A Critical Reflection by Dave Andrews

For someone to die on a cross was not a very unusual story in first century Palestine. The Maccabean king, Jannaeus, crucified eight hundred leading Pharisees after an unsuccessful insurrection in 88 B.C.[i] The Roman general, Varus, crucified some two thousand insurgents in 4 B.C.[ii] And the Roman general, Florus, crucified some three thousand six hundred more in A.D. 66.[iii] While, during the final seige of Jerusalem in A.D.70, Titus is said to have ordered so many crucifixions that they ran out of wood for the crosses![iv]

What made the death of Jesus unique, was not so much how he died, but who it was that died on the cross that day. As far as his disciples were concerned, the one who died on the cross that day was no ordinary man. To them, Jesus was the ‘Christ’ – the ‘Son of Man’ who was the ‘Son of God’ [v]– the One who was ‘with God’ and the One who ‘was God.’[vi] So for them, when Jesus died on the cross that day, it wasn’t just another death – it was the death of ‘Life’ itself. The ‘Light of Life’ itself was extinguished, and they found themselves engulfed by a terrible existential ‘Darkness’, as the ‘One they believed to be God almighty’ was ridiculed, tortured, and killed right in front of them.[vii]

Now The Question Is – Who Killed Christ?

Some say: ‘God!’ After all, ‘God is to blame for everything that goes down in the world.’ Some even quote the scripture saying, God ‘did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all’ (Romans 8:32). Some even go so far as to say, ‘We must understand “delivered up” in its full sense, and not water it down to mean…”give”. What happened here (on the cross) is what Abraham did not do to Isaac. (Abraham did not sacrifice Isaac. But God did sacrifice Christ.) He subjected Christ … to death.’ [viii] You may say

to them, ‘This is absurd. This wasn’t suicide. This was murder. How could God possibly murder God?’ No problems, they say. ‘In the words of the dogma of the early church: the first person of the Trinity…(simply) annihilates the second….’[ix] On the cross Christ is ‘godforsaken’ – literally ‘forsaken by God’. Which is why he cries out in a loud voice:

‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ – ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ [x]

These views undergird the development of two often unrecognized, but often very influential schools of Christian theology – Christian Sadism and Christian Masochism.

Christian Sadism teaches that God is omnipotent and sends suffering to punish sin, and since we are all sinners, we can expect nothing but suffering. Jesus ‘became sin, who knew no sin’[xi] and was ‘led like a lamb to the slaughter’[xii]. Be warned: ‘The Lord is fattening (sinners) for the slaughter!’.[xiii]

Christian Masochism teaches that God is omnipotent and sends suffering to make us repent from sin, so that the more we suffer, the better it is for us. Even Jesus had to ‘learn obedience through the things that he suffered’[xiv]So, ‘the very chastisements (the Lord) has inflicted upon us are just. Though (he) might inflict blows a hundredfold…we have merited them by our crimes.’[xv]

The ideas taught by these schools of Christian theology have been behind some of the worst atrocities in Christian history. Sadistic Popes have callously called for crusades, saying, ‘Cursed be the man who holds back his sword from the shedding of blood!’ [xvi] And Masochistic Pastors have sycophantically comforted the families of victims, saying, ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!’[xvii]

And, the attitudes associated with these ideas are still very much with us even today.

Some time back a letter was sent to TEAR from a church in Queensland, complaining that TEAR was too preoccupied with issues like human rights. And as Steve Bradbury, the national director, was due to visit Queensland soon, we thought it might be good to respond to this complaint by scheduling a meeting to discuss the issues face to face. So, at the appointed hour, Steve Bradbury, with a bit of moral support from Paul Mercer and myself, turned up for the meeting.

We were greeted at the door, and shown a chair at the end of a table, around which were seated a set of some of the most seriously dressed men I had ever seen. When we were all seated, a very somber looking man, at the head of the table, announced that he would select a passage from the bible to set the scene for our discussion. He picked up the big old book on the table in front of him, and, in a deep stentorian voice, began to read:

‘In the cities of the nations,

the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance:

Do not leave anything that breathes alive!

Completely destroy them –

the Hittites, the Amorites,

the Canaanites, the Perizzites,

the Hivites and the Jebusites –

as the Lord your God has commanded you!’[xviii]

Then, the somber man closed the book, and said, ‘So you can see, that in the Bible there is no such thing as “inalienable human rights”.’ God’s people are simply called to do God’s will’ he said – with a cold, hard, matter-of-fact finality – ‘whether that is to cure, or to kill!’

I could hardly believe my ears. Here I was, in downtown Brisbane, the capital of peaceful sunny Queensland – ‘beautiful one day, perfect the next’ – and I was listening to a respected Christian leader still justifying wholesale slaughter in the name of God!.

Now, it seems to me, that the Sadism and Masochism reflected in these statements are based on a distorted reading of the bible in general, and the story of the cross in partic-ular. Whether this distortion is deliberate, or not, is a matter for debate. But there are many Sadists and Masochists who have a vested interest in this distorted reading of the text. Because it projects the blame for suffering on to God, and thereby helps both the Sadists and the Masochists escape their responsibility for the suffering in the world.

If we read the story of the cross very carefully, it’s very clear that God did not kill Christ.

God did ‘not spare his Son’ in the sense that He took the risk to send his Son into the world. [xix] But, when He ‘delivered’ the Son of God to our doorstep as the Son of Man, He did so saying to himself, ‘Surely they will respect my Son!’[xx] However, when he came, ‘his own people did not welcome him’.[xxi] He may have been ‘the light of the world’. But they didn’t want him. ‘The people loved the darkness rather than the light; because their deeds were evil, and didn’t want anybody to expose them.’ [xxii] So they decided to get rid of him. And, as Jesus predicted, they eventually ‘seized’ him, and ‘crucified’ him. [xxiii]

To say Jesus felt ‘abandoned by everybody – including God’, is quite different from saying that he ‘blamed God’ for his death. Nailed to that lonely wooden cross, his body wracked with pain, his soul broken with despair, there is no doubt Jesus felt utterly forsaken. And the question arose from deep inside him: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ But, to say Jesus ‘felt forsaken’, didn’t mean that he ‘was forsaken’. In fact, before the agony of crucifixion kicked in, Jesus himself had said, ‘Don’t you know I could call on my Father for help, and at once he could send me armies of angels?’ [xxiv] And when it was all over, Jesus turned to God, as the only One he felt he could trust, saying, ‘Father into your safekeeping I commit my spirit.’[xxv]

It was not God who forsook Christ, but his disciples.[xxvi] God was not the one who sold him for thirty pieces of silver – it was Judas.[xxvii] God was not the one who denied him three times – it was Peter.[xxviii] It was not God who killed Christ, but the powers that be, aided and abetted by the public.[xxix] God was not the one who stirred up the crowds – it was the chief priests.[xxx] God was not the one who cried, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ – it was ordinary people, like you and me.[xxxi] And, in the end, it was the authorities – a Jewish King and a Roman Governor – that nailed Christ to the cross. [xxxii] Not God!

‘So where was God when all this was happening?’ you ask. Well, ‘God was in Christ.’ [xxxiii] God was in Christ – in his suffering. God was in Christ – in his forsakeness. He was not the perpetrator. He was not a spectator. He was with the victim, and He was the victim.

Jurgen Moltmann, (reacting to criticism of his views in The Crucified God,) states quite categorically that, ‘The Father of Jesus is always on Jesus side – never on the side of the people who crucified him’. [xxxiv] He quotes the scripture, saying: “He who sees the Son sees the Father“[xxxv]. Then he goes on to say, ‘in the suffering of the Son’, is the suffering ‘of the Father’. And he poignantly concludes, ‘the Father suffers the death of the Son’.[xxxvi]

The Powers That Be And People Like You and Me.

When we read the story of the cross correctly, then we are confronted with the most profound and most terrifying critique of humanity in history. For we realize, to our horror, that it is not God who has killed Christ, but the powers that be, and people like you and me, who, in killing Christ, have killed God.

The powers that be are the authorities – the spiritual centres of traditions, institutions and systems of control that have immense power over our lives.[xxxvii] These cosmic forces, at the heart of our religious traditions, cultural institutions and governmental systems of law and order maintain their control over our lives through their claims to legitimacy. They claim they have ‘a God-given right’ to control because, they say, that as ‘properly constituted authorities’ they are the ‘God-anointed, God-appointed guardians of our lives’.[xxxviii] And people like you and me are taught to submit ourselves to the powers that be, so that ‘we can learn from God through them’, as it says, in a lesson outline that was distributed in a religious instruction class at a local school some time back.[xxxix]

However, in Colossians, Paul said Jesus ‘made a pubic example’ of the powers that be.[xl] And, in his classic book on Christ and the Powers, Hendrik Berkhof explains just how Jesus made a public example – or public spectacle – of the Powers on the cross.

‘It is precisely in the crucifixion that the true nature of the Powers has come to light. Now that the true God appears on earth in Christ, it becomes apparent that the Powers are inimical to him, not acting as His instruments but as His adversaries. The Scribes, representatives of the Jewish law, far from gratefully receiving Him who came in the name of the God of law, crucified him in the name of the temple. Pilate, representing Roman justice, shows what th(is) is worth when called upon to do justice to the truth Himself. (And) the Pharisees, personifying piety, crucified Him in the name of piety. Obviously “none of the rulers of this age’, who let themselves be worshipped as divinities, understood God’s wisdom, “for if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”[xli] Now they are unmasked as false gods by their encounter with Very God; they are “made a public spectacle”.’[xlii]

Walter Wink, in his three volume series on Naming, Unmasking, and Engaging The Powers, writes: ‘Jesus died just like all the others who challenge the Powers that dominate the world. (But) some thing went awry (for the Powers) with Jesus. They scourged him with whips, but with each stroke of the lash their own illegitimacy was laid open. They stripped him naked and crucified him in humiliation, all unaware that this very act had stripped them of the last covering that disguised the wrongness of the whole way of living that their violence defended. The law by which he was judged is itself judged, set aside and nailed to the cross. The authorities that publicly shamed him, stripping him naked, have been stripped of their protective covering and exposed as agents of death’ – not the agents of life they pretend to be. ‘The very Powers that led him to Golgotha are now paraded’ as a spectacle for all to see – as they really are! [xliii]

But the Powers are not the only ones seen for ‘who they really are’ at Golgotha. Peter courageously confronts the people with their complicity, when he stands up publicly in Jerusalem and says, ‘Fellow Jews, and all of you who live in Jerusalem (both Jew and Gentile alike), you know Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God – and you, you put him to death!’[xliv] Jesus may have been put to death by the powers that be. But, it was only possible because of the collaboration of people like you and me.

Gene Sharp, in his seminal study on Power and Struggle says, every Power that there is depends on the support of people for the operationalization of its power. The power that each Power exercises depends on the degree to which people accept its authority, assist with its activities, share their resources with its agencies, and subordinate them selves to its directives. Which people are prepared to do for the Powers out of a sense of obligation, a habit of obedience, the desire for approval, the fear of punishment, the hope of reward, or perhaps just plain laziness – taking the path of least resistance. [xlv]

Jesus acknowledged that people often ‘did not know what they were doing’ when they

collaborated with the Powers. Even when the crowds, stirred on by the priests, were baying for his blood, he prayed ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’[xlvi]

As Studdert Kennedy, the keen observer and remarkable author of Indifference writes, ‘All through the ages (people) have crucified God, not knowing what they did. Crucified Him through their ignorance, stupidity, dullness of imagination, feebleness of mind, and a host of other factors – as well as their deliberate choice of wrong against right.’[xlvii]

But at the foot of the cross people are forced to face the truth about themselves at last – clearly, unmistakably, and unavoidably. Here, at the foot of the cross, people are forced to confront the truth of who they are in the light of what they have done. They look at the body in front of them, then look at the blood they have on their hands, and hear that still small voice whispering in their hearts, saying to them: ‘You put him to death, you know.’

There’s no time to run. There’s no place to hide. They are totally exposed. And stripped of all excuses. They may’ve been ignorant – but they know ignorance is no justification. They may have been stupid – but they know stupidity is no defense against culpability. They may not have been too bright – occasionally quite dull actually – but they know that lack of imagination is hardly an acceptable explanation for the execution of innocents. As feeble and as fickle as people may have been, they know they must own the truth – that out of some misplaced sense of obligation, habit of obedience, desire for approval, fear of punishment, hope of reward, bout of laziness or fit of spite, they have crucified their Messiah, and they have nobody to blame but themselves!

The Victim Of Injustice At The Heart Of A Hurting World.

Now, according to the scripture, though Christ was crucified, ‘once and for all’, as an historical event,[xlviii] Christ is crucified ‘afresh,‘[xlix] in an existential sense, every time the powers that be, and people like you and me, conspire to crucify one of our neighbours.

Christ makes this very clear when he says ‘whatever you do to one of the least’ – one of those that most of you consider the least – the marginalized, distressed, disabled, and disadvantaged – you ‘do it to me’[l]. He says: ‘When you help them – you help me. And when you hurt them – you hurt me. Whenever you crucify them – I take it personally – it’s as if you are actually crucifying me. “For the wound of the daughter of my people, is my heart wounded – my grief is beyond healing!” ‘[li]

When we realize Christ is crucified ‘afresh,’ every time we crucify one of our neighbours,

the story of the cross becomes the metastory we can use to critically reflect, not only on the role the powers that be played in the first century, but also on the role that people like you and me play in the twenty-first century.

As Thomas Boomershine, the founder of the Network of Biblical Storytellers, says: ‘The

story (of the cross) invites us to explore the relationships between our involvement with corporate powers of sin and death (in light of) this narrative of hostility towards Jesus Christ.’ A simple way of ‘opening ourselves to this tradition’ he says, ‘is to identify ways in which the groups with which we are identified are involved in sin (and death). To meditate on our involvement in the forces that cause abuse, oppression, poverty, and war.’ One way you can do that, he says, is to ‘identify a communal situation in which you are involved and listen to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion in that context.’ [lii]

When I look for a ‘communal situation’ that represents the history of the twentieth century, I can’t go past the ‘concentration camp’. At the turn of the century the British introduced the concentration camp as a tool for dealing with the Boers. In the middle of the century the Germans developed the concentration camp as an instrument for the ‘final solution’ of the ‘Jewish problem’. And, by the end of the century, the concentration camp was employed in ‘killing fields’ all over the world – from Cambodia to Kosovo – as the most effective means of pursuing totalitarian policies such as ‘cultural revolution and ‘ethnic cleansing’. Thus it is that the concentration camp has become the quintessential symbol of cold-blooded brutality in the bloodiest era on earth – signifying the systematic slaughter of hundreds of millions of innocent men, women and children.

The most graphic story I’ve heard, that connects the concentration camp to the cross, is told by Elie Wiesel in his chilling Nobel prize-winning book Night. Wiesel speaks of an execution he witnessed in Auschwitz when he was a fourteen-year-old boy. Two men and a young boy close to Wiesel’s age were suspected of involvement in the sabotage of a power station, and were ordered to be hanged in front of an assembly of prisoners.

‘One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing

up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. S.S. all round

us, machine guns trained: the tra­ditional ceremony. Three victims in

chains – and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel.

The S.S. seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To

hang a young boy in front of thousands of spec­tators was no light matter.

The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He

was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow

over him.

This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner.

Three SS replaced him.

The three victims mounted together on to the chairs.

The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses.

‘Long live liberty!’ cried the two adults.

But the child was silent.

‘Where is God? Where is He?’ someone behind me asked.

At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over.

Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

‘Bare your heads!’ yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous.

We were weeping.

‘Cover your head!’

Then the march past began The two adults were no longer alive. Their

tongues hung swollen, blue tinged. But the third rope was still moving;

being so light, the child was still alive . . .

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and

death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in

the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was

still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

‘Where is God now?’

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

‘Where is He? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows.’[liii]

For Elie Wiesel, a deeply religious Jew brought up the Talmud and eager to be initiated into the Cabbala, that evening at sunset became the defining moment of his life.

‘Never shall I forget that night, the first night in the camp, which has turned

my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that stroke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the

children whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a

silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my

faith forever. Never shall I forget that noctur­nal silence which deprived me,

for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments

which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.

Never shall I forget these things…. Never.’[liv]

Wiesel never did forget. And neither should we. The powers may want us to forget.

The people may want us to forget. We may even want to forget ourselves. But we should never forget – that the way the world is … is literally killing Christ!

In the past few years we have tried to find a way to remind ourselves of this truth in the context in which we live. And we’ve done it by recycling the Stations of the Cross.   The Stations of the Cross are traditional series of meditations on the various stages of the story of the cross, from Jesus’ trial through to his crucifixion, his death and his burial. Whereas these meditations used to be more private we have tried to make them more public. Each Easter a group has gone on an open pilgrimage around our city, seeking to identify – and identify with – the places where Christ is still being crucified in our society.

One place we identified that represented where Christ was being crucified today was Brisbane’s Planned Parenthood (Abortion) Clinic. ‘We may not like to admit it, but we have learned to walk or drive by the(se) specialized killing centres with scarcely a sideways glance or thought as to what goes on behind their doors. We have learned to live with the killing of over 100,000 preborn babies a year (in Australia alone). (And) we have learned to accept (even) partial-birth abortions, where six-month old babies are almost completely delivered alive, only to have to be killed by having their brains sucked out by a vacuum machine. Brisbane’s Planned Parenthood (Abortion) Clinic being Australia’s specialist centre for this particular technique.’[lv]

Another place we identified that represented where Christ was being crucified today was the Tower Mill, on a hill in the middle of Brisbane. The Tower Mill was where the Aborigines who resisted invasion were hanged to death in the early days of settlement.

When the first migrants arrived, there were about three hundred thousand Aborigines and Islanders in Australia; but after a hundred years of slaughter and resettlement, there were barely fifty thousand Aborigines and Islanders left alive.[lvi] Two hundred years later indigenous children still face infant mortality rates three times more than the general population, and a life expectancy of twenty years less than that of any other Australian.[lvii] And deaths in custody continue to escalate -doubling since the inquiry.[lviii]

Yet another place we identified that, until recently, represented where Christ was being crucified today was the Recruitment Office for the Australian Armed Forces in Brisbane. Since the invasion and occupation of East Timor in 1975 (until sometime in 1999), the Australian Armed Forces were involved in training of the Indonesian Armed Forces. This included the training of aircraft pilots, combat instructors, military intelligence, and the Special Forces group, Kopassus, who were involved in the wanton massacre of over two hundred thousand people in East Timor. For the Australian Armed Forces to aid the Indonesian Armed Forces in this war against the people of East Timor was particularly

reprehensible when you take into account that forty thousand of our nearest neighbours gave their lives to help the diggers fighting the Japanese during the Second World War.

No doubt our Prime Minister, John Howard, would say this is a ‘black-armband’ view of history. But, as Justice Marcus Einfeldt says, when it comes to dealing with reality, its much better for us to wear a ‘black armband’ than it is to wear a ‘white blindfold’.

The reason TEAR – a Christian Aid Agency for which I work – exists, is to help Aussie Christians discard their ‘white blindfolds’ – along with their sets of ‘rose coloured glasses’ – and discern the presence of the crucified Christ at the heart of our hurting world, which may be getting better for a few, but is getting much worse for the vast majority.

‘In the coming world order’, says Jacques Attalli, the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, ‘there will be winners and losers. (But) the losers will outnumber the winners by an unimaginable factor. They will yearn for the chance to live decently, and they are likely to be denied that chance.’ Then, in a turn of phrase that is reminiscent of the fate of those consigned to the concentration camps, he says, ‘they will find themselves penned in, asphyxiated by pollution, neglected by indifference.’ And he chillingly concludes: ‘the horrors of the twentieth century will fade by comparison.’[lix]

Indeed, as we enter the twenty-first century our population is over six billion people, and almost five billion of these live in the ‘developing’ world. Four-fifths lack basic sanitation. One-third lack clean water. And one-fifth have no access to adequate health services. [lx] Sure we give them aid; but they are so indebted, that for every dollar of aid that we give to ‘developing’ countries, thirteen comes back in interest payments.[lxi] So after decades of steady advance, aid and development have been thrown into reverse, and over a billion hungry people are sliding, slowly but surely, into the abyss.[lxii]

‘Africa,’ Attalli says, ‘is a lost continent. It is one of the last places on earth in which famine persists. The terrible facts of having fallen into an economic black hole speak for themselves: since 1970, Africa’ s share of the worlds markets has been reduced by half; its debt has been multiplied by twenty and now equals its gross product; income in sub-Saharan Africa has fallen by a quarter since 1987. Falling exports and investments, coupled with aging machinery and equipment, guarantees that the economic plight will only grow worse.’ And his prediction is dire, saying that ‘with the possible exception of South Africa, the most probable future of Africa is tragic: it will be totally… lost.’[lxiii]

Some time back I was asked by TEAR if I would be willing to travel to the Sudan, the largest country in Africa, to assess the current situation there. Needless to say I jumped at the chance to go. But of course I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

The truth is that the expedition that I made, with Arthur McCutchan, from Kobokor in Northern Uganda to Kajo Keji in Southern Sudan, was one of the most hazardous excursions I have ever done. The road was pocked with bomb craters that were big enough to swallow trucks whole, and roving bands of armed robbers attacked vehicles that broke down on the road. As we were about to leave we heard that a convoy, that had left barely an hour ahead of us, had been shot to pieces by some rebel soldiers.

But we had a job to do, so off we went. The drive to the border went without incident. It was dusk by the time we got to the outpost, and night fell fast and dark. There was no electricity. No light at all. So at the check post we were ordered to stop the car, turn off the headlights, and turn on the inside lights, to illuminate the cabin of the car. We felt like sitting ducks, surrounded by soldiers with their fingers on their triggers, lit up like easy targets in sideshow alley, and not being able to see ‘a bloody thing’.

What made us feel even more nervous was the fact that we were traveling on papers issued by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, and, at the time we were asked to hand our documents out the window into the darkness, we weren’t sure whether the soldiers that had us surrounded were government or guerrilla. The wrong ones – and we could have been in a bit of trouble. Fortunately, it was the SPLA at the border that night.

Across the border we were in Sudan. Sudan has a population of some thirty-five million people. Arab in the arid north. Negroid in the tropical south. They have been at war with one another for twenty-five of the last forty years. It has been a particularly brutal war. Priests have been crucified. Captives sold into slavery. Villages razed to the ground. And vital food stocks destroyed. A million people have died. Five million people have been displaced. And ten million people have been at risk of starving. Government troops stopping emergency food supplies getting to the people in guerrilla held areas.

At first sight its gutted structures gave Kajo Keji the look of a ghost town. But it was inhabited by more than two hundred thousand people. Many of them refugees. Seeking safety away from the fighting. But the bombed out roads and bullet ridden buildings indicated that even here the refugees were caught in the crossfire from time to time.

We met with a local pastor who greeted us warmly and offered to take us to visit some of the camps for displaced people round Kajo Keji. So we spent the day going round the town. Meeting groups of people squatting by the side of the road in temporary shelters made out of sticks and bits of blue plastic. They told us their stories of fleeing on foot, from air raids and ground attacks, across hundreds of kilometres of inhospitable country -side. They all looked as if they’d walked as far as they could, and couldn’t walk another step to save themselves. A sign strung across the encampment read: ‘Victory Is Assured’. But there was only defeat in the eyes of the bedraggled refugees.

The state of the emaciated people in the camps was serious. But more or less what I had expected. It was the kind of malnutrition that’s common in slums all over the world. But then I met the lepers. Outcasts struggling to survive by scavenging on the outskirts of the camps. Without access to a smidgen of the emergency supplies the people in the camps had access to. Not even a single aspirin between them in the last seven years. And nothing that I had ever experienced before – in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, or Nepal – prepared me for the extremity of suffering I saw reflected in the lepers’ eyes. Minus their fingers and their toes, they dragged themselves around the edges of the camps in their skeletally thin bodies. Naked and broken, abandoned and alone, every move they made seemed to scream: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

That night we returned to base in Kajo Keji. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. As I lay there I heard the sounds of screaming. To start with I thought it might have been a domestic dispute. But as the screaming continued a chill crept up my spine as I realized that it probably was some poor man being tortured, or some poor woman being raped. I got up to look around. But I could see nothing at all in the impenetrable darkness. I couldn’t see anything. But I heard everything. I heard every howl of torment that was wrung from that wretched soul that night. It was hard for me to lay there listening to the screaming, but it must have been hell for my unseen friend writhing at the hands of those merciless men. At the time the only thing I thought I could do was to pray. So I prayed, desperately, the agony would end. But it went on and on. Like a wound that would never heal.

And I asked myself, ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer:

‘Where is God now? He is here – writhing in agony at the hands of merciless men!’

Christ That Bleeds – A Song by Dave Andrews

Excerpt from ‘Crux’ by Dave Andrews

http://www.daveandrews.com.au/crux.html

[i] Josephus Antiqities xiii.14.2

[ii] ibid xvii.10.10

[iii] Josephus Wars of the Jews ii.14.9

[iv] D.Wiseman ‘Crucifixion’ The New Bible Dictionary Eeerdmans Grand Rapids 1973 p281

[v] Math.16:16

[vi] John 1:1

[vii] Mark 15:33

[viii] W.Popkes Christus Traditus 1967 p286

[ix] Ibid p286

[x] J.Moltmann ibid p241ff

[xi] 2 Cor. 5:21

[xii] Acts 8:32

[xiii] D. Soelle ibid pp23-24

[xiv] Heb. 5:8

[xv] D. Soelle ibid p9

[xvi] H.Ellerbe The Dark Side Of Christian History Morningstar San Rafael 1995 ibid p65

[xvii] A, Schmidt Leviathan Rowohlt Hamburg 1949 p58

[xviii] Deut.20:16

[xix] Rom.8:32

[xx] Math.21:37

[xxi] John 1:11

[xxii] John 3:19-20

[xxiii] Math. 20:17-19

[xxiv] Math. 26:53

[xxv] Luke 23:46

[xxvi] Math.26:56b

[xxvii] Math.26:14-16

[xxviii] Math.26:69-75

[xxix] Math.27:24-26

[xxx] Math.27:1-2,20-21

[xxxi] Math.27:22

[xxxii] Luke 23.6-25

[xxxiii] 2 Cor.5:19

[xxxiv] J.Moltmann The Way Of Christ SCM London 1990 p176

[xxxv] John 14:9

[xxxvi] J. Moltmann The Way Of Christ SCM London 1990 p173

[xxxvii] T. McAlpine Facing The Powers Marc Monrovia 1991 p15,

[xxxviii] ibid p12

[xxxix] Lesson Outline B.S.H.S. p1

[xl] Col. 2:15

[xli] 1 Cor. 2:8

[xlii] H.Berkof Christ and the Powers Herald Scottdale 1962 pp30ff

[xliii] W.Wink Engaging The Powers Fortress Minneapolis 1992 pp139-140

[xliv] Acts 2:22-23

[xlv] G.Sharp Power and Struggle Porter Sargent 1973 pp11-12, 18-24

[xlvi] Luke 23:34

[xlvii] S. Kennedy The Best Of G.A. Studdert Kennedy Hodder and Stoughton London 1963 p84

[xlviii] 2 Cor.5:15

[xlix] Heb.6:4-6

[l] Math.25:40,45

[li] Jer.8:21-22

[lii] T.Boomershine Story Journey Abingdon Nashville 1988 p171

[liii] E.Wiesel Night Hill and Wang New York 1960 p 70ff

[liv] Ibid. Introduction.

[lv] G.Preston in Contemporary Christian Issues Heritage Brisbane 1998 p14

[lvi] D. Andrews Building A Better World Albatorss Sutherland p262

[lvii] W.Deane Some Signposts From Daguragu Com. Of Australia Canberra 1996 p26

[lviii] P.Dodson The Path To Reconciliation Com. Of Australia Canberra 1997 p29

[lix] J.Attalli Millennium Random House New York 1992 p84

[lx] K.Miller ‘6 Billion To Feed’ The Courier Mail Wed. Sept. 22 1999 p19

[lxi] The Burden of Debt Jubilee 2000 Coalition 1999 Melbourne p3

[lxii]The Debt Cutters Handbook Jubilee 2000 London 1998 p13

[lxiii] J. Attalli ibid p73-74