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The crucifixion
Cally Hammond on the last sorrowful mystery
 For our sins: Jesus Dies on the Cross by Iain McKillop from a new series of Stations for St John’s, Bury St Edmunds. See the Arts page |
| The meaning of the crucifixion is more in the stillness and solitude than in the words or actions of the scene. Here, at last, Jesus goes where, even in our imagination, we cannot journey with him.
The agony of indecision, the dread of punishment, the imprint of cruelty, the weight of burdens to be carried — this we can to some extent understand, and can sympathise with. But the crucifixion draws us out of the realm of understanding and into that of the divine mystery of love. We can gaze and gaze, but we cannot follow.
All my adult life I have trusted in the power of the cross, and believed in the saving blood of Christ. But what does it mean? Atonement theories (the quest for the meaning of the crucifixion) go to the heart of the relationship between God and his creation. They tackle the ultimate questions: What went wrong between God and humankind? What did Jesus do to set that right again?
To recap: everything the first Christians believed about Jesus was grounded in the fact of the resurrection, which they themselves had witnessed. When they began to work through its implications, their ideas of what the resurrection revealed about God, and Jesus, and themselves developed in two directions.
On the one hand, they grew into belief in the incarnation — God entering into human flesh, to make humanity divine. On the other, they were led to an understanding of the cross as the means of reconciliation and salvation — in other words, “atonement”.
So, whatever they thought the crucifixion might mean, however they tried to understand it, those first Christians came to see that it had to relate to the incarnation. This is certainly Paul’s view, most clearly expressed in 2 Corinthians 5.19: “God was in Christ [incarnation] reconciling the world to himself [atonement].” So, on one level, the atonement is something which happens within God.
Paul said nearly two millennia ago that the message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1.18). And that has not changed. Without the eye of faith, the Passion is a beautiful, inspiring story — but only a story.
For those blessed with faith, the Passion is infinitely more than a story. To the eye of faith, the Passion discloses the nature and truth of God, and it does so in terms of an atoning sacrifice.
It shows us the truth of the incarnation at work in human history — in Christ, God became human to make humanity divine. And it shows us the truth of the atonement — that Christ bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, might live to righteousness (1 Peter 2.24).
The Passion, therefore, acts as a commentary on the resurrection, making sense of the miracle of miracles. The Passion story ends with the resurrection: with new life and with a new beginning.
A prayer on the mystery of the crucifixion
God our Father,
standing at the foot of the cross
I look upon my crucified Lord.
In his Passion, help me to see the image of your love,
and so to offer my life in gratitude,
and in faithful trust that your service is perfect freedom,
through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This is an edited extract from Passionate Christianity: A journey to the cross by Cally Hammond (SPCK, £6.99 (CT Bookshop £6.30); 978-0-281-05882-2).
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