Finding Meaning in Suffering

Marc Chagall was haunted by the image of Christ as Jewish martyr, not least following the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. The Yellow Crucifixion, painted in 1943, is one of several crucifixion scenes Chagall produced, which scandalized Jew and Christian alike.

Christ on the cross is unmistakably a Jewish man, wearing tefillin on his head and left arm. Moreover, trampling on centuries of artistic convention, and in contrast to his earlier and more famous White Crucifixion (1938), Chagall has de-centred the cross. It has yielded its place to an open Torah-scroll. Or perhaps the two symbols—the Torah and the cross—belong together, connected by Christ’s outstretched right arm, and both illuminated by the candle held by a flying angel, blowing a shofar.

Moreover, the crucified is surrounded by scenes of Jewish persecution and displacement. A town burns below the cross to the right. At bottom centre, a Jewish mother flees with her child, recalling the Christian iconography of the Flight into Egypt. The boat on the left is the Struma, sunk off the coast of Türkiye in 1942 with nearly eight hundred Jewish émigrés on board. Here is a potent image of European Jews sharing in the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 4:13). Or rather, the crucified Christ as the archetypal suffering Jew.

1 Peter originally addressed converts from paganism, ostracized by family and taunted by neighbours for their association with the Jewish Jesus of Nazareth. Yet by Chagall’s time, the tables have dramatically turned. Now it is Jesus’s co-religionists who find themselves reproached, ostracized, and forced to flee by those who bear his name. Nor, tragically, is this something new. Centuries of Christian antisemitism have prepared the ground. Far from being reviled ‘for the name of Christ’, his followers have used that name to revile others. Chagall’s shocking variation on a familiar theme foregrounds the complicity of European Christians in the sufferings of their Jewish brethren.

References

Amishai-Maisels, Ziva. 1993. Depiction and Interpretation: The Influence of the Holocaust on the Visual Arts (Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press), ch. 3

Bohn-Duchen, Monica. 2010. ‘Images of Jesus in the Work of Marc Chagall: Christian Redeemer or Jewish Martyr?’, in Cross Purposes: Shock and Contemplation in Images of the Crucifixion, ed. by Nathaniel Hepburn (Paddock Wood: Mascalls Gallery), pp. 68–71

Jeffrey, David Lyle. 2012. ‘Meditation and Atonement in the Art of Marc Chagall’, Religion and the Arts 16: 211–30

It is especially poignant that the author (actual or implied) of this exhortation to share Christ’s sufferings is the apostle Peter. The memory of Peter’s denial of Christ was widespread among early Christians. Peter was ashamed to be associated with Jesus in the courtyard of the high priest: not once, but three times (Mark 14:68, 70, 71). But Peter is also a potent symbol of the transformative power of grace. Simon’s new name ‘Peter’, ‘rock’ (Matthew 16:18; John 1:42), is less an indicator of his character than of what he would become.

But how long would it take Simon to live up to his new name? More importantly, when would Peter be bold enough to publicly declare Christ’s name, and suffer for it?

Annibale Carracci depicts a scene, not from the New Testament, but from Christian tradition.

Many years have passed since that threefold failure in Jerusalem. An elderly Peter, having preached the gospel in Rome, flees the city, only to encounter Christ on the Appian Way. Quo vadis, Domine? (‘Where are you going, Lord?’). Christ, bearing the marks of his passion, replies that he is headed for Rome, to be crucified again. Carracci’s Peter recoils at this prospect of suffering. Yet this encounter also marks a turning-point. Peter will return to the city, and face crucifixion in Christ’s stead. Posterity will claim both Peter and Paul as founding martyr-apostles of the Roman church.

Our passage presents an apostle who has made that transition. He has learned from his mistakes, and is no longer ashamed of Christ’s name. Now he boldly encourages his fellow Christians, scattered across the provinces of Asia Minor, to suffer joyfully ‘as a Christian’ (1 Peter 4:16). The name ‘Christian’ almost certainly emerged as a term of abuse, used by pagan neighbours (Acts 11:26). Yet now it has become a badge of honour, for those, like Peter, unashamed of their association with Christ. 

Stefan Lochner’s magnificent triptych of the Last Judgement, of which this is the central panel, is one of the most compelling interpretations of the scene surviving from the late Middle Ages. Christ sits enthroned, separating the wicked from the righteous as they emerge naked from their graves: his right hand raised in blessing over the latter, his left directing the former towards eternal punishment. Lochner’s panel vividly depicts that eschatological judgement of which our passage speaks (1 Peter 4:12, 17–18). The ‘fiery ordeal’ faced by Peter’s early Christian audience is part of the so-called ‘messianic woes’, expected sufferings of God’s people as the day of reckoning approaches (see e.g. Mark 13:5–8; Romans 8:18; Revelation 7:14).

Lochner’s Last Judgement panel does not stand alone, however. It originally had side panels (now fragmented and dispersed among several different collections), presenting in twelve graphic scenes the martyrdoms of the apostles. For Lochner’s contemporaries, these apostle-martyrs would have served as powerful intercessors in the face of their own experience of suffering. They exemplify the promise that those who share Christ’s sufferings will ‘rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed’ (1 Peter 4:13). The revelation of the glory is displayed for all to see in the triptych’s central panel.

Yet, this passage from 1 Peter also contains a word of warning. Judgement begins with ‘the household of God’ (v.17). The author has regularly used architectural metaphors to describe Christian converts whose profession of faith rendered them homeless: living stones, a temple, a house (or household). Here his readers are warned against the presumption of salvation. Hence, contrasting sharply with the jubilant procession entering heaven’s gates to the left of Lochner’s panel, is the disturbing scene at bottom right. A chained devil seizes a terrified group of twelve humans—a kind of anti-apostolate—pulling them down into hell. Visible among them are pillars of the medieval Christian community: a pope, a cardinal, a bishop, and a monarch.

Judgement begins at the very door of God’s household, the Church. To whom more is given, more will be demanded.

References

Chapuis, Julien. 2004. Stefan Lochner: Image Making in Fifteenth-Century Cologne (Turnhout: Brepols)