Matthew 25 Spotlight

This week, on the day we call Good Friday, we remember Jesus’ death on the cross. 2,000 years after the crucifixion, the significance of the cross may, in some ways, be lost on us. The late Dr. James H. Cone, in his 2011 book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, makes the connection between the ancient means of capital punishment and the far-too-recent means of an extra-judicial death penalty. “The lynching tree,” Cone writes, “reveals the true meaning of the cross for American Christians … The cross needs the lynching tree to remind Americans of the reality of suffering — to keep the cross from becoming a symbol of abstract, sentimental piety … yet the lynching tree also needs the cross, without which it becomes simply an abomination.”

Click here to listen to Dr. Cone talk about this in this 2017 presentation to National Capital Presbytery (38 minutes). And if you’d like to see an interview with Dr. Cone by Bill Moyers, this video (45 minutes) from 2007 shares an earlier conversation about the cross, the lynching tree, and our nation.