The Perpetual Relevance of (and Resistance to) the Cross

“The cross is relentlessly a scandal for Christian faith.  Because the event of the cross is a dynamic phenomenon in the memory, narrative, and life of the church, the exact ‘bite’ of the cross for faith is not static or stable.  It is a memory that insists on beginning present reality; it is a concrete event that restlessly becomes paradigmatic in various contexts and circumstances of the life of the church.  For that reason, its claim, power, and threat must repeatedly be reasserted and rearticulated…Our North American dominant cultural values are massively resistant to a theology of the cross, precisely because the cross places suffering at the heart of God’s character and at the heart of meaningful, faithful human life.  Cultural resistance to meaningful suffering has as its counterpart theological resistance to the cross that issues either in resistant disregard or in resistant distortion and trivialization.” (Walter Brueggemann, “Foreword” to Charles B. Cousar, A Theology of the Cross: The Death of Jesus in the Pauline Letters)

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