The cross: A symbol of solidarity with the oppressed
In this Holy Week, I am finding myself reflecting more deeply on the cross. I grew up thinking that the cross was a symbol of God sending “His” Son for the atonement of our sins. This seemed like a grounded and well-accepted theology. That theology changed for me when I came across the work of Black liberation theologian James Cone’s work. In the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, Cone (1938-2018) critiqued the popular White theology of his time—theology that so abstracted the Jesus story that it could not take into account the realities of suffering people, especially Black Americans.
Cone saw a need for a new theology of liberation for Black Americans. Surveying the Bible, from the Israelites‘ freedom out of the bondage of slavery to Jesus’ life in solidarity with the least of these, he concluded that God takes a side. Namely, God takes the side of the oppressed. Not only does God side with the oppressed, but God also identifies as the oppressed, particularly through the life of Jesus.
Cone described this liberation theology often through metaphor, most powerfully by comparing two of the most charged symbols to Black Americans: the cross and the lynching tree. He identified the lynching of over five thousand Black men and women by white Christians between 1890 and 1940 with the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Cone linked these two symbols in the hope that people might “see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.” Telling the story of Jesus through the lens of oppression created a concrete argument that God incarnate, like the Black community, was oppressed. God’s solidarity remained with the oppressed to the point of death on a cross or lynching tree.
Since reading Cone and other liberation theologians, I think of the cross a lot differently. Jesus’ death on the cross was not something God caused or wanted. God is not a violent deity needing to use violence to save us. Rather, Jesus was in deep solidarity with the disenfranchised, the marginalized, and the oppressed. Jesus was seeking the upside down kin-dom of God, where the first shall be last. That set Jesus’ life in stark contrast to the way of the empire.
The empire executed Jesus.
Jesus’ physical body suffered, like so many bodies suffer today at the hands of empire’s violence (capitalism, militarism, racism, poverty).
God mourns this violence.
The cross reminds me of Jesus’ solidarity. Jesus’ body matters. And the bodies of those experiencing deep harm today matter.
In this Easter time, as we reflect on the cross, let us all take seriously the pain inflicted on Jesus’ body and the bodies of others. May we mourn with God the exploitative power of the empire. Would we ask for the upside down kin-dom of God to come. May we cry out for justice.
“You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that mere earthly mortals
will never again strike terror.”
Psalm 10:17-18
