the life of the Crucified One exhibits the counterpoint to the great seduction

 IT WAS DURING ADVENT last Decemember 7th  that I posted this as part of a series going through a lecture by Walter Brueggemann:

But what then?  Well. If we take the antithesis of might, wealth and wisdom, we might come up with a triad of weakness, foolishness and poverty. And, of course, that's what we get in Jesus of Nazareth. For God chose foolishness that is wiser than human wisdom and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.  First, you know the gracious act of our Lord, Jesus Christ who though he was though rich, yet for our sake became poor so by his poverty he might make ready rich.

It turns out that the life of the Crucified One exhibits the counterpoint to the great seduction of Jerusalem. He is the embodiment of weakness as he stood vulnerable before imperial authority.  He is the embodiment of foolishness.  Terry Eagleton describes him this way:

 "Unlike most responsible American citizens, Jesus appears to do no work, is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard.  He is presented as homeless, property-less, celibate, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdainful of kinfolk, without a trade, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, careless about purity regulations, critical of traditional authority, a thorn in the side of the establishment, and a scourge of the rich and powerful, The morality Jesus preaches is reckless, extravagant, improvident, over the top, a scandal to actuaries and a stumbling block to real estate agents. Forgive your enemies, give away your cloak as well as your coat, turn the other cheek, love those who insult you, walk the extra mile, take no thought for tomorrow."

So far Eagleton.

He is the embodiment of poverty with nowhere to lay his head or even healthcare.  The remembered Jesus sits amid our posturing, it reminds us that the great imperial triad of might, wisdom and wealth never delivers the security or the happiness that it promises.

But I will not linger over that counter-triad of weakness, foolishness and poverty that waits silently for us, because that triad is too outrageous and too remote from our business at hand. 

I gave that title the post, No, This is the Real Reason For The Season, noting that if it wasn't for what if someone today lived and spoke has he did would win them near universal dismissal and disdain, there wouldn't be any reason to have Christmas.

If it's the same reason for the season we're working towards in Lent may be debatable, depending on how much emphasis you put on things like late classical-early medieval atonement theology,  what happened on Good Friday.   Though I think it is indisputable, apart from the idea that Jesus's crucifixion was "necessary for our salvation,"  "part of God's salvation plan" etc.   From the point of view of those who put him to death, the imperial Roman authority as exercised through a brutal and incompetent local gangster ruler, this is exactly what caused it, his presentation of an alternative to their Pax Romana which was not in any way peaceful, the order that it imposed, imposed through brutal violence and confiscatory taxation and appropriation.   In the lecture that passage was from, the topic was about us today, not those who witnessed and heard Jesus and their world.

In Brueggemann's talk he noted that that radicalism, I would assert the most radical formulation of The Law ever articulated, was not something that there was much hope of making the basis of justice in the modern world, if it is even possible to enact it in this world.  

Jesus was taken out of this world because of it, even though his Resurrection suggests there are limits to the capacity of worldly power in even that most seemingly ultimate human experiences and acts.   Even the cynical Roman writer Tacitus complained that Rome's execution of him didn't end it in even the base terms that he was intellectually prepared to deal with.