“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” These words from an African American spiritual are not about one’s physical location. They are about one’s social location. 

According to the late James Cone, the words of this spiritual transported Black Christians, who experienced hardship and oppression, to the foot of the cross. The song helps to shape the identity of those who are oppressed by connecting them with Christ, who also suffered. 

In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone argues that one cannot reflect theologically on the meaning of the cross without noting its similarity to the lynching tree during the era of Jim Crow. 

Cone argues that just as the Roman Empire used crucifixion to deter resistance to its rule, so too was the lynching tree used to keep Black people in oppression. 

When someone threatened the empire’s power, Rome used the threat of execution on a cross to strike fear. It reminded people who was in control.

As violent and as horrific as the cross and the lynching tree are, Cone says suffering is what links the oppressed to Christ. The paradoxical nature of the cross is that, though it was a tool of death, Jesus brought life through it. Although lynchings in America were horrible, God demonstrates, through Jesus’ death, solidarity with those who suffered in this way. 

To be clear, I do not mean suffering is good. It is terrible. Christians should try to alleviate suffering. 

Yet suffering is inevitable. We saw this during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. We see it in the story of Jesus. We see it today.

Lately we have witnessed the harm and fear that agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have caused in communities throughout the United States. People have been beaten, kidnapped and killed, none more prominently than in Minneapolis. As I write this, the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti are the latest outrageous acts to shock the nation. 

As I have watched what is happening in our country, I’ve often thought of Jesus and the cross. 

The suffering of our undocumented siblings — the forced deportations and the harming of those who resist this treatment — reminds me of America’s history. It’s a history of racist and discriminatory laws. It’s a history of using law enforcement to strike fear into those who would oppose these actions. 

All of it reminds me of the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. 

It also reminds me of the story of Jesus.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells his disciples that whatever they do to “the least of these” they also do to him. Jesus identifies himself as one of the oppressed. We are to think of the “least of these” as Jesus. 

When I see our immigrant siblings taken from their homes, their children afraid they will never see their parents again, I see the least of these. I see Jesus. 

As we enter the Lenten season, I am reminded of the inevitability of the cross. Jesus, who lived a good life, worked for the liberation of the oppressed and challenged the empire of his day, walked down the road that led to suffering. Not because suffering was good or noble but because other people were suffering and he wanted to alleviate it. 

During Lent, the cross comes back into our focus. Once again we are forced to see the suffering in our world and think about the suffering of Jesus. 

Things have not changed all that much since Jesus’ time. The cross still awaits those who want to liberate the oppressed and the suffering.

The question that the African American spiritual asks remains important today: Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? 

For it is those who were there whom God is with. 

The spiritual ends on a high note: “Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?” The story does not end with the cross. Suffering does not get the last word. Resurrection and liberation are indeed on the horizon. 

I pray that God will free us all from suffering. But if we suffer, may it be used for liberation.