On Philosopher Idiot's

A Holy Saturday Meandering

Hi friends,

Thank you, Jesus; what a sombre day we are invited into to contemplate—the wrenching depths God chooses to reveal himself amidst.

I hope the day’s growth keeps you company (for those in London), and the sun’s luminance is not overpowering your skin (for those in Australia). For this Passion weekend, I share an appropriation of something I’ve been thinking through for a few months: on Christ’s Idiot’s.

If Christ is Wisdom dwelt among us, then his Mother is the greatest Philosopher—that is, lover of Wisdom (philo-sophia). If Christ’s Cross is foolishness, then His Mother is the foolish philosopher; her Annunciate treatise proclaims the magnificent liberation of all, whilst yesterday culminated in a humiliating cross. Dare I say, from the perspective of these next 48 hours, she and all who follow in her wake are idiots. Now, before you brush me aside for being contentious, might I add this: Christ’s Kingdom has space only for those stupid enough to follow. The first will be the last, and the last will become the first.

God dwells with the least of these. And, on this day, he passes over the banality of violence, illustrating Death’s pseudo-attempt of intellectualism as foiled. Evil is a privation and therefore finite and, thus, at its most deceitful attempt of being splendour, confesses itself to be repetitious, boring, and disgusting. On the contrary, the Good can never cease to be vivid, original, and new; as a transcendent quality, it has infinite ways of manifestation. Therefore, in passing through Death, Christ reveals his Presence as being amidst the chaff of creation, laying dormant beneath where Death dare not go, inviting them, too, to give up the to-be-expected aesthetic of evil and emerge into wheat. However, to know this, one must have Post-Resurrection eyes.

The liturgical calendar invites us to feel, embody, and imbibe the liminal space between old and new for a moment so that we might join with Christ in crucifying again, again, and again, our expectations of who God should be.

Christ’s culminating Theophany, as Mark’s Gospel has it, contains no Resurrection. (That is, at least originally.) However, Mark does include three faithful women onlookers and a demon (the Centurion). I am yet to understand how our Christian imagination arrived at the general conclusion of the Centurion converting to Christianity upon seeing the way Christ died. For one, he speaks not of it again.

If this is a disclosure of Divine revelation, akin to the Transfiguration, in which Christ told the disciples not to speak, yet here Christ says nothing of that kind, then did the Centurion really ‘convert’? Can one see Christ and not feel compelled to speak?

Secondly, Mark’s Gospel is a rhetoric charged with a dichotomy: those who recognise Christ are either demons or God. Is not the ultimate subversion found in God’s supreme manifestation? At the hands of an empire perpetuating the woefully arrogant proposal of control through violence, Christ’s slain body impresses fear and trembling upon its symbolic leader; he shrieks on behalf of Empire—that last remaining demon. However, I believe that to hold such a view, we need simultaneous attendance to the Good, not just the clearing of evil. We must follow the women onlookers and seek to embody their example—particularly as we journey through Holy Saturday toward Easter Sunday.

I propose an alternative, one that prepares us to visit the tomb of Christ on Sunday; one that takes seriously the trepidation of uncertainty surrounding the would-be sight of your Beloved, dead by Imperial hands, with spirits crushed and supposed hope lost. God’s Mother, as I said, is the idiot philosopher, and that is the highest ‘status’ one might claim. The other Marys and Salome, students of the foolish academy, will follow her lead, eyes attuned to see the presence of Christ amidst the least of these. When all the male disciples have fled from the Cross, these women remain. These women will take note of where He is buried; they will attend to Him on Sunday in preparation for anointment.

However, on the threshold of then and now, they wait, and we grieve with them the tragic condition of humanity’s trajectory when it participates in sub-human ideologies.

But on Sunday, we join these women, and we become idiots, too: Christ’s Idiots. We venture onward to gift Christ the fragrance of attention amidst a rotting body. Because it is the nonsensical who love, the irresponsible who fight for peace, and it is the imbeciles who will, contrary to all odds, be brave enough to visit Christ one last time. And on this visit, might we be surprised at what we find. If Christ is not there, I repent for not following the footsteps of the Foolish, your Children. Help me, oh Lord, to crucify my expectations of what you should be. You are the God of Peace; might we be idiotic enough to believe.

With love,

Isaiah

Have a blessed Holy Saturday as you wait in eager expectation for Resurrection Sunday. I leave you with this wonderful hymn sung at my church’s Station of the Cross service, written by Matt Redman:

Mercy, mercy
as endless as the sea
I’ll sing Your hallelujah,
for all eternity.

May I never lose the wonder,
O the wonder of Your mercy
May I sing Your hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Amen.

I will kneel in the dust,
at the foot of the cross
where mercy paid for me. 

Similarly, Victoria Emily Jones has a delightful (and short) reflection on this Congdon, over on Art & Theology!

William Congdon (American, 1912–1998), Crocefisso 45 (Crucifix 45), 1966. Oil on canvas, 152 × 139 cm. Collection of the William G. Congdon Foundation, Milan.