The Meaning of the Crucifixion

Episcopal Café has a post that contain ns the question "What does the Crucifixion mean, anyway?" Ann Fontaine challenged a member of our class to come up with her own answer. I decided it was time to look at my own ideas in a way other than just turning it over in my mind and then forgetting about it.


Crucifixion was an ancient form of capital punishment; you were hung up with ropes or nails until you died and if you didn't die in a reasonable amount of time (but not too quickly), they broke your legs to help you along. It was not hidden away behind penitentiary walls with only invited guests to view the event as it is today; it was set right out in front of God and everybody as a form of warning about what happened to those convicted criminals who committed certain crimes and to serve as a form of humiliation for both criminal and family, a very bad thing in those days. It was slow, painful, public and very ugly.

I've been to some churches where the crucifixion of Jesus is the primary event, symbolized by not just a cross but the suffering, dying or dead Christ still hanging there. This represents their view of salvation, the blood sacrifice demanded by God for the redemption of the world. It represented the lamb sacrificed in the temple for the cleansing of the people, an innocent victim made to pay the ultimate price for the sins of all. They celebrate Easter is a festival of resurrection, but the emphasis is on the crucifixion, the death.

I've also been to other churches who see the crucifixion as an event for sorrow and mourning, but they look beyond Good Friday to the glory of Easter. The crucifixion was not the end of the story, just the completion of one chapter and the beginning of another.

I tend to be one of the resurrectionists. Without the crucifixion, whether it was for political reasons, substitutionary atonement required by God or both, there would have been no opportunity for a resurrection, no need for one. I mourn on Good Friday, mourn the humiliating and painful death of the man Jesus who taught love, who healed the outcasts, who exemplified what a life devoted to God and God's service looked like. Yet unlike his mother and the women at the bottom of the cross and the apostles cowering in fear and huddled in a hidden place, I know that Jesus' death was not the end. It was one subway stop short of a full run, one act short of a full play, and one period short of a full paragraph. There was more beyond what they could see and know, thanks be to God.

I look at the cross and see more than a piece of jewelry to be worn around the neck or hanging from the rear-view mirror of the car. The cross represents my belief that salvation is fully realized – salvation from sin as typified by a symbol, the cross, and salvation from death by its emptiness.  I see hope, the hope that the Gospel promises for my redemption from sin and my own rising again in glory. I see the hope that Jesus' teachings will be our guides for creating not just a promise of heaven after death but of making a new heaven here and now.

What does the crucifixion mean, really? It means hope, and in this day and age, hope means the world – really.