Jesus hangs from the mirror of my 2002 Honda Accord. He’s up on his cross, arms outstretched. He’s skinny. His knees are knobby and his ribs are showing. His face is directed downward. He looks sad, lonely, defeated. A few beads up from Jesus on the cross, his mom looks down at her baby boy. I doubt she imagined that her son would ever end up with arms outstretched on a Roman cross, sadly looking down at and forgiving those who didn’t know what they were doing.
I picked Jesus up a few years ago in Jerusalem. The very city where the rich, the powerful, and the religious conspired to put him up on that cross. The city Jesus wept over. The city that refused the things that made for peace. I found him at one of those kitschy touristy stalls in the old city where everyone is selling Jesus to people like me wandering around with a few dollars in our pockets eager to capture a bit of the “holy” city. Or at least to have something Instagram-able to prove we were there having an admirable experience. Who knows, if Jesus were there, he might even have turned over the very table that I bought him at…
A rosary is a strange thing for someone like me to hang from the mirror of my 2002 Honda Accord. I’m not Catholic. I’m not part of one of the “high churches” where crucifixes are part of the imagery and piety of everyday life. My faith has taken root in more prosaic soil. The crosses I grew up gazing at were doggedly empty. Jesus wasn’t still on the cross, after all! He died, yes, but—hallejuah!—he is risen from the dead, is seated at the right hand of the Father and he will come again in glory. Crucifixes are decidedly un-victorious artifacts, after all. We wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea—that Jesus was still on his cross, that he hadn’t defeated the powers that put him there, that he wasn’t alive and well thank you very much!
