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The Head of the Cow and The Way of the Cross

In 1528 a small fleet of Spanish galleons arrived off the Gulf coast of Florida.  On those ships were 300 men, professional soldiers, conquistadores. They didn’t know it, but ultimately, this journey would bring death to every single one of them except four.  What happened to those four men is so amazing that historians refuse to believe it.  At a terrible moment of the greatest danger, a strange power overshadowed over them. 

Second in command and auditor of the doomed expedition was Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.   His name means Head of the Cow.  It’s not a name that I would want, but to him it was an honor. The King of Spain had conferred it on one of his ancestors for bravery in battle.

What was the goal of this expedition?  To establish a new colony for the Christian nation of Spain.  Of course, the personal goal of the hard men on those ships was somewhat different.  They wanted to get rich then go home and live in luxury.  

The galleons landed in what is now Tampa Bay. Like many military leaders the man in charge of this expedition was utterly incompetent.  In fact, stupid in the extreme.  Military stupidity gets people killed.  I know about that from personal experience. Their leader decided that the force should go on foot up the coast.  The ships would meet them on the Florida panhandle. Exactly where that was they were not quite sure, but that was the plan. So the men were dropped off and the galleons sailed away never to be seen again.   

With no maps and with so-called guides who didn’t know where they were going, the Spaniards slogged their way through swamps, bogs, disease and unfriendly natives.  The miserable journey took months and many of them died.  Finally, they reached the panhandle.  Then they waited while fending off attacks from local tribes.  The galleons didn’t appear.  When they realized they weren’t coming, the men decided that they had to get to New Spain on their own. That’s what they called Mexico.  One of the men was a carpenter so they chopped down trees and built barge rafts.  During that time, while constantly under attack, they suffered from disease and their food ran out so they killed and ate their remaining horses. Finally, they shoved off into the ocean.   

On this horrible trip across the gulf, they ran out of water.  They had stored it in horse hides, but the hides rotted.  Then storms came. Many men drowned on this trip. A few made it to shore around Galveston Island. One of the survivors was Cabeza de Vaca. They were starving and exhausted. You think things were bad up to that point?  Then they got terrible.  Galveston Island wasn’t where they wanted to be.  They needed to get back out into the Gulf, but their barge got stuck in the sand and they had to push it off. So they stripped off their clothes to keep them dry. When they started to shove the raft off the sand, suddenly, a giant wave came and swept it out to sea.  They were left stark naked and defenseless.  Their weapons were in the barge.  So a tiny group of Spanish conquistadores had arrived in Texas. Over the following months, more men died leaving only four.  One of them was Cabeza de Vaca. Living with the starving tribes, ultimately, they became slaves.  All the things the Spanish were doing to the tribes of the New World were done to them.  They were beaten, starved and forced to do hard labor.  They slept naked without shelter in the cold and heat.  

Their slavery went on for several years.  Brutalized, they lived in constant fear that the tribe was going to murder them. When the situation couldn’t get any worse, it did.  Suddenly, the tribe was stricken with a terrible disease.  People were dying.  The desperate leaders dragged them in and said, “You are from far away. You know things. You heal us.  And if you don’t, we will kill you.” I’m sure they thought this is insane.  We’re not doctors.  But they were still soldiers.  As a former infantry soldier myself, I know what I would have thought.  “Well, this is it.  Weak as we are, we’ve got to try to escape.  If we get caught, we pick up sticks and stones and make a last stand.  At least we’ll go down fighting and not die like dogs.” 

That is exactly what they did not do. In the middle of the darkest moment of their lives they did the entirely unpredictable.  They prayed.  Now let’s be honest, if you had been there, with all the death and destruction that they had faced for so long, what would your attitude have been? I think the vast majority of people would say, “What’s the point of praying?  If there is a God, look what he has allowed to happen to us. Look at all the horror in the world. If he exists at all, he doesn’t care whether we live or die.  If he did, he would have helped us a long time ago.”  Is that your feeling about God? “Whatever happens to me, it’s all in my hands.  No help is coming from the sky.”  

I’ve lived for many years.  Over and over, I’ve seen how suffering changes people. For some, their broken hearts and broken lives become broken bread and poured out wine to nourish a starving world. I have one dear friend like that right now.  He and his wonderful wife are undergoing terrible suffering.  He is a brilliant man with a doctorate who has been ministering to students and faculty at an Ivy League university for many years. Several years ago, he began experiencing a strange weakness and loss of feeling in his legs.  It grew.  Finally, he was diagnosed with ALS. Right now that brilliant mind is locked in a body that cannot respond in any way.  He communicates through his computer by moving his eyes.  Yet, out of this man and his loving wife flows a river of love for others. In their weakness, they are still ministering the love of Jesus Christ into their world.  And they are not alone.  There are many who have refused self-pity, bitterness and anger.  In their suffering, they have looked up to God and have been filled with His love.    

Those four Spanish soldiers who had suffered so much, who had every logical reason to disbelieve in God, chose to pray and they did it in an unusual way. They went to the people of the tribe who were dying from disease and prayed for them.  As they prayed, they laid hands on them, made the Sign of the Cross and breathed on them in Jesus’ Name. Where had they learned to do that?  Not in military training.  But a more important question, given all of the suffering they had experienced as slaves, how could they do that?  Because at some point, those men had chosen not to hate their captors. Instead, they had compassion for them. At some point during all their suffering, Cabeza de Vaca and his friends began to see their captors for who they really were, poor, naked, frightened, broken people.   

Now we come to the shocking truth that is so disturbing to historians.  Now we come to the most wonderful pattern of supernatural phenomena, a pattern that stands against every evil manifestation in the entire world.  Those they prayed for were healed. Totally naked with nothing and in utter weakness, they began to experience the real, loving power of God who sent His Son to suffer and die in our world to save poor, naked broken people like you and me. Well, the word got out.  From all over, poor, sick people began to flock to those Spaniards. They prayed. They kept on praying.  And the healings came. 

Needless to say, their status in the tribe changed.  They weren’t slaves anymore.  They were honored. But they were still half-starving and naked just like everybody else. And they longed for home. The only way to get home was to get to New Spain.  But not by water. They had had enough of that.  It would have to be overland. How far was it?  They had no idea.  They didn’t know that they would have to walk across Texas and New Mexico and down through Arizona. 

So Cabeza de Vaca and his friends began one of the most startling journeys of history. With no clothes, totally naked, with no maps, no weapons, no guides, and almost no food or water, they started wandering through this new world. Wandering?  Don’t you believe it.  They were being guided by an unseen hand. Do you know what those men did? They healed their way across the Southwest, the first Europeans ever to be there were healers. Often thousands of tribal people followed them. Runners would stream ahead.  They would enter villages and the sick were waiting for them. The stripped conquerors from Spain had become the Healers from Heaven.  In the process, they carried the message of Jesus Christ and His love to people who had never heard His Name. In one tribe they asked the leaders who they worshipped.  They replied that they worshipped a man in Heaven, but they didn’t know who he was. Cabeza de Vaca and his friends told them. 

Their journey through the southwest was horrific.  Many times they went for days with little food or water. People from one tribe would lead them to the next, suffering deprivation with them along the way.  They were loved and because they had the power to heal, they were feared. Cabeza de Vaca and his friends never took advantage of that power.  When they were given gifts, they gave them away to people in need. Finally, they made it into Northern Mexico.  There they met the Spaniards, their countrymen, who were burning, pillaging and enslaving the tribes. Cabeza de Vaca tried to stop them.  He tried to make them treat the people with kindness. His own countrymen hated him for it. 

Even worse, these evil men did their best to get the tribes who were loyal to Cabeza de Vaca to turn against him by telling them that he was just like they were. The reply they got from the tribal leaders was piercing.  They said to the Spaniards, “You came to us with horses and weapons. You killed the healthy, while they healed our sick. They walked naked like us, while you wore heavy armor. They asked for nothing and gave back what was given to them, while you took everything we had. No, they could not be from the same nation as you.”

Finally, Cabeza de Vaca made it back to Spain and wrote a military report for the king.  What was the heart of that message? “Please your majesty, treat the tribe with kindness. They are so poor. They have nothing. They’re in so much need. Kindness is the only way to victory.”  In this, Cabeza de Vaca failed.  But he and his friends, rough soldiers who had suffered so much, had planted the message of God’s love like seeds in a wilderness. And God had been with them, the God who heals. The God who is at war with the enslaving powers of darkness.  

How do we know about this story?  We have the report that Cabeza de Vaca wrote to the king. It has been translated, published and is available for you to read. In it, he gives detailed information about the land and the people. It is of tremendous historical importance because it is the first such report of a European who traveled through the southwest.  Yet rarely do you hear it mentioned.  Why? To tell that story truthfully, you must tell about the supernatural power of God. Many people, including many historians today, don’t want to hear that. What happened to Cabeza de Vaca?  Throughout his life he kept on pushing for the Spanish conquerors of the New World to treat the native tribes with compassion. But his countrymen, fake Christians that they were, wanted to enslave them and hated what he tried to do.  Ultimately, it cost him his career and almost cost him his freedom.  I’ve only told you a small portion of what happened to Cabeza de Vaca.  I encourage you to read his report.  

People will ask, why doesn’t God heal like that all of the time?  Why doesn’t He heal your friend with ALS? I don’t know.  But I do know two things.  First, God is with us in our suffering.  He feels what we feel and loves us more than we could ever understand.  He sent His Son Jesus into this world to experience our suffering and to suffer beyond anything we can imagine by dying on a Roman cross to pay the penalty for your sins and mine.  And second, if we give our suffering to Him, there is the certainty that it will have a purpose that will be clear someday. At this moment, the world is in a time of dark transition. Great suffering is happening right now to many people and much worse is ahead.  The only question is what road will you take through it? What effect will your life have on the people around you? Cabeza de Vaca took a hard road that was covered with blood-stained footprints.  They were the footprints of Jesus Christ who walked it before him and walked with him every step of the way.  If you want him to, he will walk with you through all the crises you face into a transformed life that will go on forever.  

But I need to say something else. And it’s about fake Christians, the kind of people who attacked Cabeza de Vaca. In the New Testament it is clear.  There is one way that you can know whether a person is a true follower of Jesus Christ or a fake. That is by their love. Love both for those who agree with them, but also love for their enemies. And love for the poor, the downtrodden, the prisoner, the addicted, the refugee, the immigrant, the homeless, because Jesus specifically said in Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” His true followers have the same calling.  So when you hear hate, rage and racism spewing from people who claim to be Christians, who wear crosses and carry Bibles, and go to church every Sunday, no matter what they say they believe, they are not true followers of Jesus. When you see people who claim to be Christians but have no concern for the poor, the homeless and suffering, they are not true followers of Jesus. When you see such people follow evil, corrupt leaders and demagogues who tell them what they want to hear, even defending violence, it is proof that they are not followers of Jesus. Those who pollute the message of God’s love with a political philosophy even preaching it from pulpits or on TV in order to gain power are not true followers of Jesus. Those who love money are not His followers, no matter how they spiritualize their greed. Tragically, most fake Christians won’t know they are fake until it is too late. Jesus said that there is coming a day when every single person in this world will stand before Him to have their lives judged. In Matthew 7:23 he warns that there will be many who claim to have been His followers, even doing great miraculous works in His Name. But He will tell them, “I never knew you. Get away from Me forever, you evildoers.” Tragically, based on all of this it is clear that America is filled with millions of fake Christians.

Now I could tell you I am a brain surgeon and impress you with all the right terminology and glowing reviews. I could have a beautiful office with diplomas on the wall. But the first time I drilled into your head, you would know with your bloody brain, the uncomfortable truth. I was fraud. How many years have you been letting fake, brutal Christians drill into your head? You want to know an ultimate supernatural pattern? For a couple thousand years, the powers of darkness have used fake Christians to keep people from meeting the real Jesus. And my friend, meeting Him is the most wonderful thing that can ever happen to you.