Today’s sermon is part two of last week’s sermon in which we began reflecting on the meaning of the cross, about what actually happened when Jesus died & rose again & how exactly God or humans or the world changed after this event.
There are a large number of theories but as discussed last week Fleming Rutledge in her book on the crucifixion defines two overall categories that she believes can (more or less) encompass all the theories and the motifs or themes of the Bible.
The first category she gives the title Atonement. This category defines the cross as God’s definitive action in making vicarious atonement for sin. This category, that we delved into last week, encompasses the idea that Jesus died on the cross for us, for our sins, in our place. It should have been us on the cross, getting what we deserved, but instead He who knew no sin sacrificed himself for us.
We went into some of the ways that this has been distorted. In particular the idea that Jesus, the Son, was crucified by God, the Father, in order to appease his wrath at human beings because of all the things that they as individuals have done and will do wrong. This horrific sacrifice of the Son enabled the Father to love humanity again and they could go to heaven if they believed this.
This rendering of the cross is a misrepresentation of the Trinity. That is the Father, Son and Spirit are one. In Jesus, God came and dwelt among us. God, the Father is eternally in God the Son. In life, death and resurrection the Triune God acted together, with one will. As put by Karl Barth, “Jesus is no less God in the incarnation and on the cross than he is in the eternal Godhead. God must be seen as undertaking atonement himself.”
Also, this rendering can imply that God had to have his mind changed by a human sacrifice. I believe it is crucial to maintain that the disposition of God towards humans is and has always been the same – unfailingly determined upon our redemption. We need to put to rest any sense of the cross as placating, appeasing, deflecting the anger of, or satisfying the wrath of God.
In saying all that we need not and should not completely reject the idea that Jesus died on the cross for us, for our sins, in our place. That it should have been us on the cross, getting what we deserved, but instead He who knew no sin sacrificed himself for us. This idea is deeply Biblical, and it acknowledges that something is wrong and needs to be put right. And not only with the whole human situation but with one’s own self. It acknowledges what Anslem called the gravity of sin, that forgiveness and reconciliation are costly and that those who have suffered great wrong demand justice.
Desmond Tutu, who was pivotal to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid said, “as a victim of injustice and oppression, you lose your sense of worth as a person, your dignity. Restorative justice is focused on restoring the person hood that is damaged or lost. But restoring that sense of self means restoring memory – a recognition that something seriously evil happened.”
I think atonement theory recognises this. The hideousness and horror of the cross acknowledges that something seriously evil has been done but also it demonstrates the lengths that God will go to put it right. I ranted about this last week but in a world of obscene wealth inequality, the ongoing damage of racial injustice, violence and sexual exploitation of women being rebranded as simply preference, I could go on, this matters.
The second category that Rutledge gives is Deliverance. This category describes the work of Christ as first and foremost a victory over the Powers which hold humanity in bondage: sin, death and the devil. The victory of Christ creates a new situation, in which their rule ends and we are set free.
These two categories – deliverance and atonement, overlap and we should be careful about holding strictly to these two. However, I have found this way of exploring the meaning of the cross helpful. It has given me a clearer language to explore what happened at Calvary that day, as well as deepened my appreciation, awe and wonder at it.
In Romans 6, that we read to day, you will note Paul talks about sin (singular), not sins (plural). What he is pointing to is something outside of us, something bigger, more powerful than our own individual transgressions.
“We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is free from sin. 8 But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.
And
But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness.
When I sent this reading to Neil her wrote back saying, “There is no doubting that Paul is very profound; but equally he can be very abstruse.” That is difficult to understand. Indeed. The mystics, of which I now consider Paul one, often are.
As I reflected on this reading this week I found Bob Dylan’s lyrics coming to my head. Is that happening to anyone else, can anyone guess which ones?
You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Written during Dylan’s so called religious phase these lyrics were controversial. John Lennon responded to them saying, “serve yourself.” I think John Lennon’s ideology has won the hearts of the 21st century. Most people do not like to think of themselves as serving anyone or anything but themselves. One could argue perhaps that this mentality does in fact serve the purposes of the devil. But whether we like to admit it or not I think Dylan (and Paul long before him) are probably right.
But that the difference between being a slave to righteousness, that is to the justice and mercy of God or being a slave to sin, is freedom.
When we are enslaved to sin we often feel like we are losing control. Things like greed, jealousy, wrath, violence, addictions, fear and prejudice often feel like they are taking over our lives. They mess with our head and make it so hard to make the good decisions we want to make. They might feel good at first but over the long term they start to feel like they are eating us alive and they have devastating consequences on our world and those around us.
But the fruits of becoming slaves to righteousness are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Any claim to a righteous life in which things are not seen and felt is false. These are things that we choose, they do not control us, they do not separate us from others but bring us closer together.
This week on the sacred podcast Elizabeth Oldfield was interviewing Joshua Luke Smith who is a recovering addict in AA. He described recovery as God having him on a short leash. He said at first he hated that but has come to see it as just walking a little closer to the master. He says recovery is often seen as restrictive but in his words he has found liberation in limitation. Now he’s poet, a vocation he describes as being a witness to life. He teaches poetry in prisons but he tells his students, “I am not here to teach you to write poems but to live more poetically.”
On Friday night I was watching the final series of the TV show the Handmaids tale. This show depicts a dystopian world in which the few remaining fertile women are forced to be “handmaids” to the powerful captains and their wives. No doubt they think they have set up a righteous world but there are very little fruits of the spirit on display, not a lot of poetic living. In the episode I was watching “the wages of sin is death” was quoted to justify capital punishment. Of course they missed the crucial last line of the sentence “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” To use this line as a justification for capital punishment is a misunderstanding of Paul and what he is saying about what happened on the cross. If Christ has in fact overcome both sin and death then our calling is not to continue in those but to lean into life eternal, to seek all that is life giving, life affirming, life transforming.
The good news is that while Sin and Death (and what Paul sometime calls Powers and Principalities) are indeed powerful forces, righteousness, that is the justice and the grace of God is more powerful. And this power is actively working, recapturing the creation and inaugurating a new rule of righteousness and eternal life, what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. This is what happened in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. And it is good news for the whole creation, not just individual souls.
I understand that all this does not really explain how this all happened, I imagine that will remain a mystery on this side of eternity. As Leanne Van Dyke says, “theories of the cross do not claim to define or explicate the inner mechanics of salvation. They seek to express in limited, analogical language the reality of God’s decisive act on behalf of a broken world. There was some kind of victory that took place, some kind of power shift in the universe, some kind of ransom paid, some kind of healing initiated, some ultimate kind of love displayed, some kind of dramatic rescue effected. The terrible paradox of the Christian faith is that this rescue happened because of a death – a notorious public execution. This is the dark mystery of the cross. No theory can effectively account for that paradox. Rather the range of theories attempt to focus our attention, illuminate the truth and point beyond themselves to God.”
When we understand the cross as atonement and deliverance we can appreciate it is God’s emphatic no to all that to would hurt and destroy his good creation and his passionate yes to life. As his followers in this time and place it is our calling to do this here and now.
