meditation and practices of cross

Meditating the Cross to Equip the Practices of Cross

We all yearn for a saintly life. We all love to be remembered as saints. But what does it mean to be a saint in a Christian way of understanding. Both biblically and ecclesiastically viewing at the issue, one should say saintliness in the Christian sense involves “Christ likeliness.” “Christ likeliness” points to the likeliness to his cross. Therefore it is the cross of Christ, which forms the ultimate criteria for the assessment of saintliness.

Unless it apprehends the pain of the negative Christian theology cannot be realistic and liberating (Moltmann, Crucified God, 1974).

 It makes hope more concrete and adds to the power of resistance, power of its visions to actions. In Christianity the cross is the inner criterion for everything.

Cross as Identity-Involvement Dilemma

Moltmann speaks about two crises in the life of the Christians especially the Christian theologians that come up when we engage in developing a theology of cross. They are the “crisis of relevance” and the “crisis of identity.” These crises are complementary. When a church and its theology attempt to be more relevant to a particular context its identity may start facing crisis (here identity is understood as the fixed essence of something). The more they try to assert their identity through their traditional dogmas and moral vision they become more irrelevant. Therefore he says this crisis can be more accurately described as the “identity-involvement dilemma.” Because the involvement of the church that makes its faith relevant always challenges the conventional identity of the church. If put other words, we could say that it is its oversensitivity to its identity that prevents the church from having meaningful involvements as disciples.

This dilemma can lead us to a withdrawal into a defensive and fearful faith. Here we may seek protection for our faith as our faith is preyed upon by fear. We also seek to protect our God, Christ, doctrine and morality as we feel that they are not capable of protecting themselves. Instead of confidence and freedom, fearfulness and apathy dominates us.

Christ is remembered as crucified because he has attempted to make the faith relevant. It is more clearly a double process of identification; God identifying with the godless in Jesus Christ and human identifying with the crucified Jesus. Cross is a powerful symbol that reflects God’s constructive involvement in the affairs of the world.

What is Cross for us Today

What are the present day crosses in the lives of our people? Are we able to identify those people living under the shadow of the cross?

We read in the Gospels that cross was a locus of Godlessness and horror. 'We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he has made himself the Son of God' (John 19.7). jesus screamed reflecting Pslam 22: 1, “Oh God! why did you forsake me?” Even the disciples were fearfully fleeing from it. But for Jesus, cross was also an ultimate locus of resistance. Resisting the hegemonic power of the Roman Empire and the symbolic world it created to sustain that power. Thus cross was projected by Jesus, into the history of the human living, as a powerful symbolic fulcrum around which a new meaning system is built up to affirm the ultimate authority of God over all earthly hegemonic powers.

But what happened to the symbolic energy of cross in the course of the witness of the Church in the world? As Moltmann says, cross nowadays has just become a habit in the lives of the Christians. We put cross in the Church to mark that we are Christians. We wear golden crosses as we are traditional Christians following the practices of our foreparents. All these acts are simply catering to our sense of a rigid identity. Though cross was a historical event that made our understanding of God flexible, it nowadays makes the Christians more rigid and exclusive.

Who put roses on the cross? This question was asked by so many people like Goethe, Nietzsche and Marx. Choang-Seng Song in his book Jesus: the Crucified People raises similar concerns cross being reduced to an object of worship. The draping of the cross with roses has made it a religious thing. Cross originally is not something religious.

Cross as Reality and Cross as Solidarity

While reflecting on cross, we can have different perceptions such as “Cross as a reality” and “cross as solidarity” (Moltmann). Cross is a reality in the lives of a great multitude of people not only in our churches but also in our country. Because of the very experiences of the cross that they bear, they are pushed away to the margins.

There are also people who withdraw themselves to some undisturbed comfort zones. Because, they don’t want to be disturbed by the sights of crosses in the lives of their neighbors. They also want to keep off from any kind of involvements that make their theology of cross relevant for our times. We would say that their cross is “sanitized” from all the horrors and pains associated with the cross of Jesus.

In that sense we could say that cross as marginalization and sufferings at the margins are very much present in our ecclesial life, whereas cross as solidarity with such sufferings is very much missing in that life. They are in a “dishonorable peace” with the powers of the evil and hence made the church less Christian.

For further reflection and meditation

“Church is less “Christian,” because it is losing its Saintliness or Christianness, as it looses its cross from its life.

A church which has lost its Cross is less credible and less attractive.

Then what is the relevance of cross today?

Cross becomes meaningful in the historic contexts!! What is our context and what are our crosses?

Cross for us is a commitment to the original event of incarnation and the cross as its zenith, which is the basis of our faith.

Some of the images of the cross the students of Gurukul presented in their worship evaluation classes were really touching. Someone represented cross with the broken peaces of a plough: pointing the crosses in the lives of Indian farmers inflicted by debts, climate changes globalization. There was the picture of a sprouting cross symbolizing hope for a world haunted by the threats of an early exhaustion. Black cross: representing the struggle of the dalits for centuries. Therefore, new images of crosses that reflect relevant theologies of cross for our times are real need.

The way of Cross

In this second part of the meditation on cross let us have our focus on the way of cross. The way of cross is nothing but the road of discipleship. Discipleship is more precisely Orthodoxy (right beliefs) following orthopraxy (right practices).

Discipleship is all about following Jesus and following very much involves cross-bearing. In the medieval church suffering was thought of as bringing honor to the persons who voluntarily suffer. Thus it was celebrated. It happens in the tradition of mysticism of cross. But suffering and rejection promised in the discipleship is a unique combination. Constant rejection in suffering makes it dishonorable. It is not that easy to be in dishonorable suffering for long. The truth is that discipleship involves this dishonorable suffering. Jesus asks John and James to be part of this dishonorable suffering to be his true disciples and also to be part of his glory in resurrection. Paul speaks about this dishonorable suffering of the disciples as he himself experienced it every moment of his life as a disciple. Paul’s sufferings are not his choice, but something comes to his life as part of his apostolic sufferings and the suffering of those who bear witness to crucified God

Discipleship is thus dieing in fellowship with Jesus who died alone on the cross. Martyrdom is not the passionate will to assume sufferings as it prevailed in the medieval church. But marturia is the readiness a disciple has to maintain every moment of his/her life to bear witness to the crucified one.

Marturia the attitude required on our way to cross

It is our attitude of marturia that sustains us on our way toward the cross. The evangelists’ story of the way to cross is an engagement with the world and not a withdrawal from it. Jesus on his way to cross takes heed of the cry of the poor Bartimaeus. He spares time to engage the rich young ruler trying to reproof him and loving him. Discipleship does not end at the dispersal at the foot of the cross; it is also a reinstatement of the disciples who have fled from the scene of crucifixion. Jesus through his post resurrection appearances to the retracted disciples, love them and reinstate them back to the way of the cross. Therefore this “passion-week” will be experienced by all of us as a time to put us back into the love of God and to the way of cross as a response to Jesus’ call to discipleship.