Slavery, Suffering, Salvation

In taking on flesh and blood, the Creator was willing fully to associate with the plight of his fallen creation ‘since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature’ (2:14). For the author of Hebrews, Jesus was without sin. He nonetheless personally and directly stepped into the theatre of human anguish.

In Spain, baroque devotional art sought a vividness and impact that would stir emotions of penitence and inspire worship, in keeping with the values of the Catholic Counter-Reformation’s Council of Trent (1545–63). The Córdoba-born sculptor Juan de Mesa (1583–1627) developed a deeply expressive naturalistic manner, following his arrival in Seville in 1606. His attention to anatomical accuracy purportedly arose from his study of cadavers. His most celebrated work Nuestro Padre Jésus del Gran Poder (Our Father Jesus of the Great Power) was commissioned by the Hermandad del Gran Poder, a confraternity originally founded in 1431 and still custodians of the sculpture today.

The life-size figure of Jesus is made of cedar wood with articulated arms and has three sets of clothing. The polychromy was a vital aspect of bringing the sculpture to life and, interestingly, contemporary sources refer to such painting of flesh tones as encarnación, implying a mimesis of the incarnation itself. Contemporaries apparently hotly debated whether the finish should be polimento (glossy) or mate (matte, without lustre), the latter regarded as superior so that the colour would absorb light and seem more natural (Bray 2009:18–19). El Gran Poder’s somewhat dark complexion is a result of later damage.

The sculpture stands on a heavy metal float carried by approximately 35 members of the confraternity. Seen from the side, it creates a striking impression with its huge cross. The so-called costeleros under the float keep step in a swaying action that creates the impression Jesus himself walks the streets of Seville, followed by penitents wearing tall conical hoods and vast crowds of onlookers. The striking spectacle is intended to stimulate the memory, intellect, and will, and captures powerfully the idea of imaginal thought expressed in Hebrews 2:9, ‘But we see Jesus…crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death’.

Hebrews 2 conveys the immeasurable value that God invests in each human being. Jesus, the one ‘by whom all things exist’ (v.10), willingly stepped into human flesh, being made ‘for a little while lower than the angels … so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone (v.9). His purpose was to destroy humanity’s slavery to sin, death, and the devil: ‘that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage’ (vv.14–15). Christ sets humankind free from the fear of final and eternal separation from God, bestowing undeserved love on forgiven sinners, ‘Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So, Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters’ (v.11). Jesus’s extraordinary intervention is set against the total inability of humans to rescue themselves from spiritual bondage and the resulting utter failure of human beings to treat fellow humans as brothers and sisters. 

The slavery of humankind to sin, death, and the devil is especially horrific where groups and nations have used their power to persecute, oppress, and enslave other whole communities, especially where Christianity was invoked to justify the actions of perpetrators. Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, a widely acclaimed contemporary Ghanaian sculptor, captures the devastating impact of the orchestrated transatlantic slave trade in a series of works focused on memory, healing, and restorative justice. His first major ‘Nkyinkyim’ installation (a term derived from a Ghanaian proverb meaning life is a twisting journey) was unveiled on the sixtieth anniversary of Ghana’s Independence in 2017, at Kwame Nkumrah Mausoleum in Accra, comprising 1200 life-size sculptural heads of people of African descent, each unique, cast in concrete using living models. The faces convey emotions of shock and horror and their scars, chains, and blindfolds bear evidence of dehumanising brutality. Permanent installations are now displayed at Nuhalenya-Ada, Ghana, and at the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, USA. 

The installations challenge the viewer with the experience of enslavement of an estimated 12.5 million African people, whose autonomy, dignity and homeland were ruthlessly stolen primarily by Portuguese, British, Dutch, French and Spanish colonialists, forcibly removing them as transatlantic chattel slaves. Akoto-Bamfo’s sculpture heads invoke the traditional Ghanaian ‘Akan’ practice of remembering the dead, giving individualised faces to people, reminding us each person is made in the image of God. Makeshift wooden crosses placed among the concrete heads reflect how many enslaved people changed their religion as a result of the Middle Passage. As Akoto-Bamfo comments, ‘they are an acknowledgement of the irony that everything about them changed especially how they lived and how they were buried and yet racism persisted’ (personal correspondence). 

Yet Christian faith also gave many slaves and abolitionists, such as the Ghanaian-born abolitionist Quobna Ottobah Cuguano, author of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, 1787, a means of hope beyond the grave as well as a powerful resistance to re-assert their human dignity and God-given status as ‘brethren’ of Jesus. For Jesus was a liberator who achieved his purpose specifically by entering the suffering of humanity to ‘make atonement for the sins of the people’ (Hebrews 2:17). 

Christians believe that human beings have a unique place in God’s creation (Hebrews 2:5). The author of Hebrews turns to Psalm 8 to show that humans were intended to be creatures of God’s special favour, supreme dignity, and unrivalled dominion (2:6–8; Brown 1982: 55–56). But sin created ‘lifelong bondage’ (v.15) so that humanity is no longer as God intended it to be; it is fractured like the image in a broken mirror. Jesus, however, shows what humanity is meant to be (v.9). The sinless and ideal man willingly bore the redemption price as a pioneer of humanity’s salvation. As the biblical scholar Raymond Brown comments, ‘Christ came not only to share our humanity but to transform it’ (Brown 1982: 58).

Roger Wagner’s stained-glass window The Flowering Tree (2012) is a rich theological visualization of all that Jesus’s death accomplishes—commissioned for one of England’s finest surviving Norman parish churches: St Mary’s Iffley, near Oxford. For Wagner, ‘Jesus’s crucifixion on “the tree” somehow expresses a divine forgiveness in which the whole story of human redemption comes into focus’ (Wagner n.d.).

The sky is vibrant blue and the rolling hills are lush green; sheep gather at the foot of the tree, symbolizing those who trust Christ; a hare pricks up its ears to see what is happening in the foreground and fish play in the water. In many ways, it is a very English pastoral scene, with stylistic echoes of Samuel Palmer (1805–81). The bright, jewel-like colours continue the tradition extolled by Abbot Suger of Saint Denis (1081–1151) who believed that the beauty of coloured light streaming into a church could transport the soul to contemplate God. Wagner’s window is thus a fitting modern addition to one of England’s finest Romanesque parish churches, built by contemporaries of Abbot Suger, the Saint-Remy family, in about 1160. Such beauty can be seen as testimony to the fact that (in the words of Hebrews) God is ‘bringing many children to glory’ (2:10 NRSV)

References

Brown, Raymond. 1982. Christ Above All: The Message of Hebrews (Downers Grove: IVP)

Wagner, Roger. n.d. ‘The Flowering Tree’, available at http://www.rogerwagner.co.uk/work/item/9/the-flowering-tree-1 [accessed 18 April 2023]