In the Name of the Crucified. Amen.
And so, it’s over. Jesus is dead. The rain comes down and Joseph of Aramathea and his friends take the body down and prepare it for burial. The Blessed Mother cradles the head of her first born in her arms and wails as lightening splits the skies. And she will not be comforted.
And we all know who did it. There’s always the finger to point. “Whose fault was it?” Mark is the first to put pen to parchment and write a Gospel - written some forty years after the event. By this time, the hostility between the Jewish and Christian communities was in high gear so it was easy for the author to blame the death of Jesus on the Jews.
But in reality, there were only about fifty or so Jewish men involved in the trial and execution of Our Lord. Between the office of the High Priest and the Sanhedrin and the Elders, it wasn’t a big group. It may have been about the same number of Romans involved between Pilate and the court system - as well as the soldiers that played a part. Certainly it wasn’t the whole Jewish nation responsible for the death of Christ, though that community has suffered mercilessly up to the present for a crime it didn’t commit. And since the Roman Empire eventually converted to Christianity, of course their part in the story would be all but forgotten.
But there remains the question of “why.” Why did Jesus go to the cross? Was it even necessary?
There has never been a dogma pronounced by the Church on the Atonement as has been on the dogmas of the Trinity or the Incarnation. The meaning of Jesus’ death and what it accomplished is still open to question and debate.
The Early Church wasn’t concerned with such questions. To the Early Church, the death of Jesus and his subsequent Resurrection defeated the powers of sin and death. One participated in that defeat by being a member of the Christian community. It was very simple.
No one seriously asked any deeper questions until the coming of St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th Century. Augustine had lived a life of debauchery until his conversion and then felt horribly guilty about it afterwards. Not being able to cope, he came up with the doctrine of Original Sin – that all people, including himself – had inherited Adam and Eve’s guilt for their disobedience in the Garden of Eden, and all deserved eternal damnation because they had ticked God off to the nth degree. Oddly enough, neither Judaism nor the Christianity before Augustine had any concept of Original Sin. The Eastern Church never even thought about it. In reality, it should be called “Augustine's Sin.”
It is no wonder that an Englishman named Pelagius saw through Augustine and challenged him. But he lost and entered the realm of obscurity and was labeled a heretic. But another Englishman, over a thousand years late, St. Anselm – then Archbishop of Canterbury – took Augustine one step further. Anselm came up with the idea of Substitutionary Atonement, the idea that God was so angry about sin and disobedience that he wanted and deserved vengeance and retribution. But instead God sent Jesus to pay the the price for human sin and those who believed were spared their sentence. Somewhere, I think Anselm missed the logic. Also smacks of child abuse.
Of course, the Continental Reformers took this to ludicrous extremes. Calvin taught that such an Atonement was only for the elect. The Calvinist Puritans in this country founded the legacy which led to the rise of Fundamentalism in the early 20th Century. And Luther believed that God loathed the human race because of its sin but when He looked down from heaven, all he saw was the blood of Christ on the Baptized and had mercy on them for the blood alone, not for any worth of their own.
But there is, and always has been, another school of thought surrounding the events of Jesus trial and execution – one that never got the press of the other schools because one can’t control the crowds as well - one that looks at these events from a different vantage point – a vantage point of a compassionate God, who being outside of time and space knew how the human race would turn out in the act of creation; a God who took the risk of giving humans free will knowing what we might do with it but took the risk anyway. Vengeance and retribution from such a deity would be nothing but tyranny – a truly human trait. Such a vantage point presents God as never being angry about sin, but profoundly saddened by it. Such a God doesn’t require a sacrifice for sin. But eventually that God decided to become one of us in Jesus of Nazareth to teach the world to live in compassion and mercy and peace; a God whose love for the human race was never in doubt – a love which embraced everyone, both saint and sinner. And with that love, the world would be transformed into new and abundant life.
But such a message scares the living daylights out of us, especially those among us who are wealthy and powerful. Teaching that all are equal in God’s eyes threatens such power and wealth because those at the bottom of the food chain come to realize that those at the top are no better than they are. And such raising of human dignity creates the danger of insurrection and revolution.
And these hundred Jewish and Roman men and their friends felt so threatened by Jesus and what he was preaching that the only thing they could think of in response was to execute him in order to shut him up. Kill him and be done with him. Problem solved.
It’s easy to point the finger at a hundred men who lived two thousand years ago. What vile creatures they were: inhumane, vicious, cowardly men who could only respond from their own greed and fear and ignorance. But the truth of the matter is that they were and are us. It’s an unfortunate truism that when humans are backed into a corner we respond in the most vile of ways. And the stronger the threat, the viler the response. We become vicious and vindictive and, if backed far enough, murderous. Humans responding to their own fear become irrational and violence and death frequently ensue. Look at human history. Well, why go that far back? Just look at the last and present centuries: The Great War to end all wars; the Armenian Genocide; the Genocides in the Balkans, The Second World War, Vietnam, Rwanda, Iraq – twice!, the concentration camps of the National Socialists which exterminated fourteen million people, six million of them Jews still paying the price for the death of Christ. I could go on, but you get the picture.
The truth of the matter is that neither the hundred Jews nor Romans are solely responsible for the execution of Our Lord. It is we humans who put Jesus on the Cross. Those hundred men are unfortunate Sacraments: outward and visible signs of what we as humans can do and have done. It is a humanity living out of its basest instincts of survival at any cost. It’s easy to marginalize those hundred men, but the very truth is that they are us – us at our worst – humanity gone to the dogs. Somehow, the message of Jesus scares us to death – literally. For some reason, when humans are confronted with absolute compassion and mercy, we head for the hills. We don’t believe it. We don’t buy it – even if it’s true. And we lash out. And the results are beyond what the darkest places in our souls can begin to imagine.
It’s very tempting at this point for a preacher to go and sit down and get on with the Liturgy. By now, we should all feel requisitely guilty and at the verge of despair. But such a preacher wouldn’t be worth his or her weight in salt. We’re Anglicans. We’re the Catholics that don’t do guilt. And we’re Christians that proclaim that power of God is stronger than even death itself.
It may seem premature to talk about the Resurrection, but let’s face it, we all know how the story ends. We’ve all bought new hats and baskets and that plastic grass stuff to go in them with the chocolate eggs and bunnies. So, the Resurrection isn’t a new story. But it’s the story of what life is all about.
As you all know, I have no children. I’ve been owned by cats through the years however. And I’ve loved those cats as if they were children. And I know that if anyone had dared to come near one of them, I’d’ve ripped their eyes out. And I’m sure that you who are parents have a much deeper and more profound love for your children than one can ever have for a cat. And had I been God, which thank goodness I’m not, and the people I loved most betrayed me and executed my child, I’d’ve been, “OK! EVERYBODY OUTA D’POOL! THIS GAME’S OVER!” And the suffering and devastation that would’ve followed would be epic!
But I and you are human. God is not. And at the darkest moment in human history, when humanity had sunk into the pit of its worst depravity, God’s response is not vengeance nor retribution nor divine wrath, but love. Instead of “everybody outa d’pool!” God raises Jesus from the dead – a living and breathing witness that the powers of love and compassion and mercy and forgiveness and peace are stronger than even death itself. And that witness goes even deeper. Not only does God raise Jesus from the dead, but God raises us too. All of us find ourselves occasionally nailed to crosses – alone, despairing, frightened, betrayed. And when we’re stuck in the tomb, it is the power of God that bids us into the garden, and into new life. It is the power of God, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, that gives us the courage and fortitude so that when we’re backed into a corner we respond with mercy and loving-kindness, with reconciliation and peace. And it is the power of the Resurrection that holds the same promise to change and renew the world in which we live.
Holy Week is a time for us to retell the story of the last days of our Lord. It is an important week to remind ourselves of the loving compassion of our God. But it is also a time for us to retell our own stories – a time for us to remember the joys of friendship and the depths of despair, a time to remember the God who enters our own tombs and brings us out into the bright sunshine of day.
Let us walk this Week together, through the Passion and Death and Resurrection of our Lord. Through Liturgy and sacred song, through ritual and metaphor we relive the truth that out of death comes life – and life more abundant. For it is through his death and Resurrection that we to have new and abundant life and peace and hope; the peace of the Resurrection; the peace of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment