Held by love - April 2007

I’ve been reflecting on depictions of the crucifixion in art down the ages as part of my Lenten devotions. I’m no expert on art, but its amazing to see how Christian understanding of the passion of Christ has developed, and been expressed in film, painting and sculpture.

One of the most striking examples is by Salvador Dali. It shows Christ on the cross distant above the world, serene and at peace, like many of our crucifix imagery. Christ is held to the cross not by nails, but by his love for us. Part of me struggles against this view – surely death on the cross was more violent than that?

By contrast the film The Passion of the Christ, by Mel Gibson, is full of violence, blood and gore. Some say it is too violent – but surely this is what really happened, as we read in the gospels. We read of Jesus being beaten with a grotesque flesh-ripping leather and metal whip; we read of Him having a crown of thorns forced down over his head around his eyes; we read of Him struggling to carry a huge wooden cross through the streets of Jerusalem; and all before the crucifixion had even started!

But surely the point was, and is, that Jesus' death was horrifying. It was unjust, it was brutal, it was barbaric and yet this was what Jesus always knew that he had come to do - to die the most awful death on the cross in order to identify with the most awful suffering of humanity and in some mysterious way to achieve something that would change the whole course of history.

Jesus could have avoided being crucified. He could have stayed at home and not entered Jerusalem. He could have kept quiet through the Passover or hidden with his disciples. He even could have got down from the cross in some miraculous manner as He was jeered at. But it was for the very purpose of his death that Jesus came to confront ultimate evil and to come through it. So what held him to the cross was not in fact the nails in his hands and feet – but his love for humanity – for you and me.

But of course, the story doesn't finish there. The bloody and broken body of Jesus is not the end. Just three days later came the most amazing and wonderful turn-around - Jesus' broken body somehow transformed and restored to life, to health and to the future. And so arrives Easter Day - the ultimate miracle and most important victory of all time.