasphemy; to non-Jews, it was just foolish nonsense.
Jews demand signs, Paul writes. And don’t we also want God to do big and spectacular things, something on the scale of parting the sea or turning down the planet's temperature? Something like a grand-slam final where Jesus is on the court against all the forces that oppose God’s will and purpose, and he dominates the game, and the whole world is watching and cheering as he wins in straight sets? Instead we look at him on the cross, beaten and forsaken by all.
Greeks desire wisdom, Paul writes. And don’t we also want the gospel to be philosophically elegant and aesthetically pleasing? Don’t we want the TED talk that blows us away? Instead we hear the gospel of the crucified Messiah. We look for power, and weakness is given. We want wisdom, and foolishness is given. But in the community gathered around the cross, in the community being shaped by the love of Christ, his humble service, his deep compassion, and the courage of his vulnerability are recognized as the fullest expressions of God’s power and wisdom.
The word of the cross doesn’t fit the mold of what we know and how we know; it shatters it. Paul quotes from Isaiah,
The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote, so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden (Isaiah 29:13-14).
Paul wants us to see that the cross of Christ was the shocking and amazing act of God who chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; who chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; who chose what is low and despised in the world, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. No more boasting in our wisdom, our might, our wealth, our power.
With his opening reflection on the cross of Christ, Paul is laying the foundation for his argument against elitist attitudes that are fracturing the Corinthian community. One of the issues was about supper: should believers eat food that had been presented as an offering in a pagan temple? Serving that kind of food was common practice at dinner parties, especially when meat was part of the menu. Some believers said, “No big deal; we know there’s only one true God, and those idols are no competition. We can eat anything we please: Christ has set us free.” But there were also those who worried they might fall back into pagan ways if they didn’t stay clear of pagan practices; so they stopped eating meat altogether, just to be safe. Given Paul’s own faith and robust theology, you’d expect him to side with those who act boldly in Christ-given freedom. But he doesn’t. “Knowledge puffs up,” he writes, “but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1)
In the community that embodies and proclaims the power of the cross, building up comes before personal liberty. The love and faithfulness of God, revealed in the cross, is to shape the love and faithfulness among us, and our witness in the world. Love builds up.
“Building up” takes on fresh urgency when yet another black man has been beaten to death by police. And when we hear the news from Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, and we continue to turn the names of towns and schools into shorthand for mass shootings. “Building up” takes on fresh urgency, but many feel drained by the violence, exhausted and helpless, numb.
Jillian Peterson and James Densley teach criminology and criminal justice. In a recent column, they listed one-sentence details from profiles of the suspected or convicted perpetrators of more than 150 mass shootings in the United States. They had created the profiles from news reports, public documents and their conversations with the shooters’ friends, colleagues, social workers and teachers.
He was accused of threatening to kill his roommate.
At least seven killed and one injured in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Jan. 23, 2023
He believed his family tried to poison him.
At least 11 killed and nine injured in Monterey Park, Calif., on Jan. 21, 2023
One of his only friends died from a heroin overdose.
Seven killed and 46 injured in Highland Park, Ill., on July 4, 2022
It goes on like that, a sad line and a statistic, a startling line and a statistic, over and over, more than 150 times. These events have become more frequent and more deadly over time. The professors write,
This is no coincidence. The killings are not just random acts of violence but rather a symptom of a deeper societal problem: the continued rise of “deaths of despair.” This term has been used to explain increasing mortality rates among predominantly middle-aged white men caused by suicide, drug overdose and alcohol abuse. We think the concept of “deaths of despair” also helps explain the accelerating frequency of mass shootings in this country. Many were socially isolated from their families or their communities and felt a sense of alienation. … Most chose not to ask for help when confronted with hardship, like a breakup or being fired from their job. They chose mass shootings as a way to seize power and attention, forcing others to witness their pain while attempting to end their lives in a way that only they controlled.
At first Peterson and Densley employ medical language, suggesting that “we must treat the underlying pathologies that feed the shooters’ despair.” But the work isn’t for experts only; we must, they say, “find ways to reduce social isolation.”
It’s no small thing to knock on a neighbor’s door with a plate of cookies. It’s no small thing to call a friend you haven’t seen in a while; to write a note, or give a ride, or listen. I want you to remember that sending notes to students at West End Middle is no small thing, and eating supper with Room in the Inn guests, and praying for God’s wisdom to inspire us, and welcoming every person as God has welcomed us.
Allow me to return to the peculiar wisdom of the cross. I want to return because so many of us do feel drained by the violence, discouraged, and numb. I just finished reading a novel about Peter Abelard, one of the great theologians of the 12th century. Toward the end of the book, Peter, in disgrace and despair, is trying to find a measure of peace in a remote, little hermitage. Thibault, one of his former students, is living with him. One day, they’re coming back from fishing, and they hear a tiny cry, like a child’s cry of intolerable anguish, coming from the woods behind them. They rush in the direction of the cry and find that it’s not a child, it’s a rabbit caught in a trap.
The rabbit stopped shrieking when they stooped over it, either from exhaustion, or in some last extremity of fear. Thibault held the teeth of the trap apart, and [Peter] gathered up the little creature in his hands. It lay for a moment breathing quickly, then in some blind recognition of the kindness that had met it at the last, the small head thrust and nestled against his arm, and it died.
It was that last confiding thrust that broke [Peter’s] heart. He looked down at the little draggled body, his mouth shaking. “Thibault,” he said, “do you think there is a God at all? Whatever has come to me, I earned it. But what did this one do?”
Thibault nodded. “I know,” he said. “Only—I think God is in it too.”
[Peter] looked up sharply. “In it? Do you mean that it makes [God] suffer, the way it does us?”
Again Thibault nodded.
“Then why doesn’t He stop it?”
“I don’t know,” said Thibault. “... But all the time God suffers. More than we do.”
He points to a fallen tree beside them, sawn through the middle.
“That dark ring there, it goes up and down the whole length of the tree. But you only see it where it is cut across. That is what Christ’s life was; the bit of God that we saw. And we think God is like that, because Christ was like that, kind, and forgiving sins and healing people. We think that God is like that for ever, because it happened once, with Christ. But not the pain. Not the agony at the last. We think that stopped.”
Peter asks him whether he means that “all the pain of the world, was Christ’s cross.” And Thibault says, “God’s cross… And it goes on.” For a moment, Peter is baffled, and then he exclaims, “Oh God, if it were true … it would bring back the whole world.”[4]
The wisdom of the cross is God’s persistent, vulnerable love that will not let us go. May it fill our hearts and continue to shape our life together.
[1] For more information about the image see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito
[2] James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 209.
[3] The Speech In Defence of Gaius Rabirius, sec. 16, in The Speeches of Cicero, trans. H. Grose Hodge, The Loeb Classical Library (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927) 467.
[4] Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard (Chicago, IL: The Thomas More Press, 1987), 262-265.