The crucified people of the world

Photo: Ahmed Abu Hameeda; Unsplash

A few years ago my faith was in freefall. In an attempt to reconcile my religious tradition with the suffering and injustice in the world, I wrote a book exploring the intersection of liberation theology with Mormonism. My faith didn’t make it, but I was introduced to a strand of theology that I find a powerful and hopeful expression of humanity. It feels appropriate today, on Easter Sunday, to share a section.

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In the final analysis, what more can be said about Jesus’s death and resurrection? Millions of words, thousands of pages have been spent in trying to parse out its meaning. For many in the world today, the cross of Jesus is not merely symbolic but experienced as a daily reality. They desperately need saving. For them Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection provide hope for salvation in their own lives. He becomes, according to C. S. Song

Christ who is born, lives, heals, comforts, saves, dies, and rises again, not only once, not only ten times, not only a thousand times, but as many times as there are people who have to be healed of their ailments, who long to be saved from their misery, who need to be given power to live in the midst of suffering, and who seek the assurance of life in the face of death.

Throughout history as in the time of Jesus, there have been and will always be the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized. As one of these, Jesus resisted the powers that would destroy the lives and livelihood of those outside the circle of influence, those not privileged with wealth and power. Jesus took on these powers head-on, and he was killed by them on a cross reserved specifically for the public torture, execution, and humiliation of political criminals. There could be no mistaking the symbolism here. The state mobilized its forces to crush a political threat to its power and domination.

The similarities between the life and death of Jesus and those billions throughout history and in the world today who suffer poverty, starvation, oppression, torture, and murder at the hands of the powerful are stark and sobering. Jon Sobrino, whose colleagues and collaborators were executed by the Salvadoran military, compares these suffering people to none other than Jesus himself. Through a profound and moving reflection on human suffering and Paul’s metaphor of the body of Christ, he asserts that the “crucified peoples” of history are literally the crucified body of Christ in the world:

The crucified peoples are those who fill up in their flesh what is lacking in Christ’s passion, as Paul says about himself. They are the actual presence of the crucified Christ in history, as Archbishop Romero [one of the Salvadoran martyrs] said to some terrorized peasants who had survived a massacre: “You are the image of the pierced savior.” These words . . . mean that in this crucified people Christ acquires a body in history and that the crucified people embody Christ in history as crucified.

This interpretation flips the traditional logic of salvation on its head and deepens our understanding. Rather than viewing Jesus’s death as a means to bring about individual salvation, we can see his torture and death reflected in the lives of those who suffer needlessly in the world at the hands of the rich and powerful. Those poor who Jesus served and blessed in his life have become the living symbol of his suffering and death. Again from Sobrino: “the crosses of history are a mediation of the cross of Jesus. And, importantly, through being real, they lead to its reality.” His salvation then becomes not just a once for all time event, but an ongoing historical reality. His broken body, symbolized in the bread he tore and offered to the disciples at the last supper and which we partake in our own sacrament, becomes incarnated in the broken, starving, and suffering poor in the world. Our promise to “always remember him” takes on a different meaning when the broken and “dis-membered” body of Christ has a physical face and requires a literal “re-membering” or being put back together in its brokenness. Though taken as a metaphor in its usual reading, this interpretation casts Jesus’s words regarding the righteous in a stark new light:

for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” (Matt. 25:35–40)

When all is said and done, Jesus gave his life in the service of humanity, however we choose to interpret the specifics. By so doing, he showed us all how to be truly human. To love one another, to champion the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. To show mercy. To give voice to the voiceless. To struggle against the powers of the world that would deny any their humanity or erect boundaries which compromise the full and inclusive community of love that comprises the kingdom of God. His life of service reaches out across the centuries as the perfect example of how to manifest God’s love in the world. He is the crucified millions who suffer and the resurrected hope of liberation. This love and liberation is both the promise and the responsibility of the salvation he offers. He invites us to “Go and do thou likewise” (Luke 10:37).

This Jesus who concentrated his life on proclaiming and building the Kingdom of God for the poor, who showed ultimate mercy to them, who for defending the victims of this world faced up to his executioners and ended up as a victim himself, who through all this placed himself face to face with God and placed God before us—this Jesus is liberation and good news for the poor and for all those who seek to be human in this world. (Jon Sobrino)