The Cross, the Lynching Tree, and the End of Separation
Good Friday and the Death of “The Other”
Today is Good Friday, the day Christians around the world remember the crucifixion of Jesus. And I’ve been thinking a lot about what this day really means—not just in a theological sense, but in a deeply human one.
Because if we look closely, we’ll see that Jesus was the ultimate breaker of barriers. He didn’t just talk about love; he lived it with skin on. He touched the sick when others stepped away. He sat at tables with sinners, the despised, the “wrong” kinds of people. He healed foreigners. He praised outsiders for their faith. I could keep going.
On this day, on Good Friday, he died the death of an outcast—executed by the state, shamed, stripped, and hung between criminals for all to mock and despise.
The Cross and the Lynching Tree
I’m currently reading The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone, and it’s a humbling look at one of the darkest chapters of our country’s history in the post–Civil War South. Cone draws a hard but necessary parallel: the cross, in Jesus’ day, was the lynching tree. It was a tool of terror, meant to maintain control by publicly humiliating and erasing those seen as “other”—those seen as dangerous to the status quo.
I can’t help but think about who we “other” today and how, as a culture, we humiliate those we push to the margins. This subject is personal to me because as I look at the images of people deported into Salvadoran prisons, I notice how much they look like me.
- We other immigrants, painting them as threats rather than neighbors.
- We other political opponents, turning them into enemies instead of human beings.
- We other those who don’t fit neatly into our religious boxes, calling them heretics—or worse.
- We other people based on race, gender, sexuality, or nationality.
- We even other criminals, not considering the factors that created the individual law-breaker (and that they are still image-bearers of God). Due process? No. Make a mistake? Make them out to be a villain.
And we do it all while claiming to follow the One who ate with outcasts and died with them.
Waking Up to Oneness
Good Friday is a brutal reminder: Jesus wasn’t crucified because he was just too inclusive. He was killed because he broke the barriers of “us” and “them”—and that is a big threat to the categories and laws we create as humans. He was killed because he announced a new kind of kingdom where the last are first, and the ones we try to erase are crowned with dignity. Wow.
In Merton’s language (from my last blog), Jesus lived fully awake from the “dream of separateness.” In every action, he pointed us toward oneness—the truth that there is no “other.” Only beloved sons and daughters. Only broken, beautiful humans trying to find their way.
But waking up is costly. It always has been.
Good Friday invites us into that cost—into the death of our pride, our divisions, and our need to be right or superior. It invites us into a painful, necessary reckoning with the ways we have built walls where Jesus built tables.
Maybe that’s the work of today: not rushing past the grief or the darkness, but sitting with it. Naming it. Letting it break our hearts enough that we start to live differently.
Because the real miracle is not just that Jesus rose again—it’s that he first chose to enter into our suffering. To be lynched alongside the lynched. To be cast out with the outcasts. To die a death that said once and for all: “You are not alone. Not now. Not ever. No matter how far you’ve gone.”
Today, may we remember:
- The cross was meant to divide, but Jesus used it to unify.
- The cross was meant to shame, but Jesus used it to dignify.
- The cross was meant to end hope, but Jesus transformed it to a symbol of life through dying.
May we wake up from the dream of separateness. May we see “the other” for who they truly are: our brother, our sister, ourselves.
In my next blog I want to talk about how we practice resurrection, or “build tables” in a world so divided. Come back soon!