Page - 74 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

Charivari or the Historicising of a Question | 73www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 67–79 Three aspects of this passage are to be highlighted: (1) the subjectively felt inad- equacy of the own use of language for the described objective – a typical mysti- cal topos, (2) the urgent need to express and even more urgent need to have intimacy with Jesus, and, finally (3) the connection between redemption and the stigmata (“that winds itself around your feet”). The feet thereby stand as pars pro toto for all stigmata (feet, hands, side), which themselves are likewise pars pro toto for Jesus Christ – and as we will see, for even more. The primary function as redeemer is expressed mainly in formulations that worship the stigmata, so that Jesus is addressed through his wounds, scores, welts, blood, sweat, tears, and, preferably, the hole in his side, but not without perpetual evocation with terms of love and devotion to the decidedly masculine bridegroom.23 He is the lamb and man of torture (Marter=Mann24) as well as the loving shepherd of his congregation. Through his being simultaneously immanent and transcendent, loving and grieving, God and man, he is the ultimate mediator between the po- larities of heaven and earth. Both the transcendence and the immanence of Jesus emphasize his masculinity:25 as transcendent savior, he is the loving and redeem- ing bridegroom; as immanent human being, he bears the suffering at the cross in manly fashion: “The figure of God [GOttes=Gestalt] came in the figure of man [Mannsgestalt], relinquished all his Godly might, was like one of us in every detail, carried our misery on his back.”26 Yet he is depicted as “poor, unsightly, and much despised” in his human form,27 as a result of the inherent dualism of transcend- ence/immanence: even the immanence of Jesus is connoted with decay, evanes- cence, and sin, all of which are characteristic of the praying and singing human and will be changed ultimately by Jesus Christ as the loving and redeeming savior. THE HUMAN AND THE BRIDAL SOUL Mankind is corrupted and captured in sin – this is not just a pan-Christian posi- tion on the result of the Fall, an insight of the Reformation in the simul iustus et peccator, but also the baseline of the Moravian anthropology. Individuals and 23 He is also addressed as hero, king, prince, ruler, and master; mostly masculine expressions, even if the idea of the birth of the church out of the hole in his side –“the core of Zinzendorf’s theology of the sidehole” (Peucker 2002, 56) – allows him occasionally be depicted as mother and mother-heart: see Beyreuther 1978, Vom Wandel im Licht, 24; Beyreuther 1978, Von der Ablegung unsrer Hütte, 3. Vogt speaks of a performative femininity, which seems fitting, see Vogt 2015, 80. 24 Beyreuther 1978, Anhang, 20. 25 Vogt confirms the emphasis on the masculinity of Jesus Christ, see Vogt 2015, 69, 77. Even if Atwood’s thoughts on Christ as an androgynous figure are striking (see Atwood 2011, 12), the masculinity of Jesus Christ as found in the Kleines Brüdergesangbuch as well the necessity for masculinity in a binary gendered bridal mysticism seem much more plausible to me. Atwood himself points out that “Christ is the only true male” in the context of bridal mysticism; see Atwood 2011, 25. 26 “Die GOttes=gestalt kam in Mannsgestalt, äussert’ sich aller der Gottes=gewalt, ward wie unsers gleichen, in allen stükken, trug unser elend auf seinem rükken”, Beyreuther 1978, Hirten-Lieder, 7. 27 Beyreuther 1978, Hirten-Lieder, 7.