I still remember vividly the demand placed on churches and pastors to either view—or even organize viewings of—Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. It bothered me then and bothers me even more now to have had that particular piety, glorying as it does in all the blood and suffering of the crucifixion, lay claim to the way so many popularly view the “meaning” of the crucifixion.
Although there have been times when Christ’s suffering on the cross—the extent of it, the length of it, the sentimentality around it—has touched me and so influenced my devotion to Jesus, in the end I think a focus on how much Jesus suffered on the cross is misguided.
I can offer at least two arguments for why this is the case. First, although the crucifixion was a form of torture, and an awful form of torture at that, human history is unfortunately replete with forms of torture even worse—suffering that lasted longer, pain inflicted more vindictively, etc. In other words, if it’s necessary for the cross to mean something through the comparative amount of suffering inflicted, then crucifixion is awful but not awful enough.
It’s crass to say this, but it needs to be said to point out how problematic it is to focus on how much Jesus suffered there.
But second, by focusing on the suffering, Christian community sometimes has successfully deflected attention from the actual significance of the crucifixion as act or event (whether in the life of the world or the life of God). That Christ was crucified is significant in many ways. His subjective experience of the politically instrumentalized torture, less so.
It’s important to try and differentiate what I am and am not saying in this thesis. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pay attention to crucifixion as a means of torture and shame in the ancient world. Historical preliminaries are important, because if we are going to understand the significance of the cross, the significance of crucifixion, we need to understand its meaning for those in the ancient world who witnessed and practiced it.
In this sense a really helpful companion is Martin Hengel’s Crucifixion In the Ancient World and the Folly and Message of the Cross. It contains quite a bit of information on the biology of crucifixion, as well as incredible detail on the practice of crucifixion.
On the other hand because torture, any torture, draws our eyes and makes it very difficult to look away, the more any author or sermon or film dwells on the suffering itself the more that becomes the meaning.
So what am I saying? Crucially, it’s an attempt at differenting between the meaning of the cross, and the meaning of Christ’s suffering on the cross. I believe epistemologically and theologically the importance is more on the cross itself, not the suffering.
We can see this in the gospel witnesses. Certainly, the gospel writers do not flinch from describing the crucifixion in detail. But they also show an admirable restraint, describing the scene without prurient attention to the (admittedly gory) details. And this is for the sake of what the cross is truly about, which is centered more in Christ’s words from the cross, the impact of the that-ness of crucifixion on the witnesses, the response of the disciples and eye-witnesses, and the interaction (or lack thereof) between Christ on the cross and God.
The broader reality here is also important: in a very real sense, we all know that unjust suffering is meaningless. Some pain has meaning—we draw our hand away from a hot flame, and so the pain of that moment protects us from bodily home. And some suffering is a kind of discipline that trains us. Think of running sprints and the burn you feel in your legs. Or the letter to the Hebrews says, “ No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Fair enough, but this is the kind of pain that has the opportunity to produce something.
Torturing someone to death doesn’t offer that chance.
And torture really is meaningless. It is pain that will not teach, does not produce anything, and is beyond any kind of measure. Certainly, there is a concept in Scripture that something happens on the cross. Jesus takes on the sin of the world. By his stripes we are healed. But once again, and this is crucial, it is the crucifixion itself, not the suffering (and sufficient suffering) that does it.
This may be a certain kind of relief to Christians who are much more focused on Jesus as moral exemplar. I’ve noticed in some circles one kind of piety that hunkers down on Good Friday in a kind of sober solemnity. We’re supposed to be all serious and sad because in this moment Jesus was going through hell (or harrowing the realm of the dead, etc.). And because Jesus suffers a lot, we’re supposed to somehow join that suffering through our own solemnity.
But if crucifixion is what it actually is—unjust, pointless, cruel, awful—then we are allowed a wider set of reactions, from holy rage to stunned silence and all the way over to a certain level of dismissiveness. If something is meaningless, there’s no reason to give it any time. We can’t change it. So then the cross presents us with a different question, which is basically “what are you going to do about it?”
Now, there is a way in which the suffering itself can and does take on meaning, and I know I’m going to contradict myself here, but if the suffering is a form of solidarity, then you can understand why it would be meaningful to suffering communities.
Some people, some communities, identify with Jesus in his suffering because they are suffering. There is a poignant proximity because there is solidarity.
Inasmuch as Christ’s suffering on the cross is a form of solidarity with all those who suffer (even including all of creation itself as it groans), then the suffering has a kind of meaningless meaning.
It’s not that those who suffer like Christ can learn something from the meaningless suffering they are enduring, but they can be comforted in their affliction by an awareness of the affliction Christ underwent as Son of God together with them.
Once we release our attention from the suffering, we are free to look at the folly of the cross in all its—folly. We can see first of all that this fully Human One, Jesus, was apparently so committed to the life of the world that he did not abandon that mission even though it meant his death at the hands of religious and political authorities and the wider population.
That’s one part, and immensely important. We are to keep in mind on this Good Friday that the rejection of Jesus was quite widespread. How we think about his life as moral exemplar should be complicated by the cross.
Second, the cross tells us something about God. Again, the focus is not on God’s need for Christ to suffer, for some emptiness in God or God’s honor that needed to be filled or satisfied through the suffering of his Son, but rather that the cross represents solidarity. That’s God there in Christ on the cross. And because of that solidarity, something happens in the life of God. Death is subsumed into God’s life, and as a result a new thing happens three days later that complicates the cross.
I've come to the conclusion that Jesus suffering and death wasn't extraordinary. Hundreds of thousands of human beings were killed using a cross by various civilizations (and most notably, the Romans) over the centuries. It was a severely painful death for every victim of this cruel form of capital punishment. It was meant to be. It was used as a deterrent. Public crucifixion sent a message to anyone who witnessed it, or it's results, not to defy the powers that be -- or the same fate will be yours as well!
So what meaning, if any, does Jesus' "messy death" mean for those of us who believe that he is (and was) the Son of God? From my own life and experience, I take comfort in the knowledge that the Lord experienced first hand what it is like to be an outcast, treated like a criminal, scorned, abused, betrayed, suffered severely, and died a humiliating death. The Lord knows by experience what the very worst in life that can happen to the blameless or the guilty is about. It's not comforting to me because I think Jesus was some kind of divine masochist. Rather it is the ability of Jesus to redeem a tragic, wicked, and hateful experience into something good and beneficial for humanity. The injustice and cruelty of the crucifixion was redeemed by the resurrection and the promise that even the worst kind of sin, malevolent behavior, wrongdoing, or human atrocity can work for good for those who love as the Lord loves, and those who are called according to God's good and righteous purposes.
Jesus didn't deserve to die like that. But he did. And in the end, God redeemed it for good and for the benefit of humanity. The abuse of power, death, and the devil (in Christian language) are not all powerful as they purport or threaten to be. It may not seem like it, but that is what Christians believe. I believe this to be the truth.
From "Jesus Christ Superstar"
"Did you mean to die like that --Was that a mistake, or
Did you mean your messy death to be a record breaker?"