In the Cross we rediscover the grace to rise up and ask, “How am I avoiding Christlike humiliation, suffering, and rejection? How am I rejecting, humiliating, and causing suffering for others? What in me must be confessed and crucified so that Christ may live through me?”ĭaniel Harrell is editor in chief of Christianity Today.In addition to symbols of white supremacy, many of the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. The liturgy of penitence-“pride, hypocrisy, our self-indulgent appetites and ways, our exploitation of other people”-feels more real with all that has happened this past year. Lent commenced on Ash Wednesday with a call to confess and be crucified. True for Christians of color, but true for white Christians too. The Cross bears its strange fruit in an inexplicable capacity to rise above hatred, prejudice, and injustice with genuine love and joy. This is not “liberal” Christianity this is biblical Christianity. To be chosen, in this perspective, means joining company not with the powerful and the rich but with those who suffer. The lives of his disciples have been signed with that cross. Chosenness, as reflected in the life of Jesus, led to a cross. Divine election brings not preeminence, elevation, and glory, but-as black Christians know all too well-humiliation, suffering, and rejection. Raboteau rightly noted:Īfrican-American Christians perceived in American exceptionalism a dangerous tendency to turn the nation into an idol and Christianity into a clan religion. Suffering-servant Christianity has stood as a prophetic condemnation of America’s fixation with power. Jesus came to earth as the Suffering Servant. Nonwhite Christians, historically bereft of power and abused by it, embrace a Cross that has always meant victory through death, be that dying to old sinful selves, for the sake of righteousness, or as the extreme expression of love. They downplay, and even scorn, the Cross that crucifies our ongoing failures and refusals to love sacrificially as Christ loved us (John 15:12–13). But this is a difficult teaching for Christians accustomed to power, many of whom embrace the victorious Cross as validation. The only cure is crucifixion-the reason Jesus calls us to carry our own crosses and the reality experienced by Paul (Gal. And once we stop needing grace, we stop giving it too. Formerly sinners humbled by grace, we easily warp into do-it-yourself saints who don’t need grace anymore. But hiding and gilding only give church leaders center stage, all polished and proud, and confuse fame and fortune for righteousness. Other churches gild crosses to showcase the prosperous Christian life. Contemporary churches hide crosses out of concern for offense or irrelevancy. Throughout history, we’ve misused the cross to sanction hostility toward perceived enemies and others, from the Crusades to Jim Crow and the Klan, to the Capitol steps this January. But victory has been swallowed up by those who distort the cross as a symbol of conquest. At the same time, the Cross that assures our salvation continually indicts us for our failures, forcing us to return and rely on the grace it provides. The Cross serves as a shot in the arm, injecting us with courage and conviction to live lives of goodness, compassion, sacrifice, and love. “We are those who have died to sin how can we live in it any longer?” (Rom. Grace is less a goal of the gospel than a goad to spur us on toward cross-shaped obedience. The Cross that assures our salvation continually indicts us for our failures, forcing us to return and rely on the grace it provides. To participate in Christ’s resurrection requires we share in his sufferings and become like him in his death (Phil. Crosses must still be carried (Mark 8:34). But our sure salvation in Christ is not permission to do as we please. Protestants note how our crosses hang vacant to signify God’s finished work and final victory. In our anxiety, we can bypass the Cross in a rush toward resurrection. They present a pernicious enticement to Christians who eschew the Cross. These words denote the exploitation of power and its destruction of deeply held values in our country. This year, Lent calls our attention to specific sins such as nationalism, supremacy, conspiracy, and celebrity. Lent draws us nearer to the Cross with practices like self-examination and repentance. In the shadow of two million coronavirus deaths worldwide (and counting) and the reverberations of an angst-ridden election and insurrection, self-examination and repentance prove essential this Lent, even for Christians who don’t observe it.
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