Amongst the anguish and debris of the Twin Towers, two broken girders stand in cruciform lament. This is the Cross emerging from the wreckage of human suffering, bearing witness to the destructive powers of a cosmos in chaos.
Holy Week is the time when sin can no longer be trivialised, when violence is confronted for what it is, and when hatred is seen to unleash the destructive anger whose end is death and whose means is the murder of the other. Christian theology sees in the Cross the mystery of iniquity and the greater mystery of an eternal love which renders all evil and all destructive powers penultimate.
"In the cross of Christ I glory towr'ing oe'r the wrecks of time.." can never be a triumphalist escapism from the wreckage of human life and the wasting of Creation that are the realities of our global history and our economic, cultural, military and technological adventures. Instead, we glory in the Cross as those who know such evil, sin, iniquity, what Paul called the principalities and powers, to be defeated by the self-giving love and searing holiness in judgement of the God whose Creation is defaced and defiled by all our ancient hatreds, incurable covetousness, territorial and materialist empire building, and by the infused and cherished divisions and fears, hatreds and enmities of a grace-averse world.
We glory in the cross because "having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacke of them, triumphing over them by the cross." (Col 2.14) Earlier Paul explained, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross." (Col 1.19-20)
Holy Week is the time to reflect on how violence spawns violence, hatred enacted provokes hatred as vengeance, in an upward spiral of destruction ever more creative in its lethal intent. The Cross is God's NO! The Cross is God's negation of all other negations of life. The Cross is, as Paul said elsewhere, the place where "in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself."
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