"Paradise" | Oil on canvas, 8 x 10
Did you know that for almost the first thousand years of Christian faith, there are no images of Jesus being crucified upon a cross? Considering how ubiquitous the crucifix became in the second millennium, don't you find that a curious reality?
It was that curious and mysterious question about the missing crucifixes which led two scholars, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, on a world-wide exploration. First, they wanted to see if this absence was indeed true. Second, if there was an absence of these later images of Jesus being crucified, then what did that mean. Their exploration is detailed in the book they coauthored: Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Beacon Press, 2008).
In such a short space I will only address a key point of their exploration. You'll have to read their substantial writing to hear more about their journey of discovery. What fascinates me as I've listened to the perspective of Brock and Parker is this simple reality. The earliest images of Jesus show him fully alive, risen from the dead. Jesus is the Leader of Life. And the cross, where imagined, is shown to be a tree of life.
The earliest followers of Jesus and their communities of faithful imagination--for almost a thousand years--focused upon the abundant and overflowing goodness of the life they experienced within the Spirit of Jesus, the Christ who is risen from the dead. Others who have studied these earliest communities of faith and their growing influence within the Roman Empire (for example, Rodney Stark), write about how this focus on the energizing life of the Spirit compelled followers of Jesus to engage in actions of compassion and mercy within their networks of relationships. These actions of "heaven on earth" confronted the injustices of their culture, and at the same time, comforted those who were suffering and dying.
So as we go on our own adventures of faithful imagination today into the third millennium of faith in the way of Jesus, how are we practicing the paradise of God on earth in our own actions?
