Making sense of the crucifixion (11.23.25)

Luke 23:33-43

Deep in the heart of Cologne, Germany there is an enormous gothic cathedral. In it, there is a side chapel with a large crucifix carved out of a single oak block that is about six feet tall.  The crucifix is surrounded with an oval of gold with sun rays shimmering outward.  In the center, Jesus hangs on the cross, his head lifeless, eyes closed.  The crucifix is estimated to have been carved around the year 970. I was struck that this tree was carved out of oak—and by who felled those oaks. In the years around 750-800, King Charlemagne, waged a brutal war in the expansion of the Frankish territory into northeast into Saxony.  The city of Cologne sits in the heart of Saxony and history tells us that Charlemagne was terrorizing and cruel in this area--thousands were massacred.  In his war tactics, Charlemagne forced people into baptism by the sword. He outlawed pagan rights, destroyed sacred groves of trees—many of them oak trees. The crucifix in the chapel, called the Gero Cross was carved out of oak and is the oldest surviving image of a dead Jesus on the cross.  As far as historians can tell, It took about 1,000 years of Christianity for Jesus to show up dead on the cross.  

We could talk for hours, (for days) about the first 1,000 years of Christianity and the images of paradise that permeated the early church:  Instead of suffering, these were images of shepherds and green pastures, starry night skies and the garden of Eden. But today, on Christ the King Sunday, we are assigned this bible reading of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus.  

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There is something about this Gero cross that I can’t shake. Christianity emerged and then grew in societies where there was a lot of economic disparity, slavery and war. This happened across the centuries and continents. People who received Christianity in the harshest ways somehow reshaped it into a source of dignity, survival and liberation. On one hand, as the religion spread in Europe, people were baptized by the sword but underneath it, a dying Jesus was hewn for a heartbroken people out of an ancient oak.

In the Americas, Native people were evangelized under the crown of Spain but later the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to beaten-down indigenous Mexicans with brown skin, speaking their native language and offering tenderness. 

These communities and peoples reinterpreted the faith forced on them.  God broke through the awful stories with this startling presence and connection.

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The whole point of crucifixion was to destroy people, to terrify them to silence the truth and suffocate their ability to tell the story of what happened.  But somewhere along the way, crucifixion began to witness to the worst a community can endure.  The story of the crucifixion said:“this awful thing happened."  The horror was palpable and yet, with fierce mercy, "God was still somehow there.”

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The good news is that God meets us exactly in the places meant to undo us.  Don’t ask me how—God’s grace is found at the end of our rope. God brings us life where none should be possible.  Through Christ, who enters the depths with us, we survive.  God’s presence enters the worst a community or a person can endure, bears it with us, mends what is broken and then ushers us into new life in an astonishing act of grace. Life is found through God’s simple presence. 

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These stories of oaks and stumps and felled trees aren’t just stories from long ago, they also echo today in our own landscape. The weather is changing and I happen to have two oak trees in my tiny yard.   We’ve planted both of them and they are growing but as the days get colder, I see them begin to lose their leaves and prepare for the winter.  My trees are young and thin, many of the branches are thinner than my wrist. In thinking about that Gero cross carved of oak in old saxony, I know that Oak trees can live to be over 1,000 years old some say even 2,000 years old.  That crucifix that was carved may have been from a tree that was quite old.  It may have come from a grove that Charlemange destroyed.  Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what I think of this: that from a felled tree came the image of a Christ who refuses to be cut down with us.

As I look at the trees in my yard I watch them shiver and transition into a colder season. In these gloomy months where the sun is dim, the branches will stop reaching. They will simply endure and wait in the winter silence. I know that all of us have lived through chilly seasons:  seasons where our emotional reserves are thin, days where the leaves fall, bark thickens, and the months of winter tic slowly by.  Some of us have tension at home or work, or we’ve received pain of crushing news. Some of us have loved ones who struggling. and some of us are simply depleted.  God doesn’t wait for the perfect conditions to show up.  God doesn’t wait for us to do our part and exert the right amount of effort. God doesn’t scan the landscape for the perfect grove of flourishing trees and decide that is the most comfortable place to be revealed.  

God arrives in the felled woods, Babe in a manger, among the stumps and jagged edges, the rings of our own histories.  In today’s reading Jeremiah speaks of a righteous branch. Isaiah also mentions a  “shoot that comes out of the stump of Jesse.”  God shows up among the toppled trees. Don’t ask me how, but God brings life from what looks like dead wood.  “Today,” Jesus says to the man on the cross next to him, “you will be with me in paradise.”  God brings relief, connection and life out of the most desolate places.  Always has.

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The story of the cross is many things.  Interestingly, the church never made some grand, over aching dogmatic declaration about what the cross means. Over the centuries, no one ever called an ecumenical council to explain the cross for us. It means a lot of things, but today, I see that it is a witness to God’s enduring presence even in the mist of the total worst a person or a people can go through.  

We’re on the cusp of Advent where we come back to this truth that God is with us. Sometimes, we need to hear the story. We need to hear the witness of where people are crucified in our world; and sometimes we need to tell it out of our own lived experiences.

As we step into Advent, (this season that is so very honest about the darkness that is around us) What are the candles that you light in the shadows--small beacons of connection that the world needs?  How do you tell the story of God with us even in the worst of times?

Maybe it’s a way you’ve shown up for someone or something.  Some of you families are managing the free little pantry—and believe me, it’s getting a lot of traction these days!  with people leaving things and taking what they need.  Each visit is a spark of life. Sometimes, the stories of God showing up are more personal: It’s the story you share about the loneliness you don’t talk about, the fear creeping under the surface that worries if everything will be okay, the anxiety around money or the future, the pressure to preform. “Today,” Jesus says to the man on the cross next to him, “you will be with me in paradise.”

Paradise doesn’t mean life without struggle, or a life free from problems where we don’t have to wrestle with injustice, suffering and evil.  One theologian writes, “Histories of harm are all around us. Forces of evil operate within and among us. And yet, bushes are on fire all around us. The risen Christ is with us on the road. The spirit rises on the wind. Rivers of paradise circle the earth… We don’t have to retrieve paradise or construct it, we have to perceive it and bring our lives and cultures into accord with it.”

“Today you will be with me in paradise” is connection with one another, it’s feeling seen, advocating for change, it’s belonging, its justice. It is that mysterious Communion of Saints that  surrounds us and God’s light present among us. 

So as Advent dawns, bring your places of weight—your weariness, your longing, your worries, your winters. God meets you there.  God holds it with you and speaks into the places meant to undo you.  God refuses to abandon you. And then open out, lift your eyes, take the anchors off your lungs because Christ is waiting for us in those crucified places in our world: Where people are cut down, pushed aside and suffering. God finds us where we are breaking, we find God where the world is breaking. And as we find each other, God connects us, mends us, enlivens us and today, even for a moment, we are with God in paradise.