Gratuitousness emphasizes the free and superabundant nature of God’s initiative for our salvation from the time of Abel to Jesus himself. ... Jesus on the cross was the poorest man in the world.

What if Jesus’ cross really is a healing burden? John tells us, in the gospel read at the liturgy for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, that God did not send the Son to judge the world — krino, in Greek.

That Jesus suffered such an undignified death was an embarrassment to some early Christians. The apostle Paul describes Jesus’s crucifixion as a “stumbling block” or “scandal” to other Jews.