The Cruciformed Halo: the Reality of (our) Glorious Suffering

The soldiers whose duty it was to torture Jesus put on him a twisted “crown of thorns.” As was true of (nearly) everyone in Jesus’ life, they did not know what they were doing, though we can be sure that the irony wasn’t lost on Jesus’ followers, at least not after some careful post-Paschal reflection. Jesus, the “king of kings,” they came to see, would have had no other crown, for his glory and his suffering are indivisible. His suffering is his glory! His resurrection casts light on to his crucifixion; and the darkness of his crucifixion sets the light of the resurrection in relief. We must be careful not to forget this.

The ancient Christians did not forget this, as can be seen in their art. They often crowned Jesus with a cruciformed halo, a tradition which has continued through the medieval period and to the present day.

This image from the Baptistry of St. John in Florence, Italy portrays a serene Jesus, crowned with the crucifix, sitting cruci-form upon a circle within a circle, which speak of Christ’s eternality and infinity. (We should think of Ezekiel’s “wheels” and the rainbows of the Apocalypse, among other things, I believe.) We see here the truth that Jesus’ timely suffering belongs to his eternal nature, to his very being as God’s beloved Son and creation’s saving Lord, and that it is precisely as the suffering servant that he rules sovereignly over all and in all.

This has much to say to us about our lives, too. In one sense, glory and suffering have a Now-Then structure. I mean, in the words of St Paul, we suffer with Christ (συμπάσχομεν) now, in this present age, so we may reign with him (συνδοξασθῶμεν) then, in the age-to-come (Rom 8.17).

But in another sense, glory does not come after suffering, as its end, but belongs to suffering, as its nature or character. This is the truth of the crown of thorns and the cruciformed halo. This means that even while we suffer with Christ we always already are glorified with him; indeed, our suffering with him is our glory!

This is mysterious, of course, and we mustn’t become masochists. But we should take heart in the truth that because of Jesus’ dolorous triumph, our sufferings have been caught up into his sufferings (Col 1.24). It means we, too, have been crowned with thorns.

Ware on the Fool for Christ

Kallistos Ware, in his The Orthodox Way, explores two extraordinary Spiritual vocations: the elder and the fool. Of the latter he writes,

A second prophetic Spirit-bearer within the Christian community is the fool for Christ, called by the Greek salos and the Russians iurodivyi. Usually it is hard to discover how far his “folly” is consciously and deliberately assumed, and how far it is spontaneous and involuntary. Inspired by the Spirit, the fool carries the act of metanoia or “change of mind” to its farthest extent. More radically than anyone else, he stands the pyramid on its head. He is a living witness to the truth that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world; he testifies to the reality of the ‘anti-world’, to the possibility of the impossible. 

Ware knows this is an extremely rare vocation and that it is almost impossible to discern the true fool from the false, the “breakdown” from the “breakthrough.” In the end, there is only this: the false fool destroys himself and others; the fool for Christ brings life to the community. The true fool doesn’t serve any certain purpose, but in his impractical way of being, he in his innocence “awakens men from complacency and pharisaism.”

Admittedly, this is an extremely rare vocation, but why is it we don’t see this gift at work among us? Perhaps we do, but do not recognize it as such? What are your thoughts?

On Prayer

We sometimes talk as if prayer were a last resort, as if we can responsibly decide for prayer only after all other options for activity are exhausted. But that reveals our faithlessness, our “hardness of heart,” our double-mindedness. In truth, prayer is the first and best activity. The Scriptures – and the saints – remind us again and again that we should do nothing apart from prayer. That we should “pray without ceasing.” This is not impossible or meaningless; it is the simplest and most practicable advice.

As Barth has it,

[P]rayer is the most intimate and effective form of Christian action. All other work comes far behind, and it is Christian work… only to the extent that it derives from prayer…

Prayer, as he insists, is the “basis of all other actions.”

After so long a time, a prayer

Apologies for my hiatus. I hope to get back to posting regularly tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, in light of our current series at Divine Life on prayer, let me share this Eberhard Jungel prayer with you:

Almighty God, heavenly Father,
You have given us life and the means of life. Daily and abundantly,
you prepare a table before us. Yet we neglect the thanks that you are
due; we are afraid to share with others what you have given us: our
daily bread, our time, our hearts, our lives. Lord, shame us with your
goodness, and let us understand how we have sinned in thought,
word, and deed.

Lord Jesus Christ,
You shared our distress, and you died for us that we might live. You
have invited us to the meal for sinners, preparing for us joy upon joy
at your own table. Though we are not worthy, we come gladly,
confessing to you our guilt, our great guilt.

God, Holy Spirit,
You refine us and make us holy with the fire of your love. We pray
that you come and renew us through and through that we might
speak from a clean heart, saying, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”

On Christian Joy §4

Christian joy is born in obedience.

We must not separate faith from obedience, or obedience from salvation. In Christian terms, faith is obedience and obedience is salvation. We find this in the life and work of the man Jesus; and, as always, it is precisely because we find it in his life that we recognize it as true - for us, for the world.

In the language of St John’s Gospel, we must “remain in [his] love” (15.9).  Apart from him – this is not hyperbole – we can do nothing. How do we remain in his love? In the same way he remained in his Father’s love (15.10): obedience.

If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

In his obedience, Jesus finds his identity, his meaning. So, for him, obedience, while undeniably difficult, is not burdensome. Far from it: it is his joy. Doing his Father’s will is his very life (Jn. 4.34)!

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

This doing of the Father’s will is Jesus’ faith; it is his un-interrupted dependence upon the Spirit and un-diverted orientation toward the Father’s will. Yet it is still faith; that is, it still is a choice Jesus makes. Jesus really obeys; it isn’t in any sense “easy” for him. There are no inevitabilities out in front to guide him. We know the way the story turns out, but it didn’t have to turn out that way. Jesus really was at risk. And it was his faith, his doing, his obedience, that led him through the temptations to the cross. And it was because of this obedience, this faith, that the Father vindicated him, raising him from the dead by the power of the Spirit. Our salvation is the Father’s response to Jesus’ obedience.

That being said, all along the difficult way, Jesus finds joy in the Father’s will. Even when it cuts against the grain – his will, after all, is not automatically identical with the Father’s – Jesus remains confident that true joy waits in the Father’s intentions for him; so he can say the defining “Nevertheless” and can “endure the shame” of the cross because of the “joy set before him” (Heb 12.2). It is that confidence in the joy that is future that makes it possible for him to take joy in the present.

As with him, so with us. We obey, joyfully, because we know by faith the Father’s will is our good, and the good of all creation. In the light of new creation, which we foretaste in the Lord’s supper and baptism, how could our obedience not be joyful? Faithfully we hope for the rest promised for us, the eternal delight of divine play, when all things shall be put right and God shall be all in all. Rejoicing, we go on our way, confident of the joy set before us in the end.