Holy Saturday 2022

I want to lay these directly beside each other, because I've learned to approach Christianity as a paradox, and this strikes me as a fine expression of that paradox.

Today is the day after the crucifixion, on the Christian liturgical calendar.  On the question of the motive for the crucifixion "Jesus Christ Superstar" gets it surprisingly right.  Before Act I of the opera is over (well, side 1 of the original four sides of the album), the high priests have already gathered to worry about "this Jesus of Nazareth."  "I see bad things a-risin'," sings Caiaphas, "The crowds crown him king, which the Romans would ban."  That is followed immediately by the opening of Act 2, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, what we now call Palm Sunday.  This much is correct:  crucifixion was a Roman form of torture/execution/humiliation reserved for political prisoners, those who threatened the Pax Romana.  It was meant to be brutal and humiliating, because it was meant to be a deterrent. 

So Caiphas is right:  if the crowds "crown" Jesus king, the Romans will react.  But the idea that Pilate would give a wet snap what worried the Judeans, or why it worried them, only shows you don't understand Pilate or Roman rule.  All Rome cared about was absolute fealty to Rome.  Don't challenge Roman rule, and you could do what you wanted.  In fact, Pilate was recalled from Judea because he was too harsh, too cruel, executed too many people. He was, in other words, too bloodthirsty for Rome.  Pilate wasn't going to give a wet snap what the priests and the scribes were concerned about.  On the other hand, the concerns of the fictional Caiphas (in the opera) were not entirely unfounded.  The historical Pilate was likely to punish too many, rather than too few.

So why was Jesus crucified?  Partly because he was "King of the Jews," a mocking title meant to justify the form of, and reason for, the execution.  But 4 centuries later we get the atonement theory, the one that said Jesus had to die so God could forgive our sins.  I've never liked that one, and only lately have I realized I dislike it partly because it removes all responsibility from us for the death of God.  Under the atonement theory Jesus had to die, and God had to see to it that God died (the Trinity is three in one, not three with one more "God" than the other two).  Let's us off the hook, doesn't it?

But we aren't off the hook.  We crucified Jesus.  Well, not you and me and thee; this isn't a blood guilt or a communal liability passed on through Augustine's original sin and the "seed" of the man.  But we rejected God, acted in the name of the state, in the name of society and stability and the way things are.  God didn't kill God; people did.

We worship a crucified God, as Moltmann said.  We worship the God we crucified.  Which may make it sound like we killed the God we invented, the popular modern critique of Christianity.  But I don't mean that either.  We crucified God; and we worship the God we crucified.  This is the paradox we should meditate on, early and late and often.  But it's not the beginning and end of the paradox.  There is another one, one that is created by the very nature of the God we worship.  God as Creator, I mean.

I was awakened, a year ago or so, to birdsong on Holy Saturday.  That was extraordinarily rare, and extraordinarily appropriate to the day, largely because it remined me of this:

“My mother was always at work, by day helping my father on the croft, and by night at wool and spinning, at night clothes and at day clothes for the family. My mother would be beseeching us to be careful in everything, to put value on time and to eschew idleness; that a night was coming in which no work could be done. She would be telling us about Mac Shiamain, and how he sought to be at work. If we were dilatory in putting on our clothes, and made an excuse for our prayers, my mother would say that God regarded heart and not speech, the mind and not the manner; and that we might clothe our souls with grace while clothing our bodies with raiment. My mother taught us what we should ask for in prayer, as she heard it from her own mother, and as she again heard it from the one who was before her.

“My mother would be asking us to sing our morning song to God down in the backhouse, as Mary’s lark was singing up in the clouds, and as Christ’s mavis was singing it yonder in the tree, giving glory to the God of the creatures for the repose of the night, for the light of the day, and for the joy of life. She would tell us that every creature on the earth here below and in the ocean beneath and in the air above was giving glory to the great God of the creatures and the worlds, of the virtues and the blessings, and would we be dumb!

“My dear mother reared her children in food and clothing, in love and charity. My heart loves the earth in which my beloved mother rests.”

-Carmina Gadelica

That, too, is the God we worship.  Marana tha.  O Lord, come.