The late Spanish artist Salvador Dalí is best known for his surrealist art. But when Dalí was inspired to portray the crucifixion in a 1951 work called Christ of St. John of the Cross, he momentarily stepped away from surrealism and rendered a somewhat traditional painting.
And yet Dalí’s portrayal of the crucifixion is nontraditional in one key respect. Unlike most other renderings of the crucifixion, the painting’s perspective is not from the ground looking up at Jesus on the cross, but, instead, it is a view from above the crucified Christ, looking down at the earth.
Below Christ, whose hands and feet interestingly bear no signs of the wounds, is a lake with two boats, a large fishing net, and three fishermen. We don’t know who they are. Peter? James? John? Or maybe Andrew?
Jesus’s face is not portrayed. We see merely the top of his head as he looks down on the world that has crucified him.
Dalí’s painting was inspired by a drawing by the sixteenth-century mystic St. John of the Cross, which employs a similar perspective. We are not used to seeing things from this perspective. It may even seem presumptuous for us to inhabit Christ’s vantage point. Is not this bird’s eye view from the cross to be reserved only for Jesus the Crucified One? Isn’t our place down below, looking up?
Or perhaps St. John of the Cross and Dalí were onto something. The central feature of their portrayals of the crucifixion is the change in perspective. And it is a change in perspective that is introduced by St. John the Evangelist in his account of Jesus’ passion. When we entered Holy Week on Palm Sunday with Mark’s Passion narrative, we entered a world of dissonance between loyalty and betrayal, between truth and lies. The journey to the cross ended with some of Jesus’ followers standing at a distance, looking from the ground up at the Savior dying on the cross. Jesus died with a painful cry, having quoted Psalm 22 in the depths of loneliness and despair.
When we encounter John’s world of the Passion, we find the same tension between falsity and truth. But from the very beginning of the Passion, Jesus states who he is with crystalline clarity. “I am he,” Jesus of Nazareth. More accurately, “I am.” Jesus has revealed his identity as God revealed his to Moses in the burning bush. He has staked his claim and there is no turning back.
And so, it is all the more heartbreaking when Peter denies Jesus three times. Peter’s “I am not” is the foil to Jesus’ “I am.” And Peter is just like everyone else in this story in that he is incapable of standing for something. He is mired in a tight web of deceit, accusations, and fear. The only words he can muster when a woman questions whether he is one of Jesus’ disciples is to answer in the negative: “I am not.”
Peter’s perspective is that of the world. It is that of our world. We, as it were, stand looking from afar at the Savior of the World hanging on a tree, with “I am not” ringing in our ears.
We recall how often we are more passionate about standing against something than in standing for something. What is it about the human condition that seeks to build up the self by tearing others down? Why are we so adept at saying no and so reluctant to say yes? Think how many people of faith are more enthusiastic about defining their identity over and against others rather than standing for the Gospel.
The air we breathe is full of no’s. Pilate’s sarcastic retort to Jesus might as well define our reality at times: What is truth? The countless “I am nots” can be seen in the willfulness of going one’s own way, no matter the cost and no matter the harm to others. It is present in the stubborn refusal to identify with a neighbor, whether in compassion or joy. Its toxicity rears its ugly head in the defining of oneself over and against the other, those who are easily demonized and scapegoated.
It is present even in John’s Gospel itself, as the evangelist established his own religious tribe over and against an opposing group, whom he called “the Jews.” Centuries of anti-Judaism have fed off this tendency to stand against a body of people rather than standing beside them.
The motives for the naysaying characters in the passion are varied, and they are the motives that are just as present to us as well. It is the palpable presence of fear: the fear of losing one’s life, the fear of losing friends if you rally with the underdog, the fear of losing control of one’s own destiny. It is the fear of loneliness, of being the only one left standing for something or somebody, even if that somebody is the Christ. And it ends in the perspective from the ground looking up at the cross. We gaze with our own measure of sorrow at the cross, knowing what the world has done to its Savior, and feeling that we will always be defined over and against it.
But if we press John’s Gospel a bit further, we might find the perspective changing. After the excruciating journey to the cross, where Jesus carries it all by himself, and once he is hoisted up to the tree, the perspective alters. Jesus now looks lovingly at his mother and the beloved disciple, and he entrusts them to one another. “Woman, behold thy son!” My friend, “Behold thy mother!”
We are now looking down on things the way that Dalí and St. John of the Cross did. We dare to go for a moment to the top of the cross and look down with Jesus. We see the lonely boats on the lake, with their owners going about their business, saddened by their friend’s death. We see a world riven by sin and antagonism. We behold the violence among kin. We see the barriers being constructed among cities, communities, and nations. We see, from the vantage point of Christ, the venom played out in hateful words and meanness. We see the stubborn refusal to extend a hand in peace or love. We see a world of “I am not.”
But we also see that there is one true answer to all this mess, and it is the cross. There on the cross is the Savior of the World, lifted high, so that all people can be drawn to him. This yes is the meaning of the cross.
We see in the cross the love of the great I AM. It is the definitive yes to the good news of peace, reconciliation, and fullness of life. It is the yes that finds life in standing for something rather than against something. It is the yes that went to the cross without lifting a hand against those who were determined to offer a resounding no. The cross is the utter sacrifice of no for the sake of yes. The cross has broken the cycle of no once and for all.
And reigning from the cross is that Good Shepherd of the sheep. It is the Shepherd whose voice was ignored while the crowds followed the hired hand. It is the Good Shepherd who, having been glorified on the cross, becomes the sacrificial Lamb for the salvation of the world.
This Good Shepherd, who has maintained his steady yes to the life of the world, invites us to inhabit the place he has prepared for us. By his gracious permission, we are invited to change our perspective. We have for so long been looking from the ground up, confronted with the agony of the cross. But Jesus invites us to come up and look down from his view.
And Jesus, now reigning in glory, looks down on our world, with his arms stretched out in love, and says to us, Behold your brother and your sister. Look down at this world from my view and see how good it can be.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Good Friday
April 2, 2021