What has Christ got to do with It?

I feel like I have been confronted by three critical issues this week: domestic violence, the Royal Commission and Knox Grammar, and the fate awaiting Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan.

(I am aware that I first wanted to use language like words like “assaulted” and “hammered”, rather than “confronted”. I wonder how much I use language like that, when people who hear me are facing physical assault as a normal, abhorrent part of their daily life).

One of the consequences of our new electronic age appears to be that everything can be in front of us, all this time. Escape can seem improbable, and sometimes impossible, as the faces and stories confront us at every turn.

It’s been outside my usual experience to hear so much about it in community conversations. At the blood bank, hairdresser, morning tea with friends, even at the airport on Tuesday with the television muttering in the background as the sun rises. People have an opinion and are alternately appalled, or angry, or indignant, but the central pieces seem to be about the victims.

What about the people whose lives are ruined by those drugs? Look at the drug crisis in Indonesia… Isn’t Rosie Batty wonderful? We need to have more safe places for those women and children. Why does the victim have to leave the home? … He was more concerned about the school’s reputation than the boys. Why wasn’t more done to keep them safe?

This week’s reading talks about God’s foolishness and wisdom, all revealed in the cross. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Perhaps, in the darkness of this week’s news, two candles are unwavering. The crucified God is a victim and identifies with all those who are victims – those impaled on drugs, those hammered by domestic violence, those punished by abusers. For each and every victim, Jesus is with them. This can sound glib when said too quickly or easily, but it is the heart of God’s act in Jesus. Jesus’ death is not the end, nor is suffering the final word for these victims. That God is with them means that new life is God’s gift – healing, hope, resurrection.

The other candle is that the crucified Jesus confronts those who make the victims. By accepting their violence, Jesus, in God’s most scandalous act, offers to save them too. Violence and abuse is abhorrent in all its forms and yet Jesus still dies for those who are its perpetrators.

Resurrection is not selective – God wishes to restore the creation, not just the people we like. Madness and a scandal indeed.

As we walk toward the cross, remember the foolishness of our God – for all of us.