One cross

Holy Cross 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyDays/HolyCros_RCL.html


What does the cross of Christ mean?

A story from years ago that disquieted religious folk was of the patient in the Catholic hospital who asked the nurse to take down the crucifix that faced him on the wall at the foot of his bed, a familiar sight to this day in hospitals like Providence. “I am in pain” said the man. “What possible good does it do me to be forced to look at the image of a suffering man?”

I appreciate this man because he was seeing the cross clearly and was impacted by what is depicted. For him the image of Christ crucified was not just part of the background of a religious institution, whether hospital or church.

Today, the feast of the Holy Cross, the cross is not just part of the background. Even if the cross has become an ignored accessory, or a rejected image by those appalled by the pain depicted, the cross is still inescapable.

Wherever pain and division and violence and loss are found, there we find the cross.

In the past 20 years roadside shrines at the sites of accidental death or even murder have become common in the USA. Often a cross is part of the shrine. “Yes this” says the cross, yes, tragic and hideous loss. “Yes this, but also this.” A dialogue of realities—loss and pain, yet a stubborn and irrational hope at one and the same time. The bridge between loss and hope is the cross.

This + is a crucifix given to me by a charming Filipina nun as I entered the novitiate of my old religious Order. We were twice besieged by government-sponsored paramilitary in the village where we lived for a year. I was sitting meditating and looking at this cross one night when a burst of automatic rifle fire went off only yards away from our residence. I still feel the fear of that as I tell the story and hold this crucifix. “Yes this, but also this.”

The cross, the crucified yet risen Christ, is found at the center of all our suffering and the suffering of the world. The cross is found particularly at the nexus of suffering and pain dealt out by the oppressive powers of the world, dealt out to the poor and the pushed aside. The cross is emptied of its power if we forget that on the cross is stretched out a man executed by the powerful, executed because he was a threat to organized political and military and yes, religious power. The cross faces us with the reality that to this day people, whole peoples, are still beaten up and ordered around and imprisoned and pushed aside and even executed by the powerful and the threatened. The cross is both uncomfortable truth and proclamation of the overthrow of the powerful and the abusive, of God’s stand with the poor. “Yes this, but also this.”

We here live the cross in a particular way. Last week Padre Maldonado spoke with me about our project to make one community from two very different peoples, different cultures and language groups. One of those groups experience discrimination and exclusion on a daily basis. He said in admiration “You’ve really bet the farm!”

Well, we have. But we’ve done that because Jesus of Nazareth bet the farm, bet with his life. He bet that God would be victorious in the face of the worst that the Roman Empire and the Temple elite could do. He bet that death would not have the last word.

We here bet that, in the midst of challenges and difference, in the face of the deep divisions between people and languages and cultures, that we find the cross of Christ. “I shall draw all people to myself.” “Yes this, but also this”: a people healed and made one, an improbable community that practices justice and equality before God.

Anyone here have dandelions in their yards? Each year when I harvest the dandelions one more time, I speculate again that they are not individual plants, but all part of one whole. In the same way, the cross on our foreheads through Baptism is not our personal cross. It is one cross, one plant, blossoming in different places and different lives, drawing all, plunging to the depth of human division and human pain, embracing all and yet making hope.

“Yes this, but also this.”