Dear Saints of Valley Church,
In the corner of the Palatine Museum in Rome hangs an etching on part of a plaster slab discovered as part of the Roman school on the Palatine Hill. This etched graffiti, dating back to around A.D. 200, known as the Alexamenos Graffito, is one of the earliest artistic representations of Jesus’s crucifixion. The etching depicts a figure on a cross that has the body of a man and the head of a donkey, and, to the left of the cross, a young man raising his hand in a gesture of worship. Below the etching is the Greek inscription, “Alexamenos worships (his) God.” Glen Schrivener explains how this etching exemplifies the moral earthquake the Christian worldview created amongst the Roman world in his excellent book The Air We Breathe: “Comedy doesn’t always hold up over time, but the mockery here hits its mark today just as powerfully as it would have done 2,000 years ago. The message is clear: a man on a cross is not a God, he’s an ass. Anyone who venerates such a figure is a fool at best and probably perverse.”[1]
To the Romans, the very idea that the Son of God would come in the weakness of human flesh seems foolish. That God would condescend to such weakness as to be hung on a cross was a laughable contradiction to God’s power and dignity. Paul himself acknowledges the way the world would view the cross as foolishness: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). And yet, God chose the weakness and foolishness of the cross as a witness to his glory and strength (1 Cor. 1:19-25). Furthermore, we were the foolish, and weak, and low, and despised in the eyes of the world who are now in Christ who became for us “wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor. 1:26-31).
This tension between the world’s view of weakness and God’s use of weakness is precisely what we will see when we study Psalm 8 this Sunday, as the Psalmist asks, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” When we stare into the vastness of space or consider the brokenness of our world and feel so weak and powerless, Psalm 8 offers David’s perspective on weakness, providing a reason for us to praise God. We declare “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth” because we worship a God who chooses weakness as a witness to his glory. So, I hope you will join us for our Sunday gathering where we praise God’s majestic name and character as we seek to follow Jesus together.
By His strength and for His glory,
Craig Shigyo
[1] Glen Schrivener, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality (The Good Book Company, 2022), 24-25.