Christianity as the Land of the Living and Not The Dead by Kathleen Rolenz December 9, 2011

After seeing literally dozens of churches, mosques and synagogues in three different countries, spanning from the first century to the twentieth century, today's visit to Istanbul's Chora Church stood out as one of the highlights of the entire trip for me. The Chora Church was originally built as an Orthodox church in the 5th century and what it lacks in size it makes up for in the incredible beauty of the 15th century mosaics it contains.

What struck all of us about these mosaics, beyond their vivid colors and three dimensional appearance, was the lack of emphasis on the torture, suffering and death of Jesus. Instead, the narthex contained images of and references in Greek letters to Jesus as the Land of the Living and his mother Mary as "the container of the uncontainable." There is a tenderness in many of the scenes between Mary and Jesus; in Jesus assisting the ancestors to heaven, and a gentle intimacy between Mary's parents Joachim and Anna. One mosaic depicting the birth of Mary shows the women attending the birth, caring for Anna, and washing the baby.

As we looked upon the final mosaic, one of the few in the nave, titled "Mary's Dormition" (her bodily death) Rebecca Parker reflected on a question posed to her about the absence of the violent imagery we had grown accustomed to in the churches in Spain. Dr.Parker spoke about how western Christianity's use of redemptive violence as a theological position did not start to dominate their religious art and architecture until the beginning of the 7th century. We asked why? What might have been some of the factors that contributed to the difference between east and west, to the change from these beautiful, peaceful and life-inspiring mosaics to the broken body of Christ on the cross? Her answer was provocative. "This is still a theory, but I believe that fear of Muslims and Jews are connected to Western Christianity's use of violence in depictions of Jesus...". We remembered the history of the Visigoth Christians' anti-Semitism in the 6th and 7th centuries prior to being driven out of Spain jn the 8th by Muslims. In the four centuries that followed, western Christians crusaded to recover their lands, both holy and secular, and punish those who they believed had denied or killed Christ, the only way to salvation. Just as Christ died for us in a vicarious atonement, the western church taught that waging war and dying for Christ was redemptive. So western Christian iconography displayed the violence used to torture and kill Jesus to illustrate that such violence has a salvific purpose.

The images in the Chora church were beautiful not only for their exquisite craft work and intriguing stories, but because they represented the Christianity not obsessed with redemptive violence as the central message of the faith. The Eastern Christian theology and the Marian devotion we have encountered and learned about on our journey is a gift and a comfort we will carry back with us.