The Shame of The Cross

The cross has become the quintessential symbol for the Christian faith. It’s placed on churches, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, lapel pins, necklaces, tattoos and even baked goods. It is a symbol of comfort, a symbol of faith, a symbol of allegiance, and even at times a fashion statement. The casual use of the cross that we see today would not have been what the first Christians would have expected in first centuries after Jesus was crucified. The early Church served a God who they believed had become human, and had suffered crucifixion. This was a huge scandal for the church. Crucifixion was the arguably the most shameful way to die in the first century and to own a leader who was crucified, was in part, to own the shame. This is why the story of the cross in the early church is so amazing. The church was a community that was able to embrace Christ, even in the shame of the cross and was even able to see beauty in the midst of the grotesque. The cross that finds itself so comfortable in our culture today was only able to find it’s place of ease through a gradual process of self reflexion by a community torn between love and aversion toward it.

The History of The Cross 


The Cross was adopted by the Roman Empire with the intent to suppress any and intimidate people. It was devised as a method of execution that prolonged the suffering and death of a victim, emaciated the body brought death to the perpetrator at the highest price. Victims were impaled on a vertical wooden stake or on stakes formed together like the letter T. Victims would hang there for hours, or even days. While there they were emaciated alive. Measures were often put in place specifically to lengthen the the suffering of an individual by keeping them alive just a little bit longer. Bodies were so destroyed by the process that of the few that were able to find a pardon and come down before they died, a fair percentage still died. Once dead the body would remain there to rot as an example to the people who passed by what would happen to those who stood up to Rome. In most cases the bodies were not allowed to even receive a proper burial.

It was originally reserved exclusively for slaves and was considered one of the most humiliating and shameful things a person could ever endure, which was it’s aim. It was so humiliating that Roman citizens were only crucified for grave offenses, like treason, and even these crucifixions were not common. In fact Cicero argued that, “the very mention of the cross should be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears.” The cross was a beyond the pale and taboo to the extreme for upstanding Romans.

It’s no wonder that the early church did not begin using the cross as the public symbol of their identity in the earliest years. The cross was still in use. Many Christians were still being crucified in the empire up to the time of Constantine. It was only due to the conversion of Constantine to the Christian faith that Crucifixions came to an end in the empire. Constantine ended the practice in honor of Jesus. The cross was a symbol used to openly mock Christians for what they believed. Archaeologists have uncovered an engraving from the time of the early church which reveals a bit of what the mind of the ancient Roman world was like. In the engraving there is a picture of a man with a donkey head being crucified. Next to him is another posture that seems to be worshiping the donkey-man on the cross. The image was a piece of graffiti often referred to as the graffito blasfemo that is thought to have been written by an ancient slave who was probably making fun of his fellow slave for his belief in Jesus. With the picture there is an inscription stating, “Αλεξαμενος ϲεβετε θεον.” This is translated as “Alexamenos, worship God” or “Alexamenos worships God.” It would appear that the slave being mocked was a man named Alexamenos. Scholars believe that the reason that the man has a Donkey head was due to a widely held misconception in the ancient world that the Jewish people worshiped a donkey, which had led them to water while they wandered in the wilderness with Moses. The artist mocks Alexamenos by pointing to how utterly shameful it was to worship Jesus as the Jewish donkey God, since Jesus had been killed in the most shameful way.

To overcome the historical and cultural shame of the cross the church had to re-frame the cross in a new paradigm. It was no longer seen as a place where Jesus was overcome by shame, but a location where shame was overcome by Jesus. The author of the book of Hebrews makes the argument that Jesus καταφρονέω (made nothing of, despised) the shame of the cross, so that the church would not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:2-3). In other words the Jesus transformed the cross from a place of shame to a place of victory. The early church found took up this tradition and more fully developed the understanding of the cross as a seal of victory placed on believers and a place of redemption. Both of these themes are worthy of a closer look.

We will take up these themes tomorrow

Prophet from Poetry

Poetry is a dying art. Few people write it, read it, or would even know how to if they tried. It requires a heart, an imagination, and the ability to sit within a tension.

In today's sound-bite culture people have lost the essential ability to live within a poem

This is a deeply tragic cultural illiteracy.

Being unable to dwell in poetry means you are unable to dwell in the world of the Bible because so much of the Bible is poetry.

Obviously there are poems that make up the Psalms, but poems also are scattered throughout almost every book of the Bible in one way or another. The prophets are almost entirely written in poetic form and some of the deepest theology in the the new Testament is created employing forms of parallelism in the Greek text that dwell on the rich heritage of Hebrew Poetry (look at Philipians 2 for example).

Jesus himself used poetry more then any other source to frame and define his action to the Jewish world he inhabited.

Like I said, understanding poetry is essential to understanding the Bible.

I have had difficulty learning how to read poetry poetry in the Bible. For many years I struggled just to get a grip on what the prophets were saying. It's a deep well that it's hard to master completely, but in reading about poetry I have the paradigm of Parallelism as a great starting place to begin.

Parallelism is at the heart of much of Hebrew Poetry.

What parallelism basically means is that one line of poetry has a direct relationship with another line of poetry, and must be read in that relationship in order to be understood.

The meaning of the passage is not just in the lines themselves but in the tension created between the two lines. It's like creating a perception of depth by seeing a truth through both eyes.

Parallelism can function in a number of ways. My teacher, Bob Hubbard, helped me to understand this better using the symbols = < and >

If a line of poetry is = to the line that follows it then the parts of the lines are interchangeable. The second line ECHOES the first line.

An example of this kind of poetry can be found in Amos 8:10

1. I will turn your feasts into mourning
2. and all your songs into lamentation;

You could switch Feasts with Songs or Mourning with Lamentations and the meaning stays about the same.

You could also see a form of this kind of comparison where the second line is actually trying to CONTRAST the first line. In this situation the parts are not so much interchangeable but in direct tension with one another semantically.

If a line of poetry is > to the line that follows it. The second line is used to qualify the first line, and help bring the first line into great clarity or more completeness.

This can be done by qualify the time of the first line, the reason for the first line, or the means of the first line. In other words the second line can show how, why, or when the first line came about.

An example of this is given in Amos 5:20

1. Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, 
2. not light--pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?

The second line deepens the understanding of the first line

If a line of poetry is < to the line that follows it. The first line is used to introduce the second line, and the second line expands or completes the first line.

This can be used to continue the first line, compare something in the first line, intensify something in the first line, so specify something in the first line (this can be spatial, explanatory, for dramatic effect, or give the purpose of the first line).

An example of this is given in Amos 7:11

1. Jeroboam will die by the sword, 
2. and Israel will surely go into exile, away from their native land

This set of verses lays out a series of events. Line one happens and then line two happens.

This little tool isn't the end of studding Hebrew poetry, but it has helped me a great deal. Ever since I started reading with these eyes the Psalms have come alive to me, and reading through Amos this week was like reading the book for the first time.

Where I am in life right now... A Picture

In our lives there are many directions we can focus on. In Helen Cepro's Journaling as a Spiritual Practice: Encountering God Through Attentive Writing she encourages people to take time and figure out where you are by evaluating the compasses in your own life.

To Look South is to be focused on the "Sunny exposure" of your life. This is the creative and playful part of your own life. to evaluate this think about what is drawing creativity out of you. Make a collage or write down a name of a person who inspires you!

To Look East is to look toward a rising sun. What is beginning to appear on your horizon? What are you being asked to take hold of? What are you being called to embrace? What areas in your life are in need of transformation.

To Look West is to look at your life and see what is setting. Are there patterns or paradigms that just don't seem to be working anymore?  What do you need to let go of? They aren't necessarily bad things, they are often good gifts of God that you need to move beyond in the next chapter of life.

To Look North is to look to what guides you (like the north star, sorry southern hemisphere types). It helps you keep the other directions aligned. What or who loves and guides you? What images of God sustain you? Take time to thank God for these sorts of things!

In The Center if you have thought about all these things write them down on a sheet of paper oriented like a compass. In the middle leave a space. Think about if you are willing to try to live your life by the compass you have just created. If you are, write YES in the middle.

I decided I would try to make a little compass like Helen talks about.

Here is where my life is right now:

Nothing fancy, just a little me