Ashamed

Holy Cross Day, Part One

All who were incensed against him shall come to him and be ashamed.

— Isaiah 45

...when he comes to judge the earth.

— Psalm 98

There is an uncomfortable word in today's reading from Isaiah.

Ashamed.

Those who were incensed against God, Isaiah tells us, will one day come to Him and be ashamed. For some readers, that may sound like one more example of an angry God enjoying the humiliation of His enemies. See? There it is again. In the end God gets to be right, everybody who opposed Him gets to squirm, and apparently He enjoys watching it happen.

But Isaiah doesn't say that. He simply says they will be ashamed.

We know something about shame. Most of us have blushed. Most of us have been absolutely certain about something, only to discover that we were wrong. Maybe somebody produces an old photograph of us doing something ridiculous when we were young. We laugh, perhaps, but we also wince. Oh my goodness. I did that? Nobody has to punish us for the embarrassment. Nobody has to stand over us and enjoy it. We simply see something now that we could not—or would not—see then.

Perhaps that gives us a way to hear Isaiah. God does not have to manufacture our shame. Sometimes shame is simply what happens when reality becomes undeniable and we finally see ourselves within it.

Psalm 98 places the thought against an even larger horizon. The Lord comes “to judge the earth.” Christians have traditionally connected such language with the return of Christ, resurrection and judgment, although human beings have accumulated plenty of legend and speculation around what the end of this age will actually look like. Even science gives us no reason to suppose that the universe as we presently experience it simply continues unchanged forever. And on a much smaller scale, every one of us already knows that our own earthly life has an endpoint.

Eventually, something comes next.

If the Christian hope is true—if death really is defeated, if resurrection is real, if Christ really does lead us into an age and a life beyond anything we can presently imagine—then surely there will be moments of recognition. Things we dismissed will look different. Things we considered terribly important may look foolish. Things we laughed at may turn out to have mattered enormously.

Yes, there may be shame.

But before Christians become too comfortable imagining somebody else's embarrassment, Isaiah's word needs to turn around and look at us. What will I be ashamed of when everything is finally brought into the light? Perhaps I will discover that I was right about some doctrine and terribly wrong about a person God loved. Perhaps I'll see how often I confused my opinions with God's will, or how easily I reduced another human being to a label. Maybe I'll remember an opportunity to forgive when I preferred to keep the ledger. When everything becomes clear, surely unbelievers won't be the only people with reasons to blush.

And all of this brings us, appropriately enough, to Holy Cross Day.

September 14 has been observed by Christians for centuries as a day associated with the Cross. Its September date does not correspond to another event in the chronology of Jesus' earthly life. Rather, it grew from the dedication in Jerusalem in the fourth century of the great church complex built at the traditional places of Christ's crucifixion and burial, together with the ancient tradition surrounding the discovery of the Cross by Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine. This year September 14 happens to fall on Monday. The date remains September 14 as the weekday changes from year to year.

That gives Holy Cross Day a different character from Good Friday. On Good Friday we encounter the Cross as part of the unfolding story of Jesus' suffering and death. Months later, Holy Cross Day allows us to look back at that same Cross from the other side of Easter and consider what it became.

And there is our great reversal.

The Cross was designed to produce shame.

Crucifixion wasn't merely intended to kill. It exposed and humiliated. A condemned person was displayed publicly as someone defeated, disgraced and powerless. To those who watched Jesus die, the verdict must have appeared obvious. Whatever this man had claimed, Rome had supplied the final answer.

Then came Easter.

Christians began doing something astonishing. They took an object associated with humiliation and displayed it proudly. They placed it on churches. They carried it in procession. They wore it around their necks. What had announced defeat became an emblem of victory. What had proclaimed death became inseparable from the promise of life.

Perhaps Holy Cross Day therefore gives us a particularly good warning about deciding too quickly who ought to be ashamed.

Human beings looked at the Cross and saw a disgraced man.

God apparently saw something else.

So when Isaiah tells us that those incensed against God will someday be ashamed, I don't hear God gloating over a collection of humiliated enemies. I hear the possibility of that enormous moment when appearances finally fall away. We see God clearly. We see Christ clearly. We see other people clearly.

And perhaps most uncomfortably, we see ourselves clearly.

Psalm 98 says that when the Lord comes to judge the earth, creation rejoices. The sea roars. The rivers clap their hands. The hills sing together for joy. Judgment, in that Psalm, isn't merely something terrifying that happens to bad people. It means that what has been crooked will finally be made right.

Holy Cross Day reminds us just how dramatically God can overturn our judgments about what is crooked and what is right, what is defeat and what is victory, and even who should be ashamed.

Once, people looked at Christ upon a Cross and thought they knew the answer.

Then God turned the whole thing around.

Reflectionary is an ongoing conversation with Scripture. If these reflections are meaningful to you, please subscribe and come back often. And by all means, join the conversation—your questions, disagreements, insights and reflections are always welcome.