Christ crucified again and again

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried

Historians tell us that the most humiliating and painful form of capital punishment in the Roman Empire was crucifixion. Those who were opposed to Christ didn’t just want him dead but also to humiliate him. Why? Because Christ was a scandal to their sense of themselves, their pride.

The Holy Spirit, through the prophet Isaiah, long before Christ, said: “He will keep you safe. But to Israel and Judah he will be a stone that makes people stumble, a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.”

God knew the Jews, instead of making him their refuge and strength, would resist his claims and appeals. God is often represented in the Scriptures as a rock, a firm defence, or place of safety, to those who trust in God.

Often I wonder, why would God put “a trap and a snare” for his own people. Considering their history and beliefs, there’s no way the Jews were going to accept any human being calling himself God. That is blasphemy in Jewish religion. The Jewish messiah is not the “saviour”, an innocent, divine being who is sacrificed to save us from our sins. That’s a Christian belief.

The Jewish term mashiach literally means “the anointed one”, and refers to the ancient practice of anointing kings with oil when they took the throne. In Jewish belief, the mashiach is the one who will be anointed as king in the End of Days. God becoming man is a stumbling block to the Jewish faith, even if he is the eternal wisdom of God to us.

St Augustine has the most satisfying answer why Christ became the stumbling block, not only to Jews, but also to the proud.

Augustine speaks of humility as the very portal for knowing God and knowing one’s very self. His Confessions are about the contradistinctions between pride and humility. Over and above all else, he says, it is intellectual pride that cannot grasp the coming of God into the flesh, born in the form of a servant.

Humility is a graceful acceptance of our own limits without collapsing into despair, shame, or impotent rage. Pride robs us of this developmental accomplishment, and is at the centre of the original sin. Humility marks the move from fantasy to reality, from omnipotence to competence.

Humility is a gift of genuine life progression to maturity—when a 2-year-old can accept that they are not actually in charge of everything, or when an aged person accepts that they need to depend on others in a way they haven’t before. It is a key element of being at peace. Contrary to humiliation, humility gives a person their dignity and equilibrium back. It restores all that pride seeks to rob.

Christian faith cannot be understood without seeing the humility of God. God’s divine condescension to man, to be among us in our scarred humanity, and man’s descent from his pride and vain spiritual imagination, meet in Christology.

What does the weakness of an omnipotent God teach us?

That God loves us enough to render even God’s omnipotence hapless against our sins. That is the lesson of Calvary. God does not prevent sin but redeems it. That’s the lesson of the cross. God loves us enough to allow the misuse of our free will to crucify God.

Pride makes us brittle; hardens us away from humility. Unfortunately, our narcissistic age honours pride above humility, hence it is mostly unable to move beyond from the anger of resentment, jealousy, competition, and so on.

Could it be that because the Jewish authorities and high priests shared the vices of our age that they were unable to understand the humility of God in Christ? Is this the reason they were unable to find relief from God’s humility? Christ humiliated their pride because he exposed their hypocrisy.

When people are humiliated, they become truly dangerous. Historians tell us that the settlement of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, was so humiliating to the German people that it made them susceptible to a seductive con man who told them they were the master race. And from that the seeds of another world war were sowed.

On the other hand, South Africans, through the symbolic gestures of humility that forged a saint (Nelson Mandela) for their needs, had enough humility, even if not sufficient, not to hang on to anger and resentment. And disaster was averted.

The enemies of Christ choose to dwell on their shame and their shattered pride. By doing so they crucify God over and over again.