Grid::Blog::Via Crucis 2007 - Station VIII
April 6, 2007
Check out other blog “stations” on the Way of the Cross at Via Crucis 2007
Can Jesus console these daughters?
By Bowie Snodgrass
Washington Window
Vol. 75, No. 6, May 2006
Mothers. Whores. Martyrs. Virgins. We’re all daughters. Daughters of Jerusalem.
Asked to do a Station of the Cross for an alternative Good Friday service, I chose VIII: Jesus Consoles the Daughters of Jerusalem. Thinking about my station, I wondered: who are the daughters that need consolation? Can Jesus, a first-century male, console us?
“A great multitude of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’” - Luke 23.27-29
The barren
Jesus tells the women not to weep for him, but for themselves and for their children. Worse times are ahead. This death is just the beginning. The destruction of the temple is still to come.
Jesus then blesses the barren, and their unused wombs and breasts. Caught between the sin of Eve leading to the female ‘punishment’ of childbirth, and the theme of cursed barrenness in the Hebrew Bible, women’s worth was all too often caught up between being a mother - or not. Jesus transfers the personal “sins” of both motherhood and barrenness away from the individual, pointing rather to larger societal ills.
As a modern daughter of Jerusalem, I see an underlying anxiety among my friends in their 20s and 30s about becoming mothers - or not. About the roles our professional lives play in that equation. About the threat of environmental toxins, and the number of young women we know who have cysts, fibroids, and the worry that when we’re ready, with the right guy, we’ll be infertile (with the option of spending tens of thousands of dollars helping nature along). About the complex and intrusive legal process of adoption for lesbians. About having kids as this American Empire bloats and the green apocalypse threatens an end of natural days, as we knew them.
Jesus doesn’t pity us. He sees us - the barren, the prostitutes, the modern maidens - and reaches out. The ‘con’ in ‘console’ means ‘with.’ Jesus stands with us. Jesus consoles the daughters of Jerusalem.
Fashion victims
Starting my station, I envisioned a collage of women who looked like they needed to be consoled. I ended up with an art installation of pinned-up pages from Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine, both high fashion advertisements and portrait photographs.
These women look like they need some serious consolation. Their skinny, contorted bodies, dressed in ways that would leave you unsafe on the streets, look lost and exposed. My roommate commented on their empty eyes. How uncomfortable they appear in front of the camera - and how they make most of us feel in our own skins.
They are victims to the fashions of the times. Beautiful freaks. We can’t help but stare at the androgynous and the super sexy.
Think of the desert mothers, who starved themselves in an ascetic attempt to shed the weight of the world, or the 13th century female mystics diagnosed with “holy anorexia” by modern scholars of medieval history. Throughout the centuries, in the Christian ethos, that which ties us to this world is suspect, and that includes sexuality and body.
Humans are superficial creatures. Jesus sees the humanity in us all. But, do we see it in him? We have made an icon of his face. In Station VI, Veronica (meaning ‘true image’) captures the first image of Christ’s face with her veil. Later we see paintings of the beautiful Jesus in art, Greek-god-like Jesus in stone, gruesome Jesus on the cross.
In the eighth century, portraits of the crucifixion shifted from portraying Jesus in a long robe to simply in a loincloth. Unclothed images of Jesus are everywhere. He stands naked in icons of the Baptism. Leo Steinberg exposed the Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, opening our eyes to a period where baby Jesus’ penis was a focal point in art with the theological intention of highlighting his true manhood.
Jesus however, is not presented as a sexual object (neither to be an object of our desire, nor as a subject who felt desire). Naked Jesus symbolizes the power of the incarnation, the undoing of the stain of our original sin (thank you very much, Augustine), a perfect hypostatic union of God and Man. God made Flesh, made manifest.
Yes. We are all created in the image of God. Male and female, God created us. Then God became flesh and dwelt among us. Sexuality is part of being human.
Women’s lives are tied to their bodies, for better or worse. Can they produce children or not? Are they beautiful or not? Are they pure or unclean? Jesus too is sexualized and desexualized with the fashions of the times. But, I believe Jesus sees, knows and loves us all as fully-human natural women.
I can still hope for a day when ministers can wear mini-skirts, when we’re not defined by our wombs and breasts and need not fear being barren, when women no longer need to beat their breasts for the sins of the world. Jesus, you with us?