Crucified, Risen, and Exalted

If you were to ask most Christians what the most important thing about Jesus is, they’d probably say it’s that he rose from the dead. If you were to ask them what is the most important thing Jesus did for our salvation, they’d probably say that he died for our sins. And if you were to ask them how the world is going to end, they’d probably say that Jesus would return as our judge. These, what you might call Jesus’ ‘greatest hits’, comprise the secion of the Creed we’ll be looking at today. It reads:

Who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried,
and rose gain on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures,
and ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
Who is coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.

It’s not surprising that this material is in the Creed. What may be surprising is that it’s all treated pretty much the same. As I wrote last week, all of these, equally, are considered to be things Jesus did “for us and for our salvation.”

First, we have the Passion. He was “crucified under Pontius Pilate.” The reference to Pontius Pilate, who was the Roman Governor of Judaea in the 20s-30s CE, is a bit odd and was not a part of the original 325 text. I have never found any explanation for why this particular reference was added, other than that it puts the text in line with other popular Creeds in circulation at the time, such as the Old Roman Rule (an earlier version of what became the Apostles Creed in the fifth century). But it sets Jesus’ death out very plainly as an act of the Roman state: Crucifixion was a punishment under Roman law and Jesus’ death is at the hands of the Roman governor. It’s strange that right at this time when the Church and Empire were becoming enmeshed, the Church went out of its way to lay blame officially at the Empire’s feet. Jesus’ way put him and his immediate followers into direct conflict with the domination hierarchies of Empire, just as much as it put them in conflict with the Jewish religious authorities, and he died as an enemy of the Roman state.

This section on the Passion ends by affirming that, even as the Son of God, divine with the same divinity as the Father, Jesus really did suffer on the cross, he really did die, and he really was buried. The fact that he “suffered” was important in the thought-world of time. The Greek word is closely linked to the idea of passivity (which we’ve already seen this year was understood to be a ‘womanly’ vice at the time). And passivity was widely understood in the philosophies of the day to be incompatible with divinity. I don’t put much stock in these so-called ‘divine attributes’, but even if we accept them, all of them are undone by the Incarnation. And that’s the point. The one who is timeless came to experience time; the one who was needless came to experience need; and the one who is never passive was acted against. Whether or not we think that God can suffer, God-made-flesh absolutely did.

But these three expressions of divine humility — crucified, suffered, and buried — are counterbalanced by four expressions of glory: He then rises from the dead, ascends into heaven, sits at the Father’s side, and is coming again. What’s interesting to me about these is how, each in their own way, they are all about judgment, or better, since that word has negative connotations for us, the dispensation of God’s justice. By raising Jesus from the dead, God vindicates the one killed by human injustice as expressed in the collusion of State and Religion. And, while the symbolism is largely lost on us today, ascending into heaven and being seated at the right hand of the Father was likewise a statement of judgment: for the Father’s Wisdom through which justice is dispensed is now also our one mediator and advocate, who now has first-hand knowledge of the human experience. And, of course, there is the faith that when all things are ready to be consummated, he will return to separate the wheat from the chaff and the sheep from the goats. But, something somewhere along the way shifted for Christians. God’s righteous judgment was for the first Christians something to be excited about, something glorious and wonderful that was to be eagerly anticipated. But at some point, it seems to have become a threat: so that these images of judgment became primarily about God punishing the unrighteous (generally conceived of as whomever it is powerful Christians choose not to like at any given time) rather than about vindicating the righteous, the marginalized and abused. We don’t need at all to toss away our faith in divine judgment; what we need to do is to remember that God’s justice is one of mercy, and divine wrath is that of a momma bear protecting her cubs, not that of a power-hungry lord punishing anyone who steps out of line.

What does all this mean for Christian spirituality? At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the point of Christianity is for us to become by grace all that Christ was by nature. In New Testament terms, this is about “let[ting] the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2.5) and “tak[ing] up [our] cross to follow him” (Luke 9.23). It isn’t a matter of repeating Jesus’ life: It isn’t a call to devote our lives to wandering around the country teaching and healing; and far less is it necessarily a call to the martyrdom of death. But what it is is living out as much as we can his way within the very different parameters of our own lives, whether it’s humility in business practices, the humbling dying to self that comes from parenthood, or putting the concerns of ‘the least of these’ (Matthew 25.40) ahead of our own self-interest at the ballot box. Yet it also means that “If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2.11-12). We are united to Christ not only in suffering but also, ultimately, in glory. This is our hope; this is our faith.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten, Who was begotten of the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, Begotten not made, Who is of the same essence as the Father, Through whom all things exist. Who, for us humans and for our salvation, came down from heaven, And was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became human. Who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose gain on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. Who is coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end….