Alastair's Adversaria - A Lenten Reflection on the Cross

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

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The following is a reflection upon the cross, first published on our substack earlier this year in written form. Mark chapter 8, verses 34 to 38. And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will save it. For what does it? does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels. Our Lord's teaching in this passage is arresting and shocking, coming shortly after his first statements foretelling his death, statements which had provoked a scandalized response in Peter, it is the first time in the Gospel of Mark that the specific manner of his death is implied,

take up his cross and follow me. If Peter had objected to the prospect of his master willingly going to his death, our Lord's teaching in response suggested that faithful disciples must follow him on that path. Almost two millennia later, the symbol of the cross is ubiquitous and overwhelmingly seen as positive. It is seen on jewelry, on places of worship, on national flags, on the crowns of kings. Yet to Jesus' first hearers, the cross might evoke the ignominious deaths of subdued insurrectionists or rebellious slaves.

It represented imperial might and cruelty, or was a grisly spectacle of abject humiliation and agonizing suffering. While some have compared it to the electric chair, crucifixion as a means of execution. was designed to produce spectacle in a way that the electric chair or lethal injection are not. It was not a fast or a clean death delivered in some room deep in a government facility. The drawn-out suffering and utter humiliation of the crucified person was on the most public display, exposing them to ridicule and abhorrence and presenting them up as a warning to others, that Jesus should willingly travel towards such a death,

and to charge others to follow him on that post. would naturally have appalled his disciples and hearers. In his teaching, Jesus presents the sharpest of contrasts, gain and loss, life and death, shame and glory, and shockingly he presents his way of the cross, that symbol of the most gruesome and shameful death as the way of gain, life, and glory. Behind the surface contrasts lies a deeper one,

between seeking ultimate security, life and honour from the people of a wicked society and seeking such things from God. Although the cross represents the ultimate rejection of a cruel and evil society, when the path of the cross is taken in the faithful service of God, it ascends to the place of highest honour. In his charge to his disciples, Jesus identifies the more fundamental action that is required of them and of us. Rebels and revolutionaries, in their opposition to the established powers,

can situate the line between good and evil, between them and their enemies. Perhaps for the most radical such persons, one could imagine the cross being treated as a symbol of revolutionary heroism against a brutal regime. Yet the deeper adversary that Jesus focuses upon is neither the Jewish religious leaders nor the Roman Empire, but our own fickle hearts. Our desire for security, our wish to avoid suffering,

our hunger for praise, our sense of shame before the slights and ridicule, of our family or neighbours. This is where the greatest threat resides. We must deny ourselves. Yet we should beware of so emphasising the renunciation that Jesus commands, that we miss the promise that he holds out. The path of the cross is the path in which we follow Christ himself, the path he has pioneered for us, the path where we ascend to be with him. The cross has become for us the tree of life, the disarming of false powers, a beacon of hope to the world, a sign of victory, the mark of honour, a promise of deliverance to all oppressed by the evil one, and the symbol of our very salvation. This is because of the one who hung there for us, overcoming in his sacrifice.

It is through him that the cross is not merely an empty and suicidal gesture of political renunciation. In taking the path of the cross, we don't merely reject the world. world and ourselves, but affirm Christ. We take this path as those called to be witnesses, as martyrs. The centrality of the cross was paramount in the teaching of St. Paul in his epistle to the Galatians. Against any who sought to move beyond the scandal of the cross, to present the Christian faith merely in the unthreatening and respectable clothing of religious or social conformity, Paul insisted that no such movement was possible. But far be it from me to most except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me,

and I to the world. For Paul, while it was never less, the cross was much more than a sign of Christ's once-for-all vicarious sacrifice. The manner of Jesus' death mattered. It marked and symbolized the fundamental and comprehensive reconfiguration of Christian existence. The Christian response to the spectacle of radical shame and dishonour that was crucifixion. is not to seek to minimize it, but to proclaim it, even to boast in it. For the cross is a spectacle and must never cease to be such. It is a radical unmasking of the truth of things.

It is a stripping and disarming. It is a manifestation of triumph and victory. In John's Gospel, Jesus refers to his cross as his lifting up, as an exultation that would draw all peoples to himself. In Colossians, Paul describes God. disarming rulers and authorities and putting them to open shame and triumphing over them in Christ and His cross. For Paul, the cross is a spectacle of shame, of subjugation and of utter defeat, yet of the rulers and authorities of this age, not of Christ.

The ultimate sanctions of rebellious humanity, destruction of the body, death, utter shame, social rejection and expulsion were rendered impotent in the cross. To the destruction of the body, the cross is the sowing of the seed from which a more glorious body will spring forth. To death, the cross is the opening up of the fountain of water and blood from which everlasting life will be enjoyed. To utter shame, the cross is that in which we glory and Christ's exaltation to universal rule. To social rejection and expulsion, the cross is the foundation of a new society, and that through which we will find welcome into eternal habitation. Although the visceral shock and offence of the cross as a symbol has greatly diminished,

through distance from the wider practice of crucifixion and familiarity with the cross as a religious symbol, we must revisit the cross and rediscover its meaning, and Lent is a perfect time to do so. As we recall Jesus' journey towards Jerusalem, his setting his face towards his cross, let us learn to take up our own. Let us learn to carry our crosses, not merely as unwelcome and onerous burdens, but as what they are in truth, the signs of our living union with Christ, our deepest identity and belonging, and the assurance of our destiny and inheritance. We carry the cross as those marked for death. We release our desperate grip upon the praise of men, the security this present age has to offer, the social standing it affords, the

power, wealth and fame it pursues. These things, of which most people's selves are formed, must all be denied or surrendered. And marking ourselves out for such death, we recognise that we, like Christ, must be prepared to be a spectacle. In our renunciation, we must be witnesses and martyrs, our lives a site in which the unveiling disclosure and disarming of Christ's cross might be manifest. And the triumph on display is first and foremost a triumph over ourselves. Christ's victory over that within us that is in the thrall of the world and all that it has to offer. Where we are displayed as those over whom Christ has been victorious, we are also the beneficiaries of his victory. In surrendering the whole world, we gain our very souls. The cross remains the true

symbol of the Christian faith, the symbol of our having been crucified with Christ, of our standing relative to the world, and of our allegiance to Christ. As a paradoxical intersection of shame and glory, life and death, gain and loss, salvation and destruction, in the cross the full mystery of our salvation is displayed, and we discover the path that leads to joy everlasting.