Jesus, The Antithesis to Captain America

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “There are only two possibilities when a human being confronts Jesus: the human being must either die or kill Jesus.”

The American hero archetype is certainly grounded in Jesus, but has taken on the distinctively American characteristic of always beating the bad guys. Oh, there is the occasional threat, to heighten the drama, but we all know how it turns out. Captain America wins. And he does so because he is stronger, smarter, braver, better than the rest. He beats back evil with superior force.

In all of our myths we celebrate not just winning against evil, but winning in a certain way. It's the final scene, the hero is bloodied after an intense struggle with evil, but somehow he summons a final surge of strength and snaps the neck of the bad guy, and all the children can rest safe. That is the Superman!

Our myths tell us something about what we want. We want gods like that. We want people with the requisite power to drive evil people away by killing them. We want our gods to end evil people! And more to the point, we want it done in our timing.

How strange is the Biblical story of Jesus? Here comes one with the power to speak the universe into existence and out of existence, submitting himself to the vulnerable confines of human flesh, and never did His plans include a single fight scene. At any moment He could, indeed still can, insert himself into the human scene to destroy the bad guys, but we are still waiting. There will no doubt be a day when warrior Jesus comes, more fearsome than any shock and awe campaign of any "superpower," but in the meantime we get a martyred God.

We are shown in Jesus a radically counter-intuitive solution to evil, indeed the only solution to evil: crucifixion! God came not to drive evil back with superior force, but to make himself the object of the cumulative evil of the race, to absorb the sins of humanity, and to be destroyed by it only to emerge triumphant in resurrection. Everything is turned upside-down.

How did a desperately evil race react to the only morally pure human being ever to be so bold as to enter into society with them? They destroyed him! And Jesus knew they would. It was the counsel of the Trinity from time immemorial for Jesus to be thus destroyed, and at precisely the right moment in history.

There was a scene in Captain American that looked very much like Jesus indeed. The final fight scene between Captain America and his old friend Bucky Barnes, who was now the killing machine called the Winter Soldier, expresses the spirit of Jesus better than anything in the rest of the movie. Captain America insists that he will not kill his old friend, and is himself beaten to the brink of death. Captain American certainly had the power to fight and kill his old friend, but instead he accepted death at his hands in order to radically demonstrate his love for his friend. Only then did his friend recognize him. Perhaps he stopped killing Captain America only because he wanted to kill him for the sake of his own pride, and it hardly feeds one's pride to kill a defenseless man, or perhaps he stopped because he was changed (which is hard to believe since they were probably setting up a sequel). The point is that a martyr's love is given regardless of the outcome. It is done because love is greater than conquest. It is frankly done for the glory of love.

Resurrection, and the transformation that comes through it, is God's answer to evil in the world. Judgment is a part of the equation, but not now in human history. The human race in its unrepentant brazenness will one day face a day of reckoning concerning the long inglorious ledger of its sins, but not yet. Now is the day of salvation! Receive the Martyr God!

Here is a poem I wrote a few years back that expresses this antithesis to the typical hero archetype:

Blood Legacy

They found a man reviled for his effeminate kindness,
and they beat him,
spraying his cowards blood so that it became a viscous rain,
smearing it sadistically upon their smiling faces,
painting themselves war heroes with his inferior blood.

One said, “Should we laugh?”
Another answered “Should we not take pleasure in justice?”

The weaker he became at the ferocious flurry of pummeling fists,
the more intoxicated with power they became.

A synergy of sadistic hedonism moved them,
so that their voices became a crazed, incoherent symphony
of hatred.

Shrieks of pain
and waves of laughter
rose to cacophonous crescendo
until the broken man gave up his impotent soul.

Stillness settled over the scene, for even a just killing
can create a mood of contemplative dissatisfaction.

As they shuffled back to their homes, heads hung low,
the dead man called to them in love,
having risen from the dead.

Incensed that he was still alive,
and that he would dare address them again
with patronizing compassion,
they destroyed him again,
confirming their strength.

And again he rose and called to them in love.

Their anger grew into irrational, spitting vituperations
of malice until they killed him again,
this time hacking him to pieces with swords.

And again he rose and called to them in love.

But they kept killing him, because that is all they knew,
and that is all they knew to teach to their children.
Every generation killed him,
and with increasingly evolved methods.
They made it their destiny as descendents to destroy him
once and for all.
Killing him became their legacy.

But each time he rose and called to them in love,
only to be destroyed again,
and again and again.

One rare day after generations of this rabid bloodthirstiness;
after a river of this
one man’s blood had flowed,
a child of this murderous brood
in trembling empathy embraced him,
only to be destroyed with him.

But he raised them together

and proclaimed…
“Enough of my blood has flowed.”

November, 2007