The Text
Remember when Diddy hovered over Times Square? He was sporting a designer sweat suit from his Sean John clothing company and you knew it was 2005, but his swagger was straight out of the 1968 Summer Olympics. What was he selling? A sweat suit or black power? His hand was raised straight in the air and his fist was clenched in resemblance to the two athletes who had just won the gold and bronze medals respectively in Mexico City, Mexico that year. It was all so ironic. A hip hop icon dotting on an iconic event and people who had themselves become icons of a generation.
Maybe it was just art imitating life, but I liked the image. That didn’t stop me from considering the meaning behind the text. In fact, as I began to think about the feelings of individuals and maybe Americans in particular, I wondered what significance that image, that symbol had on people today as opposed to 1968. What association or feeling did it illicit in Africans? Soweto men, women, and children organizing in SouthAfrica had resolved to end apartheid and along with their audible voices chanting in the streets, the world had grown used to seeing the visible symbol of the clenched fist raised valiantly, powerfully in the air when there had appeared to be no power they possessed of their own. You had seen blips of an apparent life for these people. It was dehumanizing to say the least. This wasn’t Sudan, but It looked like God had grown tired of them. Ah, but the singing, the spirit of the people, and that fist were saying something different. The fist was conveying a different story…
Gold Medalist Tommie Smith and Bronze Medalist John Carlos had staged a silent protest that spoke volumes to the world when they won the men’s 200-meter race that day in 1968. The US National Anthem may have been blaring proudly in the background warming the hearts of die hard Americans, but the glory of the USA had been reviled on the world stage as well. As providence would have it, the symbol sung louder than the anthem that day. Smith and Carlos were protesting the gross injustices black Americans faced in the US.
The world was awed and whenever I view pictures of the event I share in that sense of awe, but what were they doing up there with raised fists? What did it all mean?
The Meaning Behind the Text
Smith and Carlos said alot without using words. I did a little bit of reading on the topic and I learned that not only did those men plan to wear gloves, they originally planned to each be wearing a pair of gloves and a pair of black socks! Carlos had forgotten to bring his gloves and so the third and admittedly most overlooked medalist (I’m speaking mainly of my ignorance for not knowing that Peter Norman had supported the civil rights movement and in a show of solidarity had worn the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on his track top), had suggested they share the pair of gloves. So, we have Smith with bowed head, raised right arm and clenched fist and Carlos with bowed head, raised left arm and clenched fist standing on the podium forming an arc. The right fist symbolized black power and the left, black unity. Together the arc represented black power and unity. The black socks illustrated black poverty. So, that’s what that meant? I thought. Shut my mouth wide open!
Subverting Culture with the Truth behind the Text
The blood that Jesus shed for me, way back on Calvary, the blood that gives me strength from day to day it will never lose its power. It reaches to the highest mountain, it flows to the lowest valley
Cross. In case, you missed it ‘Cross’ follows the ellipsis on my title. The Old Rugged Cross. This whole exercise was hardly an attempt at a history lesson, because as much as I love it, I know that there are many who are far more capable and patient enough to write about it than I.
This is my attempt at subverting culture. This is where I get to ask myself and you nagging questions about the symbol of the Christian community. Like, is there a symbol that can define the church movement (Christians) and what does it say?
At the expense of losing the attention of those reading, I’ll spare you the suspense. If the clenched fist meant something to the generation pass and hopefully means something more than Diddycan communicate in an ad campaign for Sean John, then I am hopeful that Christians will continue to regard the Cross with all the meaning it had when Christ suffered and died on it way back on Calvary.
One guy told me that the Crucifix he wore on his neck meant nothing to him. He was emphatic about this, to the point of disgust. I was perplexed that someone would pay so much money for something they could care less about, but he explained, “this is jewelry.” Okay, I thought. He pushed further about the lies of Christianity, said something about the white man I’m sure and urged me to read all about the Ausarian something or other.
Clearly, this guy has no love for the Cross as symbol for a greater reality, but then again, I don’t think he’s alone either. I think that as quiet as it’s kept, some Christians feel no connection to the Cross either. Throughout my years as a believer I could describe the reaction of several Christians when it came to the symbol: remember those old vampire movies where some Hollywood director would manipulate the camera so that all you saw were the vampires bulging eyes and heard his heidous screams? It’s a vague recollection for me, but I’m sure he was running from garlic or the cross (or both)!
I’ve managed to harbor my own form of skepticism when it comes to this topic too – hey, I attended Catholic Schools for the majority of my life.
I [went] to St. John’s University/And since kinde-garten I acquired the knowledge/And after 12th grade I went straight to college
I digress, but I really did go to St. John’s back in the days when they were still calling the basketball team “The Redmen.” Praise God for cultural sensitivity. Anyway, I was baptised or sprinkled with water and received my Confirmation at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Harlem. I say all this to say that crucifixes and crosses kind of make me uneasy too. However, I am contending for the right use of the cross in the believers life not an abuse of the symbol (or of art for some).
The Cross is the venerable symbol of the Christian faith and what it communicates to the Christian and to the non believer are totally different, but to be sure, it is much more than jewelry.
Here is the Lord bringing his humiliation to a finale. He had begun by being born of a woman and then found in of all places, a manger because there was no room for him in the Inn. Now would he being Lord and Sovereign submit to the torturous instrument of human death? From a feeding troth to a human torture device. There is something so human about dying on a cross as the Romans typically punished men this way and yet there is something so inhumane about a baby being placed in a manger. And of all babies, the Lord? How egregious.
The carrying of his cross is the living illustration of him setting his face like flint and embracing the cup of the Father’s wrath, (Luke 9:51-56). To the Christian, the cross is more than place where our sovereign Lord died in our place. It was there that he bore physical pain and death, (Mark 15:16-20) bore the sin of many, (Isaiah 53:12; Mark 14:24, 34) was deprived of the intimacy he shared with the Father, (Mark 15:34) and in bearing the wrath of God became our propitiation. Grudem’s Systematic Theology talks about propitiation in this way, “a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath to the end and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor.” Praise God, it is the place where he made all things new.
Christians continue to carry the Cross and tred hard steps on the road to Calvary. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it,” (Luke 9: 23-24). John Piper talked about the idea behind Jesus’ words here,
“When Jesus set his face to walk the Calvary road, he was not merely taking our place; he was setting our pattern. He is substitute and pacesetter. If we seek to secure our life through returning evil for evil or surrounding ourselves with luxury in the face of human need, we will lose our life. We can save our life only if we follow Christ on the Calvary road. Jesus died to save us from the power and punishment of sin, not from the suffering and sacrifices of simplicity for love’s sake.”
Read the whole sermon, http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/1982/339_He_Set_His_Face_to_Go_to_Jerusalem/
To the unbelieving sinner, the Bible says it all, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God”, (1 Corinthians 1:18).
But the glory of the Cross and the gospel is summed up in 2 Corinthians 14-17, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.”
This is the joy of the believer and the hope that Christ provided for sinners who would believe in his name. I’m loving the Cross of Christ because it never loses its power or relevancy in a sinful world. It may be old and it may be rugged, but not even Jacob the jeweler can out shine the light that the cross brings.
banging!!