Pentecost 17 – 2024
Mark 8:27-38
Marian Free
In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, and Life Giver. Amen.
In 1984, during Holy Week, a sculpture by Edwina Sandys was hung below the cross in the Episcopal Cathedral of St John the Divine, in Manhattan. The sculpture was of a woman, arms outstretched as if crucified. Needless to say, the image created a great deal of controversy, theological debate and emotive responses. For one woman though, it was a powerful and healing symbol of the God, who in Christ suffers with us, who suffered with her. Until that moment she had not understood that Christ shared her pain, that Christ was with her in her trauma.
She wrote a poem about her experience of sexual abuse which begins:
O God,
through the image of a woman
crucified on the cross
I understand at last.
For over half my life
I have been ashamed
of the scars I bear.
These scars tell an ugly story,
a common story,
about a girl who is the victim
when a man acts out his fantasies.
In the warmth, peace and sunlight of your presence
I was able to uncurl the tightly clenched fists.
For the first time
I felt your suffering presence with me
in that event.
I have known you as a vulnerable baby,
as a brother, and as a father.
Now I know you as a woman.
You were there with me
as the violated girl
caught in helpless suffering[1].
“I have known you as a vulnerable baby, as a brother and as a father. Now I know you as a woman.” It was only when this woman saw Christ as a woman in agony that she saw herself in Christ. She was finally able to fully comprehend that on the cross. Jesus represented her, that his suffering was her suffering, that he truly understood what it was like to be in her skin and that on the cross he shared her pain and trauma.
Images of Jesus have an interesting history. There were no portraits or even written descriptions of Jesus the man, but we can be sure that he almost certainly looked much like any other poor person of Middle Eastern origin with dark hair, dark eyes and dark skin tone. In the absence of a tradition of representing the divine the earliest artists turned to images of pagan gods for inspiration. Later a generic image of a bearded Christ with shoulder length dark hair predominated. It was during the Renaissance that artists in Europe began to depict Christ in their own image – a light skinned European. This was in part to represent the human, suffering Jesus and the artist’s identification with him. In the same period images of Jesus with Ethiopian and Indian features emerged. [2]
This image of a light-skinned, European Jesus spread throughout the world thanks to the ease of trade and colonisation and the attendant missionary activity. Unfortunately, this image, the image used to convert the colonised, had the negative effect of reinforcing the presumed superiority of the colonisers and the implied inferiority of the colonised – especially those of a darker skin-tone. During the last century as nations and races broke free of the chains of colonisation, people across the globe began to visualise and to represent Christ as someone with whom they could identify – someone who could identify with them. Today many such images exist, allowing believers to recognise themselves in Christ and to see Christ’s suffering as their suffering no matter what their race, culture, gender, sexuality, occupation or income. Artistic images which depict Christ as poor, or tortured, as a refugee, or a victim of natural disaster speak to those who find themselves in those situations and remind them that Christ shared their anxiety, their pain and their sense of powerlessness.
It is the image of a vulnerable, suffering, dying Christ, that Peter finds so scandalous in this morning’s gospel. Peter didn’t want a Christ to whom he could relate, a Christ who was weak, a Christ who was at the mercy of human powers – a Christ who would suffer and die.
We don’t know just what Peter expected, but it certainly was not that. Indeed, Peter was so shocked by Jesus’ announcement that he dared to take Jesus aside and to rebuke him. He couldn’t allow that the person whom he had just identified as the Christ, would be so ineffectual, so disinterested in his own fate, and so apparently indifferent to the future of his mission and that of his disciples that he would willingly submit to suffering and death.
Peter it seems, wanted a Christ who could impress, who could be put on a pedestal, who could stand against the power of Rome and against the leadership of the church. Peter wanted a Christ whom he could trust to protect him, who could exercise influence over the religious and political authorities and who could exert his divine power over his enemies.
Jesus could not meet Peter’s expectations. Having become fully human Jesus was susceptible to hunger, exhaustion and frustration, able to feel joy, compassion and grief. He identified completely with the human race – especially the marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed – and this meant that he identified with humanity even to the point of death.
It is because Jesus was born in human likeness and took on human form that we are able to relate to Jesus. In Jesus we recognise someone who knows what it is like to be one of us, to love and to be hurt, to trust and to be betrayed, to live and to die.
Jesus the Christ is representative of all people, and he suffers with and for all people.
We who are relatively privileged, free and at peace, need to take care not to colonise Jesus and insist that he is in our image alone. We need to recognise that Christ was sent into the world to save the world and that his face is the face of all people, and that. all people are found in him.
[1] In Prayers and Poems and Songs and Stories. Ecumenical Decade 1988-1998. Churches in Solidarity with Women. Crosswood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. 1988.
[2] https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-how-jesus-came-to-resemble-a-white-european-142130
Tags: crucified woman, Edwina Sandys, images of Christ, Jesus the Christ, who do people say that I am?
Swallowsrest 