Inverting The Order (part one)

From Caesar and the Lamb by George Kalantzis:

Christians had inherited their notions of martyrdom from their Jewish heritage and especially the martyrdom accounts of [Second and Fourth] Maccabees...[concerning those who] were killed for their unyielding faithfulness to God.  Origen looked to the martyrdom of the Maccabees and acknowledged it as "a magnificent example."

The Christians' primary inspiration, however, was in the power and hope of the resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor 15:13-14) whose life and example they were called to emulate. The descriptions of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 and the obvious connections with Jesus were from very early on the interpretive matrix through which Christians understood their own experiences and times. Jesus had warned them that in response to His call to discipleship they would be persecuted at the hands of the status quo (e.g. Matt 10:16-42, John 15:18-35). Jesus had called His disciples to see themselves as "blessed" when reviled and persecuted on His account and had assured them of the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:10-12, Rev 21:7). To quote Wilken again,

The Church gave men and women a new love, Jesus Christ, a person who inspired their actions and held their affections. This was a love unlike others.... The Resurrection of Jesus is the central fact of Christian devotion and the ground of all Christians' thinking....

It would be misleading, then, to read the accounts of the martyrs primarily as refusals by Christians to offer sacrifice, as their pagan counterparts [accused]. On the contrary, almost sacrificial in character, each of these accounts is a rich sacrificial narrative that rejects the dominant religio-political paradigm and reinterprets assumed perceptions of power dynamics. (pp 23-24)

Note how Kalantzis above places faithful martyrdom into a stark contrast with power dynamics. I can adjust the terminology by setting martyr cross racing in opposition to self-empowerment.

Kalantzis quotes Eusebius describing the brutality of the martyrdom of a slave woman named Blandina. Eusebius concluded,

And the heathen themselves confessed that never among them had a woman endured so many and such terrible tortures. 

Kalantzis picks up from there:

The reversal of power was complete. It was the pagans who were led to confess, not the Christians. The example of Christ, His response during trial and torture, even His physical posture of calm silence and assurance had given Christians a new vocabulary. It transformed profoundly deeply rooted ideologies about human beings, power, the world, and history. The classical Greek concept of arete, and its Roman equivalent of virtus, both linguistic  derivatives of "male/man," signified the ideal of individual greatness. Based on the heroic ideal, Aristotle identified a virtuous person as someone who is prepared to sacrifice himself...for one's friends or family or homeland, and, if necessary, to die for it. Many of the philosophers from the classical to the imperial era expressed similar views. To be humble was to be weak, poor, submissive, slavish, and womanish; it was the physical position of shame, humiliation, degradation and, therefore, to be understood as morally bad. The New Testament revolutionized these values wholly by their total inversion. It presented Jesus who "endured the cross, disregarding the shame" (Heb 12:2) as the One Christians ought to emulate (1 Pet 2:19-20), and Paul's boasting in his lowly status, tapeinos, and sufferings in imitation of Christ gave new meaning to humility, transforming it into a virtue.  (pg 33)

This very key trait -- that ensured the faithful Christlike depth of the early persecuted church as well as its growth in numbers -- has ceased to be found in her much anymore in our cultural context.  We are so like the world, intoxicated with position and winning and goods, that Christ is blasphemed to the world by our self-empowerment and worldliness.  I'm reminded of something that old preacher from my early adulthood would say:  "So many Christians are looking for the World Church to start, and they're sitting in it." It's easy to look at someone else as being worldly in order to distract us from our own worldliness.

We will pick up with more from Kalantzis next time, seeing again how Christ inverted the order of honor, and maybe we will catch a peak at how and why the church after Constantine inverted the order back to a more pagan view.