The Cross under the Shroud.

At this time in the Christian Church calendar, Lent draws to a close, and we are brought to the foot of the cross. How do we make sense of God’s Messiah dying on a symbol of criminality and shame? If we are honest, this is not at all what any of us would have expected. The earliest Christians struggled to make sense of this crucial moment in Jesus’ life. Execution on a cross was as shameful a death as anyone could imagine. What could this senselessness have to do with God? What does Good Friday have to do with our God or us. The Scriptures answer with one voice: everything. When Jesus looks most deserted and defeated, the promise of hope, love, and grace resounds most powerfully.

When early Christians turned to the prophets, they found exactly this tension in Isaiah’s song of the suffering servant. Similarly, they turned to Psalm 22 and read a lament that could have been on Jesus’ lips as he seemingly breathed his last. In these powerful cries for justice, our sisters and brothers found Jesus’ shameful death and his exaltation standing side-by-side, not as contradictions but as the mysterious path God chooses to reach us, God’s children. We are not alone in our distress. Jesus meets us in suffering and anguish, for he has walked with us.  

This year, these hopes, and expectations come together in John’s extended account of Jesus’ passion. Space does not allow for extensive comment on this long passage save this basic guiding principle. We are not to rush to the confession that God will deliver in Psalm 22 or the exaltation of God’s servant in Isaiah. We are called not to rush to the glory of Easter morning. Instead, we are called to walk in the steps of Christ, not in order to dwell on his torture and death but to reflect on the burdens he chose to bear for our sake. We are called to take the journey with our God at our side offering love as the grace of this journey of faith.

I am reminded of an event I read about. It started in a fabric store and goes thus:

{“I should have seen the question coming. They always ask at this fabric store. I suppose it makes an otherwise boring job of measuring, snipping, ripping, and folding a little less tedious. If the person handling your fabric and cutting it from the bolt can start up a conversation with you about how you are going to use the fabric maybe it benefits you too. Maybe you can begin to see the project take shape, right there in the store.

So, I should have anticipated the question and perhaps prepared an answer, but I didn’t. And when she asked me, quite innocently, what I was making out of those two yards of black poly-cotton blend, I hesitated for a few seconds, then stammered, “Um …. a shroud.”

Her eyes narrowed as she considered this. She began, ever so slightly, to ask a follow-up question, then it showed quite plainly on her face that she changed her mind. But really, what would one ask? And we stood there, wanly smiling at each other, agreeing to just let that matter drop.

But as she worked, I thought back to just a few minutes earlier. Had I really stood at all those bolts of black fabric, touching them one by one, considering weight, heft, drape? Could I really explain how such a thing could possibly matter when the task for the fabric—the thing the fabric was going to do—was to cover the cross on Friday?

Even more ridiculous—almost comical even—I had stood in line at the fabric store with all the other customers that day, surrounded by people buying cheery cottons printed with eggs and bunnies, and sherbet-toned polyesters that would become little girls’ Easter finery within the week.

Later, when the fabric was hemmed and ready, and I took it to the church and practiced shrouding the cross on the Communion table, I realised the futility of such careful consideration of the fabric. Although, yes, the fabric was fine and did what it was supposed to do, no matter how weighty it was, the cross beneath it was recognisable. We can cover up the cross, but we cannot undo that terrible day any more than we can get to Easter morning without it.}

I leave you with these challenging but profound thoughts.