*written in appreciation of a nativity painting, within the Church of the Pantanassa, a Byzantine church in central Athens, Greece. No photos were allowed, just imagination.
What goes into a sacrifice? How deep must the cut be?
The Ancient Greeks slaughter lambs for absolvement and fear, the modern for gyros with tomato and yogurt sauce. Smother both with devotion, relish the taste. It will make you content.
Both involve the spilling of blood, some more holy than others. However queerly potent an animal’s sacrifice, the conquerors decide which blood is the sweetest, the most potent of all.
Iisoús Christos, orthodox, and now the sacrificial lamb. Enshrined in a painting within a Byzantine church in Athens, Jesus glows in a shimmer of afterbirth and divinity. His sacrifice has yet to pass, but in anticipation, all pictured here look on toward the son of the one unnamed God, greater than Zeus, wiser than Athena. A jealous God with wrath to rival Ares, his mercy beautiful as Aphrodite, though he goes unseen, uncarved with historic marble.
His mother Mary shrouds her mortal self, blue as the chill of the mortal coil, red in the blood of his birth. Her sacrifice is heralded in this scene, the near-center of this profound memorial.
His father Joseph, looking on sullen as Judas, yet nobly so, accepting his secondary fatherhood, at the right hand of the Virgin and the son, those at the right hand of the new Father.
A sheep looks on, once centered, now replaced. Its wool now dull, its glory shorn. It won’t be the savior of millions, no calf of gold or child of God. Its blood won’t appease one or twelve, god nor disciple, by any name you can give. It looks on, its purpose passed, as the orthodox commands the new meaning of sacrifice: as art, as weaponry, as power.
Philip Runia 