What does the Passion mean to you? Of course, it might not mean anything, which is okay I guess.
Sometimes I think of Jesus as an ordinary criminal who was arrested, tried, tortured, and executed. (I say “criminal” because he was, in fact, found guilty, and also because assaulting change-money guys would be illegal anywhere.)
Sometimes I picture him going through the whole process in the modern day, and frying in the electric chair. At other times I imagine what it would really have looked like–Jesus naked, sweaty, smelly, with a sign around his neck, with fifty other people crucified around him and women wailing that Middle Eastern trilling sound.
And sometimes I picture myself driving the nails into his wrists. (Yes, his wrists–not the palms. Never mind how we know that.) And with each hammer-blow, he screams. (My user name is actually a double entendre, though. Think about it.)
His disciples desperately wanted him to be a success, instead of the utter failure he appeared at the time, and so adapted their memories accordingly. And so he became an archetype.
Jesus is cool without a doubt, a man who could let it all hang out. But what of Pilot on that eventful day who asked the question that’s here to stay. The man who knew that CNN would go on a bender to not offend the powers that be that rule the roost when he put it to Christ, but what is truth?
What I daydream about every Good Friday when I’m nodding off in church is what Jesus, up there in heaven, thinks about capital punishment down here on earth. Can somebody who was a victim of capital punishment themselves actually be for it subsequently under some circumstances or would they tend to think it’s just too flawed a system for any humans to be in charge of anywhere at any time?
My guess is his thinking is that getting it right most of the time just isn’t good enough and he still tends to take it somewhat personally. That’s how I’d feel about it anyway if it were me.
Yes I think so, braxtonhicks, because that kind of thing is impossible. Not to be too close-minded about the world’s possibilties or anything, but the gospels are so full of crazy stories that I couldn’t possibly accept them as reliable accounts. Indeed, some early Christian sects denied that Jesus was the son of God, or born of a virgin, or resurrected. The people we now call Christian killed them off.
Jesus’s views on capital punishment didn’t seem to survive, as did his views on oath-taking or divorce, but a clue may be found in the story of the woman caught in adultery. (One doesn’t have to regard him as the messiah in order to appreciate his virtues.)
One deconstructionist author (forget which one, had to read him in school) interprets the crucifixion as a sexual act. Not the real one, which was probably painful but our cultural memory of it. A bunch of people in the Philippines crucify themselves every year, supposedly out of piety but you never know. Interestingly, the last time the blasphemy law was used in England, was for a gay porno movie of the crucifixion in which Roman soldiers violated Christ in a sexual way. (Or possibly it was consensual, I haven’t been able to see the movie yet.)
but our cultural memory of it. A bunch of people in the Philippines crucify themselves every year, supposedly out of piety but you never know. Interestingly, the last time the blasphemy law was used in England, was for a gay porno movie of the crucifixion in which Roman soldiers violated Christ in a sexual way. (Or possibly it was consensual, I haven’t been able to see the movie yet.)