NEWS FEATURE: Author Applies Crucifixion to Modern-Day Suffering

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The human drama involved in Jesus Christ’s Crucifixion did not end on that first Good Friday, but continues today, says the author of a moving and provocative new book. Like the mob who called for Christ to die on the cross, people still “engage in moral compromise,” aligning with […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The human drama involved in Jesus Christ’s Crucifixion did not end on that first Good Friday, but continues today, says the author of a moving and provocative new book.

Like the mob who called for Christ to die on the cross, people still “engage in moral compromise,” aligning with groups that do things that “we would never do as individuals,” says author and psychotherapist Erik Kolbell of New York City.


Kolbell, a United Church of Christ minister, says he wrote the book, “Were You There? Standing at the Foot of the Cross,” to help people identify with Peter; John; Jesus’ mother, Mary and other characters in the Gospel accounts.

“I wrote this book from the perspective of the people who were with Jesus because they are the ones we can identify with. It is in their frailty and courage that we see our own possibilities,” Kolbell said in an interview.

“While I stand in awe of the one who laid down his life for me, I stand in sympathy with those around him.”

The Crucifixion remains “eternally applicable” because it is the “human enactment of the divine intention,” Kolbell says. “It provides for us a glimpse of the depth and breadth of that love. In the Resurrection we have a glimpse of the power of that love to overcome even death.”

As Good Friday and Easter approach, Kolbell’s book offers a perspective promising self-understanding and a deeper appreciation of the courage and cowardice human beings showed at Jesus’ death. “We were all there in the lives of the saints and the sinners who played pivotal roles in the last hours of Jesus’ life,” William Sloane Coffin, former senior minister of New York City’s Riverside Church, says of Kolbell’s book. “This very readable book is a mirror to our humanity.”

Kolbell describes the Crucifixion as “the ultimate symbol of a world turned upside down because it represents the purest expression of love not in the form of power over people but in weakness and surrender laid out before people.”

Approaching it this way makes it an intensely human drama, influenced by the behavior of James and John, Peter, Mary and Mary Magdalene.


“Instead of seeing St. Mary at the foot of the cross, see a mother watching her son die,” Kolbell says of his approach. “See a parent whose greatest wish in life is that her son live a long, joyous and meaningful life. What parent doesn’t?”

Then Mary sees her wishes stripped from her in a violent fashion. But this Mary, Kolbell says, is the same mother who made sure Jesus ate his vegetables, did his studies, consorted with good kids, came home before dark and did his chores.

Taking the analogy one step farther, Kolbell suggests that readers may then see a mother “whose child is killed in an automobile accident, a drive-by shooting, a street in Baghdad or the balcony of a motel room in Memphis, Tenn. There is no greater pain than that reflected in this woman who would one day be called the Holy Mother, but who on this day was simply a heartbroken mom. ”

In the character of Mary Magdalene, the Christian can find a woman who felt devotion “to the man who loved in a way that no other man had ever loved _ seeking nothing in return,” Kolbell says. “In this way she feels an immeasurable loss but she also reflects that this is the man who taught her that to be a woman is not to be a second-class citizen.”

Kolbell suspects that the apostle Peter felt enormous shame that he denied Jesus “in his hour of need and enormous dread because not long before this moment Jesus had proclaimed to Peter that he was to be the rock on which the church would be built.”

Maybe Peter even felt that accepting that responsibility might redeem him for his cowardice.

“Perhaps, too, he knew that when Jesus anointed him as the symbol of the church he was taking into account both his wisdom and his cowardice,” Kolbell says. “For what is the church but a body that is at times wise and at times cowardly? ”


Kolbell’s book might best be read a chapter or two at a time, particularly during Lent or Holy Week. Written roughly in the chronological order of Scripture, it moves slowly to the dramatic denouement of Jesus’ trial and Crucifixion. From there, it goes on to the “mesmerizing end that is the Resurrection,” Kolbell says.

“As people read it I hope they are not reading about people `there and then’ but rather `here and now,”’ Kolbell says. “If we can find ourselves reflected, even obliquely, in the lives of these people, then the book will be worth something.”

MO/JL RNS END

(Cecile S. Holmes, a longtime religion writer, is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of South Carolina.)

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