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117 Conclusion W e conclude with a story that is meant to serve as a pendant to the story with which we began. We opened with Socrates relating the story of Leontius’s encounter with the corpses. Socrates prefaced his telling by saying, “I once heard something that I trust.”1 At the close we have another story relating something that the writer has heard and in which he emphasizes the credibility of what he relates. This story also is an encounter with a corpse, but it brings this scandalous scene to a different end. 31Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. 32Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. 35(He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) 36These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, 118 Conclusion “None of his bones shall be broken.” 37And again another passage of scripture says, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.” It is hard to understand the act of the soldier as anything other than a literal adding of insult to injury. It was clear that Jesus was dead, so the soldiers did not break his legs. Still, one soldier felt compelled to stab the corpse. Perhaps it was a way of showing that this supposed king, this Messiah was really dead, really rendered powerless. The witness does not allow the intended offense of this act to overwhelm him. Instead he directs his attention to what the mediator, with his spear, literally points at—the corpse. He looks long and hard at the corpse and something flows out from beneath the surface: blood and water. The author records this testimony so that the reader might also believe. What would he have us believe? He would have us believe that these things occurred so that “the scripture might be fulfilled.” That is, he would have us believe that in the flowing out of blood and water from the side of Christ the whole meaning of the Old Testament has been fulfilled. We are to believe that all the blood, from the foundation of the world, as it were, has been accounted for in this death. We are to believe that all the waters of all the floods that have been unleashed have been taken into account. All of this violence has been fulfilled or completed on the body of the Son. We are to believe that what flows back from all this violence is one gift with two fruits: the gift of forgiveness with its fruits of communion (the Eucharist) and community (baptism). The story to which this is a pendant is that of Leontius striving not to look at the corpses and failing. Contrary to Plato’s suggestion, Leontius’s failure cannot be overcome by a better husbanding of the available forces. And, if we accept Plato’s analogy in the Republic between the individual soul and the city, neither will the city be better ordered and thus healthier through the application of force. Rather, we have outlined a longer journey that accepts the risk and the reward of looking “long and hard” at the victims of society’s violence. The risk is to get caught on the surface. The reward is to understand the real workings of a society through the portal of political violence. The way to the reward is to get “beneath the surface.” Certainly there are occasions where it is better not to look directly, but then only so that one can see the reality more deeply. Dante does not look directly at Medusa so that he may look at the depths of hell. And he looks upon them only in order Conclusion 119 to be able to gaze into the eyes of Beatrice and through and with her into the “love that moves the sun and...

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