(This is one of the four essays I wrote for my take-home final for my Bible class this spring. If you are really excited by this sort of thing, let me know and you can get the whole collection!)
The four canonized gospels present slightly different accounts of Jesus’ death and final words on the cross; these differences reveal the distinct theologies of the four gospels, and the differences between the four Jesuses they present. The story of Jesus’ death and suffering is the key phenomenon through which the gospels, and Christianity, wrestle with theodicy (the existence of evil in the world, and God’s relationship to its existence). Unlike such classics as Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, however, none of the gospels spend much energy highlighting the physical pain of Jesus’ death; his spiritual pain is much more central to their theologies and their stories.
John offers a long Passion story, in seven chapters. John’s version of the crucifixion reveal his theological orientation to the story of Jesus and the method of following Jesus as being a form of legal trial: Jesus’ followers must always choose, either for or against Jesus (a dualism that also reflects Gnostic outlooks). The Jesus of John’s gospel is one utterly in control: in verse 19:30, he states that “It is finished,” and so it is for him. John represents Jesus’ death as his own choice, and the relatively short period of expiration (for the brutality of the means of execution) as further evidence of how Jesus was in control of even the manner of his death. John’s Jesus was more divine than human, bordering on Docetist or Gnostic concepts of Jesus’ divinity, but still human enough to get thirsty and ask for water (in 19:28). John’s Jesus is still in control of the story through his death, still the center of attention of the gospel’s characters, and is not abandoned at the cross as he is in Mark’s gospel. Instead, John’s crucifixion scene is peopled with Jesus’ mother and a certain ‘beloved disciple’ (who is later interpreted as the author of the gospel). In 19:26-7, Jesus tells these two that they are to be new mother and son to each other, thereby establishing a new definition of family, forged not through bloodlines but through Jesus’ blood in dying. John’s Jesus is clearly not overcome by the suffering of physical or emotional pain to the extent that he cannot converse with his supporters around the cross.
Luke offers a Jesus who is a martyr, along the same lines of the apostles martyred in the continuation of the gospel in the Book of Acts, but a Jesus who is distinguished from the later martyrs by his exceptional resurrection. Luke presents a theology of bad things happening to good people. The suffering Jesus undergoes is bad, but not downright evil, because God is still in control of the situation. Jesus is in control of his body’s crucifixion enough to “commend his spirit” in to his Father’s hands (23:46). Even this bad experience is still in God’s plan, even though humans might not understand the plan. Human agency is sacrificed to this theology, but human followers can rest assured that God’s control is a benefit to them, because of the example of how Jesus uses his control to continue his ministry to the people around him, even through his Passion and death. Jesus is a reconciler and minister up until and through the end: Pilate and Herod bond over Jesus’ trial; the centurion at the cross is converted through witnessing the scene (23:47); one of the criminals hanging with Jesus is converted on the cross. Jesus is in control and still ministering when he defies the pain readers might expect him to be feeling, to ask for the forgiveness of his condemners (23:34). Luke offers a nuance about why the crowd would ask for Barrabas’s release instead of Jesus’ by explaining that Barrabas was involved in a local insurrection, and thus more than just a common murderer; in this more merciful description of the crowd’s vehemence, the crowd is less vicious. One of Luke’s trademarks in this story is the language of guilt and innocence. He emphasizes Jesus’ innocence through the words of a diverse slew of characters, from Pilate to the man crucified next to Jesus to the centurion at the cross. Jesus offers his betrayers pardon in the line “Forgive them…” The purpose of Jesus’ Passion, then, is a continuation of his ministry, through death; it is not about Jesus’ suffering through physical pain or spiritual abandonment.
Matthew builds on Mark’s story of the crucifixion, but casts Jesus as the ‘rejected Messiah of the Jews.’ Matthew offers the harshest blame of any of the evangelists on the Jews who do not accept Jesus as Messiah, blaming them for Jesus’ death. Matthew’s gospel alone curses the Pharisees; Matthew’s gospel alone includes Pilate washing his hands of Jesus’ death and having the Jewish crowd take his blood on them and their children. The Book of Matthew, then, offers its readers the most problematic relationship of the Jesus Movement to the rest of Judaism, and may be responsible for the worst anti-Semitism through history, even if in its initial writing, the book spoke to a social context of vying faiths; when Christianity gained ascendancy in regional power, its bullying of its Jewish cousins became oppression, and we are still recovering from the divisive ideas of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew’s gospel offers a perspective of Jesus’ mission as initially intended for the Jews alone, but expanded to be a mission to all nations (28:16) after the resurrection and the proof of the Jews’ forsaking Jesus to his death. Jesus’ last words about God’s forsaking him reflect more the abandonment of his Jewish people who were supposed (by Matthew) to be his followers.
Mark’s story of crucifixion is a murder that triggers the apocalyptic end of the world. Mark’s Jesus suffers, not so much the physical pain of crucifixion (in a dying that took an unnaturally short 6 hours), but the humiliation of people’s mocking and the seeming abandonment of God. For Mark, ultimate suffering is the absence of God, as reflected in Jesus’ last words (15:34). But the Jesus of Mark’s gospel suffers not out of cosmic necessity, to excuse or mediate humanity’s atonement from sin, but as a result of humanity’s sin and evil. Jesus’ crucified murder is the symbol of Earth’s need for the apocalypse Mark predicts in chapter 13. The theory of how Jesus’ death fits into this world-reshaping is explained in Mark 12, in the Parable of the Sower. The owner of the vineyard (representing God) sends his beloved son (Jesus) not to suffer and die, but out of some sort of merciful foolishness, to give the bad tenants (humanity) one last chance to repent of their sins. Because they don’t, and instead perform the ultimate evil of killing the beloved son, the owner (God) has no choice but to destroy the vineyard and create it anew for new tenants. Jesus confirms his role in this parable in positing himself as the cornerstone of a whole new world, after the Temple (at Jerusalem) falls, as he predicts it will.
None of the gospels focus on Jesus’ physical pain, as the last words of Jesus deal less with his physical state than his spiritual and relational one. This indicates that the canonized gospels, while not agreeing on exactly how evil plays out in Jesus’ story and our world, are concerned more with the reasons for the suffering (physical or emotional, murderous or natural) than the uncontextualized existence of evil and suffering or what suffering as suffering does for the world.
