“For Our Sins”
Palm/ Passion Sunday C
20 March 2016 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Palm/ Passion Sunday C
20 March 2016 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish
Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
God, give us hearts to feel and love,
take
away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
When my second son David was about
nine, he asked me: “Why did God have to kill his Son Jesus off to pay for our
sins? Doesn’t that make him a very bad Father? Why couldn’t he have just been
bigger-hearted and forgiven us when we’re sorry?”
I tried to give an answer, something like that of the Evangelical Alpha Course: God is just and fairness demands that sin be punished. We are sinners. It was God’s mercy and love that demanded that he send Jesus to suffer such punishment in our stead if only we have faith in him.
David would have none of it: “If God is
really boss of everything, he can make things any way he wants. So why did he
make them so that he had to kill his own Son?
It just isn’t fair, and it certainly isn’t loving.”
I replied that Jesus and the Father enjoyed unity in the Godhead, and this meant that actually God himself was volunteering to die for us on the Cross because of his love. No go: “Then why does Jesus pray, ‘Please don’t let this happen to me?’”
David was thinking of the prayer of
Jesus in Gethsemane. He wasn’t alone in
seeing the problem. John’s Gospel,
alone among the four, drops any reference to Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane from
the Passion story it has received.
Rather, just after Jesus arrives in Jerusalem in the triumphal parade of
palm branches, Jesus baldly declares, “What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from
this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father,
glorify your name!’ (John 12:27)
As we go into Holy Week it is important
to remember that many of the images, affirmations, and thanks we express in these
stories are symbolic, using metaphors, limping and imperfect, to express what
is beyond our ability to conceive of, let alone express.
From the beginning, we Christians have
seen the death of Christ on the cross as not simply a case of miscarried justice
or persecution, but something much more.
St. Paul, writing just 20 years after Jesus’ death, quotes the apostolic
tradition that he received from others and affirms, “For I delivered to you as
of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3-5) and “in Christ, God was reconciling
the world unto Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).
But Paul never says exactly how this was so. And neither has the Church.
The idea that the Cross was transferred
punishment, Jesus tortured and put to death in our stead to satisfy the honor
of, or placate the anger of a Deity demanding violence and blood, is never
taught as such in the New Testament, nor defined by any of the early Councils
of the Church. The idea first arose in
the late Middle Ages in the writings of St. Anselm of Canterbury. In Anselm’s society, a feudal lord’s honor could
only be upheld by a social equal. For
him, God became man because man couldn’t satisfy the debt of honor to God
caused by human sin. Anselm’s theory of
Atonement is known as “satisfaction”; this later evolved into a doctrine of
judicially transferred punishment. But
the feudal idea is still at its core. The
idea is not biblical, but it became a cornerstone of Calvinist and Evangelical
doctrine.
The hymn “In Christ Alone” puts it this
way, “… on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every
sin on Him was laid, here in the death of Christ I live. ”
I now reject this doctrine, root and
branch. It sees God as bloodthirsty and
unrelentingly demanding violence as a way of fixing what is wrong with the
world. Further, it confuses and
corrupts the idea of the self-sacrifice of Jesus. The
ancients never viewed ritual sacrifice as a transfer of deserved pain and
suffering onto the sacrificial victim.
Sacrifice was never about suffering.
Rather, it was food offered to God to create a common sharing and
reconciliation. Jesus’ self-sacrifice in
his pursuing the kingdom even at the cost of his own life is far from
this. Early Christians felt it was like
a ritual sacrifice because in it God in Jesus shares with us and we humans in
Jesus share with God, all as a means of creating communion and reconciliation
between us and God. Calling Jesus’ death
a sacrifice was never intended to be some sort of sick expression of Mel Gibson-esque sado-masochism
and suffering for suffering’s sake.
I would prefer that hymn read, “...on
that holy cross so blessed, God’s love for us was manifest: our savior died as
one of us, here in the death of Christ, I live.”
When the New Testament says “Jesus died
for our sins,” it does not means “died to pay the punishment for our sins” but
rather, “died because of our human failings, our systems of imperial power, our
desire always to divide and to scapegoat, and our violence.”
The New Testament uses many differing
metaphors to try to get a handle on what Christ accomplished for us and in
us:
·
justification (declare or make morally upright),
·
salvation (rescue on the field of battle),
·
reconciliation (restoring a personal relationship),
·
expiation (driving away ritual impurity or
‘covering over’ guilt),
‘covering over’ guilt),
·
redemption or ransom (purchasing someone
back from slavery or prison into freedom),
back from slavery or prison into freedom),
·
liberation to freedom (restoring full-citizenship
to someone)
to someone)
· new
creation (being made anew)
·
sanctification (being made or declared holy)
·
transformation (changing shapes)
· glorification
(being endowed with the light
surrounding God)
surrounding God)
None of these are completely adequate
descriptions of what “Christ died for our sins” means. But they all agree that Jesus’s death and
resurrection is the great victory over what is wrong with us and the world, a
mystery just too glorious to reduce to a single image.
The fact is, the “wrath of God”
describes more how our relationship with God feels to us when we are alienated
from God than it describes God’s heart. And it is we human beings
who tend to think that violence can make things right, not God.
In this light, our belief that Christ
“died for us” takes on deep meaning. In Jesus on the Cross, we see God
suffering right along with us, dying as one of us; in Jesus in Gethsemane, a
human being alongside us, praying fervently with us, and, with us, not getting
what he asks for.
Today’s reading from Philippians is one
of the earliest passages in all the New Testament. Paul quotes an early
Christian hymn describing Christ lowering himself. Such emptying, kenosis, understands the Cross as part
of the same act of God we call the Incarnation.
Though Christ was in
the form of God,
he did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped at,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became heedful to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name...
he did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped at,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became heedful to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name...
Paul quotes this hymn to say we must cultivate the same mind that Christ had. Kenosis is something we too must make a lifetime practice. Empty ourselves, humble ourselves, become heedful and attentive in all things, even when it may lead to the worst possible outcome. It is in emptying ourselves that we are filled, in being heedful that we find empowerment. It is in losing ourselves that we find ourselves, it is in dying that we are born to life.
When it says that Christ was “obedient, even to the point of death on the cross” it is not saying that God willed the death of Jesus. It is simply saying that Jesus accepted the inevitable. The Greek word hypokuo means “to listen attentively” under the authority of someone or something other than ourselves. If David asked me that question today, "Why did Jesus have to die?", I would answer, "because God become fully human in him, and all human beings must die."
Attentiveness and kenosis means
accepting hurt. But it is not about the suffering or the horror. It is about the continued heedfulness through
it all. As Paul writes, it is about the
mind of Christ: the Christ who emptied himself and left the realms of light to
become one of us, and then beyond that, actually lowered himself beneath us
all.
Kenosis says God emptied himself to become human, and then further emptied himself to descend far below what most of us humans expect. Christ himself went beneath all things so that no matter how far we might fall, he is always there beneath us to catch us. As St. Athanasius said, "God became Man so Man could become god," or according to 2 Peter, that "we might become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
Let us follow Jesus to dark Gethsemane and stark Calvary. May the same mind and heart that was Christ’s be ours. Thanks be to God.
Kenosis says God emptied himself to become human, and then further emptied himself to descend far below what most of us humans expect. Christ himself went beneath all things so that no matter how far we might fall, he is always there beneath us to catch us. As St. Athanasius said, "God became Man so Man could become god," or according to 2 Peter, that "we might become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
Let us follow Jesus to dark Gethsemane and stark Calvary. May the same mind and heart that was Christ’s be ours. Thanks be to God.
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