A Reflection on the Cross as We Enter Holy Week

In the days when our Lord walked among us, crucifixion was an instrument of torture designed to cause fear in a subjected people and therefore reserved for foreigners, non-citizens, and slaves.  A Roman citizen could never be crucified even for a capital offense.  A slave could be crucified for the slightest of offenses.

In a world of secular iniquities and religious purity and impurities, of clean and unclean, the stripping of the clothes was part of a shaming process.  Crucifixion with shaming was designed to crush the victim both physically and emotionally.

Jesus Christ was made vulnerable for our sake, exposed to the elements, humiliated in body and soul, and hung at the city's gates for all to see.

There are two events in life where the vulnerability and humiliation of nakedness (or the stripping of clothes) force themselves upon the psyche.  The first is happy.  The second is deeply sorrowful.

The first is childbirth.  Here for a woman the experiences of vulnerability, openness, breathlessness of painful labor, indignity of nakedness, blood, and fluid lead to the great joy of giving birth, of holding and cradling a newborn child.

The second is death.  Standing helpless and watching a loved one die, the breathing is difficult and the mind is afflicted by racing thoughts of fear, grief, and sorrow all mixed together, assaulting every sense of being, and penetrating deep into the soul.  Why Lord?  Why?

Yet, even here in the emptiness, hope makes known its presence.  Somewhere in the midst of this pain, there is an experience of presence, a feeling perhaps that we are not alone.  In the center of pain, there is a reassurance that love never dies, that all will be again as it should, that our lives have meaning and purpose, that death is a labor into life, and that this too will pass into the eternal happiness of life forever.

You, Lord are the resurrection and the life.

Written by Ellen Ward and read masterfully by Carol Fedewa for the Stations of the Cross, April 11.