Humiliating Christ

          Our discussions and readings this week I believe had much to do with how we consider Christ can be glorified, either in the Crucifixion or the Resurrection or through both. In this vein I very much appreciated looking at the various Crucifixes and listening to the reactions of others regarding the point at which depictions of Christ’s death become disturbing or produce repulsion.

          I myself became repulsed, or at least squirmed at the thought, during two points of the discussion. The first was discussing the nails going through Jesus’ feet.

Detail of feet The figure of Christ Crucified in Cristo de la Clemencia, Juan Martinez Montanes, 1603. Image Link 

 For me this has always just been a really disturbing thought because it seems like the tops of one’s feet are so vulnerable and really receptive to pain. The sense of this acute pain was heighted for me after reading the Gospel of Mark and John of Caulibus’s Meditations on the Life of Christ.[1] Both emphasize the need to experience the scene of the Cross through their use of grammar. In particular, the Gospel of Mark and John of Caulibus use the present tense[2] to punctuate their accounts of the Crucifixion and bring vividness to the scene – like reading a script rather than reading a novel. Here is a short comparison of both with the present tense highlighted.

20 And when they had mocked him, they Καὶ ὅτε ἐνέπαιξαν αὐτῷ, They stripped off the purple cloth and dressed ἐξέδυσαν αὐτὸν τὴν πορφύραν καὶ ἐνέδυσαν him in his own clothes. And they are leading αὐτὸν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ. Καὶ ἐξάγουσιν him out so they can crucify him. αὐτὸν ἵνα σταυρώσωσιν αὐτόν. 21 And they are forcing a passer-by, a certain καὶ ἀγγαρεύουσιν παράγοντά τινα Simon of Cyrene who had come from the Σίμωνα Κυρηναῖον ἐρχόμενον ἀπ᾽ field – the father of Alexander and Rufus – ἀγροῦ, τὸν πατέρα Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ Ῥούφου, so that he would carry his cross. ἵνα ἄρῃ τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ. 22 And they are bringing him to the place Καὶ φέρουσιν αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τὸν Golgotha, which is translated Γολγοθᾶν τόπον, ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον Place of the Skull Κρανίου Τόπος. 23 And they began to give him καὶ ἐδίδουν αὐτῷ wine mixed with myrrh, ἐσμυρνισμένον οἶνον· but which he did not take. ὃς δὲ οὐκ ἔλαβεν. 24 And they are crucifying him and dividing Καὶ σταυροῦσιν αὐτὸν καὶ διαμερίζονται τὰ his closes by casting lots, ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ βάλλοντες κλῆρον for what each himself should take. ἐπ᾽ αὐτὰ τίς τί ἄρῃ. Mark 15:20-24 (Greek Text: NA28. Translation is my own)

At this point the one who is behind the cross takes his right hand and fastens it firmly to the cross. That done the one who is on the left side takes his left hand also and pulls and stretches it as tightly as he can; and another sets the nail, hammers and fastens it in place. After this, they climb down, and take away all the ladders. Only the nails, hammered into his hands, hold up the Lord while his body weight pulls him down. With all that, still another comes along and pulls him downward by the feet as tightly as he can; and when he is at full extension, someone else attaches both feet with a very heavy nail. John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, 253.

             The second point was looking at the “Piss Christ.”

Piss Christ by Serrano Andres (1987). Image Link

To this I had a three-stage reaction. Before knowing what the Crucifix depicted here was submerged in, I initially thought that the image was quite beautiful. The reddish color evoked in me a feeling of despair, but the glow around the Cross also seemed to radiate so as to signify the glory of the Cross. When I learned that this Crucifix was actually submerged in urine, I then became repulsed. I thought, “Why would someone do this?” and felt that the image was really just trying to make an “anti-Christian” statement of some sort. But after having thought about this image and contemplating it some more since our discussion, my feelings toward it have changed again. As we were asked in class, is there a point were the Crucifixion can become debased or humiliated? Submerging Christ in urine, I think, actually demonstrates the entire purpose of the Cross, which was to humiliate Christ in the most degrading way possible.

            To this end I also began to consider how the cross was humiliating for Christ. True, it was a public and violent form of torture filled with mockery, ridicule, and insults. But I don’t know if the cross was the definitive point of humiliation for Christ. “The Harrowing of Hell” scene from the York Mystery Plays[3] gives an interesting insight into that nature of Christ’s humiliation. When Jesus states he is God’s son, Satan responds:

God’s Son? Then should thou be full glad,

After no chattels need thou crave!

But thou has lived ay like a lad,

An in sorrow as a simple knave (lines 241–244)

These lines, I believe, indicate Satan’s confusion and perhaps his misapprehension about God. Satan here assumes two things about God. The first being that God is content with his station and would not want to leave full gladness, and the second that God would not crave the material world either out of need or want. The claim that Jesus is God’s son thus seems out of place to Satan because he has lived outside of gladness as a human lad, and he has experienced need by living as a knave. In Satan’s terms here the most humiliating thing God could experience would be to live as a human.

            Thus from the Incarnation Christ was humiliated; it was not just the Cross that was Christ’s Passion. But if God entered into the world to demonstrate his love for creation through humiliating himself, what does the resurrection indicate about this love. For me, I believe it signifies how the idea of humiliation is itself reversed so that what was once thought detestable becomes glorified. Again, Jesus’s and Satan’s exchange in “The Harrowing of Hell” gives some indication of this. At one point Jesus states that those who do not follow his law and take the Sacraments are doomed to punishment (lines 313 – 324), to which Satan responds that because he deceived humanity and because of humanity’s inability to keep the law he somehow has rule over Hell:

Now here my hand, I hold me paid,

This point is plainly for our prow,

If this be sooth that thou hast said

We shall have mo than we have now (lines 325 – 328)

But Jesus responds that Satan is not the ruler of Hell, but will be bound in it as well:

Nay, fiend, thou shall be fast

That thou shalt flit not far (lines 335–336)

Thus in this exchange what Satan had assumed was eternally corrupted, that is humanity, is actually glorified because of Jesus.

            Finally, the resurrection shows the new state of humanity through the resurrected body of Jesus. In a way, the resurrection is another kind of incarnation, which I think John of Caulibus tries to point out in the meditation on the Road to Emmaus. John of Caulibus points to three things that indicated the “manifold goodness and kindness of your Lord” in this scene.[4] The first is the intense love of Christ for his disciples who were in utter despair. This parallels God’s love for humanity when they were in the despair of sin. The second is Christ’s “profound humility” in walking with the disciples, which parallels his humbly coming to us in the flesh. Third is Christ’s goodness in both comforting the disciples and providing for them. This parallels goodness and provision for humanity in giving himself on the cross.[5] In these ways the resurrection is a new kind of incarnation, but instead of taking on a corruptible body, this new fleshly body is incorruptible and glorified. Thus, because of the resurrection, Christ’s humiliation has become glorified. 

-Daniel Christensen

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[1] John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ. Trans. Francis X. Taney, Sr., Anne Miller, C. Mary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 2000).

[2] In Greek, aspect plays a greater role than time when determining the meaning of verbs, so when I point to the present tense of a Greek verb it is to demonstrate the vividness which its aspect gives in light of the verb’s Aktionsart, see Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 499. Because I have only been able to read John of Caulibus in English translation, I have to trust that the translators accurately represent the Latin. But the point about vividness should be valid regardless.

[3] York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling, ed. Richard Beadle and Pamela M. King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

[4] John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, 292.

[5] John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, 292–293.