Caputo agrees with Sanders that the cross as a message about service no matter what:

When Sanders goes on to say so very nicely that “the cross as a sacrifice is Jesus’s determination to live his life in the service of God come hell or high water or, in his case, Roman executioners,” I would say amen, that is exactly right. But, then again, that is exactly what I mean by a prophetic death, not a sacrificial one. Jesus taught a life of giving and forgiving, which was a provocative scandal to the powers that be, and they made him pay for it. That is how he lived and that is also how he died, which was his greatest teaching. True, one might say that Jesus sacrificed his life to that idea, but that is not what the theology of atonement means; that does not means that the cross was something Jesus gave to God as a gift to whom it was somehow pleasing or appeasing or in any way acceptable. Rather it was a monstrous cruelty that displeased God as much as it caused Jesus indescribable torment, but Jesus endured it in peace and forgiveness, which also means that if Jesus is an eikon of God, that is how God endured or received it.  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (pp. 55-56). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

I tend to think the Gospels are later than usually dated, for instance dependent on the account of doomsayer Jesus ben Ananias being handed over to the Romans for torture in Josephus, and the various conversions of the soldiers at the cross are late and are takes on Plutarch’s account of the converting death of Cleomenes.  In any case, Mark’s soldier views Jesus as the soldier par excellence following orders despite terror and even unto death: “Truly this was God’s son,” snubbing Caesar.  Matthew’s soldier is terrified by the power of God.  Luke’s soldier sees Jesus’s innocence in his forgiving death which is a literary pair with the forgiving death of Stephen in Acts which leads to Paul’s conversion.  In John the soldier pierces Jesus’ side to prove he is dead, apparently against Swoon Death accusation in his time.  So though often overlook the soldier is a key character.

The unjust suffering of sinless Jesus should open our eyes to inconspicuous violence in society and ourselves.

We should remember the unjust suffering of the dead in order to make justice happen today… This is a “festival of holy pain,” as Rahner says, not because we want to celebrate pain but because we are praying and weeping over unjust suffering, praying and saying “never again.” The danger then is the danger that the memory of unjust suffering poses to the oppressor. The memory of Emmet Till’s suffering posed a danger to racism and white supremacy; the memory of the suffering of Jesus poses a paradigmatic danger—and that is the proper content of the symbol—to every form of hatred.  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (pp. 57-58). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

These are the things that are divine with the cross: while enduring a nightmare trying to make something out of it like Jesus in Luke forgiving the Jewish elite who turned on him.  We see this too in Matthew with the command to love enemies as more important than yourself. 

It was a nightmare, an evil, pure and simple—“odious.” But it was endured with grace and dignity and without hatred by Emmett’s mother. That is the divine element in the story, the gift that they made of not returning evil with hatred. Then people of worth and courage made something good happen in its wake. That, as Sanders says so rightly, is what Good Friday means, what is good about it, what it calls for, what the symbol of the cross signifies… For the death of Jesus requires us to work, and to work well and incessantly, inspired by the spirit of Jesus, living with his life, remembering his death, to redeem this death, to make this death not a death in vain but a dangerous memory that strikes down the sword of the oppressor, not with a sword but with the weak force with which injustice cries to heaven for justice.  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (p. 58-59). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

My favorite example that I return to often is the prayer of thanksgiving by Socrates for his poison at the end of the Phaedo. Our horror at the death of noble Socrates changed society, and we no longer kill people for being gadflies.

Next time I will look at my old friend David Goicoechea’s essay on Caputo, and Caputo’s response.