The Shame of The Cross

Last updated on: August 8, 2017 at 12:16 pm by Billy Kangas

The Shame of The Cross 2017-08-08T12:16:03-04:00 Billy Kangas

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The cross has become the quintessential symbol for the Christian faith. It’s placed on churches, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, lapel pins, necklaces, tattoos and even baked goods. It is a symbol of comfort, a symbol of faith, a symbol of allegiance, and even at times a fashion statement. The casual use of the cross that we see today would not have been what the first Christians would have expected in first centuries after Jesus was crucified. The early Church served a God who they believed had become human, and had suffered crucifixion. This was a huge scandal for the church. Crucifixion was the arguably the most shameful way to die in the first century and to own a leader who was crucified, was in part, to own the shame. This is why the story of the cross in the early church is so amazing. The church was a community that was able to embrace Christ, even in the shame of the cross and was even able to see beauty in the midst of the grotesque. The cross that finds itself so comfortable in our culture today was only able to find it’s place of ease through a gradual process of self reflexion by a community torn between love and aversion toward it.

The History of The Cross

The Cross was adopted by the Roman Empire with the intent to suppress any and intimidate people. It was devised as a method of execution that prolonged the suffering and death of a victim, emaciated the body brought death to the perpetrator at the highest price. Victims were impaled on a vertical wooden stake or on stakes formed together like the letter T. Victims would hang there for hours, or even days. While there they were emaciated alive. Measures were often put in place specifically to lengthen the the suffering of an individual by keeping them alive just a little bit longer. Bodies were so destroyed by the process that of the few that were able to find a pardon and come down before they died, a fair percentage still died. Once dead the body would remain there to rot as an example to the people who passed by what would happen to those who stood up to Rome. In most cases the bodies were not allowed to even receive a proper burial.

It was originally reserved exclusively for slaves and was considered one of the most humiliating and shameful things a person could ever endure, which was it’s aim. It was so humiliating that Roman citizens were only crucified for grave offenses, like treason, and even these crucifixions were not common. In fact Cicero argued that, “the very mention of the cross should be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears.” The cross was a beyond the pale and taboo to the extreme for upstanding Romans.

It’s no wonder that the early church did not begin using the cross as the public symbol of their identity in the earliest years. The cross was still in use. Many Christians were still being crucified in the empire up to the time of Constantine. It was only due to the conversion of Constantine to the Christian faith that Crucifixions came to an end in the empire. Constantine ended the practice in honor of Jesus. The cross was a symbol used to openly mock Christians for what they believed. Archaeologists have uncovered an engraving from the time of the early church which reveals a bit of what the mind of the ancient Roman world was like. In the engraving there is a picture of a man with a donkey head being crucified. Next to him is another posture that seems to be worshiping the donkey-man on the cross. The image was a piece of graffiti often referred to as the graffito blasfemo that is thought to have been written by an ancient slave who was probably making fun of his fellow slave for his belief in Jesus. With the picture there is an inscription stating, “Αλεξαμενος ϲεβετε θεον.” This is translated as “Alexamenos, worship God” or “Alexamenos worships God.” It would appear that the slave being mocked was a man named Alexamenos. Scholars believe that the reason that the man has a Donkey head was due to a widely held misconception in the ancient world that the Jewish people worshiped a donkey, which had led them to water while they wandered in the wilderness with Moses. The artist mocks Alexamenos by pointing to how utterly shameful it was to worship Jesus as the Jewish donkey God, since Jesus had been killed in the most shameful way.

To overcome the historical and cultural shame of the cross the church had to re-frame the cross in a new paradigm. It was no longer seen as a place where Jesus was overcome by shame, but a location where shame was overcome by Jesus. The author of the book of Hebrews makes the argument that Jesus καταφρονέω (made nothing of, despised) the shame of the cross, so that the church would not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:2-3). In other words the Jesus transformed the cross from a place of shame to a place of victory. The early church found took up this tradition and more fully developed the understanding of the cross as a seal of victory placed on believers and a place of redemption. Both of these themes are worthy of a closer look.

We will take up these themes tomorrow

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