Alexamenos worships God

... the early church had the temerity to point to this event—the crucifixion of their leader—as the mighty act of God. What utter foolishness![1] Little wonder that the church was mocked by its opponents. A drawing scratched on a wall (graffito) from the early Roman Empire shows the body of a man with the head of an ass nailed to a cross, and a man worshipping it. Scrawled below is the mocking caption, “Alexamenos worships god.” Apparently some slave or child was poking fun at someone with this early cartoon. How stupid, how absurd, to worship a crucified god! The claim that Jesus’ death was a mighty act of God must have seemed utter foolishness anywhere within the first-century Roman world.[2]

[1] “In a world which longed for personal salvation, and which was full of gods and lords claiming to meet that need, how utterly absurd and indeed revolting to claim that a Jew from a notoriously troublesome province of the Empire who has been condemned as a blasphemer and executed as a traitor was the Saviour of the world! How on earth could anyone believe that”? (Lesslie Newbigin, “Context and Conversion,” International Review of Mission 68 (1978): 301)

[2]Bartholomew, C. G., & Goheen, M. W. (2004). The drama of Scripture: Finding our place in the biblical story (161). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Update: The following fascinating quote was posted in the comments:

This image is quite arresting and made me think of an ancient Roman misconception regarding the ‘image’ (or rather lack thereof) of God in the Jerusalem Temple. Tacitus, among others, jibed that the Jews worshiped the head of a donkey in their temple. I was not aware that this was extended to a lampooned crucified Jesus as well. F.F. Bruce described the occurrence of both in a 1984 article, of which I quote the following:

F.F. Bruce, “Tacitus on Jewish History” - Journal of Semitic Studies 29(1984)1: 33-44
The quote is from p. 38:

The belief that the image of an ass, or at least of an ass's
head, was venerated in the inner shrine is attested elsewhere.
Apion of Alexandria {ca. A.D. 30) asserted that the Jews kept a
gold ass's head in their sanctuary: it was discovered there, he
said, when Antiochus Epiphanes plundered the temple {Contra
Apionem, 2.80). Another writer, Mnaseas, tells how an
Idumaean named Zabidus stole the gold head from the sanctuary
by a trick {Contra Apionem, 2.112-14). According to Diodorus
{History, 34, fragment), what Antiochus discovered was the
statue of a bearded man (presumably Moses) mounted on an
ass. These tales were at least less sinister than another retailed
by Apion, how Antiochus discovered in the temple a Greek,
who was being fattened for a cannibalistic rite which the Jews
celebrated annually {Contra Apionem, 2.89-96).
As for the ass-god legend, it was in due course transferred
from the Jews to the Christians, as we know from Tertullian -
"for in fact, with other people, you have imagined that our god
is an ass's head" {Apology, 16.1) - and also from the well-known
Palatine graffito of a crucified man with an ass's head, with the
Greek caption: "Alexamenos worships his god".