Dear Parents and Carers,
It is Easter! All four Gospels are notably succinct about the gruesome spectacle of the crucifixion of Jesus. Hence Matthew’s Gospel, “When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots” (Matthew 27:35). Matthew’s initial audience knew the horror of crucifixion all too well. In any case, this was not the point. The overriding narrative and theme are about the substitutionary atonement, that is, Jesus paying the full price for sin as our substitute.
Are we desensitised to the crucifixion?
Because the Bible is sparse on the horrific detail, and because Christians have heard the Easter story so many times, there is a real danger we can become complacent, blasé and desensitised. Historian Tom Holland, in his superb Dominion: The making of the Western world, unpacks the nature of crucifixion in antiquity. He says, “exposed to public view like slabs of meat hung from a market stall, troublesome slaves were nailed to crosses…no death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion. To be hung naked, long in agony, swelling with ugly weals on shoulders and chest, helpless to beat away the clamorous birds: such a fate, Roman intellectuals agree, was the worst imaginable. This in turn was what rendered it so suitable a punishment for slaves…it was this disgust crucifixion uniquely inspired which explained why, when slaves were condemned to death, they were executed in the meanest, wretchedest stretch of land beyond the city walls”.
Greg Sheridan in his recent book, Christians: The urgent case for Jesus in our world says, “Nothing was more savage than a Roman crucifixion. It could have only one end; no one escaped from it. And it was intentionally structured to take a long time. Humiliation was mixed with pain. Terror, the power to frighten, the example set to others of what could happen to them - these were part of the design. Crucifixion was a contemptible punishment. It declared that its victim was the lowest point of humanity the ancient world could imagine or create. The idea that God himself would be crucified was simply inconceivable. After Jesus is condemned, the soldiers take him out to the crowd. They mock him as the king of the Jews, strip him of his own clothes and dress him in a robe of purple to mimic and ridicule his kingship. They beat him over the head, spit on him, abuse him, fashion a crown of thorns and stick that on his head. Just think of this action, rough and hard and prolonged.”
The reality of a crucifixion
A lot of our visual impressions of crucifixion are unhistorical and sanitised. The iconography of the Middle Ages, with Jesus serene on the cross surrounded by a halo, is misleading to the point of misinformation. The victim could last up to three days, struggling to haul himself upwards on the cross so he could breathe. Eventual death may come due to asphyxiation, heart attack from the exertion of trying to stay upright, or from exposure. That the man who had himself been crucified might be hailed as a God, could not help be seen by people everywhere across the Roman world as scandalous, obscene, grotesque. Sheridan says, “The ultimate offensiveness, though, was to one particular people: Jesus' own...that such a God of all gods might have a Son, and that this Son, suffering the fate of a slave, might have been tortured to death on a cross, were claims as stupefying as they were, to most Jews, repellent. No more shocking reversal of their most devoutly held assumptions could possibly have been imagined. Not merely blasphemy, it was madness”.
Both a stumbling block and foolishness
The Apostle Paul describes this as a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles
(1 Corinthians 1:23). This view of God was radically different from how pagans had imagined their gods. Shakespeare captures it well in King Lear: “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport”. The agonies of the cross bring rich meaning into Paul's simple statement: “(He) made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant (slave)…He humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross (Philippians 2:7-8).
The outrageous message of Calvary
As David de Carvalho, previous President of NESA and CEO of ACARA, thence Professor of Education and Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, says in his lecture ‘Meaning, Identity and Hope in our Secular Age: A Christian View’: “It is the outrageous, bizarre, revolutionary and confronting message that ‘the Son of God was tortured, flayed and nailed to a cross to die an excruciatingly painful death because of his solidarity with and compassion for the scum of the earth, the refuse of society, the poorest of the poor, who are so loved by God that they will be the cornerstone of a new form of human life known as the kingdom of God. For them, God submitted to the most humiliating death imaginable and became the bloodied scapegoat of Calvary’ (Eagleton). But the citizens of the modern West have almost completely forgotten how weird the Christian message really is. The mysterious belief of the early Christians in the intrinsic dignity of every human being, Gentile or Jew, slave or free, woman or man, was radical and strange. By the standards of the day, their desire to serve the weakest members of society, was risible. And all of this flowed directly from the strangest belief of all, that the Son of God had taken on flesh and submitted himself to the humiliation of being crucified”.
The defining events of the cosmos
In essence, the concept is mind blowing: that the God of the universe submitted his Son to a death which was agonising and abject humiliation in order to save people from their sins. Such a God amidst humility and suffering was to the Jews inconceivable, and to the Gentile (Greek) world, with their view of capricious powerful gods, ridiculous and beneath contempt. Yet, as Holland indicates, even in terms of civilisation, Jesus has been the dominant force in fashioning the world for the last 2000 years. Not only that, he is the Saviour of the world! This being so, this one agonising death on a cross 2000 years ago and his resurrection from the dead, are the defining events within the cosmos, wherein God will bring all things to consummation in Christ (Colossians 1:20, Romans 8:21).
Is the gospel credible?
Given the strangeness of the idea that the Creator and sustainer of the universe would sacrifice himself to die in agony in the most contemptible way possible for people who would rebel against him, it is not unreasonable that we would seek reasons as to why we would find this credible. Here are some from the experts: Professor Blaiklock, Professor and Chair of Classics at Auckland University said that Luke, who gives an account of Jesus death and resurrection, was a great historian, to be compared to the leading secular writers of antiquity. Professor Bauckham, Professor of New Testament Studies at Cambridge University, has shown in his seminal work Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, that the New Testament is grounded in the veracity of the rich culture of the time in a manner the inspires confidence in its narrative. Professor J.N.D. Anderson, Professor of Law at London University, said that the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection was so strong that a court of law would be compelled to find that it had been proven beyond reasonable doubt. Professor Swinburne, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, using Bayes Theorem (on probability) asserts through logic and mathematical reasoning that the probability of Jesus rising from the dead is 97%!
Happy Easter!
Dr John Collier
Interim Principal
