QUOTE FOR THE DAY/THE CRUCIFIED WOMAN

In the spirit of Luther, I propose that resistance to idolizing Jesus' male identity be presented in the strategic reassertion of the image of the crucified woman as the location of Christ today. Because the imaging of Christ has become dangerously synonymous with male identity, the image of the crucified woman has potential to critique the "inherent" link between maleness and divinity. Once it serves that critical, negative function, the crucified woman, in the spirit of a theology of the Cross, can then open up, especially for women, new existential pathways and insights into the concrete reality of God becoming enfleshed and embodied in particular human form.

But is the image of a crucified woman necessarily a healing image for women? I contend that the images of crucified women force us to ponder God's hidden presence, God's envelopment of human suffering in new ways. The crucified woman yells a resounding "No" in the face of the maleness of God, in the face of sexist structures erected in the name of Christ that are too common, too expected. The image of a crucified woman startles us into understanding God's presence hidden sub contrario. But the image of the crucified woman stands alongside the full account of the Gospel narrative of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. The promise that must be pronounced to end with the crucified woman is that resurrection offers hope to the crucified, that suffering and abuse do not, will not, ultimately have the final word.

Deanna A. Thompson, Becoming a Feminist Theologian of the Cross, taken from: Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today, edited by Marit Trelstad.

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