Why I Wear the Crucifix

Sep 30 | Why I Wear the Crucifix

This piece was originally posted as a thread on Twitter, September 28th 2017.

Interesting thought process today on the bus. I was in collar and a dude asked me what I thought Jesus would think about crucifixes.

I asked him what he meant and he said, “Do you think he would approve of people wearing them?”

He sort of laughed in this incredibly condescending way, and said, “I’m pretty sure I know.” O RLY PLZ SHARE.

“He would think they were evil and [people] who wore them were evil.” Essentially because they glorify a sick act of violence.

Before you ask, yes of course he was white. What else would he be?

And me being me, obviously I didn’t think of a response until after he’d already exited the bus, besides, “There’s empty ones, you know.”

It was only later that I thought to say (to myself, lol) that when you have a religious relationship with Jesus, he’s not just some dude.

Yes, he was an innocent victim of violence, but he was more than that. For me, he was God made flesh. And what does a crucifix proclaim?

For me, it is not about my personal sins, or at least it’s not solely about that. It’s not even just about “the sin of the world.”

For me, the crucifix is a reminder that Jesus, God made flesh, was executed by the state.

Executed for undermining its authority. Executed for daring to place God and God’s laws above their gods and laws. Silenced for the truth.

This is a powerful message to me. It says, “Don’t put your trust in human power structures above your trust in God.”

“Don’t trust their narratives or their truths or their cosmologies over God’s. They will sell humanity out to perpetuate themselves.”

“Trust in a God that has the strength, courage, recklessness, and love to die for the truth that all are created beloved and free.”

And not only that. We live in a world governed by a justice system that is heavily broken, pitted against each other like animals.

Every day people are imprisoned: most of them black, brown, and indigenous. Every day, people are killed by cops and the state.

Think of what it means, what it proclaims, to wear the image of a victim of state violence around your neck.

To me, and to many Christians of colour, this is not an endorsement of state violence. Quite the opposite. It is an indictment. Solidarity.

It says, “God does not stand with the state, but with those whom the state deems disposable. More than that, God EMBODIES them.”

Of course I know that for some it symbolizes colonialism and oppression. And I think that fact is an outrage. We got it so wrong.

It is clear in BOTH testaments that God is about the business of justice, and demands those in power sacrifice power for their souls.

The Church has much work to do. And I commit myself to it, every day; to modelling a better faith, a better Church.

And for all this I do tend to prefer the plain cross, the one that is empty because the executed has cast off the shackles of death.

In the empty cross, state violence is shown to not have the last word, to be foolishness in the eyes of the One who has made it a mockery.

But I need the crucifix so that I will always remember that God put Godself right in the middle of the despised and condemned.

I need the crucifix because I was raised in a racist system and that system is sinful and must be killed with sunlight.

Wearing a condemned criminal around my neck reminds me that apathy, complicity, and silence are Satan’s best weapons.

And you know what? All of this would still be true for me even if I believed that Jesus was only human rather than human and divine.

Â So that’s why I choose to wear it, and why I choose to share about what it means to me.