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There Is a Graffiti Called the Alexamenos Graffito Scratched Into the Plaster of the Wall of an Ancient Apartment Complex in Rome

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There Is a Graffiti Called the Alexamenos Graffito Scratched Into the Plaster of the Wall of an Ancient Apartment Complex in Rome There is a graffiti called the Alexamenos graffito scratched into the plaster of the wall of an ancient apartment complex in Rome. It dates to around 200 A.D. It shows a crucified man, except that the man has the head of a donkey. Adjacent to the crucifixion image is a crude drawing of a person worshipping the crucified donkey-man. Underneath in scrawled Greek letters it says “Alexamenos worships his God.” It clearly is meant to ridicule poor Alexamenos and anyone who would consider a crucifixion victim a God and who would celebrate that God’s death on a cross. As a means of execution, crucifixion is one of the most terrible. We tend to fixate on the nails. But what the victim died of was not blood loss or damage from the nails, but rather suffocation. When your body hangs from your arms your diaphragm is extended. It takes more work for it to contract and draw a breath. As time passes your diaphragm becomes exhausted and you cannot breathe. This could, and often did take at least a day, if not more. That Jesus died on the cross in a matter of hours was unusual. He probably was suffering from exhaustion before the crucifixion, and may have lost more blood and strength from the crown of thorns and the flogging. Crucifixion was a pretty common form of capital punishment in the Roman Empire. It was particularly used for enemies of the state. The stripped, flogged, humiliated, and suffering victim was raised outside town gates and along roads as a warning to anyone who dared question the power structure. People would walk by them on the way to and from the cities. Crucifixion is such a cruel means of torture and state- sponsored murder that it is worth wondering why we as Christians take this day to remember and even celebrate one Crucifixion, and why we use the cross - the instrument of torture and death - as our primary symbol. People have asked this for a long time. They’ve asked this since Alexamenos was ridiculed in Rome. But for the Christian faithful, the memory of the cross goes far beyond the memory of a good man who died a terrible death. The crucifixion of Jesus reminds us that, like Jesus, we are to never waiver from our proclamation that the world needs to quit raising up victims on the cross. Jesus would not waiver in his proclamation that the abundance of God’s creation was meant to be enjoyed by all. Jesus said to Pilate “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” The truth is that we humans so easily put people on crosses, deny them the abundance that would give them the dignity they deserve, label them as undeserving, condemn them to lives of suffering and slow death of the spirit and body. When I was working in Bolivia, I awoke one morning to the sound of hammering. This was usually not a good sound. In a village 4 hours from the nearest funeral home hammering often meant that someone was making a coffin. That was the case that morning. It was a small coffin. A coffin for a six year old boy who had died of diarrhea. There was no doctor in the village. There was no doctor in the nearest big town. There was no health literacy. He died because he had the bad luck to be born poor in the undeveloped world. He was put on a cross by a world that seems content to dole out great and profound wealth to a few and to walk by the crosses on which the many hang. I’ve seen people on crosses closer to home. Veterans who have become homeless. Hardworking young adults brought to this country as small children who fear they will be sent back to a country they don’t even know. Women ignored, belittled, and even assaulted by sexist men. The mentally ill left to fend for themselves on the streets. We gaze upon the cross to remember that. To help us to not walk by the others who are on crosses. To see the other crosses in the world and as Jon Sobrino says, to take people down from those crosses. And we gaze on the cross to remember that the cross is not the last word. We gaze on the cross so that we will be the people like Jesus’ mother Mary, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene, and the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved who would not abandon Jesus to lonely suffering. We gaze on the cross so that we will remember the act of mercy of Joseph of Arimethea and extend that mercy to others. The cross created a new community of faithful people who refused to let the cross be the end of the story. We gaze on the cross, we go to Golgotha, we hear the story today because we refuse to ignore the sufferings of this world. And we remember that cross every day. Perhaps we have an icon or a cross at home or work. Perhaps we wear one around our necks. We proclaim that seeing the cross frees us from being cold, closed, callous. The cross forms us as the new disciples who will give up some of our own power and privilege to honor, support, and care for the people who have been put on a cross. In the room in Rome next to the insulting graffiti, there is an inscription in a different style of handwriting. It reads Alexamenos fidelis. “Alexamenos is faithful.” Despite ridicule, Alexamenos was faithful. To be a faithful Christian is to know that God knows what it is for humans to put each other on a cross and know that God has the last word. The cross is not the end. The cross is the beginning of a world without crosses. .
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