Good Friday Homily

What Did The First Christians See In The Cross?

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for Good Friday

St. Bridget Catholic Church, Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, April 10, 2022

If someone from Jesus’ time were to enter our church today and saw the symbol of a crucified man hanging up above the altar where everyone can see it, they would conclusively say we have all lost our minds. Why? Because in Jesus’ time, the cross was the most terrifying and horrifying thing you could ever imagine. The cross was seen as the crowning point, the zenith and highest degree of suffering. The cross stands for excruciating pain, “excruciatus” in Latin which means “from the cross.” The great Roman orator and one of the masters of the Latin language, Cicero, while describing a crucifixion in a letter used all sorts of indirect expressions and circumlocutions because describing a crucifixion directly was considered too petrifying. This explains why for the first many centuries of Christianity, nobody depicted Jesus on the cross. It was too fresh  and too horrifying in the cultural memory of people to do so. Seeing the image of the cross displayed above the altar would be like seeing an image of a man hanging from a noose for any ancient person.  

But what did the Early Church see in the image of the cross? They saw all human dysfunction placed on Jesus. When we go through the Passion reading, what do we hear? We hear of stupidity. We hear of hatred. We hear of cruelty. We hear of violence. We hear of institutional injustice. And when all the darkness of the world comes upon him, he swallows it up with the phrase, “Father forgive them they know not what they do.” What else did the first Christians see on the cross? They saw that everything the world can throw at us has been conquered and consumed in the ever-greater Divine Mercy. That’s why our brother St. Paul was able to say, “We proclaim Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23b). Believe me, when people first heard Paul utter those words, they must have expressed wonder and amazement: ‘Is that what you are preaching? A crucified criminal? Are you crazy?’ But Paul had met the risen Christ and had known that the love of God was powerful than anything that is in the world. In addition, when the first Christians held up the cross, they were doing it as a kind of taunt. The Roman authorities said if you cross us, we will cross you out by nailing you on the cross. If you disobey us, you will be nailed to the cross. The cross was a sign of Roman power. It was a sign of the power of the sinful world. But in the light of the Resurrection, the first Christians knew that God’s love had definitively shattered that power. So, the first Christians taunted the world with the cross. 

Today, when we read Paul’s declaration in all his writings— Iesous Kyrios (Jesus the Lord), we sentimentalize it as a proper spiritual thing to say about Jesus. But in Paul’s time, “Jesus is Lord” declaration were fighting words. One way a Roman citizen might greet another citizen was, “Kaizer kyrios,” which means, “Caesar is Lord.” That’s how people might greet each other at that time. But in all his letters, Paul insists that Caesar is not the Lord, rather the Lord is someone whom Caesar put to death and whom God has raised from the dead. That someone is Jesus. He is the true Lord; he is the true Lord of life; he is the true Lord of everything on earth and in heaven. When Pontius Pilate, Caesar’s local representative placed over the cross an inscription meant to be a taunt of his own, “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews,” he was without knowing it stating an obvious truth. Although his inscription was meant to be a joke, but the joke was on him because Pilate becomes the first great evangelist.

As we celebrate the Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, what do you think the world wants us to do with the cross of Jesus? I will give you a few answers. They want us to make it a little private symbol. They want us to make it a sign of our little pastime activity called Christianity. But doing so would be extremely distasteful to the Bible because that sign is meant to be held up to all the world announcing that there is in fact a new Lord and a new King. Jesus himself says “When I am lifted up from the earth (that is, on the cross), I will draw everyone to myself” (Jn. 12:32). Holding up the cross of Jesus, lifting it up for all to see, helping to draw all people to Jesus is the work of the Church. It is called evangelization. The good news, “euaggelion,” in Greek is also a taunt when the first Christians first used it. In ancient times, an evangelist was someone who went ahead with the good news that Caesar had won a victory. By adopting the same word, the first Christians were saying, no, no no, no. It’s just the opposite. God has won the great victory. So, today and every day of our lives, let us hold up the cross of the crucified Jesus and use it to challenge the cruelty, the violence, the injustice and the hatred of the world. And may the cross of our Lord Jesus always remind us that the victory is won; that there is a new King and Lord whose name is Jesus Christ.