![Michelangelo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://wp-media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/637/2016/10/Michelangelo_Christ_on_the_Cross.jpg)
There is beneath this the belief that greatness is found in strength, and the strongest person is the one who can be most abusive and violent to the other. A greater person would not allow a lesser one to harm them.
The problem with this joke is that it does not understand the Cross, that great strength was shown through Jesus’ endurance upon the Cross. True greatness is not found in the apparent strength of abusive violence, but in those who appear weak and yet are capable of enduring it all to the very end without being broken. Jesus willingly ascended the Cross. It was not forced upon him – he could have avoided it if he so desired, but his purpose and mission on earth was leading to the Cross and was always included in it. This means that the Cross was not forced upon him, but was a part of the choice he made.
Jesus willingly suffered the Cross to allow all of us, united together, to give out all the abuse we want at him, to show how strong we really are to him. He hung there, taking it, enduring it all – and then when all the blows were exhausted, when the world gave as good as it could give, Jesus’s resurrection proved himself superior. He had taken it all, he had endured it all, willingly, without any attempt to get away or to stop it. He let the world show all of its power and in doing so he revealed that its power is limited. It had been unable to break him, even though it did all it could to destroy him and erase him from existence. He roses from the dead – by death itself he conquered the world, showing that death is the last of the powers of the world, the greatest and most terrible, the most dehumanizing of all, and even it could not keep him down.
Jesus suffered all he did through the power and strength of his love. All his abusers thought they were greater than he, that Jesus, because he willingly took it all, was weak. They wanted show to the world their power over him, that he was an easy victim to destroy, demonstrating their claim to greatness through violence. Jesus took on the mantle of the victim, stood in solidarity with all victims of injustice, and upon his person he took it all to show the weakness, not of the victim, but of the abuser. The victim is strong, their endurance shows their strength, their endurance transcends the weakness of the abuser’s blows. Jesus upon the Cross took on the mantle of the judge and has judged all abuse as weak; all the abusers who want power and control over someone else to prove themselves greater than the victim have to look to Jesus and see what lies behind all the victims, to the one who is inside all victims of injustice, and see he is greater, he is stronger, for he transcends the abuse. And so all victim transcend abuse in and with him.
Jesus is the one who truly possess such strength. In him, in his display on the Cross, he shows the true strength of all those who have had to suffer abuse at the hands of unjust persecutors. They are weak, the victim is strong. The power of any abuser is limited, for its expression is limited, its ability to harm someone, is to be deplored. And yet we also see through Jesus the pettiness of the abuser, because he shows how limited their notion of greatness actually is. Their power is limited, its expression in activity is limited –for when their activity ends, their power itself is what has become exhausted and come to an end. Those who were apparently weak show themselves transcending the power of abuse, and so show themselves to be the ones who are greater.
What any abuser does to anyone, they find they are really doing it to Jesus, for he is the one who is there with the victims, not only standing in solidarity with them but actually in and with them, facing the abuse as a part of his own experience of the Cross. The Cross takes on all the abuse of sinners aimed at the good of humanity itself, so all that a victim suffers is felt and shared with by Jesus, who takes all of those sufferings upon himself as a part of his own burden on the Cross. He is with them, taking them within himself, so that their greatness lies in and with him and restoration of justice achieved on the Cross. Even if they should die, as Jesus did, their legacy is greater, their power is greater, because the abuser has nothing after the abuse is done: the victory is always with the victims of abuse.
This was understood by many of the early Christians during the time of the martyrs. Lactantius, in writing to his friend the confessor Donatus, who had suffered many times at the hands of the Romans, was told how he had survived and shown himself greater than his abusers. He had stood victorious – he had not been broken down, rather the persecutors who tried to destroy him found him to be full of strength and valiant, stronger than the abuse they could give to him:
Having been nine times exposed to racks and diversified torments, nine times by a glorious profession of your faith you foiled the adversary; in nine combats you subdued the devil and his chosen soldiers; and by nine victories you triumphed over this world and its terrors. How pleasing the spectacle to God, when He beheld you a conqueror, yoking in your chariot not white horses, nor enormous elephants, but those very men who had led captive the nations! After this sort to lord it over the lords of the earth is triumph indeed! Now, by your valour were they conquered, when you set at defiance their flagitious edicts, and, through steadfast faith and the fortitude of your soul, you routed all the vain terrors of tyrannical authority. Against you neither scourges, nor iron claws, nor fire, nor sword, nor various kinds of torture, availed anything; and no violence could bereave you of your fidelity and persevering resolution. This it is to be a disciple of God, and this it is to be a soldier of Christ; a soldier whom no enemy can dislodge, or wolf snatch, from the heavenly camp; no artifice ensnare, or pain of body subdue, or torments overthrow. At length, after those nine glorious combats, in which the devil was vanquished by you, he dared not to enter the lists again with one whom, by repeated trials, he had found unconquerable; and he abstained from challenging you any more, lest you should have laid hold on the garland of victory already stretched out to you; an unfading garland, which, although you have not at present received it, is laid up in the kingdom of the Lord for your virtue and deserts.[1]
While not everyone is going to be openly persecuted for the Christian faith (though it can and does happen), the implications here are also true for all those who suffer at the hands of unjust abusers. Victory is had by the victims, for what they suffer, for the cruel degradation they have had to face from their abusers, does nothing to destroy their dignity and worth to God. They are loved by God, the God who is at one with the victims of the world, with the lowly and out-cast, with those who are marginalized and oppressed. He came to show them how much he was with them by becoming man, and suffering alongside them, mysteriously with them and in them. All they have endured demonstrates their real strength. Jesus suffered as they did. The typical behavior of abusers are shown to be had by the authorities who ridiculed and attacked Jesus. Gossip, bodily harm and injury, attempt to shame and blame the victim, are all what lie behind the abuse he suffered, and yet again he showed that as he is stronger than it, that he is not broken by it, so anyone who comes to him should not be broken but will be made strong.[2]
This is not to say that anyone should be made a victim; but if anyone is, the abuser has already lost by the act of abuse. They have given in to their weakness, indeed, they know they are weak which is why they have to display such pretense of power. They want the appearance of greatness and strength, but all they give is its façade; they are weak, petty individuals whose fear of their own weakness makes them abuse others.
Jesus is strong, and he is strong through the abuse, showing whatever anyone can give to him, any of the lashings which can be given to him, does nothing but show his greatness. He was on the Cross, arms open wide, saying as it were, “give your best shot.” And the best is incapable of breaking him down.
[1] Lactantius, “Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died” in ANF(7):307.
[2] There are even hints of sexual abuse being done against Christ during his passion. See Michael Iafrate’s Was Jesus Raped? David Tombs on Sexual Violence and the Crucifixion
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