Metaphors Galore (Midweek Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Metaphors Galore

March 20, 2013

As we go into Holy Week, it is important to remember that many of the images, affirmations, and points of gratitude we express as Christians, especially about those things that are most central in our faith, are symbolic and metaphorical efforts, limping and imperfect all, to express what is beyond our ability to conceive of, let alone express.

From the beginning, 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 a couple of decades 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 in accordance with the [Hebrew] scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared…” (1 Cor. 15:3-5).  He also writes, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, no longer counting against them their over-stepping of bounds, but rather giving to us what it is that reconciliation really means” (2 Cor. 5:19).

We tend to read such statements as if Paul were teaching a doctrine of atonement that sees the Cross as transferred punishment, where Jesus is punished in our stead to placate the anger of a Deity demanding violence and blood to set things right.  But this doctrine is an artifact of the late Middle Ages and is nowhere explicitly taught before St. Anselm of Canterbury.

Instead, Paul uses a wide variety of sometimes contradictory metaphors to describe 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),

·      expiation (driving away ritual impurity or ‘covering over’ guilt),

·      redemption or ransom (purchase back from slavery or prison into freedom),

·      freedom (enjoying the status of a full citizen)

·      new creation (being made anew)

·      sanctification (being made or declared holy)

·      transformation (changing shapes)

·      glorification (being endowed with the light surrounding God)

Other writers in the New Testament also use other metaphors.  But none of these are ever seen by their authors as the sole or even wholly adequate description of what “Jesus died for us” or “Christ died for our sins” means. 

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 Christian belief that Christ “died for us” on the Cross takes on deep meaning. When we look at Jesus on the Cross, we see God suffering right along with us, dying along with us.  We are glimpsing from the inside what it looks like when God simply loves us, heals us, and forgives us.   It must never be some sick description of a bipolar child-abusing Deity.   

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+