the comma between Jesus birth and death

In the word-frugal cadence of an aging man speaking in a second language, the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann said this in a recent interview: “Between the birth and death of Christ there is a fairly emphasized comma.”

The legendary thinker was quipping on the habit that Christians have had, dating back to the authors of the Apostles’ Creed, of embellishing the importance of the last few chapters of our gospel stories and forgetting the rest of them. Perhaps the culmination of this 18 century trend is the tagline in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ which reads, “He was born in order to die.”

What we’re left with when we drop that “comma” is the three day narrative on that back end of Holy Week. What’s missing is any clue from Jesus himself as to why these three days might have any significance for us. The knee-jerk responses—“he died as punishment for my sins,” “he is risen so that I might be risen too”—are little help. Thought through critically, these are interpretations of these events that later generations have handed onto us, and if they appear self-evident now, it’s only due to sheer repetition. They were self-evident to no one standing before either cross or gravesite during those strange days. These first witnesses had neither Augustine’s 4^th and 5th century writings nor Anselm’s 11^th century writings to inform them. They were left to scratch their heads and look back across their memories of Jesus’ life, asking, “What does this mean?”

Perhaps it was inevitable that Christians would make this <.02% of Jesus’ life story into the main thing. The death and resurrection by themselves are theologically far more malleable than that “fairly emphasized comma.” They are not as demanding as the Sermon on the Mount, as confusing as the parable of the dishonest land manager, or as upsetting as the whole fiasco with the money changing stations in the temple.

If we subtly brush all those other events to the side, then the meaning of death and resurrection can be shaped as we please. They can ease whatever existential worries we might have, while, conveniently, asking very little of us or the status quos of our world during this lifetime. Baptism becomes fire insurance, life becomes a comfortable waiting room, and “what happens when you die?” is promoted to the only meaningful theological question.

But there is a tradeoff for this kind of easy existential satisfaction (Bonhoeffer called this “cheap grace,” though not, as some believe he meant it, to simply reinstate legalism). What we give up is any kind of purpose for which the Gospel might call us to strive, any call to embrace this world for all of its warts, and any of the joy of Zaccheus when Jesus told him, “Today, salvation has come to this house.” In short, all we give up in order to have just our death and resurrection cake is everything that Jesus lived and died for in the first place. The risk and the hard work of incarnation is undone, and God can once become scarce as a disembodied abstraction up in the clouds, perhaps just leaving some paperwork to guarantee us an afterlife at the end of the day. And we can get back to whiling away our time in entertainment and consumer distraction until our number is called.

But assuming Jesus wasn’t just yammering uselessly before fulfilling his Gibson-given purpose to die, what else could that “comma” have to show us?

Well, to name a few things:

All but one of our gods will abandon us. Take, for instance, our primary god, money. Turns out, we’ve been worshipping, fretting for, and fixating on a god that can’t even stand up to some moths and rust, let alone preserve our lives.

All social hierarchies and stratifications will be flipped on their heads. It’s been lost on generations of Christians, but Mary apparently intuited it even before her first morning sickness (Luke 1:46-55). Status and influence are a hoax, hierarchy is doomed, most of the titles and honors that we’ve been working so hard to achieve will be forgotten, and the only meaningful association will be association with an itinerate carpenter’s son.

Our private moral status no longer matters. All the times we’ve turned down a potential friendship with someone for fear that they might “drag us down to their level,” all the times we’ve patted ourselves on the back for the vices that we don’t have, all the times we’ve frantically dusted the windowsills before receiving company because “cleanliness is next to godliness;” too bad. No one cares.

Life is not fair. You want to beat yourself up? You want to receive the “forty lashes minus one” for some terrible thing you did? You want to skulk about with your tail between your legs because you can never forgive yourself? You want to punish others for the same reason? Tough. Our heavenly father “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt. 5:45).

Safety is not the overriding concern. Of all these things, this one feels the most heretical to even write in the post 9/11 world and the age of the “helicopter parent,” but the gospel narratives read almost exclusively as a series of dangerous binds that Jesus gets himself into, essentially for loving the wrong people and not saluting the right institutions. This ultimately leads to his own shameful demise, just before which, he tells his disciples, “…And you can too.” As a theology professor of my alma mater is noted for saying, “There is more to do with our lives now than simply to preserve them.”

Our religions don’t matter…Yes…Even that one! Jesus didn’t come into a world that was split between Christians and non-Christians and tell the former that they would be saved. Neither did he ever even hint that he would be establishing new doctrinal thoughts or holy institutions to which we must ascribe in order for his work to become activated for us. Rather he came into a world of stoic philosophers and neo-Platonists, of resurrection believing Jews and non-resurrection believing Jews, of Greek pagans and Roman pagans, of pious old ladies and iconoclastic young men. He was rejected by them all, he died at the hands of them all, and he was raised for them all. He asked for none of their permission to do this.

Hallelujah.