Pierced Hands at Breakfast: Jesus as the Ultimate Knight of Faith and the Double Movement Beyond the Silly Hats of Religion

This Easter weekend—Holy Weekend, as some still call it—began for me with an image that crystallized years of quiet unease. An elderly man in an ornate hat, waving a scepter in the grand basilica in Rome, surrounded by pomp, incense, and the machinery of centuries-old ceremony. Pope Leo XIV celebrated the Easter Vigil, the pageantry unfolding exactly as it has for popes before him. It was beautiful in its way, theatrical even. But it struck me like a slap: this is what the raw, trembling story of a crucified and risen Galilean has become in the hands of men—a controlled spectacle, a ritual to be administered, a system of hats, frocks and hierarchies that domesticates the absurd into something manageable.

I was baptized as a Christian just over a year ago. The decision came after a long, personal wrestling with the Jesus of the Gospels—the one who eats with sinners, touches the unclean, and speaks in parables that upend expectations. Yet I've always stumbled over the central Christian claim that he "died for our sins" so that we could have salvation. Not merely modeling radical obedience or love, but accomplishing something objective “on our behalf.” That's where the beautiful story, for me, risks turning into "religion." And religion, as history shows, is too often man's invention: a tool for control, for setting rules others must follow, for tithing and penitence and institutional power that keeps the individual at a safe distance from the living God.

This morning, those thoughts collided with Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, its portraits of the “knights of infinite resignation and faith,” and the "double movement" of faith. Suddenly, everything clicked. Jesus isn't just a tragic hero or an ethical exemplar. He is the ultimate knight of infinite resignation and the knight of faith—embodying both movements perfectly, scars and all. And in doing so, he exposes the hollowness of Christendom's distortions while inviting us, his modern disciples, into the same passionate, absurd existence. We aren't spectators watching a distant savior; we are the bickering disciples, surrounded by miracles yet chasing trivialities. The pierced hands passing out fish and bread aren't a footnote—they are the living proof that light waits at the bottom of the abyss.

The Double Movement: Kierkegaard's Knights and the Paradox of Faith

To understand Jesus in this light, we must first grasp what Kierkegaard (writing as Johannes de Silentio) means by the double movement in Fear and Trembling. The knight of infinite resignation makes the first movement: he renounces everything finite that matters most—love, hope, security—and reconciles himself to the pain of eternal loss. This isn't stoic detachment or calculated sacrifice for a greater ethical good (that's the tragic hero, like Agamemnon). It is an infinite act of the will, surrendering any claim in this temporal world. The knight finds a kind of peace in spiritualizing the loss—loving the beloved eternally in memory or in the realm of the ideal. But he stops there. He does not expect restoration here and now.

The knight of faith makes the same first movement, then the second: by “virtue of the absurd”—believing that "with God all things are possible"—he receives the finite back again. Not through probability or human effort, but through paradoxical trust. Abraham is de Silentio's exemplar: he raises the knife over Isaac in full resignation, yet believes he will get his son back in this life, contrary to all understanding. The knight of faith thus lives lightly in the finite world, outwardly like any shopkeeper or neighbor, yet inwardly sustains the impossible tension. As de Silentio writes, "The knight of faith is the only happy man, the heir to the finite, while the knight of resignation is a stranger and a foreigner."

Jesus fulfills this structure in a way Abraham only foreshadows. In Gethsemane, we see infinite resignation at its depth: "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). He confronts the ultimate finite loss—his life, mission, relationships, the apparent collapse of everything he taught. No denial, no clinging. He surrenders his will completely to the Father. The cross deepens it: betrayal, mockery, the cry of dereliction ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"). This is no theatrical performance. It is voluntary entry into godforsakenness, the full weight of human finitude. Unlike Abraham's commanded test with its promised lineage, Jesus' path carries the raw horror of apparent irreversible failure. The knight of infinite resignation finds reconciled sorrow; Jesus enters the silence of the tomb.

Yet this is only the first movement. The Resurrection is the second. By virtue of the absurd—a dead Messiah rising, the cross as victory, death defeated—Jesus regains the finite not as he was before, but transformed. Yet he does not return as a disembodied spirit or in pristine, unscarred glory. He appears with the wounds.

The Scars That Prove the Double Movement

Here is the image that seized me this Easter morning, one I'd never fully grasped before: the post-resurrection Jesus, hands still pierced, passing out fish and bread to his bewildered disciples (Luke 24:36-43; John 21:1-14). He could have chosen any form. He could have appeared radiant and whole, erasing the evidence of suffering. Instead, he retains the bodily reminders of his resignation—the nail marks, the spear wound in his side—and uses those very hands to serve breakfast by the sea.

This is the double movement lived out in flesh and bone. Infinite resignation is not erased; the finite reality of pain, betrayal, and death is taken up again, reclaimed by God's power. The knight of faith does not float above the world in spiritual abstraction. He dances in it, carrying the evidence of what was surrendered. The scars are proof: this is the same Jesus who died. The suffering was real. And yet, here he is—eating, conversing, commissioning—in the everyday finite realm. The hands that were pierced break bread and offer fish. Restoration without denial.

Theologically, these scars do more than authenticate identity. They reassure. They bridge the chasm between faith and knowing that I have wrestled with since baptism. To Kierkegaard, faith is the leap into objective uncertainty—the passionate commitment to the absurd when reason sees only impossibility. Infinite resignation can be achieved by human strength alone; but the second movement requires the divine breaking in. Jesus, as fully God and fully human, experiences the movements with a knowing we lack. The "abyss" is not dark to him in the same way. His obedience is perfect alignment: "not my will, but yours." Yet the Gospels show his anguish was genuine—temptation, forsakenness, the cost borne in full humanity.

By emerging scarred yet victorious, Jesus does not eliminate our need for faith. He illuminates the ground beneath the leap. He shines the floodlight on the bottom of the abyss. The child falling backward into a parent's arms isn't leaping blindly; relational certainty holds him. Jesus demonstrates that the absurd is reliable because God is faithful. The resurrection doesn't turn faith into sight for all (Thomas doubts, others disbelieve); it provides embodied witness that the double movement is possible. We still leap with fear and trembling. But because of him, the chasm has been crossed. The arms are open. The water is there. The scars prove it was no illusion.

This is more than modeling. Classic Christian doctrine insists Jesus died “for us”—bearing sins, bridging the separation we could not cross (1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Peter 2:24). I still wrestle with how that "on our behalf" can avoid becoming a transactional mechanism or guilt-management system. Yet in the pierced hands, I see it differently: not a distant legal transaction that lets us off the hook, but a participatory reality. He accomplishes what we cannot, then invites us to enter the same movements. Dying to self (resignation) and rising to new life (faith's absurd "nevertheless").

Jesus is author and finisher of faith, enabling us to live it. (Hebrews 12:2)

The Human Distortion: Christendom's Silly Hats and the Illusion of Control

Kierkegaard saw this distortion coming. In his later Attack upon "Christendom" (1854–1855), he unleashes a prophetic critique that feels written for our age of ceremonial Easter broadcasts and institutional power. "The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all," he declares. "Here there is nothing to reform." Christendom—the cultural, state-supported version of Christianity—has replaced the New Testament's radical, offensive singularity with comfortable convention. Everyone is "Christian" by birth or habit, without the trembling or the absurd. Official preachers declaim eloquently, but "not one of them is in the character of the Christianity of the New Testament." The illusion is complete: a full crew of bishops, priests, and ceremonies convinces us Christianity exists, when what we have is its counterfeit.

The "silly hats" and scepters I watched this weekend embody exactly what Kierkegaard railed against. Pomp turns the story into spectacle. Tithing and penitence become rules to enforce compliance. Ceremony distances the individual from direct, passionate relation to God. Men in power—whether popes, pastors, or theologians—cannot resist the temptation to control: to mediate the divine, to systematize the paradox, to make faith manageable and marketable. The beautiful, unknowable, deeply meaningful story of Jesus—God entering finitude, resigning everything, rising absurdly—is contaminated into ritual that flatters the ego and preserves the status quo.

Kierkegaard insists true faith cannot be observed or institutionalized. The knight of faith is indistinguishable from the ordinary person. Jesus himself was no ecclesiastical prince; he ate with tax collectors and washed feet. The cross was scandal, not ceremony. Yet we, like the disciples arguing over who would be greatest in the kingdom mere days before the crucifixion (Luke 22:24), reduce it to status and spectacle. We bicker over material trivialities—power, money, doctrinal purity—while surrounded by the miraculous proof of creation itself: the stars, the sea where Jesus cooked breakfast, the very breath in our lungs.

We Are the Disciples: Immersed in Miracle, Yet Bickering Like Children

In this, we are the disciples. They walked with the incarnate God, witnessed healings and feedings and storms stilled, yet fought over precedence and misunderstood parables. We sit immersed in undeniable proof of miraculous creation—the ordered universe, consciousness itself, the historical witness of the resurrection—yet chase insignificant things. Our "religion" often looks like the disciples' pre-crucifixion squabbles: who gets the best seat, who controls the narrative, who enforces the rules.

Baptism didn't resolve this for me; it intensified the tension. I want the raw Jesus story—the one that demands the double movement—without the institutional overlay that turns it into control. Jesus doesn't save us by making faith unnecessary. He doesn't remove the leap. But his scarred hands reassure us: the abyss has a bottom. Light thrives there. Resignation is real, but restoration is more real still.

The call, then, is personal and costly. Not to admire from afar or outsource to ceremony, but to become knights of faith ourselves. Renounce the finite idols—status, security, even religious certainty. Then, by virtue of the absurd, receive the world back transformed. Live lightly in the everyday, carrying our own scars, serving breakfast with pierced hands.

This Easter, the old guy in the silly hat triggered something vital. Not rejection of the church, but a clearer vision of what lies beneath its distortions. Jesus, God in human form, shows us the way. He bridges faith and knowing without collapsing the difference. He models while accomplishing. And in the end, the story remains beautiful precisely because it resists our control. It demands the single individual before God, trembling yet joyful, leaping into the arms that have already caught us.

The double movement isn't ancient philosophy or Easter pageantry. It is breakfast by the sea—wounds visible, bread broken, life reclaimed. May we have the courage to make the movements ourselves.

Faramarz Hidaji, M.D.