During the spring of 1992 a business trip brought me to Italy including
the island of Sardinia. While in its capital Cagliari, I attended Mass, one
Sunday morning in one of its ancient Churches. Entering the church l
encountered an enormous glass case holding the life size wax figure of Jesus
moments after he was taken down from the cross. The life like representation of
the corpse revealed all the victim’s terrible bloodied wounds. For me it represented the gruesome display of
the evil some men continue to bring upon human beings.
This troubled focus was again highlighted this Holy Week by a national
Catholic Newspaper. Describing Christ’s
horrible sacrifice its author reveals in step by step detail the torture and
pain endured by Jesus. By the time one finishes the article the
reader will be convinced that the writer took a certain sadistic delight in
describing the horrible scene. It reminded me of a gawking spectator who has
just come across a terrible car accident. To describe the death of Jesus in
this way, without the more important focus on his resurrection can only be
described as dark pornography. Perhaps the author was just trying to outdo Mel
Gibson.
But there now appears to be a better and new explanation why the Church
has remained so focussed on the death rather than then resurrection of Christ.
And it has been only recently revealed by two extraordinary authors by the
names of Brock and Parker. Here follows a brief excerpt and explanation of
their research.
During their first millennium, Christians filled their sanctuaries with
images of Christ as a living presence in a vibrant world. He appears as a
shepherd, a teacher, a healer, an enthroned god; he is an infant, a youth, and
a bearded elder. But he is never dead. When he appears with the cross, he
stands in front of it, serene, resurrected. The world around him is ablaze with
beauty. These are images of paradise – paradise of this world, permeated and
blessed by the presence of God.
But once Jesus perished, dying was virtually all he seemed able to do.
When Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker began travelling the Mediterranean
world in search of art depicting the dead, crucified Jesus, they discovered
something that traditional histories of Christianity and Christian art had underplayed
or sought to explain away; it took Jesus Christ a thousand years to die.
In their book Saving Paradise – ‘How Christianity Traded Love of This
World for Crucifixion and Empire’ (2008) authors Brock and Parker reconstruct
the idea that salvation is paradise in this world and in this life, and the
offer a bold new theology for saving paradise. They ground justice and peace
for humanity in love for the earth and open a new future for Christianity
through a theology of redemptive beauty.
Saving Paradise offers a fascinating new lens on the history of
Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, and asks how its
early vision of beauty evolved into one of torture. In tracing the changes in
society and theology that marked the medieval emergence of images of Christ
crucified,’Saving Paradise’ exposes the imperial strategies embedded in
theologies of redemptive violence and sheds new light on Christianity’s turn to
holy war. It reveals how the New World, established through Christian conquest and
colonization, is haunted by the loss of a spiritual understanding of paradise
here and now. According to the authors the subversion of the Christian message
began with the ninth-century Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne, who instituted the
death penalty for conquered people who refused to convert. After Charlemagne,
killing, suffering and dying in the name of Christ began to represent the
highest honour for Christians, the book maintains, adding that the attitude
remains an undercurrent in some countries’ foreign policy.
Is it not time, especially during Holy Week, to take Jesus off the cross
and allow him to finally address our and the Church’s many wounds so that we
may rediscover a world alive with Christ's wonder and beauty?
