VIEWPOINTS |
Rising Up and Leaving Behind the Whitewashed Tomb... By Peter Cruchley, Council for World Mission
In these reflections I propose to explore how Jesus’ life, death and resurrection offers not just hope, but challenge
to the legacies of white colonial power ever present in our world and lives. A generation of contextual theology should by now have put to death the White Jesus so familiar to us, but yet this remains the dominant way we imagine Jesus’s power and therefore his personhood. As we shall see, the biblical text contrasts Jesus’ power with the colonial power of the (White) Roman empire, and this stands out all the more in the midst of the global Black lives matters struggles and CWM’s intention to repent and make reparation for the legacies of slavery in our life. Our journey to Easter began with the temptation of Jesus, a moment when he is confronted with how he wants to use his power and what kind of Messiah he is called to be. This became all the more urgent again in Holy Week when Jesus was confronted with the Imperial power of Pilate, the complicities of Caiaphas and the punishment for insurgency, execution. Even in the garden Jesus refuses to call on the symbols of Imperial power, the legions of angels, (Matt. 26: 53) and he does not back down from the confrontation with the only White man in the Bible, Pilate.
“The Devil offers Jesus a vantage point on all the kingdoms of the world in hope of their glory and adulation. Isn’t this God’s normal vantage point, looking down on Creation looking up to God? The witness of the Bible to this point suggests that this has not worked out well for God.” 28
In the first Temptation, a hungry Jesus is invited to turn stone into bread: Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ 4 Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.”’ Luke 4: 1 - 4 Forty days and nights without food is going beyond the experience of Israel, who at least had manna in the desert. Famished and starving as he is, Jesus still allows Scripture to speak more loudly than the rumbling of his stomach. The Devil invites Jesus to do what human beings do, which is to put their needs before everyone and anything else. But Jesus refuses to objectify creation, he seems willing to let stones be stones, rather than process them into something he can use and profit from. Jesus’ curious loyalty to stones will be rehearsed again at the entry into Jerusalem, when Jesus tells the Pharisees that the stones themselves would herald his messiahship if his disciples were silent, (Luke 19:40). Jesus, understands his calling speaks to the identities and dignities of all creation and they are not to be used and exploited for his purpose. As Jesus remarks, one does not live by bread alone, one lives by the relationships we inhabit and loyalties we honour. When we come with Jesus to the table, we realise that far from taking a self-denying approach to bread, in fact Jesus, values bread so highly, he is ready to become it himself, (Luke 22:19).
INSiGHT | April 2021
