Theological Journal – November 14 Rethinking the Crucifix

 The crucifix, a cross with the body of Jesus still on it, is a staple of Catholic and other traditions spirituality. Protestants quickly and decisively reject it because the dead body of Jesus still hangs on it signifying crucifixion whereas we believe the cross ought to be empty because Jesus has been raised from the dead and the cross is empty.

The Protestant perspective is certainly legitimate and an important and crucial part of understanding God’s work of salvation. At the same time, another crucial and legitimate part of that divine work often gets overlooked, I think. Looking back at the cross from the resurrection, it makes perfect sense to insist on an empty cross and wonder if the crucifix does justice to Jesus’ work.

But looking forward from the resurrection does the New Testament not put Jesus back on a cross? This time not as an instrument of torture, humiliation, rejection, and death, but rather as a throne from which he exercises his cruciform and saving rule over his people and his world? Is he not the Martyr par excellence? And is not martyrdom the template of faithfulness the New Testament presents to us? Is the one pictured as worthy to take and unroll the scroll of history from the one on the throne in Rev.5 not a Lamb “looking as if it had been slain? Does not God’s work of judgment on those who killed his servants await the “full number” of the martyrs to be filled up (Rev.6:10)?

Even if martyrdom is not the actual fate of every believer it is the way of life each and every believer is called to lead. As Paul describes his apostolic ministry in 2 Corinthians 4:7-12:

^“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”

And there is no reason to believe Paul limited or would limit “death at work in us, but life is at work in you” - a martyrological way of life - to fellow-apostles. It is the life of the church. Early Christians           understood that the resurrected Jesus climbed back up on the cross to live and reign from there till the End. And he calls each of his followers to join him there and participate in his cruciform rule. Even in the End the Lamb’s bearing the imprint of his wounds throughout eternity never lets us forget that for this God death is always the way of and to life.

It seems to me then that, looking forward from the resurrection, there is every reason to find him back on a cross as he lives and reigns as the Lord of all. And we Jesus-followers must adopt cruciform ways of life, even to giving up our lives for him (who gave his up for us), as witness to his rule and power over death as we “make up what is lacking in Messiah’s afflictions” (Col.1:24) carrying his good news around the world.

The Martyr is the Messiah. The church is a community of martyrs. Now I don’t expect the meaning of the crucifix to change. Nor should it. But there may be room to at least imagine a Jesus, a resurrected Jesus, to be sure, also hanging on the cross, now not his humiliation but rather his exaltation as Lord and Ruler of all. A Lord and Ruler, however, who rules and commands his people rule by the logic and power of a cross on which death is defeated by life and reveals the strangest and most confounding truth about this one we acclaim and worship as “God”!