What Hangs On The Cross

TODAY: Pray the 16th-century English prayer of St. Thomas More: "The things, Good Lord, we pray for, give us the grace to labor for."

When I was a child, my family lived in Europe. We were a missionary family, and so when we traveled, much of our sightseeing centered on churches and other religious sites. During these excursions, I was frequently frightened by the depictions of the crucifixions. There was an endless parade of graphic interpretations of this torturous form of death - of Jesus bruised and bloody. Because these images depicted in paint or stone or wood were often displayed in the most beautiful churches imaginable, the terrible quality of what they showed was highlighted. In my child's mind, I was scared of the nature of an adult world that would apply such artistry to create such graphic images and then put them in such beautiful places.

Twenty years after these childhood experiences, I had occasion to revisit the idea of the crucifix. A controversy broke out at Georgetown University regarding the presence of crosses in the classrooms, and I attended an evening of lectures set up by the university on the subject. One of the speakers was a priest, who described his meditation on the Isenheim Altarpiece, a particularly gruesome medieval image of Jesus on the cross. In this painting, the Messiah's body appears diseased as well as bearing the usual wounds on head, back, hands, side and feet.

The priest echoed my childhood sentiments when he opened his lecture by stating that his first feeling about this painting image was that it was a desecration. But his research revealed that the artist painted this image for the hospital at Isenheim that attended to victims of the plague, leprosy and infectious illnesses. Such would be the composition of most of the worshippers looking at the painting during daily Mass. Those worshippers who were healthy in body would, more often than not, either be there praying for a sick loved one or would be dedicated to serving the sick.

The priest came to understand that, far from being a debased image, this masterpiece would be a blessing and a miracle of hope for such people, healthy and sick alike. He came to understand that his first reaction of revulsion was both very human, but exactly the opposite of what Jesus had done when he came to walk among us. Jesus willingly approached our suffering and participated in it to its fullest extent, to the point of accepting an unmerited death by a particularly awful form of execution.

So as we think about the crucifixion today, we should not avert our minds from what exactly happened. Hanging on the cross is a tortured and anguished human being. And also on that cross is the Son of the God whom Jesus called his Father and taught us to call Father as well. We all suffer in this world and sometimes cause others to suffer.

If we have the courage to keep our eyes on the reality of the cross, we will see something else beyond the great evil that humankind can inflict. We will see on that cross love and hope and the eternal offer of companionship with God. On that cross is the Son of God, who willingly came to live among us as one of us and to share with us all aspects of our lives, including anguish and death. Hanging on that cross is our hope for salvation, redemption and new life. We should look hard at what happened on the cross and cling to it.

— Ursula Wilder

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist