Where is the cross?

Growing up in the Presbyterian church, I never saw crucifixes: our crosses were always empty. I was told this was because the emphasis of our faith was on Jesus' resurrection and our opportunity to be born again -- that through him we would have eternal life -- and that the Catholic fixation on crucifixes was because they wished to emphasize that Jesus died for us and our sins.

I don't actually know if this is the reasoning -- feel free to tell me if I'm wrong -- but, whatever the theology, Italian churches are full of crucifixes. Sometimes, if cameras were allowed, I photographed them; sometimes I didn't and I'm not sure why I did or didn't. I do know they had an iconic quality that resonated with me far more than the empty crosses do. But that could be because, as an artist, I am always intrigued by the human figure.

At this point in my life as a Christian, I can look back and see that there have been times when both concepts -- the hope of eternal life, and the death for our sins -- have been a very important part of my faith. But in extreme conversion moments (I confess I have had at least three of those) it was the image of Christ on the cross that impacted me most intensely.

I am still reviewing my notes from my brief time on retreat last week, and I noticed yesterday that I had written down this interesting and probably controversial remark: "Christ's mission was not to die for our sins, but to restore God consciousness." Speculating on that statement this morning, I decided to go back and look through my crucifixion images from Italy, and I found this one.

I don't believe I realized when I shot this (painted on the wall of a cloister in Naples) that it isn't actually a crucifix. It's a very unusual (to me, anyway) image of God holding the crucified Jesus on his lap; the cross is just a decoration on God's gown.

Which creates an interesting tension for me. On the one hand, God is tenderly supporting Christ. But at the same time, he is not hugging, protecting or cradling him, but rather holding him in this exceedingly vulnerable position. It's almost as if the artist is saying, not just that God sent his son to die for us, but that all the pain that happens to us is acceptable to God, a part of the fabric of life, even as he supports us through it.

The Presbyterian in me -- having grown up with the idea of predestination -- is actually quite comfortable with that thought, though the image itself is very different from the empty crosses of my youth. But the person I am now, at this point in my spiritual life, is trying to reconcile that concept with my learnings from Jesus' sayings in the Gospel of Thomas; the sayings which are so much more about how we can choose to live our lives than they are about our sinfulness.

But of course, the more aware we become of what we could be, and are called to be, and what a godly life might look like, the more aware we become of the ways we fail to live up to that -- which can make us feel extremely vulnerable and exposed.

It is at those moments that it seems to be most important to understand God's intense love for us, and God's acceptance of us, so that instead of running and hiding, curling up in a ball, masking, developing addictive behaviors -- all the ways we try to protect ourselves from awareness of our weaknesses -- we might stay with the pain of self-awareness and love ourselves through to the other side, where we, too, can develop a Christlike compassion for the rest of God's creation, and say, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

It's almost as if that statement that Jesus made from the cross is saying that it's not the sin that's the problem; it's the not-knowing that is really the issue. And doesn't the knowing emerge as we become more God-conscious? So perhaps Christ was attempting to save us from sin BY raising our God-consciousness. But of course having to face the knowing is so terrifying that people... well.. the phrase "shoot the messenger" comes to mind.

And maybe the artist's point is to remind us that it is WE who construct the actual cross and engineer the crucifixion? But that would be almost a Buddhist remark -- rather like the statement that pain is inevitable, but suffering is not; it is we and our thought patterns and behaviors that generate suffering.

Hmm. I think there are more questions than answers here. What an intriguing image this is...