Here I sit. I can do no other… I’m sipping my coffee and I’ve been thinking about this bloodsplotch for a few days. For those of you who don’t know, this image is a design by Steve Mitchell for New Wine, New Wineskins. (Many of the thoughts that are rattling around my brain are from things that have been in discussion in some of Dr. Metzger’s classes, especially Theology of Cultural Engagement.) I’m having a difficult time organizing my thoughts, so here I sit. I thought I’d write down just a few of those thoughts in hopes that I would understand Christ’s love in a deeper way and perhaps to get some other thoughts from people who might stumble across this note.
At the sight of the bloodsplotch I think of Jesus sitting with the disciples at the Last Supper and his explanation of the cup of wine from which they drank symbolizing the new covenant inaugurated by the pouring out of His life for us (Lk 22:20). I think of His prayer to His Father in the Garden of Gethsamene and am reminded of the anguish He experienced when sweat fell like blood from His forehead (Lk 22:44). I see the splotch and my mind pictures His blood drops that hit the dusty road He walked to the cross, beaten and bloodied. In the gospel accounts there is a build – up of tension and an expectation of a reordering of powers. In the Fourth Gospel, the Apostle John creates this sense of anticipation by referring to Jesus’ ‘hour’ or ‘the hour of glory’. Of course we learn that Jesus’ ‘hour of glory’ (John 12:23, 27) was not the expected hour of power in which the Messiah would overthrow the Roman occupants. Jesus’ glorification was being lifted up, but on a cross to death. What does all this mean that Jesus, Lord of lords and King of kings chose this life of suffering?
For those of us who have been brought up in the church, we know the story of Jesus’ life, and we’ve got our favorite verses for swift employment and brief contemplation. For me, I held much tighter to a list of New Testament doctrines forgetting the life of Jesus from which those doctrines came. Don’t misunderstand me, I do not want to devalue doctrines in the least, but knowing the story in which these doctrines are framed literally gives flesh and bone to the teaching of God. It is in this taking on of flesh that we come to more clearly understand who God is because He so clearly presents Himself to us.
John, the author of the Fourth Gospel, synthesized the paradox of glory and the cross. In the 16th century Martin Luther saw the Late Medieval Catholic Church holding onto a theology of glory through power, contradicting the theology of the cross. They seem antithetical, yet Christ’s bride, the Church adopted the pursuit of power instead of following Christ’s path to the cross, the path of discipleship (Luke 14:25-35). For us today we’ve done something very similar. We avoid seeing the cross as the destination of discipleship. Somehow we miss it; we’ve made the same exchange for our glory and autonomy and have only submitted ourselves to Christ’s lordship on our terms, precisely confined to the gaps of our lives in which we sense he might be useful.
Let “my personal Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ” read something more like “Jesus, lord of my religious/spiritual self, or even just sunday morning.” But God is calling us to so much more! I am fighting to return to a theology of the cross and to bow my head and drop to my knees before my Lord who found me in His gallows. I need a theology for my whole self for the whole of my life. Is God any less God when all goes wrong and when I lose the life I expected? That expectation is what I made my salvation to be. When life has gotten dirty and doesn’t look like the optimistic brochures of the “American Dream”, Jesus’ lordship unites the spheres of my life. He brings together the entirety of my life and all that He has in store for me, sufferings or successes under His presence. That is what relationship with Him entails. To remain in Christ because He is my life.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent the last 2 years of his life in a Nazi prison because of his ties to assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler. He understood the cost of discipleship; he a was pacifist who felt it necessary to rid the evils of Hitler by killing him, a decision he did not take lightly. For that conviction and the courage that led him to the attempt, he came to know that God was not limited to the gaps in which he needed to be rescued. Jesus’ ministry was one in which He took on suffering. Jesus had no home, He was abandoned by those closest to Him and the authorities wanted His life and eventually got it. Yahweh, The Great I AM, whose presence made Israel a distinct people, was with Him in his sufferings, for He is God in the gallows and reaches out to us in His sufferings. It is through weakness and death that Jesus most clearly demonstrates and communicates Himself to us in His powerful presence and love. Bonhoeffer was concerned with living a ‘worldy – life,’ not one of sin, but one where he wanted to live (spiritually) unreserved in all of lives’ successes, and sufferings. I want the God in the gallows because I’m tired of drawing back out of fear for self protection and autonomy. I want a life where I increasingly see my life in Jesus’ life and my security in my Heavenly Father.
Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. Psalm 86:11
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 11:19
Richard, I appreciate your reflections. The blood splotch has taken on new meaning for me after something I read recently from Gregory of Nazianzus. He writes in Oration 45.29 the following:
“God crucified; sun darkened and rekindled again; curtain split; blood and water pouring from his side, the one as of a man, the other as on behalf of man; earth shaken; rocks broken on behalf of the Rock; dead raised for a pledge of the final and common resurrection; the signs at the tomb; the signs after the tomb; concerning which, who could worthily sing? But nothing such as this is the wonder of my salvation. A few drops of blood recreate the whole world, and become to all people like rennin to milk, binding and gathering us together into one.”
Could it be true? “A few drops of blood recreate the whole word.”
Ross, I love that line! Seems like, in one way or another, we’re always asking if those few drops of blood are enough to recreate the world… to sustain our life-in-community as we head towards the gallows…
I wonder what that would look like in our community of faith, in the broader community. In some sense, that’s what we’re all doing here together– re-imagining life in terms of the creation and re-creation of the world.
That’s where art becomes a prophetic call to live our lives in a manner worthy of that which is most beautiful. Art, creation, and imagination can become part of the long arm and the finger that points and the voice that says: “Behold! The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”
Richard, I love that you “want the God in the gallows because I’m tired of drawing back out of fear for self protection and autonomy.” I think so often I want a comfortable God, whose main concern is my sedation. I am drawn, however to a God that is neither sedate or simple. A deep and holy Person who is infinitaly loving and kind somehow manages to be at once tender and intoxicating. He recreates the world in a moment, he recreates us over and over, changing, binding, healing and calling us further from our selves, closer to Him and closer to one another. He makes our lives beautiful even as He dies and requires us to die in order to live in Him. New life is painful and strange and its beautiful none the less.
“…we learn that Jesus’ ‘hour of glory’ (John 12:23, 27) was not the expected hour of power in which the Messiah would overthrow the Roman occupants. Jesus’ glorification was being lifted up, but on a cross to death.” It is amazing to me how quickly we lose sight of this– that the Christian’s ‘hour of glory’, or ‘life of glory’, rather, is truly upside down. It is one of humility, suffering and weakness (in which Christ’s strength is made perfect). But the world’s “glory” so sneakily becomes the Christian’s glory: power, control, longevity. Maybe we are not called to longevity on our own terms, but rather a submitted, short life in which Christ’s strength is made evident to the world. How much more powerful and everlasting would a life like that be for the everlasting kingdom? I’m not calling for martyrs for martyrs sake, but for a continual “renewing of our minds” of what “success” truly looks like in the mind of a Christ follower. That is my challenge to myself and all believers.