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Blog: Good Friday Opening
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| From Banksy’s Wall and Piece book |
Sometimes, images can speak more profoundly than
words. I think this work by Banksy is one such image. To me it says more than
any strident soundbite does about the commercialisation of religious festivals.
In case we think that such concerns are a contemporary phenomenon, we might
also see powerful resonances here with the story of Jesus overturning the
money-changers’ tables in the Temple in the days before his death. Religion, it
seems, has always been big business.
But is there more to this image than the point
it is making about commercialisation? It is a deliberately shocking and
deliberately offensive work, and as such it is perhaps one of the most
appropriate Good Friday images I have ever seen. Jesus’ death upon a cross - a
violent, shocking and offensive death - has been too much airbrushed out of the
Easter story, not least by the Church itself. We can be eager not to dwell on
pain and suffering, and on the offensiveness of a near-naked man dying a
humiliating death. Bunnies and eggs are safer and cuter for the squeamish.
Whatever we have tried to turn Easter into, Good
Friday remains about Jesus choosing to die the very worst kind of death for
everyone - including those who’ll do their shopping today.
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