The Crucified God

'And being found in human form, Christ Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.'

Just outside Liverpool at a crematorium chapel, which I had to visit frequently for services, there was a cross. Whenever I went it was just a plain wooden cross and it took some months for me to realise that it was a cross that the vergers turned round depending whether the funeral service was Protestant or Catholic. For on the other side of the plain cross was a crucifix, a cross with the human figure hanging from it which was displayed for Catholic services. No doubt this cross was totally removed for other faith and humanist services. Apart from the miserliness of the local authority in making do with just one cross-crucifix rather than having a cross and a crucifix, I found it difficult to accept in our ecumenical age that anyone could be offended by either a plain cross or a crucifix. Both seem to speak of what is central to the Christian faith, the Cross of Christ, but perhaps they reflect symbolically different aspects of our understanding of the Cross. The plain cross speaks to me of the I that is crossed out, of Christ's total self-giving, of his complete obedience to the Father. It is also an empty cross for Christ is no longer hanging dead from a cross but has risen to a new life with his Father. Death on the cross was not the end of the story, God raised Jesus to new life and he shares that new life with us all.

The crucifix speaks of different aspects of the theology of the cross. It concentrates our minds on the terrible human suffering and agony that Jesus endured. To walk the way of the Cross was costly, physically, mentally and spiritually. No wonder Jesus cried out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me". Here was the ultimate moment of dereliction and yet of unity, of oneness with God. The crucifix also speaks of the glory of the Cross. This was the way of love, of God reaching out in Jesus to all humanity and revealing his true self. Here is the very nature of God, one of total self-giving.

How foolish we human beings are, how foolish we Christians are to fight and argue and divide over the centuries over a cross or a crucifix. The local authority at that crematorium chapel was only responding to our human prejudices and divisions. There can be no doubt that for all Christians the Cross remains central to our faith. We may not fully understand every aspect of the cross and its meaning. We may not be able to comprehend the different theories of the atonement. There remains the mystery of the cross. It is not explainable. It is beyond our human capacity to embrace its significance.

However our human foolishness over understanding the cross is tiny, is miniscule compared to the foolishness of God in choosing the way of the Cross as the way of salvation, as the way of new life for all humanity. St Paul, in our reading this morning, says that Christ emptied himself and took the form of a slave. Paul is talking about the incarnation. But he immediately goes on to say that Christ then humbled himself in obedience to death on the cross. He endured crucifixion as one who was in the form of God.

So we Christians have dared to say that God was crucified. It was God who hung there on the tree. In the words of St Gregory, "We need a God made of flesh, a God put to death that we might live again" ant yet this truth is not known by reason. We cannot argue it out. It is an absurd and strange claim that God emptied himself, that God the great and everlasting Father, the God who was and is the source of all life, poured himself out, became insignificant and small, sharing our human brokenness and was put to a horrible and demeaning death. Can we begin to grasp such a truth? It is surely folly. It is a holy madness. Christ Incarnate, Christ Crucified hangs before us as a perpetual sign of the absurd, of the divine foolishness, a sign of contradiction in our reasonable world. As St Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians "We proclaim Christ Crucified, a stumbling block to Jesus and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who care called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God."

We believe in a crucified God. We believe that the grace and liberating power of God flows out of the heart of desolation and darkness. It would be wrong to try to eliminate or reduce or explain away the scandal of what God has done. It cannot be rationalised. It is the way of hope, of salvation, of triumph. It is the way of absurdity and foolishness.

When Sydney Carter wrote his song "Friday Morning", it was banned by the B.B.C. as anti-religious. The song consists of words put into the mouth of one of the thieves crucified with Jesus.

It was on Friday morning
that they took me from the cell
And I saw they had a carpenter
to crucify as well.

You can blame it on Pilot
You can blame it on the Jews
You can blame it on the devil
It's God I accuse.

It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me.
I said to the carpenter hanging on the tree.

And the song ends:-
To hell with Jehovah,
to the carpenter I said
I wish that a carpenter
had made the world instead.

It is a song of holy folly, it is a song of contradiction. But it expresses in simple words the theology of the crucified God. Do we hold to the wisdom of this world with all its rationality and reasonableness. Or do we believe in the divine foolishness, the folly of the crucified one knowing that it is in his foolishness that our wholeness lies.

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