Breaking Death
For Jesus Christ to step down alive from his cross would have been a mighty miracle, but not the mightiest.
990-994
King Ethelred the Unready 978-1016
For Jesus Christ to step down alive from his cross would have been a mighty miracle, but not the mightiest.
990-994
King Ethelred the Unready 978-1016
In a sermon for Easter Day, Abbot Elfric (955-1010) reminded his congregation that the people of Jerusalem thought it would be a miracle worthy of God for Jesus to step down alive from his cross. A miracle, yes; but not so worthy of God as the one he then performed.
THE Jews called out to Christ, fastened to the cross, saying that ‘if he was the King of Israel, he should descend now from the cross, and they would believe in him.’*
Had he descended from the cross and not borne their mockery, then without question he would have set us no example of his fortitude; but he did remain there, did bear their mockery, and did show fortitude.
However, he who would not break away from the cross rose up from death. It was more of a miracle to rise up from death than to break away alive from the cross; it was mightier to break death in pieces by his resurrection, than to cling to life and descend from the cross.
When they saw that despite their mockery, he did not descend from the cross, but waited there for death, they supposed him vanquished, and his name snuffed out. But in the event, by this death his name ran through all the earth.
See Mark 15:29-32.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.