First, understand that the cross could have been an electric chair or lethal injection or any other number of ways that the powers of this world have chosen to execute their criminals. The Romans used the cross.
Why would anyone want to get rid of this Jesus who loved everyone and welcomed everyone and offered hope and healing to those around him? It's a fair question. In general, people of power are threatened by anyone espousing a system where mercy is available to all and no one is left outside looking in. There is no point in having power and status if you aren't distinguished from the other people. Power is meant to be exercised. That's the way the system works.Of course Jesus was powerful but his power, the power of the creator who gives life, was the power to bring life to those around him. Sometimes it looked like feeding hungry people and sometimes it looked like casting out demons and sometimes it was healing from a disease. But after an encounter with Jesus, folks had access to life in new and different ways (and sometimes for the first time in their lives). In the end, it looked like a cross.
Even forgiveness was a function of healing in the ministry of Jesus. You and I both know there are many ways that we are sick and in need of healing. Frequently it is the wounds that are invisible that are the most damaging. Broken relationships can sap the energy out of a family or a marriage or even a friendship. Betrayal, abandonment, violence mar these relationships and leave wounds in their wake. Watch as Jesus not only brings healing to people but he often brings them back into relationship with their families and their communities. They are no longer on the outside edge of real living and each one has been reassured that they are a child of God: that is their name for all eternity.
It's hard to see the downside to that. Unless your function in this society was to decide who was worthy of healing. Unless you began with an understanding that some people (Gentiles? women? slaves? children?) were simply not as valuable and so not as worthy to receive any consideration. The unworthy ones could be swatted away like flies without concern.
Unless you are convinced that giving life to others meant taking some away from you,...and it would. Lifting up the lowly inherently decreases the gap between the high and the low leaving the high and mighty less high and mighty than before.
It wasn't just the wealthy that opposed Jesus, nor is it today. In the gospel of Luke, wealth is a frequent target. Jesus pushes against the attitudes, indifference and entitlement that too often accompanied great wealth. Like most of us, he knew that not all wealth was the result of fair and honest trade. He knew that protecting one's wealth could easily become more important than building a community of life for all the people. Wealth often becomes the god we worship, protect, give homage to.
At the same time, Jesus' opponents were also the established religious leaders. They had a system to protect as well, and the truth is, Jesus' message was and is radical and beyond the imagination of most of us. It was hard for them to see God in Jesus or to hear God's message through him. Jesus threatened the status quo and the powerful pushed back and the powerless stood by. Yet Jesus' mission was the healing of the world and from that mission he would not waver.
In the end, the powerful were sure they had rid themselves of that pesky rebel when they sent him to the cross. Three days later they would begin to understand with whom they were dealing.
The cross was Jesus' final sign of the power and steadfastness of his love for all of God's creation. In the end, the cross was the end of the power of this age and the beginning of healing for us all.
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