When I was about ten, I visited my best friend, who was living in Malta at the time. It was a rare reunion, as we lived on sides of the world nearly opposite each other. At the end of the trip, our mothers bought us two necklaces, with pendants made of glass in the shape of a Maltese cross, to remember our time together. I wore that necklace fondly for many years, to the point where I forgot that it was a sort of crucifix until my mother pointed it out when I started going to a Catholic high school. I was stuck between the idea that my peers may incorrectly perceive me as a Christian, and wearing the cross that was, to me, not a religious symbol, but the fond remembrance of times with my friend and her mother, who had since passed away.
This type of abstraction, it seems, is not unique to me. As we discussed in class on Thursday, the Crucifixion was, for a long time, very removed from realism in imagery and in textual description. None of the gospel accounts devote a level of description of the crucifixion itself comparable to the details of the last supper, the trial, or even the preparation for the crucifixion.
Besides the obvious irony of glossing over the event most represented in modern Christian symbolism, the crucifixion has always stood out to me as the least disputable event within Christian mythology. When my friends and I would discuss religion (most of us atheists), none of our issues ever stemmed from the crucifixion itself, and it seemed the extent of truth we could all agree on was first in the existence of Jesus, and second in the event of the Crucifixion.
As John of Caulibus points out in his Meditations, the crucifixion is the fulfillment of Psalms and Isaiah, proven in so many details to the point where it feels inevitable. In none of the gospels does Jesus resist after the trial, and only in one does he speak before his crucifixion:
"But Jesus turning to them, said: Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me; but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For behold, the days shall come, wherein they will say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not borne, and the paps that have not given suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains: Fall upon us; and to the hills: Cover us. For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?" (Luke 23:28-31)
Jesus is stoic, having long accepted his fate and speaks only to provide a type of warning, and perhaps to inspire faith. In John, the only other gospel where he speaks other than to say "I thirst," he does not say anything personal either - all is only out of concern for the future state of the world:
"When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother." (John 19:26-27)
I had a religion teacher in high school, who liked to make a point of how radical Christianity was in adopting an instrument of torture -- the cross -- as its primary symbol, of how tragedy and sacrifice was at its center. He liked to say that the story of Jesus necessitated the greatest injustice in order to provide salvation. And yet reading the gospels, even looking at artistic depictions of the crucifixion, it has always struck me as a passive event. Jesus does not fight back, not is there any great description of the agony of a crucifixion.
Perhaps it is too modern of a notion to suppose that a sense of tragedy should accompany great injustice, but somehow the detachment removes the tragedy from the crucifixion. The biblical crucifixion is so set in its purpose that it loses the sadness it may have contained in reality. It begs the question - what does self-sacrifice come to signify if it is no longer tragic?
Another one of my religion teachers told my class the story of her mother's death. She said that although she recalls the difficulty of the moment, the emotion she most associates with it was happiness. She and her siblings gathered around their mother to celebrate her life, and (in her words), to celebrate that she was going to heaven.
To me, the most salient part of the crucifixion, from a non-Christian perspective, has always been the acceptance of injustice and self-sacrifice for a greater good. And yet, is what gives that sacrifice its meaning not the pain, sorrow, and difficulty that accompany it? Modern depictions of Christ and the crucifixion lean into how "difficult to watch" it would be, and yet in not depicting the crucifixion much in medieval art before the 12th century, doesn't that avoid the pain of grappling with the full complexity of the moment?
After Jesus is condemned to death over Barabbas, "the whole people answering, said: His blood be upon us and our children" (Matthew 27:25). Although this detail only appears in the gospel of Matthew, it is reminiscent of the last supper and the disciples drinking of the blood of Jesus. Much as the sacrament of communion harkens back to the last supper, it also in a real way puts the blood of Jesus upon all his followers, perhaps as a reminder of guilt and complicity.
In abstracting the crucifixion, in representing it by a symbol now commonly worn as accessories and devoid of the blood that accompanied it, I wonder how many Christians would at first glance associate the cross with love and salvation, or the blood the first Christians assumed responsibility for?
- clmr
Could you put your meditation into conversation with "The Dream of the Rood"? There it seems to me is the crux of the issue: a jeweled (glass) image of beauty transformed into an instrument...of battle? It is true that the crucifixion itself is not much represented before the 12th century, but the cross, particularly in jeweled form, was a central feature of the liturgy for centuries before it became more usual to show the cross with the body of Christ. I thought about this reading your meditation because you mention how Jesus seems passive: which is exactly the opposite of what the dreamer in the poem describes. The dreamer hears the cross talk about how the young hero did battle by climbing it; likewise, in "The Heliand," the poet shows Christ as a warlord with his warrior companions—and yet still submitting to the cross, much as Odin hung on the tree. There are complexities here that your own experience with the pendant evoke! I like that your cross was made of glass—fragile, and yet you wore it for years? An apt metaphor!
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