We all Have to Die
becoming an insurrectionist of love
Liberating Scripture Collective
The cross wasn’t just a symbol of death.
We see crosses everywhere in our culture. They are decorations, and can be found on necklaces, churches, shirts, and tattoos. But in first-century Palestine, they weren’t decoration or even religious.
The Cross was a tool of violence and fear that the empire of Rome wielded. The cross was the ultimate threat. It wasn’t for petty crimes, or even serious matters. The cross was wielded as a reminder that Rome was all-powerful, and insurrectionists could do nothing to stop the might of Roman power.
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of interpretations about Jesus’ statement, “Take up your cross and follow me.” Some say it was about rendering your life as forfeit before God. Others said it was about becoming dead to sin. Some would say that Jesus was talking about counting ourselves as dead to the world so we can live radical, fearless lives.
None of these explanations ever hit the mark for me. They are all spiritualized and have little, if anything, to do with the reason Jesus carried his cross.
Jesus carried his cross because he threatened the stability of the religious and political powers of the region. Jesus carried his cross because he was accused of being someone who would start a rebellion against Caesar. Jesus carried his cross as someone accused of insurrection.
The thieves he was crucified with weren’t there because they took bread or money. There is a good chance that the thieves could have been part of murders and insurrection by a man named Barabbas. Barabbas was a threat to the stability of the region, and Rome wouldn’t have it.
And Jesus was crucified instead of Barabbas.
When the crowds demanded the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus, they were telling Rome that Jesus was a bigger threat to the stability of Roman power in Palestine than Barabbas was.
Jesus carried his cross because he was accused—as false as it was—of being an insurrectionist against the power of the empire.
This is the context of Matthew telling us that Jesus said to pick up our cross and follow him.
The cross was seen as the tool to crush insurrection and rebellion. It was a fear instilled into every person. They all knew that any rebellion against the empire and the stability managed through threats of violence and fear was going to end in crucifixion.
Jesus tells us to lose our lives, to be counted among the condemned, the rebellious, those whose end was crucifixion.
Jesus knew this was his end. He began to show the disciples from the scriptures and through his words and actions that he had to go to Jerusalem, and everyone knew that if he did, the religious and political leaders would bring him nothing but suffering and death.
Jesus knew his destination was the crucifixion. He knew he had to suffer and die. He knew that this was the path of the Messiah.
Even when Peter tried to talk him out of it, Jesus resisted the path away from the cross. If he took any other way, the empire would win. If he took any other way, Jesus would gain the whole world, but forfeit his soul, his very being, the very being and nature of God.
Jesus knew if he took any other way, there would be no resurrection on the third day.
And if there was no resurrection, then the call for his disciples to take up their crosses would be nothing but a death sentence with no hope, just another way the empire would flex its strength through fear and violence.
Here’s what I hear in Jesus’ call to die: Jesus wants us to live as insurrections against the violence and fear that white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy rule with, oppress with, and thrive on.
This is not about a violent revolution. That would just be bloodshed using the tools of the empire, and we cannot hope to beat the empire using its own power.
No, we are called to be insurrectionists of love.
And that demands our death.
Maybe it’s not a physical death. We are probably not going to be martyrs like many of the first disciples. But we are asked to deny ourselves, to lose ourselves, and in doing so find what it means to live.
Living under empire, under oppression, given over to the terror of violence and fear of the death that the principalities and powers can inflict—this isn’t life. This is enslavement.
Even if we were to gain everything in the world, to live as a multi-trillionaire, it means absolutely nothing because we would have forfeited our very beings to the machine of empire.
Giving in to the demands of empire, to conform, to give up queerness, to let racism rule, to grind and hustle in the rat race of capitalism—to stop resisting, is to let the empire win because we have given up on our own identity and instead are letting the powers and principalities dictate what and who we are.
I’d rather die as an insurrectionist against this system than lose who I am to the machine.
And here comes Jesus with the hope of resurrection. Death may come for us as insurrectionists of love, but death never get’s the final word. We are promised life, promised that our being lives on, promised that death has been defeated as the final enemy and that everybody lives.
So we can lose our life, keep our being, and know that the machine of empire will be dismantled, that love has won, and that we will live through resurrection and into life perpetual.
This is why we look at the cross not as a symbol of death, but as a reminder of the hope of resurrection.
The cross was the coronation of Jesus as king of the kingdom of heaven. How was this moment of death inflicted by the state the moment of glory?
Because Jesus didn’t lose himself.
Jesus remained the first insurrectionist of love without compromising. He didn’t give in to the temptation to avoid the suffering in favor of violence or power. He looked from the cross and forgave his killers. There was nothing the state could do to him to make him change the nature of God away from pure love. The empire tired. They brought out their most powerful tool of fear, violence, and death, and Jesus passed through its suffering into resurrection without becoming anything that resembled empire.
Jesus remained love.
Jesus calls us to learn this way of love from him, to see his glory on the cross and to find our lives by giving them up for the sake of love.
We don’t have to live in scarcity.
We don’t have to live in fear.
We don’t have to return violence for violence.
There is nothing the empire does that we have to do.
And this, this is what it means to pick up our cross, to be an insurrectionist of love, and to die to ourselves that we may live.
The cross is the place we come knowing we too will suffer in this life and that death comes for us all. But suffering and death don’t have the final word.
Resurrection calls to us.
Will you be an insurrectionist of love?
Will you learn to refuse the ways of empire, and in so doing strip the machine of its power in your life?
Will you rebel, become ungovernable, and live the way of love?
Pick up your cross; follow Jesus; find life.
For the month of August, I'm giving people 20% off for life of an annual subscription. Click below to sign up.