"The cross is not and cannot be loved.(Note 2) Yet only the crucified Christ can bring the freedom which changes the world because it is no longer afraid of death. In his time the crucified Christ was regarded as a scandal and as foolishness. Today, too, it is considered old-fashioned to put him in the center of Christian faith and of theology. Yet only when men are reminded of him, however untimely this may be, can they be set free from the power of the facts of the present time, and from the laws and compulsions of history, and be offered a future which will never grow dark again. Today the church and theology must turn to the crucified Christ in order to show the world the freedom he offers." (p.1)
"Whether or not Christianity, in an alienated, divided and oppressive society, itself becomes alienated, divided and an accomplice of oppression, is ultimately decided only by whether the crucified Christ is a stranger to it or the Lord who determines the form of its existence... The Christian church and Christian theology become relevant to the problems of the modern world only when they reveal the 'hard core' of their identity in the crucified Christ and through it are called into question, together with the society in which they live." (p. 3)
Moltmann here claims that the passion (suffering and death) of Christ confronts the church and society in our tendency toward division, alienation, and oppression. Among the many issues that we could begin with, Moltmann here mentions oppression - the tendency of people as individuals, as groups, as institutions, to collect and abuse power in the interest of self and of those like me (whatever defines my interest group) and thereby to exclude and limit "the other."
Our theology and our ethics together inform human relationships at all levels, and the right and the wrong of these relationships. (Note 3) This includes individuals, in our family, our community, group relationships, our churches and denominations, the behavior of institutions and governments, societies and nations. Our theology informs our relationship with ourselves, with God and God with us. How do we understand both the beauty and the suffering in these relationships? The goodness and the evil? The history and the future? Oppression is a particularly significant form of human evil (we might say "crimes against people") leading to human suffering. (Note 4) The issue of oppression has to do with, to name some forms ... a) individual or group or institutional forms of pushing people down along the lines of group identification such as race/ethnicity or creed/religion or nationality or sexual identity, or even simply the strong pushing around the weak (social or economic status), or b) efforts to use government or corporate structures to protect or extend the rights, privileges, or norms of the group in power against outsiders, or c) failure of responsibility of the privileged and/or empowered class to care for "the least of these," which is important to Jesus.
How does the cross speak to all of this? That is a long story to be explored in our look into The Crucified God, but the short answer is that the essence of this theology of God is to give from a heart of love rather than to take from a position of power.
Note 1: Comment on my method: No Christian author has so profoundly affected me as Jurgen Moltmann since I first encountered him in the Systematic Theology class of Frank Tupper in 1990. Moltmann goes deep and he is a difficult read, but the truth he expresses while interpreting the passion of Christ has enlivened my personal spiritual understanding of God and human existence. I hope the reasons will become evident if you will give me a few minutes of your time each week. My method will be to quote a few select passages verbatim from Moltmann's 1974 book The Crucified God and then offer a few comments of my own by way of explanation. I will try to keep it brief in respect of your time ...
Note 2: Christians will object - "Wait .. we do love the cross." I interpret Moltmann's statement here as a reference to the stark fact of the unjust execution of Jesus and the pain, loneliness and separation that it represents. We have to come to love the theology of the cross and what the cross represents to the redeemed believer and to the world. We wear the cross as a symbol and decorate our places of worship, and as such we honor and celebrate what it represents. But we must also draw back and contemplate the event, and place ourselves in the shoes of Jesus' family and friends, and of Jesus himself, in considering the horror that they experienced.
Note 3: For my exploration of a Christian ethic, see previous articles What is Right, Parts 1, 2, 3.
Note 4: Jesus was clear in bringing attention to oppression. In the seven "woes" of Matthew 23, he called out the hypocrite religious teachers for closing the door of the kingdom in the face of other people; for giving more honor to gifts given to the temple than to the worship that takes place in the temple; for practicing greed and self indulgence; and above all, for neglecting justice, for neglecting mercy / lovingkindness, for neglecting faithfulness. (Matthew 23:13ff) Oppression often takes the form of the aforementioned presumably "religious" task of pointing out sin or error in another, incorporated into an institutional or legal structure, entailing various forms of exclusion from full participation in the life of the community and employing more covert identification of "right/wrong" (sin) such as deficient, inferior, unnatural, abnormal, or even merely "not like us" or "not from here."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jurgen Moltmann. The Crucified God. 1974. Harper & Rowe, Publishers. (First Fortress Press edition published in 1993.)