What's with all the crucifixes?

Before I left the States I was having dinner with Matt and Liz, two friends who run the progressive Christian blog www,saltproject.org, and I asked for some advice.

I knew we would be in a lot of churches and we’d be seeing a lot of crucifixes and pietas. Not just bare wooden crosses, but dead, wounded Jesuses lit for effect.

How might I think about this image?

How might I explain it to my daughter? ...and how to compare it to the iconic image of the Buddha sitting in meditation which is the primary religious image Willa Marie has grown up with?

Their answer was helpful. It didn’t touch on the question of Christ dying for humanity’s sins but on hope.

Violence, terrible violence, occurs every day. Christ on the cross brings that reality - humanity’s worst acts of violence - into places of worship.

In church after church, museum after museum, we see mothers and friends grieving; a son and a leader taken from them by state-sanctioned violence.

People gather and grieve and lay him across their lap showing the world this beautiful boy’s limp and tortured body.

And god is there. And in that ending a beginning. In that moment of total despair hope arises, light shines. A movement begins and an empire changes and then it falls.

Out of darkness, light. Out of despair, hope. Out of violence, peace.

It’s a different, and for me, very helpful way to see the image.

Of course, it is not lost on me that since the crucifixion elements of the Christian church have been behind some of the most egregious forms of state sponsored violence in history.

But I’m indebted to Matt and Liz for helping me be lifted up, rather dragged down, again and again as we've walked into churches and seen crucifix after crucifix.

- david