The recent American elections have got me thinking, of all things, of the trial and the Crucifixion of Christ. This should not be so surprising. We Americans invest our once-every-four-years selection of a new President with all the pomp and bluster and self-importance of an ancient pagan festival. Half of the country bands together to revile the other half, to recriminate the other or to exult in triumph. The other side is made the scapegoat for all of the country’s problems. There is something inherently religious – religious, but not Christian – about the entire election cycle. It is every bit as much a rite of sacrifice and catharsis as the execution of criminals once was, even as late as in Victorian England.
And where is Christ in all of this? This is what I have kept asking myself. But the answer, as to any question, should be obvious. Christ is where He always was, and is, and shall be. He stands before the world as its just (and thankfully merciful) Judge, and his Judgement Seat is the Cross. It is not man who has put Christ to trial, but Christ in the Crucifixion who has put the guilt of man to trial, and even in this act saved us from death. Because even though the names and the labels and the material conditions have changed or even in some cases reversed, that does not mean that the fundamental spiritual realities underlying them have changed. We are still being judged by the Cross.
There exists, now, in our culture, a new set of individual purity codes and debt obligations, which are being enforced not by a physical Temple with a physical priesthood as under the Second Temple religion, but instead by the academies and the producers of popular culture. ‘Wokeness’ is the new standard of purity. It is the new Puritanism, the new Pharisaism. Just as the Second Temple was complicit with Roman hegemony, so too is ‘wokeness’ complicit with capitalism. Those who denounce the loudest the structures and contingencies of oppression and power through the lens of ‘critical theory’ are considered to be the most righteous. But this righteousness, now as then, is a fickle thing. No matter the inward fervour with which it can be put into play, no matter the tithing of mint and dill and cumin that the performers of this new righteousness affect publicly (especially on Twitter, now that Tumblr is more or less passé), the fullness of the Law is beyond them, and those who are righteous will inevitably falter and stumble. Not only this, but those who falter and stumble publicly are subject to public shaming, public ridicule, loss of jobs, threats against families.
The Second Temple housed the forces of religious conservatism and religious authority. Nowadays we can see that the forces of religious reaction no longer belong to what was several decades ago termed the ‘religious right’. The institutions of cultural and intellectual production have long been in the hands of – not the left, strictly speaking, but people who broadly consider themselves to be well-meaning and ‘progressive’, ‘enlightened’, ‘egalitarian’. The Sanhedrin of the age, the religious authority in American society, does not belong to the Evangelical right. It belongs – as it has long belonged – to the liberals. The long-standing legitimacy crisis within liberalism has eroded much, but not all, of its cachet. The punitive, vengeful, sadomasochistic form which liberalism has taken particularly in the wake of the 2016 election is an almost revivalist attempt to shore up the public prominence which it once enjoyed – just as the Pharisees sought to reinvigorate Second Temple practices by reforming the religion and insisting on the oral tradition as well as showing themselves to be upholding the purity codes.
The other side, among the people who were reviled and outcast, their œconomic and social status stripped away from them by the religious authorities, some of them (particularly the tax collectors) sought refuge in the power apparatus of the Herodian state, and the cult of Cæsar. The strongman figure of Tiberius and the notoriously-corrupt and -libertine puppet government of Herod were the civil authorities of their day – remember that Herod in particular was promising to Make Judæa Great Again, and through his building projects he was going to restore it to the prominence it once had under the Hasmoneans, even though he was simply not capable of following through on that promise.
The people who once had power and privilege under the former order of things are often wont to turn to such a strongman as Tiberius or Herod in order to reorient themselves, and give themselves again a sense of meaning, direction and purpose. This is precisely the impulse which causes many to turn to a new Cæsar, a new Herod – all the while imagining in the foolish vanity of their hearts that he is a new Cyrus or a new David.
Still others who are wholly disaffected turn toward radicalism – and look to take what was denied them with the dagger, the rope, the raised fist. The Zealots, the Sicarii: I can well understand what it is that motivates them, for it also motivates me. If I am honest with myself, my sinful and erring heart is indeed with the Zealots. These are the ones who truly do yearn for a return to the age of prophecy, the ones whose hearts truly do respond to Messianic promises. In a way, the Zealots – that is to say, the socialists, the communists, the radicals, the political insurrectionaries – are the closest to Christ, for they too shared in the Crucifixion. They too were seen as a threat to Rome and to the Temple.
And there are yet others who think that they can wash their hands of the entirety of political life, who proclaim themselves separate and disaffected from the system. These are the ones who think of politics as a matter for speculation. Though they cloak themselves in the language of prophecy and philosophy – ‘what is truth?’ – and even though they look upon the face of Christ, in the end they turn Christ over to His executioners. Often times they do not themselves understand the position from which they speak. Many would be ashamed to think of themselves as standing on the side of Pilate rather than of Christ. But a neutrality, or a passive-ism, or an anarchism, which looks upon the struggle of the masses for dignity with cold sneers and disdains from getting the hems of their robes dirty… what is this if not the spirit of Pilate?
In our political life, in other words, we are still crucifying Jesus. The woke liberals accuse Christ of blasphemy still. The nationalist right claims no King but Cæsar. The left asks for the release of Barabbas. The libertarians, anarchists and others who say they ‘hate politics’ and hold themselves aloof – they wash their hands along with Pilate. I think Fr Seraphim of Mull Monastery of All Celtic Saints put it best, when he says that ‘both sides fail Christ’. Indeed, all sides do. And yet we must exercise political agency, for if we do not then we are making a show of washing our hands while the instruments of death surround us and serve us. This is the conundrum of our times, and it is one which we must each face.
We can see from the Gospel how, where, and with whom Christ stood. We can see from the Gospel that God does take sides. That in itself should be discomforting to those who would make Christ into an easy ‘ally’ of liberalism, conservatism, radicalism or the apolitical tout court. Christ was and still is radical, but His radicalism was not of the same internal nature as the radicalism of the Zealots. Still, we must remember two things: being on the same ‘side’ as Christ is not enough, and God does overcome every possible form of political division. Christ reached the hearts of tax collectors and agents of the state like Zakai and Matthew. Christ reached the hearts of religious scholars and Pharisees like Nikodemos and Joseph of Arimathæa. Christ reached the hearts of Zealots like Simon and Dismas. According to the Church tradition, Christ even reached the heart of one who stood by and told her husband to do nothing: Claudia Procula.
It is not possible at all for our politics to be a complete reflection of the justice of God, and for that there will and must be an answer. And for that reason the political life – and particularly the political life we lead, in ‘the belly of the beast’ – must be accompanied by a profound spirit of penitence, by the spirit of Lent.
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