The Church Of The Holy Rood -- Wool, Dorset, U.K.
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The Church Of The Holy Rood -- Wool, Dorset, U.K.
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LOOKING AT CHRIST AND HIS CROSS What kind of picture springs to mind when someone mentions Jesus Christ? Is he the good shepherd, the son of man, Jesus the liberator, Christ the king, the man of sorrows, Jesus the good teacher? The list could go on. Throughout the ages different images of Christ have resonated with people according to their time, culture and personal circumstances. This struck me very strongly recently as I read an Anglo-Saxon poem dating back to the eighth century called “The Dream of the Rood”. The religious controversies of the day meant any representation of harm done to the Saviour could be seen as heresy. Christ, then, is portrayed as an athletic hero, typical of the heroic Norse poetry of the time. In this genre, the hero’s sword assumes a life of its own, duty-bound to fight its owner’s enemies directly. In the poem Christ’s cross becomes the equivalent of the hero’s sword. But there the identification with contemporary culture ends. The heroic sword, beloved of Norsemen, would have waded in and cut his master’s enemies to pieces and the cross longs to do just that. Instead, it bows to Christ’s authority and adopts his counter-cultural values: “winning victory for its Lord by fighting its own nature rather than its master’s enemies.” The cross then exhorts those who look upon Christ and the cross to proclaim a message that is unchanged by time and culture:
“ … that on the glory tree (From “A Dream of the Cross – Notes and Translation by Karl Young”) The challenge for us today is not simply to see the Christ we want to see, who reflects our own needs and times, but to embrace his message which is counter-cultural and unchanging, and leads us to new life. May you encounter Christ and his cross in all their richness and life-giving truth this Easter.
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