The Witness: The Cross and Empire

The Cross and Empire
By Michael Hopkins
Monday, March 14, 2005

Lectionary Reflections for Passion/Palm Sunday (A)

Readings for Passion/Palm Sunday, Year A, Mar. 20, 2005

Liturgy of the Palms

Matthew 21:1-11
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Liturgy of the Word
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 26:14-27:66 or
Matthew 27:11-54

What if Constantine misunderstood the sign and, instead of painting the cross on his soldiers' armor, it was intended that he etch it on his own heart?

There is always a temptation not to preach on Palm Sunday at all. "The liturgy is its own sermon," some say. Yes, it is, but, in many ways, it is a sermon too subtle for most of us to get, and easy for us to manipulate with our own pious assumptions about what this story is about. And besides, the times demand an age-old choice for Christians to make, and we need to be equipped to make it.

"Sir, we would see Jesus," some Greeks asked the disciples (John 12:20). The missing word is, of course, "today." We want to see Jesus now. And Jesus wants to be seen now. If the cross is an eternal event, what does it mean today?

Today, for instance, in the new age of American empire. It has been an astounding thing to be witness to the resuscitation of this word as a potentially positive state of affairs since September 11, 2001. It is a measure, of course, of how frightened we are by the disorder of terrorism come home that we will embrace a vision of Pax Americana, an enforced "freedom" on the world, achieved, we are led to believe, by the identification and eradication of the evil ones among us. And this by an administration that is completely at ease with the language of Christianity.

We've been here before, many times since Constantine saw the vision of a cross and heard a voice tell him, "In this sign conquer." But what if he misunderstood the sign and, instead of painting the cross on his soldiers' armor, it was intended that he etch it on his own heart? If so, it was a fateful misunderstanding that turned the cross into a symbol of triumph. One wonders if we would wear crosses around our necks, place them at the front of our churches, and follow them in grand processions, were it not for this misunderstanding.

We are obsessed by sin, and our easy categories of good and evil, an obsession Jesus did not share. It was suffering and injustice -- and the greed and grasping at power that caused it -- that obsessed Jesus.

What if the cross were not a symbol of triumph, but of judgment against all victimization, cruelty, and injustice? What if the victory of the cross were only the victory of faith, hope, and love over fear, despair, and hate in the human heart? And the great, eternal sign that this victory cannot be won by violence, that all violence is to our shame whether it be put to use for "good" or for "evil"?

We are obsessed by sin and by our easy categories of good and evil, an obsession Jesus did not share. It was suffering and injustice -- and the greed and grasping at power that caused it -- that obsessed Jesus. If Jesus' message had been primarily about saving people from sin, he never would have been crucified, because he never would have appeared on the religious and political authorities' radar screens. That he was a threat to their empire -- the control of people's lives feeding their own greed and power (not to mention their own version of the order of "good and evil") -- was the reason he was killed.

The church's capitulation to the empire after Constantine's "vision" had at least a great deal to do with its own self-protection. Christians were weary of being constantly in danger. It was an impulse entirely contrary to Jesus' own. In these days of a new re-formation of empire, Christians have a similar choice: capitulate and be protected (and even flourish) or oppose and be in danger (and even risk losing life)?

Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.

The Rev. Michael W. Hopkins is rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene in Rochester, N.Y. He is past president of Integrity USA, and is a contributing editor to The Witness. Michael may be reached by email at MWHopkins@rochester.rr.com.