Robert Barron - Christ, and Him Crucified

Watch
Donate

Peace be with you. Friends, we have a great privilege this year because the feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross, September the 14th, falls on a Sunday. So, we have a chance to reflect a bit more deeply on this marvelous, and frankly, disconcerting odd feast. Now, how come I say it that way? Well, let me take you back to this very morning. So, I always wake up early, I do my holy hour first thing. And I go to my chapel, and in my chapel I have a chair, and I’m facing the altar in the tabernacle for the Holy Hour, and right in the front of the altar, I have this golden cross, was given to me by a friend many years ago.

And it’s beautiful, it’s kind of in the gothic design, very elaborate, and it’s very prayerful, the minute I see that cross, I move into a prayerful frame of mind. But if you were to strip away the decoration, the gold, and the filigree, and the gothic trimmings, and all that, and you brought it back to what it essentially is, a Roman cross, you’d see it indeed as something terrible, as something brutal and awful. And all the poetry of this feast is summed up in the fact that I’ve got, on that altar, that awful thing, that awful thing in gold, and decoration, and filigree. I’m weirdly exalting this horrific thing.

Again, if someone came back from the ancient world and they were brought into that chapel and said, here’s a place where this man is praying, it’s a religious room, and he’d look at that decoration and say, well, wait a minute, that’s a cross, that’s where people are brutally put to death. Mm-hmm. And he’s praying in front of that? And he’s covered it in gold? It’s like, if you had a hangman’s scaffold and noose, and it’s all covered in gold, and flowers around it, like you had an electric chair, but gold and with Gothic designs, and… People would say, what’s the manner with you? That’s all the weird poetry, everybody, this feast.

You know what came to mind as I thought more about that? There was a great show on HBO about 20 years ago called the Rome Series, I think it was only two seasons, but it was so well done, and it evoked that time of Julius Caesar, and that whole period of Mark Antony, that pivotal moment in Roman history. Well, maybe the first episode, you’re with Caesar, up in Gaul, and he’s got his army with him, and the standard has been stolen by these local soldiers, local barbarians as the Romans saw them.

And the commander calls in the main character, Vorenus, this Roman soldier, and he says, «Vorenus, the standard’s been captured and Caesar wants it back». «Yes, sir». And he says, «Well, now what do you propose? How are you going to do it»? And he said, «I’ll go to the neighboring villages and I’ll crucify the men until I find out where it is». And the commander said, «Okay, good». And then the next scene is this man being nailed to a cross, and screaming in pain, and he reveals where the standards are. And then the next scene is Vorenus is coming back with the standard.

Now, I bring that up because I think that captures beautifully the attitude of Ancient Rome. When Caesar went into Gaul, they estimate there were about 3 million people in Gaul, he killed a million, that’s a conservative estimate. There was a genocide of a million people that Caesar killed. He enslaved another million, the remaining million are the foundation for the Roman province of Gaul, which then became in time, modern-day France. But when Caesar went in, he brutalized the people. And yes, he would crucify people right and left. It was the sign of Roman power, that’s how Rome exerted its kind of ruthless control over people. It was meant to terrify it with state-sponsored terrorism, it was the way Rome controlled.

And here’s the thing, I find it really interesting. Yes, indeed there were people in Rome that thought Caesar was ambitious, and they didn’t like that, they were very sensitive to people seizing power illegitimately. So, the crossing of the Rubicon and all of that, they were very aware of that. But listen, nobody complained that Caesar killed a million people, that didn’t bother them at all. In fact, they thought that was a side of what a great commander he was. What a great general he was. Nobody in Rome would’ve said, oh, did you hear he crucified, he crucified all these people? That didn’t bother them at all. Like the commander in that series, «Well, what’s your plan»? «Well, I’ll crucify him until I find out where the standards are». «Okay, good. Off you go».

But that’s what the cross meant, a horrific, terrifying symbol of tyrannical power. And so, if you were talking in the ancient world about the exultation of the cross, they would think you were out of your mind. That I’m afraid of the cross, yeah, I get that, that it’s the sign of Rome’s control, yeah, I get that, but I’m going to exalt it, and I’m going to put gold on it, I’m going to use it as a focus for my prayer? Okay. With all that in mind, we have to remember now, how strange was the emergence of Christianity. The first Christians come forth not denying the cross of Jesus, that’s how Jesus died, he died on one of those Roman crosses, nailed to it mercilessly, left to the elements, to writhe in pain, slowly bleeding to death and asphyxiating.

In most Roman crucifixions, people were just left on the cross for the birds of the air and the animals. In Jesus' case, because the Sabbath was coming, they took him down. But that’s how he died, as one more victim of this horrific tyranny. The first Christians, they don’t hide it, they don’t pretend, oh, he died some other way, or somehow he avoided it. No, no. Paul says, «I know one thing, Christ and him crucified». They preach a Mashiach of Israel, a messiah, an anointed, the anointed was to be the king of Israel. Yes, indeed. And the clearest indication possible that you were not the Mashiach would’ve been your death at the hands of Israel’s enemies, that was the best sign possible. But yet, they announce him, they announce the crucified Lord.

How do we begin to explain this? It seems to me everybody, and I’m speaking here, not simply as a theologian, I’m trying to speak just as an historian. How do you explain the emergence of Christianity? Apart from the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Apart from an act that was so staggering that it conquered and mocked even this most brutal sign of tyranny and power and cruelty and violence. That’s how. Again, I’m speaking as an historian. How do you explain the emergence of Christianity, and these men going to their deaths proclaiming Jesus as Lord? It’s only the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Now, as we look upon the exalted cross, as we look at it in light of the resurrection, what do we see? Well, we see a world turned absolutely upside down. Now, let me share something with you, and I get this from Tom Holland, the historian. So, I mentioned how Caesar conquers Gaul and kills a million people, his ambition bothered Romans, but the genocide of a million people, that didn’t bother the Romans. His crucifixion, that didn’t bother the Romans. Why everybody, why today? If someone commits a genocide on that scale, we would say he’s a moral reprobate. We’d say he’s a monster. Indeed, we have examples, sadly in the recent times of people doing just that. And we say with complete confidence, what horrible people they are.

Why do we say that? Not because somehow, oh yeah, everyone’s always said that, they didn’t. They didn’t always say it. What happened was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which showed God is not on the side of the tyrants, and the murderers, and those who assert themselves through violence, but rather God is on the side of the victim of these things. Look now at this second reading for today, which is from one of the great texts in the New Testament. It’s from the second chapter of Paul to the Philippians.

Listen. «Christ Jesus…» Yesus Christos there, Yeshua Mashiach, Jesus the Messiah, and all that irony is there now, that Jesus, the crucified one, is the Mashiach. «Christ Jesus. Though he was in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped». Mind you, who did deem equality with God something to be grasped? Adam, that’s the original sin. Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Oh, the devil says, he knows if you eat that, you’ll be like him, knowing good and evil. Adam, the nature of sin is to grasp at divinity. Well, Jesus, who really is God, doesn’t deem equality with God a thing to be grasped, rather what? He emptied himself and took the form of a slave.

Now, Roman society, a slave, nobody, at the bottom. Slave, if you kill the slave, nobody would care, that’s your prerogative. You abuse a slave in every possible way, that’s your prerogative. But see, God takes the form of a slave, coming in human likeness, humbled himself. Listen now, «Becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross».

Everything I’ve said about the cross now is contained in that little line. And Saint Paul, who grew up in that Roman culture, he knew it very well. Sin is the human tendency to exalt itself. How’s it answered by a divine condescension that goes down? We aggrandize ourselves, God empties himself. We always try to get to the top of society, whatever that means, God willingly goes all the way down into death, even death on a cross. Now, listen, «Because of this, God exalted him and bestowed upon him the name above every other name».

Here’s the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But let me just stay for a minute with the dissent. If you want to really help a child who’s misbehaving, you can say from a distance you’re wrong, and you can name the problem, and you can send a punishment, is that going to help the kid? What’s going to help the kid is if you crouch down and try to enter as much as possible into that child’s world, and to remake the child, as it were, from the inside. You’ve entered into his world, you’ve gone down into it.

If you want to fix a car, you’re not going to say, hey, that car isn’t working. Well, I could do that from the outside. You want to fix it? You got to go all the way down into the car, open the hood, go under the car, get your hands into it, only then will you be able to fix it. So, you want to fix the human race, which is dysfunctional, and which is beautifully in all of its cruelty and violence. If you want to fix that, where do you have to go? You have to go all the way down. He accepted even death, death on a cross.

Can you see the cross, everybody, as God’s descent into the very thing that is most wrong with us? It’s his descent into our cruelty, and hatred, and violence, and then it’s a remaking of it from the inside. Jesus word of forgiveness from the cross means that God’s love is more powerful than anything that’s in the world, and therefore, that cross becomes the beginning of our salvation. That cross, which was the low point in Roman society, is now exalted. There’s our feast. The exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Now, we do indeed put gold on it, we put filigree around it, we do indeed put it in chapels, and make it a focus of prayer, because on that cross, God went all the way down to fix from the inside all that’s dysfunctional in us. And that’s why we can say with Paul, I know one thing, «Christ and him crucified». And God bless you.