Living Stones in an Age of Humiliation
What 1 Peter teaches us about dignity, empire, and the stories we tell about one another
The Roman cultural context surrounding the development of the early Church perfected the art of humiliating defeated people. For most Christians, the clearest example of Rome’s utilization of humiliation is crucifixion. It was the physical torture and execution of those deemed threats to the Pax Romana, but it was always public and visible. It was meant to humiliate both the crucified and the people whom the crucified represented. Rome’s placard above Jesus’s head, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” was not an accusation against Jesus; it was meant as a taunting insult to Jesus’s people.
When the great Christ hymn of Philippians 2 speaks of Jesus, who “humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross,” the church essentially erased Rome’s agency. Rome had not humiliated him; he humbled himself. When the Church said this, they did not fear repercussions of Roman retaliation. They refused to give Rome the satisfaction of creating humiliation.
Rome had other tools for humiliation. A number of large, publicly funded stone structures also bore the humiliation of various people. The so-called Tropaeum Alpium was built to commemorate Augustus’s victory over the Alpine people just a couple of years before Jesus’s birth. The historian Pliny the Elder provides a record of its inscription:
“To the Emperor Cæsar—the son of Cæsar now deified, Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, and emperor . . . the Senate and the Roman people, in remembrance that under his command and auspices all the Alpine nations which extended from the upper sea to the lower were reduced to subjection by the Roman people . . .”
The inscription then listed by name over forty tribes or nations specifically defeated by Rome (see The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Natural History of Pliny, Vol. I., by Pliny the Elder). The stone relief also portrays the defeated people in chains and depicts them as barbarians. Similar kinds of stone structures were constructed throughout Rome’s history, including the Tropaeum Traiani and Trajan’s Column.
As I read 1 Peter 2:4–10 (the text from which I last preached), I see touchstones, forgive the pun, between Peter’s words and this cultural context that etched humiliation in stone.
The letter invites us to approach Jesus, “the living stone,” and also to be like “living stones built into a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:4–5). At the end of the passage, 1 Peter stacks one image on top of another: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9). After seeing the way that Rome sought to erase peoples’ identities and humiliate national backgrounds, it is hard to believe that this early Christian leader was not directly pointing Christians away from the images Rome had tried to use to describe them. First Peter gives us a call to be living stones in a culture that carved stones for death. He stacked images of dignity in place of the images of humiliation stacked on top of one another in something like Trajan’s Column. Peter also reminds them that their history is not fixed in stone; it is an ongoing story. They once had not received mercy, but now they have received mercy. Once they were not a people; now they are—we are—God’s own people.
When a nation acts like the imperial Romans—turning to cruelty and feeding the desire to humiliate people—it manifests the least humane aspects of being human. Because our own culture in the United States has become so partisan, it is difficult to address contemporary issues without generating defensiveness if we feel like our side is being criticized, or disgust if we feel like we can join in being critics. I think it is important that we collectively accept responsibility for what we collectively have done.
When our government communicates in ways that turn human suffering into spectacle or entertainment, we must ask what that communication is doing to us—whether we resemble the living stones formed into a spiritual home or the Roman Empire. Across election cycles, candidates and their advocates seem increasingly to depend less on reasoned argument and demonstrated character, and more on insults, propaganda, fear, and shibboleths. We turn neighbors into adversaries. We turn adversaries into enemies. And we too often treat the humiliation of those enemies as evidence that our side has won. Is it possible that we are carving our own digital versions of Tropaeum Americanum?
To me, Scripture provides both mirrors and windows. It provides a mirror for us to see who we are in light of God’s grace. A people who live with a constant, conscious awareness of God’s plan to build people up become more difficult to recruit into a culture that pushes people down. But the same grace that offers this good word to us also inspires our good work. The grace mirror needs to become our grace window so that we see others—our neighbors, the stranger, the people on the “other side” of political divides, and the people culture is trying to teach us to fear or dehumanize—with the same grace we have received ourselves.
We are living stones, and our lives tell a story. Rome had its way of depicting others, using humiliation to its full extent. How might we, the Church, God’s own people, tell a more compelling, humanizing story not only of ourselves, but also of those who are not like ourselves?