Take Down the Bodies for Sabbath: Looking on the One I Have Pierced

John 19:31-37

I come to this text as a white feminist who, as the Vice President of the WomanPreach! Board, is blessed to be in ongoing conversation with the Womanist tradition.  When I read about religious leaders wanting to honor their Sabbath by removing crucified bodies from crosses my mind goes back to my childhood in white, liberal churches. Our crosses were always gold, gleaming, and  bloodless. Our hymnals included no “blood songs.” This was our way of distancing ourselves from more conservative (white) traditions that emphasized the Anselmian “price Jesus paid on the cross” in gory detail much like Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion.” We believed that by turning away from violent imagery we were also turning away from violence itself. We were therefore proud of our bloodless, “nonviolent” worship moving quickly past Good Friday to a victorious Easter morning. No broken bones for us. No pierced sides, just lots of white lilies and lots of new clothes.

It was not until my seminary years when I served as an intern in a Black church that I came to question the bloodless worship of white liberalism. After almost a year of worshipping in this new context, where “blood songs” abounded and Good Friday, far from being ignored, included “Seven Last Words” sermons that were arguably the most profound sermons of the year,  I found myself weeping whenever we sang words like “draw me nearer, nearer precious Lord to the cross where thou hast died” or “there is power, power, wonder working power in the blood of the lamb.” I was moved by blood songs, and puzzled as to why. I asked another minister why he thought I was so emotional. He simply said “It’s the cross. Of course it is emotional.” Then he asked me to describe what the cross meant in the churches I grew up in. My story of bloodless liberal white worship horrified him. He told me “You are in community with us now. You have no right to your bloodless worship. If you turn away from the blood of the cross you turn away from the blood poured out from our Black bodies in the struggle for justice. By consenting to be part of this community, you have given up your right to the bloodless cross.” In that moment I began to realize that by hiding the bloodied body of Jesus white liberals were also hiding the bodies of Black and brown people who, like Jesus, were broken by the violence of empire and white supremacy.

I wonder if something like that may have been going on when Jesus was crucified. Did “religious” people turn away from the sight of him, along with so many others, who were seen as “nobodies” in the eyes of the Romans? Were their Sabbath “days of great solemnity” bloodless like mine used to be? Did hiding broken bodies out of sight make it easier to justify their own cooperation with an oppressive empire?

While there may be some parallels, the situation of first century Jewish leaders whose people lived under Roman occupation was not the same as mine as a white Christian living in the United States. Unlike me, they were oppressed because of the race and religion. But even oppressed people can also be oppressors. As I understand it, in this case, some Jewish leaders tried to carve out some kind of protection for themselves and their people in the context of Roman occupation. Because it was an ancient religion, the Romans recognized Judaism and allowed Jewish practices to continue unabated provided they also recognized the power of the Caesar and did not try to revolt against the empire. For them, the Jewish Jesus, who was crucified as an enemy of the state, was a problem. They had good reason not to want to be associated with him or his broken body. They had good reason for not wanting any crucified people to be visible during their worship. If they identified with the crucified in any way they risked being crucified as well. After all, that is exactly what happened during the Jewish War of 70CE when the Romans ran out of wood crucifying Jews. This is what always happens when people choose to side with the oppressed against their oppressors. They end up sharing in their oppression. Therefore the fear of these religious leaders was not unfounded and I am not unsympathetic.

But I wonder what this dissociation cost them. It is often tempting to “go along to get along” when faced with great evil. Distancing ourselves from the victims of imperial violence can make us feel like we are at least a little bit safe. If, we at the same time, find a way to portray ourselves as good and moral and somehow on the right side so much the better. I imagine these religious leaders who called for Jesus’ body to be hidden during their time of worship also saw themselves as good people. In this way, they were acting somewhat like white liberals act today.

We aren’t Nazis. We aren’t the Klan. We are the “good” people and the “allies” of those who suffer. We just don’t want to actually SEE the bodies, let alone be broken ourselves. Ours is a polite white supremacy that demands that broken Black and brown bodies including that of Jesus must be hidden and erased from our memory. Our Sabbath is too “solemn” to be interrupted by the embodied and bloodied and impolite sight of human suffering. We are too good for that.

This is what happens any time the cross of Jesus is detached from the many crosses of history.  It becomes an abstraction. Salvation itself becomes a matter of individual souls and their destiny in the afterlife. Jesus’ cross becomes unique, a locus for this individual soul salvation, unconnected from the thousands of other crosses on which the brown bodies of the victims of a brutal empire were broken. The cross becomes a gleaming, gold abstraction, not as Dr. James H. Cone would say, a lynching tree on which Black and brown bodies are still brutalized today. Take the bodies down! They offend our sense of sanitized holiness!

But again, what is the cost of this sanitized holiness? How does white supremacist "Christianity" hide the bodies today? It is easy to point to the so called “religious right” who tend to be more blatant with their racism and oppressive ways. The “MAGA” hat, flag waving “Christians” are obvious but I am afraid we, as white progressives and self-declared “allies” of oppressed people are not exactly innocent. We have yet to face the fact that there is a difference between ending violence and injustice and simply hiding the bodies of its victims. This is where this text convicts me. "They will look on the one whom they have pierced."

I cannot avoid this sight forever. The fate of my own soul lies in the balance. No matter how hard I try to distance myself from them, broken Black bodies will not stay hidden forever. They will ultimately judge me.  Jesus will return. Jesus is always returning in a broken Black body that cannot be taken down or hidden. Sooner or later I will have to look on the one that my own complicity in white supremacy has pierced. How is this good news? It is good news because looking on the one I have pierced offers me the chance to repent and rejoin humanity. It is good news because the suffering of the cross and lynching tree can be ended instead of obscured. I still have the choice of how I worship. I can turn away from abstractions that obscure and face an embodied truth.  Looking on the one I have pierced means opening my eyes to see Jesus. Looking on the one I have pierced means learning the truth about myself. Looking on the one I have pierced may well mean I will be pierced too but it is the first step toward my own salvation and for that I thank God.

Reverend Karyn Carlo PhD, is a retired New York City Police Captain who is now a preacher, teacher, theologian, activist for police reform, and the Vice President of the Board for WomanPreach! Inc. She earned her Master of Divinity and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. As an ordained American Baptist pastor, she currently serves as a global theological educator teaching about social justice in seminaries in Myanmar and Liberia.