In this reading [1 Cor 1:17-31], St. Paul contrasts the Gospel with the mentality both of “the Jews and the Greeks.” The Jews demanded signs of divine power, and in the Gospel from time to time Jews would demand such a sign from Jesus. It was traditional in Israel that if a prophet proclaimed some new message he had to show a sign from God that he that he was a true prophet of God. And remember that it got to the point at which they asked for a sign and Jesus replied that no sign would be given. He wouldn’t give that kind of sign. What mattered to the Greeks, on the other hand, was “wisdom,” sophia. Philosophy, the ‘love of wisdom,’ was the very heart of the Greek world. And St. Paul preaches this Christ crucified, who is precisely a “stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles.”
What precisely do we understand by Christ crucified? I think the first thing noted by the Jews, so eager for signs, would be that Jesus refused to provide a demonstration of power. Recall his temptations in the wilderness: to turn stones into bread, to leap from the top of the temple and be borne up by an angel — some dramatic sign of power, what we call in India a siddhi. Jesus didn’t want to demonstrate siddhis. And, in fact, he did the exact opposite; he revealed himself not in power but in weakness. And this was a terrible paradox; everybody expected the Messiah primarily to be an earthly king, to topple the enemies of Israel, to re-establish the kingdom; and he clearly rejected that. At least he could have more conspicuously manifested spiritual power; he could have shown himself to be the mighty one continually producing stupendous miracles.
But his miracles were never meant to show off; they were always done out of compassion and concern for people. There was in Jesus no desire to demonstrate that kind of power. Instead, he showed this terrible weakness — the only plausible explanation for it is that his way is a way of love. Love reveals itself not in the demonstration of power, but in weakness, in surrendering oneself. Now this surrender was a total surrender of himself and it has exercised this tremendous power ever since. We discern in it the sign of a love which is an incomparably greater power than that which is manifest in all the signs and wonders that people admire.
So we derive from our reading the first and fundamental theme that the power of God is revealed in Jesus as this power of love which is ‘weakness’ insofar as it doesn’t fight against the enemies, doesn’t try to destroy them. It accepts humiliation and defeat, yet conquers by love, conquers by suffering, conquers by self-surrender. It’s a tremendous message, when you think about it.
And then the other aspect is wisdom. The Greeks sought wisdom in philosophy, and quite clearly Jesus did not preach that kind of wisdom. There is another kind of wisdom that St. Paul often mentions; that is the wisdom of the knowledge of God. We don’t think of this so often; Jesus revealed not only the love and the power of God but this wisdom of God. He revealed that at their highest point, the two are one and the same. He revealed that the highest knowledge is the knowledge of love. Scientific knowledge, philosophical knowledge, theological knowledge— all these ways of knowing have their value, but the highest knowledge is what is called the knowledge of love. Wisdom is knowledge by love; and when you come to think of it, if you really want to reach the deepest knowledge of a person, you only do it by love. You don’t know a person except by love. And the deepest knowledge is personal knowledge; your knowledge of science, of nature, is very good as far as it goes; your theoretical psychology will help as far as it goes, but the deepest knowledge, the only really authentic knowledge is the knowledge of love and the discovery of the reality of the person. Jesus went behind all the outward appearances to the heart of humanity, the heart of the person and revealed this knowledge by love. I think this is really the message which is revealed in the cross, and it is not essentially a message of suffering.
This latter interpretation has been a great misfortune. Most people think of Christ crucified first of all as suffering, and that the Christian message is you must suffer. Of course, we do have to learn to bear suffering, but that knowledge only comes through love.
Much of the Gospel has been falsified in that way. Many of the modern crucifixes, especially some of the Spanish ones, show Christ suffering on the cross. There was not one crucifix on which the suffering Christ is found in the early churches; in fact, before the 11th century. When they did display the cross it bore a triumphant Christ. The meaning was love’s triumph over sin and death. In the Syrian Church, to which we once belonged, the crucifix is always made of silver, gold and precious stones and it is called the Cross of Light; it is a sign of triumph, of victory, of glory. And that is why on Good Friday you still veil the statues and you veil the crucifix — which seems a complete contradiction; the reason for it was that in the Eastern Church the crucifixes were these brilliant jewelled, gold and silver things and you veiled the glory of the cross on Good Friday. But now in our Western church with our suffering Christ on the cross we veil it on Good Friday for no reason at all; it’s just at that time (logically speaking) that it should be visible. It’s only an old custom that was retained despite changed circumstances. That’s the point you see — that in the early church the cross is seen as the triumph of love and of grace and of God overcoming the suffering and death — and not as signifying only the humiliation and the suffering. That aspect of suffering has been so emphasized in modern Catholicism that it upsets people badly. There’s enough suffering in life without putting further suffering onto people. And of course that approach does not teach us how to bear suffering. You only bear suffering through love. Only by love do we really learn to accept suffering and bear it. So I think that the preaching of the cross can be very misleading — or it can be wonderfully sustaining.
This article was homily given at Shantivanam Ashram (undated). It was first published in The Golden String Vol.12 No.2 (Winter 2005/6)