The Wrong Way Up — John 12:31-36a · Holy Cross Day
from Monday To Sunday Hosted by Joe Stein
The church has a feast day for a piece of Roman execution equipment. September 14, Holy Cross Day. Try the same move with anything modern, a feast of the electric chair, and listen to how it sounds. There is a cartoon scratched into a wall on the Palatine Hill in Rome from around the year 200. A figure hangs on a cross, and the figure has the head of a donkey. Underneath, in bad Greek: Alexamenos worships his god. Somebody drew it to make fun of a Christian who worked in the building. It is roughly two hundred years older than the earliest Christian artwork of the crucifixion. The people who thought the cross was ridiculous drew it first. This is the midweek show, and this week it takes the appointed readings for a feast most of us missed, because it landed on a Monday. Isaiah 45:21-25, Psalm 98, Philippians 2:5-11, John 12:31-36a. The Greek is hypsoō, to lift up. It does two ordinary jobs at once: hoisting a beam, and raising somebody's standing. John hears Jesus use it and knows both meanings are running. The lifting up is the execution and the enthronement in a single motion. Also in this episode: why the Philippians hymn is shaped like a V that does not come back to where it started, what Isaiah's one-question test for an idol does to a magazine's annual ranking of the richest people alive, and why the discipline of this feast is descending an inch in private, where nobody finds out and there is no return on it. Monday to Sunday is hosted by Joe Stein. New episodes Tuesday and Thursday. Full archive and written companions at mondaytosunday.life.
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