ecce homo!
a holy week meditation

Jesus before Pilate – defenceless, tortured, about to shed the rest of his blood – is one of the most moving moments of Good Friday.
For Canon Paul Oestreicher this figure, this moment in the Passion, personifies the dignity of every tortured human being.

Not many of us have the inner resources to look suffering in the face. What we have not seen, we have not seen. As with the priest and Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan, there is always some good reason to look away. After World War II many Germans, when the killing was over, swore they had no idea what had happened to their Jewish neighbours. Today newspaper editors think twice before publishing the photos of the humiliation of hooded and naked Iraqis. It’s doubly hard when the perpetrators are ours, not theirs.

For many years it was my privilege to take visitors to Coventry, in central England, on a dramatic Cathedral pilgrimage from crucifixion to resurrection: through the bombed medieval ruin to Basil Spence’s visionary modern Cathedral.

The first station was always at the altar with its cross of charred beams, inscribed behind it, the words of Jesus on the Cross: Father forgive – not forgive them, which would have pointed only at the bombers of 1940. War-time Provost Richard Howard never tired of preaching that all have failed and need to be forgiven, that it must always mean us and them.

Many people were so moved by this simple message that they were in no hurry to move on. From there it was only a few steps to Jacob Epstein’s Ecce Homo, Jesus arraigned before Pilate, awaiting the sentence of death. When they looked up at the massive stone figure with its powerful tortured face, their most common reaction was one of estranged rejection. They wanted to move on quickly. My pointing out that this was probably the most valuable and most profound work of art the Cathedral possessed was often met with puzzlement.

It took me time to realise that this was the measure of a great sculptor’s success, not failure. So deeply had one Jew identified with the suffering of another that producing a popular depiction of Jesus was not an option. So devastatingly alone, abandoned, is Jesus at this moment, facing a hostile, scoffing crowd. Behold the man! just look at him! – that is the last thing we want to do.

Epstein wanted his Jesus, the product of more than a decade’s arduous work, to be placed in a church. Selby Abbey was not the only place that turned his offer down. That rejection of the artist and of his vision was both hurtful and symbolic. Ecce Homo was to remain in the sculptor’s studio for the rest of his life. Only later did it find its spiritual home in the Coventry ruin.

The block of Subiaco stone that eventually became Behold the Man was “the toughest, most difficult piece of stone I had ever tackled. All the tools I had broke on it… until I finally hit on one that began to make an impression on the stone”. “This was a sculpture”, wrote Richard Cork, “that was concerned above all with suffering and endurance. So the long travail experienced by its maker… informed the meaning he conveyed” (Epstein As Carver by Richard Cork).

Epstein had abandoned the orthodox Jewish beliefs of his family. That gave him the freedom to identify spiritually with the dissident Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. Ecce Homo was followed by an equally monumental work Consummatum Est – It is Finished, inspired by listening to the Crucifixus section of Bach’s B Minor Mass. He experienced “a feeling of tremendous quiet, of awe… I see immediately the upturned hands, with the wounds in the feet, stark, crude, with the stigmata”. Is it possible to get closer to the Suffering Servant than that?

Jesus facing the judgment of the world is an example of carving that is simplified to the point of crudeness. “There is about this bruised yet resilient face”, comments Richard Cork, “a hint of self-portraiture, suggesting that Epstein identified himself with a man battered by hostility and ridicule but stubbornly undismayed by the humiliation he had suffered.

“Behold the Man is a partially autobiographical work, evincing the sculptor’s determination to continue carving in the face of the most dispiriting antagonism. In that respect it seems appropriate that the statue remained in Epstein’s studio until his death”.

It would nevertheless be a misreading of Epstein’s intention to personalise this totemic symbol of suffering or to reduce it to its Jewish origins. Nor is Epstein an evangelist. The redemption of the world is for theologians to interpret. His theme is the humanity of Christ, the universal, timeless martyr. Hence the face of Jesus that bears no visual relation to Jewishness, let alone to the classic Renaissance Jesus of so much Christian art.

Jeph Mathias and friend are thumbing their way round the S Island. Suddenly there is a precious moment to say what personal faith is all about

OK. Give me the guts of your faith, all the key stuff, no waffle. Ya’ve got thirty seconds.

This was classic Nick. He’s one of my best friends for his heart of pure steel but he’s also got a mind like an arrow: unwavering in its rationality, its skepticism – and its honesty.
We were medical students then, hitchhiking around New Zealand’s South Island for our summer holidays. As the thousandth driver drove past, Nick decided to finally sort out all this religion stuff.
“ Give me five minutes to think, Nick”
“ It’d better be worth the wait” he pseudo-growled.

What should I say? I riffled through the book of faith inside my head trying, trying, to find words for my answer. Did he want to be told he should sign up now and wave his membership card as he cruised on in through the pearly gates to eternal life? Nah! Not from me anyway. I reckon we are all saved, not just Christians.

Even then I saw God as a parent, and no parent has ‘in’ children and ‘out’ children. Nick would have thrust his rationality like a rapier at me with Why? Is God’s unlimited love limited to those who love or better still serve him? Nick wanted the guts of my faith and trying to win a ‘get-out-of-hell-free’ card is not me.

What about the Lord as my shepherd? The strong loving God who wards off enemies and dangers, looks after me, makes me lie down in green pastures, gives me everything I need and more. Beautiful! Yeah! I could tell him I have joined the herd with the big powerful God on its side. No again! He’d ask why the psalm goes on to beg warm, fluffy God to let me feast, and gloat, in the sight of my enemies (where is their loving father?), he’d ask where the shepherd is today and who feasts in whose sight.

“Easy”, he’d have said, “for us in our rich world with all our aircraft carriers and cluster bombs to lie down in green pastures and control people to work for $1 a day to make us shoes as their children die of malnutrition.” He’d tell me to take my chances alone rather than bow to a power hungry God like that. Maybe God does send miraculous healing to phone-in callers on tele-evangelist shows and maybe He answers prayers for parking places in congested cities.

Maybe, but that’s not me and Nick asked about my faith.

I never even considered talking of God’s righteousness and truth because long before Nick, I cringed about a God who allegedly “decided to win glory for himself at the expense of Pharaoh”, killed thousands and watched his ‘chosen people’ dance with tambourines over the bodies washing ashore. Today I’d say following God for fear of His righteous retribution is like swearing an oath of allegiance to the US president: “I follow your words of freedom and justice because of all those WMDs in your back pocket”.

Back then I knew I couldn’t face Nick’s steely eyes as he asked about God loading a 12-year-old’s sling for him, then tousling his golden boy’s locks as he returns gloriously with his victim’s head. I had no answer should he ask about God playing His special effects trump card to cook Elijah’s meat, gathering in the winning trick and applauding his playing partner cutting 400 prophets of Baal’s throats. “Magic and power. You’d better follow, or else,” Nick would have said, “that fear stuff’s not for me.” It’s not for me either. Never was.

So no shepherds, no righteousness, no salvation, no retribution… what do I say? In my head I flung down my book of faith to see what page it would open.


ecce homo! a holy week meditation Jesus before Pilate – defenceless, tortured, about to shed the rest of his blood – is one of the most moving moments of Good Friday. For Canon Paul Oestreicher this figure, this moment in the Passion, personifies the dignity of every tortured human being. Not many of us have the inner resources to look suffering in the face. What we have not seen, we have not seen. As with the priest and Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan, there is always some good reason to look away. After World War II many Germans, when the killing was over, swore they had no idea what had happened to their Jewish neighbours. Today newspaper editors think twice before publishing the photos of the humiliation of hooded and naked Iraqis. It’s doubly hard when the perpetrators are ours, not theirs. For many years it was my privilege to take visitors to Coventry, in central England, on a dramatic Cathedral pilgrimage from crucifixion to resurrection: through the bombed medieval ruin to Basil Spence’s visionary modern Cathedral. The first station was always at the altar with its cross of charred beams, inscribed behind it, the words of Jesus on the Cross: Father forgive – not forgive them, which would have pointed only at the bombers of 1940. War-time Provost Richard Howard never tired of preaching that all have failed and need to be forgiven, that it must always mean us and them. Many people were so moved by this simple message that they were in no hurry to move on. From there it was only a few steps to Jacob Epstein’s *Ecce Homo, Jesus arraigned before Pilate, awaiting the sentence of death. When they looked up at the massive stone figure with its powerful tortured face, their most common reaction was one of estranged rejection. They wanted to move on quickly. My pointing out that this was probably the most valuable and most profound work of art the Cathedral possessed was often met with puzzlement. It took me time to realise that this was the measure of a great sculptor’s success, not failure. So deeply had one Jew identified with the suffering of another that producing a popular depiction of Jesus was not an option. So devastatingly alone, abandoned, is Jesus at this moment, facing a hostile, scoffing crowd. Behold the man! just look at him!* – that is the last thing we want to do. Epstein wanted his Jesus, the product of more than a decade’s arduous work, to be placed in a church. Selby Abbey was not the only place that turned his offer down. That rejection of the artist and of his vision was both hurtful and symbolic. Ecce Homo was to remain in the sculptor’s studio for the rest of his life. Only later did it find its spiritual home in the Coventry ruin. The block of Subiaco stone that eventually became Behold the Man was “the toughest, most difficult piece of stone I had ever tackled. All the tools I had broke on it… until I finally hit on one that began to make an impression on the stone”. “This was a sculpture”, wrote Richard Cork, “that was concerned above all with suffering and endurance. So the long travail experienced by its maker… informed the meaning he conveyed” (Epstein As Carver by Richard Cork). Epstein had abandoned the orthodox Jewish beliefs of his family. That gave him the freedom to identify spiritually with the dissident Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. Ecce Homo was followed by an equally monumental work Consummatum Est – It is Finished, inspired by listening to the Crucifixus section of Bach’s B Minor Mass. He experienced “a feeling of tremendous quiet, of awe… I see immediately the upturned hands, with the wounds in the feet, stark, crude, with the stigmata”. Is it possible to get closer to the Suffering Servant than that? Jesus facing the judgment of the world is an example of carving that is simplified to the point of crudeness. “There is about this bruised yet resilient face”, comments Richard Cork, “a hint of self-portraiture, suggesting that Epstein identified himself with a man battered by hostility and ridicule but stubbornly undismayed by the humiliation he had suffered. “*Behold the Man* is a partially autobiographical work, evincing the sculptor’s determination to continue carving in the face of the most dispiriting antagonism. In that respect it seems appropriate that the statue remained in Epstein’s studio until his death”. It would nevertheless be a misreading of Epstein’s intention to personalise this totemic symbol of suffering or to reduce it to its Jewish origins. Nor is Epstein an evangelist. The redemption of the world is for theologians to interpret. His theme is the humanity of Christ, the universal, timeless martyr. Hence the face of Jesus that bears no visual relation to Jewishness, let alone to the classic Renaissance Jesus of so much Christian art.	The face that Epstein carved was outside a conventional historical framework. It seems to belong to pre-history. Epstein had studied what we condescendingly call ‘primitive’ art and found it to be moving and spiritually perceptive, particularly in ancient South American civilisation. This strong, noble, suffering face of Jesus would not feel alien even to modern native Americans. Their ancestors had been hunted and decimated by the European conquistadors. That left its mark on Epstein’s sensitivity. Timeless, yes. But the artist was working in the century of Auschwitz and the Gulag, of apartheid and of bloody military dictatorships in that same Latin America. Perhaps no century has produced more martyrs. This abandoned Jesus is their prototype, personifying the dignity of every tortured human being. That dignity found its ultimate expression in his limitless compassion. He could and he did empathise with his torturers and executioners. He was with them, even in their invincible ignorance: Father forgive them for they do not understand what they are doing. Is that not a generic description of the human condition? A great deal of Christian devotion notwithstanding, Jesus was like us. I see his face in Gordon Wilson, Protestant Ulsterman who was standing beside his daughter when an IRA bomb tore her apart. Forgiveness for the terrorists was his immediate response. The Irish Republic perceptively made him a Senator. Here is an illustration of what George Fox, the father of Quakerism, called ‘that of God’ in each of us. I see the face of Jesus in every solitary witness to humanity, abandoned by most other Christians and so often by the leaders of the church, left to the mercies of a cruel state. Did not Jesus’ own congregation in Nazareth, disturbed by the challenge of his preaching of Yahweh’s indiscriminate love for Jews and foreigners alike, turn into a lynch mob? In the resolute face of Jesus I see the devout peasant Franz Jaegerstaetter, who confronted not only Hitler’s state but also his patriotic bishop in a lonely act of spiritual insight which, in that context, was astonishing: “If I take part in a war of aggression against the people of other nations I will be betraying my Lord”. He knew he would be beheaded. He was. Somewhere in heaven he will be allowed a wry smile when later this year he is beatified by a German Pope in the presence of his aged widow, if by then she has not been called to join Franz. In the tortured face of Jesus I see many a zealous Russian priest, abandoned by a compliant hierarchy and left to his fate in the Gulag. I see the visionary Socialist Rosa Luxemburg, in love with life, in love with the poor, tossed into a Berlin canal by those who feared for their riches. I see Sophie School, the Munich student, distributing leaflets denouncing a murderous state and facing the hangman without hate. I see the four Jesuit priests, friends of the poor, preachers of liberation, murdered by the military in Central America. It is an endlessly unfolding, universal tale recorded in the annals of God’s Kingdom and, more mundanely today, of Amnesty International. Its heroes, most of them unsung, are women and men of every race, of every religion and of none. In an act of imagination, Westminster Abbey has found a place for some of them carved in stone on its West Front. Was Jesus really just one of them? Classically so, for there is no hierarchy of suffering. His death was the product of an unholy alliance of church – Temple, to be accurate – and state. The protection of established religion and of public order made it necessary. The common good demanded it, an old and very modern tale. It is for example the story of William Tyndale, to whom we largely owe the best of the English language. To put the Bible into the people’s hands was held to be dangerously subversive of both church and state. On reflection, it still is. That is not where this reflection ends but before it does I must reveal that, in the heart of London, I encountered a sculpted companion, a soul-mate of Epstein’s Christ (I take the risk of calling *Ecce Homo* Christ for the only time, for might it not be that in some indefinable sense the sculptor did glimpse something of the mystery beyond his subject’s humanity?) I was walking through London to an ecumenical meeting. My path took me through a narrow passage between the Royal Festival Hall and the railway line from Charing Cross to Waterloo. I was stopped in my tracks by a sculpted massive head, a strong and suffering face, the face of Nelson Mandela in the days of his imprisonment on Robin Island. Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council had commissioned it as an act of prophetic courage at a time when to Downing Street and much of Britain Mandela was simply a terrorist. This was no likeable head. No site more prominent could be found for it. This was not the genial and adored statesman the world now venerates. This was the unpopular suffering face of courage. The aesthetic and spiritual bond with Ecce Homo was and is amazing. Some will ask: am I daring to compare Jesus to lesser mortals, albeit to the best of them? Of course I am. That is what Incarnation means. The child in the stable and the man dying between two robbers was of our kith and kin. Superman is for Hollywood. That does not invalidate the mystical theology on the other side of the coin, God in man made manifest. When the Coventry pilgrims have passed Jesus facing Pilate and moved to the sculpture of reconciled enemies embracing, they are on the way into a 20th century Cathedral that is testimony to the reality of Christ today living in the hearts of all who share their love which is also his love with a world waiting to be healed. It is the journey from Good Friday to Easter, from a sentence of death to the affirmation of life. But when the Hallelujahs have been sung, a few, like the beloved disciple and the women at the cross, may quietly return to the ruin and sit in the stillness of the evening before the gates are shut to contemplate gratefully as they behold the man. Paul Oestreicher is a Canon Emeritus of Coventry Cathedral and Quaker Chaplain to the University of Sussex. This piece is also being published in the English Church Times, who kindly forwarded to us the picture of Epstein’s Ecce Homo.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to God Jeph Mathias and friend are thumbing their way round the S Island. Suddenly there is a precious moment to say what personal faith is all about OK. Give me the guts of your faith, all the key stuff, no waffle. Ya’ve got thirty seconds. This was classic Nick. He’s one of my best friends for his heart of pure steel but he’s also got a mind like an arrow: unwavering in its rationality, its skepticism – and its honesty. We were medical students then, hitchhiking around New Zealand’s South Island for our summer holidays. As the thousandth driver drove past, Nick decided to finally sort out all this religion stuff. “ Give me five minutes to think, Nick” “ It’d better be worth the wait” he pseudo-growled. What should I say? I riffled through the book of faith inside my head trying, trying, to find words for my answer. Did he want to be told he should sign up now and wave his membership card as he cruised on in through the pearly gates to eternal life? Nah! Not from me anyway. I reckon we are all saved, not just Christians. Even then I saw God as a parent, and no parent has ‘in’ children and ‘out’ children. Nick would have thrust his rationality like a rapier at me with Why? Is God’s unlimited love limited to those who love or better still serve him? Nick wanted the guts of my faith and trying to win a ‘get-out-of-hell-free’ card is not me. What about the Lord as my shepherd? The strong loving God who wards off enemies and dangers, looks after me, makes me lie down in green pastures, gives me everything I need and more. Beautiful! Yeah! I could tell him I have joined the herd with the big powerful God on its side. No again! He’d ask why the psalm goes on to beg warm, fluffy God to let me feast, and gloat, in the sight of my enemies (where is their loving father?), he’d ask where the shepherd is today and who feasts in whose sight. “Easy”, he’d have said, “for us in our rich world with all our aircraft carriers and cluster bombs to lie down in green pastures and control people to work for $1 a day to make us shoes as their children die of malnutrition.” He’d tell me to take my chances alone rather than bow to a power hungry God like that. Maybe God does send miraculous healing to phone-in callers on tele-evangelist shows and maybe He answers prayers for parking places in congested cities. Maybe, but that’s not me and Nick asked about my faith. I never even considered talking of God’s righteousness and truth because long before Nick, I cringed about a God who allegedly “decided to win glory for himself at the expense of Pharaoh”, killed thousands and watched his ‘chosen people’ dance with tambourines over the bodies washing ashore. Today I’d say following God for fear of His righteous retribution is like swearing an oath of allegiance to the US president: “I follow your words of freedom and justice because of all those WMDs in your back pocket”. Back then I knew I couldn’t face Nick’s steely eyes as he asked about God loading a 12-year-old’s sling for him, then tousling his golden boy’s locks as he returns gloriously with his victim’s head. I had no answer should he ask about God playing His special effects trump card to cook Elijah’s meat, gathering in the winning trick and applauding his playing partner cutting 400 prophets of Baal’s throats. “Magic and power. You’d better follow, or else,” Nick would have said, “that fear stuff’s not for me.” It’s not for me either. Never was. So no shepherds, no righteousness, no salvation, no retribution… what do I say? In my head I flung down my book of faith to see what page it would open.	It was Lent. I’d been turning and turning over this story of the carpenter’s boy who is suddenly talking to the devil. “Pull a trick then,” wheedles little Lucifer, “turn stones into bread. Ya’ll have the masses all over you.” “Yeah, I could but it’s not what I am here for,” says a confused young man, not sure what he is here for. (OK Jeph, don’t tell Nick God will magically skate you over life’s slipperiest ice or that he’ll solve the world’s needs.) The Devil tries another angle. “Alright. Don’t give ‘em anything, just wow them with your magic powers. Jump off the temple, mate. Ya’ve got talent boy... yer’d be an idiot not ta use it,” he taunts. “Yup, could do that too,” says the young man, “but that’s not the way.” (Hmmm…If God reckons that just displaying power is wrong I won’t try to sell God’s power and glory to Nick.) “OK then, Listen! Just quietly between you and me let’s make a deal – a hierarchy of power. You’ll have everything under you – except me. They’ll never know,” he whispers seductively. Shake on it?” “Get lost,” shouts the boy, “Power sucks.” Yeah! It’s all about power. Not wanting it when you don’t have it, not using it, displaying it or even accepting its legitimacy when you do. It’s an idiot’s story. We all know where the story led. Particularly me, that Lent morning sweltering on the Blenheim roadside under the blaze of Nick’s question. The story leads to an anguished young man at midnight in a garden sweating blood because now he knows what it’s about: He is here to live love and truth while avoiding the temptations of power, and it’s going to kill him. It’s an idiot’s story and he’s the hero. Look! Here they are for him… “ Have you learned nothing?” he shouts when his best friend desperately draws his sword “even injustice doesn’t warrant power.” And so it goes. He walked on water, brought the dead to life, controlled the weather… now he’s nailed up in the sun. “I believe in you. Pull one of your tricks for the three of us,” begs the man in agony beside him. “Nah, leave him alone. We shouldn’t ask” says the other criminal, also slowly suffocating. “ Man, you’re the first who’s ever understood. I’ll see ya on the other side,” Jesus says. And he dies. Waving my hopeful thumb at the cars whizzing by, it was that story, beautiful and hard, that I’d found in my hand. Love over power. Blindingly simple! Yeah! It’s all about power. Not using it when you have it, not wanting it when you don’t. Freedom from power is true Freedom! It might be the most important meditation of my life, those five minutes Nick gave me one February day 15 years ago. I remember it every Lent. Love not power, no matter how seductively the world whispers. I am truly free if I refuse to use the power I have, nor lust after the power I don’t have. That’s Love: relationship without power! As hard and as beautiful as that. It’s an idiot’s story. Nick, it’s about an all powerful God who chooses love instead. And you’re free…”, I said, “to use my 25 left-over seconds to think that over." Jeph Mathias and his wife Kaaren,both doctors from Christchurch, are serving in Himachal Pradesh, India.

ecce homo! a holy week meditation

Jesus before Pilate – defenceless, tortured, about to shed the rest of his blood – is one of the most moving moments of Good Friday. For Canon Paul Oestreicher this figure, this moment in the Passion, personifies the dignity of every tortured human being.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to God

Jeph Mathias and friend are thumbing their way round the S Island. Suddenly there is a precious moment to say what personal faith is all about

ecce homo!
a holy week meditation

Jesus before Pilate – defenceless, tortured, about to shed the rest of his blood – is one of the most moving moments of Good Friday.
For Canon Paul Oestreicher this figure, this moment in the Passion, personifies the dignity of every tortured human being.