The very first time I saw the image of the Scourged Christ of the Indies I felt aghast. It looked evil, not conforming to human disfigurement, conveying a message I was unable to understand. Confronted with a realm of meanings to which I was a stranger, I preferred the conventional western Jesus on the cross, with negligible blood oozing from deep scars and still retaining a sensible human figure. The Scourged Christ was to preserve its mysterious meaning until one day I found myself among its authors, in Peru. Previously I did try to comprehend its meaning, but its domain was experiential rather then cognitive and only the reality of its birthplace could uncover some of its significance.

The image resembles a history book, which recounts the happenings of the Latin American continent mixed with the universal History of Salvation. Merged as they are, the former gives tangibility to the human senses while the latter gives direction to the proper conclusive chapter of this book titled 'Liberation'.

Why this disfigurement?

This sculpture of the crucified one by the Peruvian artist Edilberto Merida strongly resembles the figure of an executed guerrilla warrior. Under all its malformations lay the common physionomical features of the Indies, and a history of atrocities and sufferings induced on the natives of Latin America.

But why have we to revert to five hundred years of history when we speak about this continent? Is it necessary? Why don't we forget about the distant past and live the present? Good observations, but when you are in the midst of these people you cannot fail to notice that suffering lays at the background of their faces. Some may not even know their history, but history has altered their genetic coding, and conscious or not they are carrying today what their fathers had endured yesterday. And 'Christ' happens to form a substantial part of their memory.

The year 1992 was an auspicious time to undertake such reflections. It was the five-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. Columbus is related to the Christian church and to the cross because of his alleged involvement in the evangelization and Christianization of the Americas. This conquest undoubtedly led to domination and it was not only the sword that was grounded in the fertile soil of this continent, but at its side, grounded equally firmly, was the cross, the fundamental symbol of Christianity (The Scandal, Altmann, 77). On many occasions the cross went hand in hand with the sword. Not only was it used to proclaim salvation to the peoples but also in the process of crushing and subjugating others. As Regis Debray puts it, "the redeeming Cross was stained with blood. Not that of the missionaries. Only that of the indigenous people." (The Scandal.., Tesfai, 4) The cross was really a scandal, but not in the biblical sense.

Already in the 16th century Bartolome' de Las Casas and others resisted this perverse image of Christ and sided with the Indian cause. Las Casas had a great insight: he recognised Christ as speaking to us from among the Indians. "Jesus Christ, our God, scourged and afflicted and crucified, not once, but millions of times." (quoted in Gutierrez, Power, 197) Yes, they recognised that in fact Jesus Christ was really in the midst of the people as the crucified - not at the side of the sword but stabbed by it. In this light, a radical reversal of the understanding of the cross was being called for, where understanding starts from below. This reached its culmination with the advent of liberation theology. Instead of speculating on the motives and the reasons behind the crucifixion as it happened in God's mind, it takes seriously the story of the passion of Jesus as related in the gospels and ties it strongly to the people's sufferings. Over and over in Latin American theologies of liberation one's own historical situation and that of Jesus' time are related to each other and form one image. In Latin America the death of Christ is experienced as the "death of the other," of the Indian and the peasant (Wessels, 79). For this reason, the Scourged Christ is an accumulation of suffering endured by the people and Christ himself. No wonder then that Edilberto Merida came out with this image of Christ together with the Latin American continent.

The point of departure in doing this theology.

It is an existential starting point where the risen Lord - the crux of our Christian faith - is never disembodied. Today Jesus is always united with the people who are his body. He is continuously in search for his body (Jn 10:16), and is alive in their very being which happens to be scourged by injustices. Jesus born marginalised, with no place to lay his head, sweating blood before his imminent death and executed is more then spiritualization among the poor who see these events as effective images of their own history. Native people being exterminated, black populations being maintained in the severest slavery and millions of people exploited to death by the most unmerciful systems of exploitation, are given the opportunity to pour their afflictions onto this humble Christ who will not rise from death without raising them - that is, the poor - with him.

Latin American Christology gives priority to "the historical Jesus" over the "Christ of faith". Here, however, it must be clarified that the quest for "the historical Jesus" is not a study of what is proper to Jesus and what has been attributed to him by the early Christian communities (as emphasised in European Theology). Rather its interest is and remains practical in nature: theological reflection from within the social context of Latin America. The only way to come to know Jesus is to follow him in the reality of his own life (Sobrino, Christology..., 34-35). This implies commitment on the part of the Church, the body of Christ. Jon Sobrino in "The True Church and the Poor", is clear about it:

'The resurrection of Christ is impossible unless it in turn launches history. ...unless it in turn launches a movement aimed at overcoming death and the wretchedness of history... The church that comes into existence is not simply the depository of the truth about the resurrection of Christ but is itself the very expression, at the historical level.' (Sobrino, 87)

This passage from death to life, from the Cross to resurrection, is the path these people are called to thread. Thus the Scourged Christ is not the end of this theology. Rather he is a necessary intermediate, the vehicle leading to the true hope, that of "Christ the Liberator."

"Hope is the last thing that dies," goes a Brazilian saying.

At first sight, the image reflects many things except hope. But on the contrary, what we are looking at is a "theology of Hope". Jesus becomes the saviour because he himself was the victim. Jesus will conquer all injustices because he suffered injustice without him being unjust. Jesus shows his power in his humility. He reunites in his person all the humiliations suffered by the defenceless, the exiled, those under the yoke of violence. Most of all, Jesus carries the burden of a sinful world as proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah:

This unexpected form of God, so different from the one adored in heaven, is more than approachable. His gruesome appearance is very close to the experience of the afflicted and makes it impossible to look at him without being attracted. He is the Christ close at hand, not ashamed of oppressed humanity. He is the Christ present in current history, and cares about human activity. He is Christ the liberator, who already won the faithful but is asking for partnership in his plan. (Sobrino, Spirituality... 170-175)

The Scourged Christ may be for us westerners a window over the toils of Latin America. For Latin Americans, the Scourged Christ is more than a self analysis. He is a window on God; perhaps the only window from which a ray of light shines in. But it is a ray of truth which will not betray and which gradually uncovers the path of true liberation.

Bibliography

Ellis Marc H. & Maduro Otto, The Future of Liberation Theology: essays in honour of Gustavo Gutierrez; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989.

Gutierrez Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation, SCM, Great Britain: 1973

Gutierrez Gustavo, The power of the poor in history; SCM, Great Britain: 1983.

Sobrino Jon, Christology at the Crossroads: A Latin American Approach; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1978.

Sobrino Jon, The true Church and the poor; SCM, Great Britain: 1985.

Sobrino Jon, Spirituality of Liberation; Claretian, Philippines: 1988.

Tesfai Yacob (ed.), The Scandal of a crucified world; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994.

Tesfai Yacob A Latin American Perspective on the cross and Suffering, Altmann Walter

Wessels Anton, Images of Jesus; Eerdmans, Michigan: 1990.