A Lack of Hammers--March 14, 2024

A Lack of Hammers--March 14, 2024

"It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings." [Hebrews 2:10]

What's the central symbol of the Christian faith?  That's a no-brainer, right?  The cross.  It's on top of steeples, worn on necklace chains, suspended over our worship spaces, tattooed on arms, and traced on our foreheads in water, oil, or ashes.  Even when it runs the risk of becoming reduced to a brand logo or just a bit of decoration, we are at least pretty clear about the cross as the essential symbol of our faith.

But that begs a question that I'm not sure many of us really sit with, at least beyond a surface level: Why? Why the cross? Why, of all things we could say or show about Jesus, is the cross our symbol? What does it say about Jesus that, if we've only got the chance to say or show one thing, our go-to message and insignia is the cross on which he was lynched by the Empire and the Respectable Religious people? Why not jars full of wine that had just been water a moment ago? That seems fun and would make him popular! Why not a boat and a guy walking on water? That's impressive and awe-inspiring? Why not even a silhouette of a man on a mountaintop teaching? That's biblically accurate, too, isn't it?

The answer, I am convinced, is the same thinking as this verse from Hebrews--somehow, more important than producing wine at a wedding or telling a good story, somehow more than his clever verbal sparring with the Respectable Religious Leaders and even more than a manger or a palm branch, the suffering love of Jesus is the key to who he is. The way that Jesus saves--enduring a cross, rather than being the one crucifying his enemies--is inseparable from the saving itself. The writer of Hebrews says it "was fitting," as in "in character with," or "just what you would expect, given the nature of who God is," that Jesus' way of saving the world is to give himself away in love, even enduring the shame, the pain, the torture, and the hatred that came with being lynched on a Roman death stake while pious crowds cheered at the triumph of "law and order." The cross of Jesus--as well as a whole lifetime of Jesus' choice to suffer with others who suffered, as well--says something essential about who God is, as well as what God thinks we need saving from (and what we are saved for).

Let me suggest a thought experiment for a moment to get at this idea a little better. In this day and age of countless superheroes in movies and on television, you can learn a lot about what a hero is "for," and who they are, by how they go about trying to save the day. Take Iron Man--the classic billionaire inventor Tony Stark solves problems by building new versions of his mechanized, weapon-stocked suit to defeat whatever enemy he thinks he might run across. Need to stop a flying enemy? He builds a suit that can make him fly and take the fistfight to the sky. Need to wrestle a giant opponent? He builds a Goliath-sized Hulkbuster suit of armor to fight off that enemy. Need to fight a bunch of enemies all at once? He constructs an army of remote piloted suits that can each fight his enemies in hand to hand combat. Basically, for Iron Man (and Batman isn't really different on this point, either), the problem we need saving from is various kinds of villains, and we need a technological solution to invent the right counter-weapon to stop whatever new weapon the bad guys come up with. Saving the day is about inventing new ways of punching and zapping, basically. How about the Flash? Well, to a superhero who can outrun anybody else, saving people has got to be matter of outrunning whatever the problem is--dashing in to pull someone from a burning building before it collapses, or grabbing the ray gun from the villain's hand faster than than the villain's finger can pull the trigger, or maybe even running so fast he travels through time. "Salvation," for the Flash, boils down to being faster than the danger he's rescuing people from, and his way of saving is to get people away from the threat. Hawkeye and Green Arrow are archers, so they need to find a way that shooting an arrow at something very well can solve any problem--that takes some clever writing sometimes! And Hulk? Well, you know--"Hulk smash!" right? Whatever the problem is, Hulk will just smash his way to save the day.

We could go on ad infinitum with all the pantheon of superheroes across their various multiverses, but I think you'll get the gist here. It's like the old adage says: if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you're the fast hero, you're going to look at saving the day in terms of outrunning the enemy. If you're the rich inventor, you're going to build a new weapon to stop the bad guys. If you're the archer, well, gosh-darn-it, you're gonna have to find a way that an arrow can save the day. And all of these make the assumption that the world can be saved by punching, shooting, or blasting something or someone.

But Jesus' very existence tells a different story. He's not the one with the hammer--not even Thor's. He doesn't save the day by punching, kicking, or blasting, and he doesn't seem to think that he can save us by pounding any nails, but by bearing nails instead. Jesus--and the writer of Hebrews would add that this is true about God's deepest self, too--saves by bearing the worst we can dish out, absorbing it, and breaking its power through divine self-giving, suffering love. It is "fitting," then, that God's means of salvation looks like the suffering of Jesus, both because the heart of God's own character is enduring, self-giving, suffering love, and because our deepest need isn't for someone to punch the villain but to break the very power of evil by absorbing its full fury all the way to death and rising in reconciling love out the other side.  God's way of saving involves a startling lack of hammers--only nails.

We do a great disservice to God when we talk like dominating, destroying, and plundering are in character with God's deepest heart. We end up remaking the living God in the likeness of our culture's lesser deities who need to smash or blast or punch (or inventing machines to do the same for us) in order to "save" the world. And we also show how much we misunderstand what we need to be saved "from" if we think any amount of killing, conquering, or crucifying will produce that salvation. If you're the one with the hammer thinking you can save the day by nailing something, but the problem is cardiac arrest on a person's heart, you're not going to help by breaking out your hardware. But what we have been given in Jesus is the kind of help and healing we actually need--the kind that stares our hatred and evil down with courage and then bears the worst we can do, all the way to death, and then creates a new kind of life as it embraces us and disarms us all at once.

So, why the cross, after all, instead of Peter's sword or David's slingshot or Solomon's chariots and piles of gold, as the emblem of our faith? Because in the suffering love of Jesus--love that meets us in the mess of this world and holds onto us through it--we get a glimpse of who God actually is. "Fitting," then, is an understatement--it is not merely "fitting," or even "right and salutary" to say that God saves through suffering love: it is the very heart of God's character and the clearest picture of our what we need.

Lord Jesus, let us our lives reflect the way you save, and let us speak and act in ways that witness to your enduring, self-giving, cross-shaped love.