Jesusʼ Death with a Midwife
power together theology, not power over
The Holy Week story most of us know is one that operates on the typical power-OVER theology and thinking. (If youʼre new here, when I say power-over I mean hierarchy, dominance, and otherwise exerting power in a vertical fashion OVER other people). Letʼs break it down:
God is holy and will only tolerate perfection and purity.
Because humanity is sinful, God cannot tolerate us and therefore we cannot be in relationship with him.
But because the God who cannot tolerate us deeply loves us (totally sus), he sentenced his son to a brutal death by crucifixion.
Our impurity demanded our deaths, but God decided he could tolerate us if he killed his own child instead.
If we believe that God did this horrible thing on our behalf—and that he really should have done it to us instead—then we are invited to hang out with this homicidal deity after we die instead of being eternally tortured by him.
There are numerous chapters from the power-over playbook here. Purity, hierarchy, domination, gaslighting, and violent enforcement. Letʼs frame it another way to highlight these features:
Entity A demands perfection of Entity B (purity), and there is a power differential between A and B (hierarchy).
A rejects B and seeks to punish B (dominance).
A claims, despite their behavior, to deeply care about B (gaslighting).
A pulls in Entity C and abuses and kills them (violent enforcement).
A tells B that he feels better now that heʼs sated his thirst for violence, and would B want to be in his club after all?
Can you tell I donʼt care for penal substitutionary atonement? Łol.
But this is not the only way to consider the cross.
Did you know that in the ancient Jewish world, when someone spoke the first line of a psalm, it was implied that they were invoking the entire psalm? Did you also know that the famous phrase—My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?—are the first line of Psalm 22? And did you know that God is portrayed as a MIDWIFE in that psalm?
This changes everything if you ask me. Iʼve spent a lot of time around birthing people, and I can tell you that almost everyone says in the throes of active labor, at the peak of transition, ʼI canʼt do this anymore!ʼ Doulas and midwives often smile to themselves when laboring people say this. Itʼs not masochistic; itʼs knowing whatʼs coming. Itʼs knowing that birth is around the corner, and the only way out is through. And, it SUCKS.
Your doula or midwife or partner cannot save you from the pain. Youʼll feel every little bit of it, every ginormous obnoxious insistent contraction. (Yes, in real life, you could get an epidural, but there was no epidural for Jesus on the cross, and there arenʼt any epidurals for life either, so stick with me on this unmedicated birth metaphor). Youʼre the only one who can birth your baby, so the only way out is through. But your midwife and doula will stay close. Theyʼll hold your hands and make sure youʼre hydrated, or get you into a better position, or tell your well-meaning husband that itʼs time to be quiet. Theyʼll validate your incredible pain and tell you that youʼre a goddess and believe in you when youʼre too tired to believe in yourself anymore. Theyʼłl see you to the other side.
Midwife means with woman. And Jesus cried out for God the Midwife from the cross. Be with me. Stay close. Get me to the other side.
Why have you forsaken me? and I canʼt do this anymore are soul cries. There is no fixing them, only witnessing them.
The cross is not a sadistic deityʼs way of satisfying a bloodthirst in order to tolerate the people he created and supposedly loves. Jesus did not have to die, but empire killed him. And because God is more like a midwife than an almighty dictator, God couldnʼt save Jesus or take his pain away. But She could—and I think did—have power together with Christ. She provided solidarity, as did the women at the cross (Christʼs doulas). She accompanied him to Golgotha and all the way to death. She bore witness to his ordeal. She stayed, never once turning her face away.
Maybe brutal warlord gods kill babies to save sinners, like penal substitutionary atonement essentially supposes. But midwives help mothers (and fathers and non-binary parents!) access their own internal power that babies may be born and thrive. You can think of Christʼs death as the birth of the Church, or the labor the preceded his own Easter Sunday rebirth, or something else entirely, but the main point is this: This Good Friday and Holy Saturday, imagine God as a midwife at Jesusʼ side. Wiping his brow. Telling him that heʼs not alone. Feeling his pain alongside him. Itʼs a power-together story, not power-over.
I love this so much. I’ve been thinking about the cross all week, trying to shake all I was taught about it and lean into the solidarity of it instead. Thank you for this beautiful picture.
Going to go read Psalms...