Flannery O'Connor: Writing a Theology of Disabled Humanity

4. The Image of Christ and a Disability Perspective

79 CHAPTER 4 The Image of Christ and a Disability Perspective “I read a lot of theology because it makes my writing bolder.” —Flannery O’Connor1 In Luke 19, Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey a week before his crucifixion. The author did not have to tell his readers that Jesus’ action was in fulfillment of prophecy. They knew. Jesus’ disciples, the Twelve and the others following him on that day, knew as well. Their desire for the promised Messiah ran deep; their longing for freedom from oppressors was tangible. As Jesus approached the path that led down the Mount of Olives, “the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice.”They shouted,“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven.”2 As Jesus rode the donkey across the tiny Kidron Valley and started up the path, only a few hundred yards, to enter Jerusalem ’s city gate, the expectations for Jesus-as-king were high, so high that the Pharisees in the crowd perceived a danger and warned Jesus to have his disciples be quiet.The Romans atop the city walls that they were approaching might be inclined quickly to crush any sign of a political uprising. 80 Flannery O’Connor For many centuries, Christians have celebrated this triumphant entry on Palm Sunday for good reason. The people had finally realized Jesus’ true identity as the Anointed One (Christ in Greek, Messiah in Hebrew). Luke draws a beautiful picture of this multitude shouting for their king. Matthew’s version has the participants waving palm branches and laying their coats on the road in honor of their realized messiah. Luke provides us with a further insight, though; he knows the multitude has not truly understood. They have not realized that “the face of the good is also grotesque” and only “half full of promise.” The gospel accounts are full of the irony of the scene that some of these same people would be crying out for Jesus’ death only a few days later. But Luke helps the reader glimpse a deeper paradox. As Jesus approached the city, “he wept over it.”3 During his own triumphant entry, amidst the shouts of realization of his true identity, Jesus wept.And he said,“If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But they are hidden from your eyes.”4 The scene’s paradox is that the humiliation of the cross is the thing that makes for the peace these disciples cry out for in expectation. They will have to learn to accept Christ’s death before they can know the peace they desperately anticipate. They cry for a king and for “Peace in heaven,” but Christ says they do not know “the things that make for peace.” Jesus weeps because the people do not understand this paradox. Despite years of teaching, they still cannot comprehend that the face of the good is grotesque. O’Connor’s fiction captures the mystery and paradox of this moment. Amidst our expectations for liberation, our desires to be justified and for justice to be carried out on our enemies, O’Connor points us down the via dolorosa. Our sense of justice is offended and our hearts are crushed when the innocent boys Harry and Bishop are drowned in their baptisms. But have we seen the things that make for peace? We want our religion to be a big electric blanket, but O’Connor continually points us toward the Cross.5 The Image of Christ and a Disability Perspective 81 O’Connor’s Image of Christ If Christ is the true image of God, then radical questions have to be asked about the nature of the God who is imaged. At the heart of Christian theology is a critique of success, power and perfection, and an honouring of weakness, brokenness and vulnerability. —Ecumenical Disabilities Advocate Network of the World Council of Churches, “A Church of All and For All” O’Connor’s image of Christ drove her fiction. But her image of Christ was not the victorious and conquering king the Jews of Jesus’ day and the Christians of O’Connor’s day (or our day) expected. Hers was instead the image of Christ on the cross that was installed above the altar at Milledgeville...