From Grünewald’s crucifixion to immigration detention
Cover Image: Matthias Grünewald (1470–1528), Isenheim Altarpiece (1512–1516). Public Domain found here.
Matthias Grünewald’s early 16th-century crucifixion painting is one of the most gruesome paintings of the crucifixion. Christ’s body is discolored, twisted, and studded with shards of wood and thorns. His extremities are twisted unnaturally and have turned a sickly green.
As grotesque as the scene is, it’s not nearly as horrifying as Jesus’ body must have appeared on the cross. But something more important than accuracy is happening in this painting.
Grünewald was commissioned to paint the piece for the chapel attached to a monastery in Isenheim, France where monks treated victims of ergotism, a fungal disease caused by eating infected rye bread. The disease was also called “St. Anthony’s fire” for the burning sensations caused by the constriction of blood vessels. It left its victims with skin lesions that caused gangrene of the limbs, hallucinations, and sometimes death (more here). The monks would treat patients with good bread, wine treated with healing herbs, and special anti-inflammatory salves (source HERE).
When the poor and afflicted of Issenheim would enter into the chapel to pray or worship, they would see the face of their Savior afflicted with their same symptoms.
Other artists have depicted the ills of their age upon the face of Christ. Julius Bloch’s 1932 painting The Lynching portrays Jesus as Black man being lynched by a white mob (found HERE):
Marc Chagall’s 1938 painting White Crucifixion shows a Jewish Jesus on the cross surrounded by scenes of Jews suffering at the hands of the 1930s German National Socialist Party (found HERE):
Fleming Rutledge, in her book The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, writes that the cross “was a form of advertisement, or public announcement—this person is the scum of the earth, not fit to live, more an insect than human being. . . Crucifixion as a means of execution in the Roman Empire had as its express purpose the elimination of victims from consideration as members of the human race.”
In this present age, whose face do we see on Christ’s on the cross? Who has the full power of the empire and the religious institutions come down upon today? Who are they trying to eliminate as members of the human race?
Christian peace activist Shane Claiborne reposted these images of the stations of the cross this week, created by the Guatemalan-Maya Center:
In them, refugees and asylum seekers are detained by officials, wait in long lines with exhausted children on their shoulders, cross a river to face fences lined with sharp barbed wire, and run from tear gas and whips.
I also think of the people despairing in detention facilities around this country, particularly the children for whom detention has been shown to be so harmful and dangerous. On March 25, a 14th person died in ICE custody this year alone, for a rate of one death every six days this year (source HERE and HERE.
Jesus encouraged us to see his face in the hungry and thirsty, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned:
“Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. . . . Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” (Matthew 25:41-43 + 45 NIV)
Mark tells us that for the last three hours of Jesus’ suffering on the cross, the sun itself went dark in the middle of the day (Mark 15:33). Raymond E. Brown suggests that this is God the Father’s expression of his presence with his Son in his suffering, even though Jesus could not feel that presence in the moment (Rutledge, The Crucifixion).
Each person who bears the image of Christ is worthy of such compassion.
All writing copyright Marydean Draws 2026.
This article was originally posted on my Substack.
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