Awe and Wonder, Then and There.
Awe and Wonder, Here and Now
March, 2018
I have just finished reading Arthur Dewey’s latest book, How the Death of Jesus was Remembered: Inventing the Passion (Polebridge Press, 2018) As an enticement let me quote the blurb from Karen Armstrong: “Dewey’s investigation of the passion story in the gospels is not only learned and accessible but exciting: it should challenge the way we read our scriptures as well as our understanding of the past.”
How the Death of Jesus was Remembered: Inventing the Passion
Let me highlight something from Art’s book that spoke deeply to me. We are probably familiar with the fact that crucifixion was a Roman form of execution. It may not have originated with them, but the Romans carried out this public form of execution for traitors, rabble-rousers, violent criminals, anyone who might challenge or jeopardize the authority of the state. This military and political punishment was intended to be a deterrent. What I learned from Art was the searing effect crucifixion had on the hearts and minds of those who witnessed it or heard about it. “The public display of a crucified one represented the utmost humiliation. In the ancient honor/shame society such an end would signal a human being reduced to nothingness. It was not only the worst of Roman punishments, but also drove all to forget the one liquidated…Crucifixion enacted the ultimate obscenity: it pushed – with every last breath – the condemned into oblivion.” pg. 17. Italics mine. A bit later Art writes:
“Roman execution liquidated not simply the person but even any trace of remembrance. The social pollution of crucifixion obliterated the victim’s worth and others’ memory of the victim. No longer having any advantage, physical or social, the victim died in disgrace, a god-forsaken nobody. Crucifixion also traumatized all associated with the victim, anticipating any other story to be told about the victim. Roman crucifixion reduced all to social silence.” pg. 39. Italics mine.
Crucifixion, the end of the story?
What I find so striking is that crucifixion intended not only to remove the victim from sight but to remove the victim from memory. Erasing them. Not only physically but psychically. Witnesses were rendered speechless. There was no story to continue. The person was null and void. Crucifixion was end of story. But the crucifixion of Jesus did not silence his followers nor erase the memory of him or the impact of his presence. The Empire’s machinery of death did not ultimately eradicate Jesus nor put to death a vision that was already underway.
For me this is striking testimony and witness to the man Jesus, his compelling message, and all associated with him. Crucifixion killed Jesus. But an ongoing story about what his life and death signified lived on. Two thousand years later we are still telling and retelling his story. Because it insists there is another way to order our relationships than the way of domination systems.
Jesus embodied a possibility
One more thing I want to highlight from Art’s work. In the first centuries after Jesus’ death early Christian art depicts Jesus as a healer, a teacher, and at table. There are no early images of Jesus crucified. Those come later. Five centuries later. This is not to diminish the importance of Jesus’s death and how he was killed. It does underscore that the early followers of Jesus wanted him to be remembered for how he lived. He was a healer, a teacher, one who practiced open table commensality. It was how Jesus lived that was paramount for his followers. It was his life and how he lived that changed people. Jesus embodied a possibility. And people began to see that possibility for themselves. It was his horrible death and the suffering of this innocent one that became the challenge for meaning making.
Crucifixion was intended to erase all memory and any trace of the crucified one. Crucifixion was considered such a shameful and unbearable act of humiliation that it repelled one’s mind from returning to it or the person executed. It was power of the person of Jesus, Jesus the human being, what he accomplished in his lifetime and what he inspired in others that brought to a grinding halt the attempt of the machinery of death to annihilate him and his vision for a better world.
Consider our power to do the same in our day.
I continue to reflect on Art’s book in Continuing the Conversation on our website marcusjborg.org.
