Neither could Karl Barth. Of the piece, he once wrote:
The model of the biblical witness in his unity of form is John the Baptist, who stands so notably at midpoint between the Old Testament and the New, between the prophets and the apostles ... In this connection one might recall John the Baptist in Grünewald's Crucifixion, especially his prodigious index finger. Could anyone point away from himself more impressively and completely?Today is Good Friday. So today, this image is back in my theological imagination, for the boney finger that continues to point at Jesus on the cross and insist: There, this is the salvation of the world.
I was reminded of this piece today, as I sat in a meeting with other clergy, who were lamenting the death of the "institutional church". Mainline denominations, as folks may want to notice, have been on the decline at least since the 1970s.
I like to say on the day I was born, my church decided to start dying.
And there's some truth to this.
But as some-truths go, it's not the whole truth. Hence, it's not very good theology to make comments about the future of the church based on demographics.
I pointed at Jesus in that conversation, and said that Jesus is the One who constitutes and calls the Church. There's no death of the Church so long as God is at work in the world, and those of us with the eyes to see it, point, even with boney, dying fingers -- much in the way John the Baptist points in the Isenheim piece.
The Isenheim Altarpiece is perhaps one of the most grueling images of the Crucifixion ever painted. Arguably more horrific crucifixions have been painted since the Isenheim Altarpiece, but relative to the genres of its time (and even today) the Grünewald Crucifixion remains unique in the risks it took. But more than this, the fame of the Isenheim Altarpiece is largely due to the fact that this Crucifixion scene was used in a church. Few churches have a Crucifixion scene this difficult as the focal point of worship.
Just think what it might be like to see that image of Jesus -- in all its stark forms -- every Sunday.
Make no doubt about it. This is a difficult image to see.
Why would anyone make this image the center of a church's worship?
The answer to this question comes from noting that the monks at the Monastery of St Anthony specialized in hospital work, particularly the treatment of ergotism, the gangrenous poisoning known as "Saint Anthony's fire". In ancient times ergotism was largely caused by ingesting a fungus-afflicted rye or cereal. The symptoms of ergotism included the shedding of the outer layers of the skin, edema, and the decay of body tissues which become black, infected, and malodorous. Prior to death the rotting tissue and limbs are lost or amputated. In 857 a contemporary report of St Anthony's fire described ergotism like this:
a Great plague of swollen blisters consumed the people by a loathsome rot, so that their limbs were loosened and fell off before death.The theological power of the Isenheim Altarpiece is that Grünewald painted the gangrenous symptoms of ergotism into his crucifixion scene. As the patients of St Anthony's Monastery worshiped -- and a more hideous, ugly and diseased congregation can scarce be imagined -- they looked upon the Isenheim Altarpiece and saw a God who suffered with them.
What particularly grabbed me this morning in thinking about this image -- as I stood in a room where pastors (!) were lamenting the death of the Church -- is that the left arm is practically severed from the rest of Jesus body. Scroll back up to the top of this post and take a look again at the crease in the altarpiece. Jesus is an amputee!
I don't understand a lot of what happened on Good Friday. But what I think about the most is how, in the crucifixion, God participated in the horror of the human condition and stood beside -- eternally -- the ugly, cursed, and god-forsaken. Like the congregation of amputees at the Monastery of St Anthony in Isenheim.
When I read through the images of the Church in the New Testament, we are the "Body of Christ", oftentimes more broken and fractured and gangrenous than Jesus' actual body on the cross. But still we point at that body and insist: If you want to see what God is doing in the world, look there. Just like John in the image of the altarpiece itself.
Yes, the Body of Christ is broken. Yes, it's bloody. Yes, it's fractured. And sometimes it's even dying.
But know this, pastors who think all that's bad news:
It's not.
In that very brokenness, bloodiness, fracturedness, God is at work.
To quote Jurgen Moltmann's Crucified God
The crucified Christ became the brother of the despised, abandoned and oppressed. And this is why brotherhood with the 'least of his brethren' is a necessary part of brotherhood with Christ and identification with him. Thus Christian theology must be worked out amongst these people and with them ... in concrete terms amongst and with those who suffer in this society .... Christian identification with the crucified necessarily brings him into solidarity with the alienated of this world, with the dehumanized and the inhuman. ... The church of the crucified was at first, and basically remains, the church of the oppressed and insulted, the poor and wretched, the church of the people. ... But for the crucified Christ, the principle of fellowship is fellowship with those who are different, and solidarity with those who have become alien and have been made different. Its power is not friendship, the love for what is similar and beautiful ... but creative love for what is different, alien and ugly ...