Alexamenos, And All of Us--July 31, 2024

Alexamenos, And All of Us--July 31, 2024

[Jesus said:] "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.... Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets." [Luke 6:22-23, 26]

Let me tell you about one of my favorite depictions of Christ in art.  (And no, it's not the one everyone seems to be fixated on since the opening ceremonies of the Olympics the other day, although we can certainly have a conversation someday about the merits and limits of Da Vinci's famous mural, "The Last Supper.)

No, the piece of artwork I have in mind is much less-well-known, but it's also much more ancient.  In fact, it might be the earliest depiction of Christ EVER to have survived to the present-day.  And it wasn't made by a Christian at all--it was apparently made to mock both Christ and Christians, and yet at the very same time actually points to the compelling beauty of this faith of ours.  Here's what it looks like:

What you're seeing is a line-drawing version of a piece of graffiti originally scratched into the stone wall of a Roman building, probably etched in the 2nd century AD, give or take.  It's intended to be a mockery of Jesus and someone worshiping him, and it says in crude Greek, "Alexamenos worships [his] god."  The figure on the left is presumably a man named Alexamenos, and the figure he is worshiping looks to be a crucified figure with a donkey for a head--an image intended to mock Jesus.  (Some think that goes back to a pernicious myth that floated around the ancient world that the God of Judaism was a donkey; others think it might echo the lowly donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem.  And another possibility is just that it is intended to humiliate Jesus by depicting him with a lowly donkey's head--much like it is still today not a compliment to call someone a jackass.)  No matter what, it certainly seems like the gist is to mock this poor Christian, Alexamenos, because his "god" (Jesus) isn't the sort of pomp-and-circumstance cosmic showman or bully that Zeus, Jupiter, or Caesar were thought to be.  Jesus was the opposite--lowly, non-threatening, and crucified.  For whatever other ways the ancient pagan world mocked or misinterpreted Christianity, it does seem that they understood that the One at the center of our faith was a crucified homeless rabbi, which was utterly scandalous to their worldview.

Now, here's why I want you to know about this crude anti-Christian cartoon by a 2nd century would be Banksy, and here's why I call this one of my favorite images of Christ in the history of art.  The artist didn't realize it at the time, but his attempt to mock Christ actually reveals the beauty of the Gospel.  That is to say, at the heart of our faith is the scandalous claim that God in Christ was willing to bear all the scorn, all the shame, and all the ridicule that humanity could fling at Jesus--and he absorbed all that evil without returning it and lobbing back mockery at his tormentors.  At the cross, Jesus endured not just the physical pain of crucifixion, but all the worst mockery, insult, and psychological torture the Romans could inflict on him--and this is precisely the way God has chosen to save the world!  Jesus doesn't threaten the centurion back or say, "I will have my revenge!" but rather prays for his executioners, "Father, forgive them, for they do not understand what they are doing."  This isn't a sign of Jesus' weakness--it is the glorious expression of his utterly limitless strength.  

Jesus does not give into the impulse to spew hatred back in the face of hatred or vitriol in response to vitriol from the mob shouting "Crucify!"  The poor schlub who thought he was making fun of Jesus for being crucified (and a Christian, Alexamenos, for worshipping such a Christ) didn't realize that he had actually stumbled on the thing that makes the Gospel sublimely unique compared to all the boasting and bitter braggadocio of the Greek and Roman pantheon of deities.  Zeus, of course, wouldn't submit to humble serving like Jesus.  Jupiter would never lay down his life for mere mortals.  Caesar, who regularly adopted divine titles for himself, could never imagine that true power came not from crucifying your enemies but loving them even while being crucified at their hands.

This was the message that the early Christians brought to the world, and this is what made the Gospel they brought actually sound like "Good News," even as strange as it sounded to its first hearers.  The God of the universe, it turns out, doesn't need defending, certainly not by us. (Like the old saying goes, you defend God like you defend a lion: you just get out of its way.)  The God we meet in Jesus is not so fragile, not so insecure, as to crumble in the face of insult or mockery; rather, the very power of Jesus' saving love is his capacity to endure the worst we humans can say about him and still to stretch out his arms for us at a cross anyway.  The most we can do is simply to point at the Crucified One and say, "Yes--this is my Lord.   Yes, this is how God saves the world."  It will sound like nonsense to the watching world, but for Saint Paul, that was the power of the gospel: it sounds like "foolishness" and "weakness" but turns out to be the wisdom and power of God.

And that brings us to Alexamenos himself.  Everything else about this ancient disciple is lost to history, but we know he was a worshiper of Jesus, and someone thought it would rile him up to point out that the Jesus we confess as Lord endured utter humiliation.  I'm sure it wasn't fun to be the butt of this graffiti artist's joke, but I do think that Alexamenos, whoever he was, knew that this was a sort of solidarity with Jesus himself.  After all, Jesus had told his disciples that they were blessed when people made fun of them for his sake.  Jesus doesn't goad his disciples to get mad when someone mocks their faith or ridicules them for being associated with him; he says, rather, "Remember--that's what happened to the prophets before you."  And instead, the way we respond to those insults with love becomes a way of pointing to the love of Christ.  The way we answer others' mockery, whether it is clever or crude, by refusing to answer their meanness with more meanness, is a way we point to the goodness of God.  It becomes our way of glorifying God--and no fussy indignation or flustered clutching of pearls is necessary.  That's the way we offer a witness.

In fact, that's the one other thing we know about Alexamenos, the otherwise anonymous Christian from those first centuries.  In the room next to the one where this piece of ancient graffiti was found, there is another inscription, made in Latin, presumably sometime later.  And all it says is simply, "Alexamenos is faithful."  

How beautiful, you know?  How absolutely lovely that Alexamenos could be recognized as faithful, even in the face of mockery of both him and Jesus.  And yet nobody needed to lash out, make threats, or cause a big stink that Jesus was being depicted this way--it was, in a flourish of divine irony, actually revealing the glory of God who goes to a cross and endures our mockery for the sake of the world.  

That's what our response is meant to be in the face of hostility or mockery from the wider world.  And again, like I say, we can have a separate conversation about what was or was not going on in the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and whether anybody was supposed to take offense at it or not.  Even imagining the worst-case scenario that it was a deliberate shot at Christians (and again, there is sound reason to believe that's NOT the right way to interpret what happened there), the question now falls to us, who do confess Jesus as our Lord: will we be bitter, melodramatic, and vengeful, or will we embody the kind of love we have found in Jesus precisely at the cross? Will we, like Alexamenos did all those centuries ago, simply say, "Yes, this is our Lord. This is how he saves and reigns: in humble love, all the way to a cross"?

Ultimately, the cross is what makes our faith in Christ immune to ridicule. In the cross of Jesus, God bears the worst mockery humans could lob; so when people try to insult Jesus, the gospel replies, “Yes—this is precisely what God has endured for the world.” The cross steals the thunder of anybody who wants to try to mock Jesus--you can't insult Jesus any worse than what they already did to him, and he endured it to the end. And when others mock Christians, for our hypocrisy, we should really be grateful they are pointing out truths we didn’t want to see. Only when we Christians forget the meaning of the cross will we get defensive about people ridiculing Christ—and if we forget the meaning of the cross, we deserve the criticism.  The way we respond to mockery and insult as the people of Jesus can become a reflection of the love of Jesus--if we are willing to respond as Jesus does.

So, what will we do in this day, or whenever the day comes, when someone makes fun of our faith in Jesus?  Once we've set aside the criticism of hypocrisy that we might need to hear... once we've dealt with accusations that are not true or don't accurately reflect our faith, what will we do if someone pulls an Alexamenos-type insult on us?  Jesus himself would tell us that's a moment simply to sit with the blessedness of loving people like Jesus does in response, and letting that be enough.  

It is enough, after all, just to be faithful.

Lord Jesus, let us be faithful as we point to your crucified love, no matter how scandalous it seems to the world.