An Honorable Defeat

AN HONORABLE DEFEAT After Jesus died in the most humiliating way a person could die at that time, by being crucified, the first generation of Christians had a massive struggle with both the fact that he died and particularly with the manner in which he died. For them, if Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah, he wasn’t supposed to die at all. God is above death and certainly beyond being killed by humans. Moreover, as a creedal doctrine, they believed that death was the result of sin and, thus, if someone did not sin, he or she was not supposed to die. But Jesus had died. Most faith-perplexing of all, was the humiliating manner of his death. Crucifixion was designed by the Romans not just as capital punishment but as a manner of death that totally and publicly humiliated the person’s body. Jesus died a most humiliating death. No one called Good Friday “good” during the first days and years following his death. However, given his resurrection, they intuited without explicitly understanding, that Jesus’ defeat in the crucifixion was the ultimate triumph and that the categories that make for victory and defeat were now forever different. For several years after the resurrection, Christians were reluctant to mention the manner of Jesus’ death. It was a defeat in the eyes of the world, and they were at loss to explain it. So, they remained mostly silent about it. St. Paul’s conversion and his subsequent insights changed this. As someone who was raised in the Jewish faith, Paul also struggled with explaining how a humiliating defeat in this world could be in fact a victory. However, after his conversion to Christianity he eventually understood how goodness could take on sin and even “become sin itself” for our sake. That radically flipped our conceptions of defeat and victory. The cross was now seen as the ultimate victory and, instead of the humiliation of the cross being a source of shame, it now became the crown jewel: “I preach nothing but the cross of Christ.” To read more click here or copy this link into your browser http://ronrolheiser.com/an-honorable-defeat/#.YIHGjalKgq0 www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser