A Transformed Symbol

It really wasn’t the stories and parables Jesus told that undermined the Roman Empire. Infuriated, maybe, but not undermined. And it wasn’t the miracles or healings. Those things got the Roman Emperor’s attention. But it was reported that other healers roamed the countryside. No, Jesus beat them at their own game. He disarmed the Empire’s greatest weapon. He brought power against power and his was stronger. The most terrifying instrument the Romans possessed was the cross, on which thousands of people lost their lives. These death instruments lined the Roman roads as a reminder to the average citizen to behave and do exactly as the Romans ordered. What better slap in the face than for Jesus to show the Romans how impotent they were, that their hold of terror had been broken. Jesus trusted himself and his God and he broke a Roman cross like a twig. He said that an alternative Kingdom existed, what he called The Kingdom of God, and he proved it. Life to death to life. Along the Via Dolorosa, up the hill, on the cross, in the tomb…and then the revealing of life in a way unimaginable. Resurrected life.

For the Romans, crosses were the end of the line. For Jesus, the cross was a vehicle to victory for a new way of being. He gave himself to a power greater than himself. And the world has never been the same since. Thanks be to God for life. We are people of a new Kingdom, but it doesn’t belong to the Romans.