MISREADING THE CROSS

Sometimes whenever we look at the cross with Jesus on it, hanging in pain and suffering and death, we can easily get the wrong idea about what it means to be a Christian, to follow Jesus. Yes, there are times, probably very, very few and very far between, when we get nailed for being a Christians. But those times are the exception, thank God, and not the rule.

Being a Christian demands sacrifice, to be sure. It means putting the other person first, walking the extra mile, even turning the other cheek if necessary. All these actions can be and usually are painful. But they come up short when we compare that kind of pain to the pain Jesus endured. And, yes, we have been told that no greater love can we have than to lay down our life for another, lay it down and give it up as in actually dying. So, when was the last time anyone ever asked you to do that?

Novelist and poet Chris Abani, a Nigerian by birth, thinking about not only life in war-torn Nigeria but life in this world, said this: “What I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back to me.”

He is not denigrating what Jesus did on the cross; rather he is observing that such messianic gestures really don’t change the world. Jesus’ death on the cross did not. What changed the world were “the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion” that the followers of Jesus did day in and day out. That is what converted others, changed them, changed their lives.

Yes, we are all thankful for what Jesus did, but that is not what he has called us to do nor is that we have promised to do in and through our baptism. We are called to live each day as caring and compassionate people, no more and no less. That is not always easy and it is often a pain in the neck if not everywhere else on our body. Kindness and compassion are not always rewarded in kind but just the opposite.

Nevertheless, if we truly want to change the world from what it is to what God created it to be and what Jesus came to remind us that we could make it over as, then the only way is the ubuntu way. That means that we are fully alive, fully human, when the kindness and love we share with another is shared back. Sometimes that happens immediately. Sometimes it takes a long time, even a very long and painful time. And sometimes the other simply does not share back. It happens.

Yet, no matter how long it takes, how painful it is at times, the only way we can change another and in the process change a very, very, very small part of this world, is to hang in there even when our acts of kindness and compassion are rejected. Jesus never gave up even to the end when he kindly, lovingly and compassionately forgave those who rejected his love and nailed him to that cross. Neither can or must we.