Getting Christ Wrong

Okay, so we get God wrong when we begin with a barter, but didn't Jesus say that he would give his life as a ransom for many? The word is lutron, which can be used as a payment to liberate a slave, it was used that way in the Septuagint. But its more common meaning was to untie or liberate, as in a donkey or an ox. Jesus has come to set us free. Yet often when we turn to the church, we feel anything but free. We feel oppressed by rules and moral and even political standards. This is a frustrating reality, but not a Gospel one. We are free in Christ. The best sermon I ever preached was in a bar called the White Horse in San Francisco. It was this tiny little place that looked to be as old as the sign claimed, an old wooden bar beaten and loved clean night after night for more than a century. I was working on a sermon, oddly enough, and surrounded by a Bible or two, a Book of Common Prayer, and a few other texts, and writing and looking wistfully at the bartender. I was single at the time, and she was attractive and Eastern European and going to the art school upstairs, which I learned by listening to the conversation she was having with the fifty year old man with a long curly black ponytail only a few feet away. Two younger guys came in to stand at the other end of the bar and an Irish grandfather and his grandson were having a beer at the table behind me at the front window. The ponytail chatting up the waitress turned to me and asked "So, are you a priest?" And I gave up hope of flirting myself and admitted that I was. "There is a question I have always wanted to ask one of you, and you look like the kind of priest who might answer it." Inside I prepared for one of several possible arguments and also relaxed. The guy was friendly and everyone was suddenly paying attention. "How much can I really get away with and still get into heaven?" This was my greatest sermon of all time. It was one of those rare moments when you get it right. "Well, if Jesus is right, you can do whatever you want." Shock. "What?" "Yeah," I reply. "Jesus came to tell us and show us that God loves you, and that sin isn't really point. God loves you right now, probably wishes you would do a whole lot better, but wants you to love other people the same way." The bartender leans back against the bar drying her hands and says, "So going to church, taking care of your neighbor, giving to the poor, all of that would just be a response to God's love." "Yep." They got it. We talked for a while, but that was point. And it still is. In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God made all things new, including us in our relationship with God. We are made his children and expected to live into that reality, which has its own challenges and difficulties, but they are wholly different than trying not to piss off an angry God. Jesus is not a buy off of a dictator incapable of love without blood. Jesus is the liberator who shows and proves God's love for the creation and us by giving into the forces we create and sustain that would destroy the very love and holiness of people and God. A great mystery is why we create and sustain such forces, but that is what we do. Jesus shows us a reality that is different from that, a way to live in that reality, and its ultimate reality through facing the reality of death and going past it in resurrection, which made the early church impossible to quench, because they didn't fear the very thing that keeps most of us in line. Jesus shows us the Rule of God, or Kingdom of God. It is a reality that is already present and yet not realized. We are already God's own children, a royal priesthood, bringing the love of our Father out to the world and bringing the concerns of his scattered children to him. Jesus taught us how to live in that reality, which we are exploring in this book, an ethic that we are calling the Rule of Grace. And he proved that it was possible to stand in that Rule before the worst that even Rome could do. That makes him so much more than a sacrifice, and it makes his sacrifice make sense. And it explains the early church's willingness to die. If Jesus came to buy off God, then the martyrs were confused or worse. But if Jesus came to usher in a new reality that trumps this one, then the martyrs were following their Lord, witnessing to a reality and to a God who was other than the one that appeared to win in their execution. So when Jesus says that the "Rule of God is among you," we can take that literally. The Rule of God is present when we, trusting in his life and example, live by his ethics. We are kind to those who be unkind, loving in the face of violence, honest in the face of deception or coercion, then we are living in the Rule of God. We can't do this alone or by our own understanding. The Holy Spirit teaches us and molds us into the way of Christ from within, empowers us to stand before Pilate, and comforts us when the world pressures us even unto death.

When we look at the Israelite or Hebrew understanding of sacrifice in the lineage of the prophets, we see something radically different than that pagan model of God needing a sacrifice to forgive sins.  

God, in the Bible, is not bound by sacrifices.  God binds himself to a covenant with Israel.  N. T. Wright will point out that Israel wasn't going to keep that covenant because they were, as we are, human beings, but that does not dissuade God from going ahead and making a covenant with and remaking it, and remaking it . . . .and you get the point.  God loves the people, in fact the cosmos in John's language, so much that God is willing to come back time and time again to stay faithful to his promises in covenant with Abraham and his descendants.  

There is this consistent picture throughout the Bible of God's desire to walk with human beings in the intimacy of the Garden of Eden.  It is a heartbreaking desire that seems to constantly lead to despair and frustration for God.  

We have this Roman god in our heads that is beyond the reach of all emotions and perfect, immutable, and orderly.  YHWH is not that.  Throughout the Bible, God is a God who loves and loves passionately, to our scandal at times.  How can any respectable God act this way?  we think as we read about the tantrum of the flood or the rage of Amos.  We want a mature God.  

Getting God Wrong - part II

The problem for most of us in the church is that theology has driven our understanding of Jesus rather than Jesus driving our theology. We twist the text around to fit into a theological understanding worked out hundreds of years after the Gospels were written. This does not mean that we have to reject or try to read the theology out of the Gospels or the rest of the Bible. The Bible is inherently theological. We just have to take the time to let Jesus teach us about God.

 The case in point is the most thorny. Most of the time we understand the crucifixion through a traditional/revivalist reading that is based on Anselm's barter: put in its popular form, God could not forgive our sins and love us without someone dying to pay off our debt to God; we have to do that ourselves unless we accept the payment that God provided in letting his Son die in our place. Now, that formulation is tweaked a little here and there, but is also repeated every year as we gaze upon the cross again trying to get our heads and heart around Good Friday.

 I want to be nice and say that there is nothing wrong with that theology, but there is a serious flaw at its heart: that is not the God of Jesus. Jesus is clear about the nature of God, and that Daddy is hard to square with a God who sacrifices his Son because he is incapable of forgiveness. In fact, it does not square with the prophets either, "If I were hungry I would not tell you, a thousand bulls on a thousand hills are mine, I desire not the blood of bulls . . ." In another place, I desire not the sacrifice of bulls and sheep day after day, but the sacrifice acceptable to God is a contrite heart . . ." This god is not big enough to be Jesus' Abba. And yet, we read and twist Scripture to fit this God. We find tidbits and odd pieces that focus on the wrath of God without looking at what the cause of that wrath is or what it requires.

 The Abba of Jesus, and the Bible, is the God of all creation, who made the world in love and called it good. When we pulled away from God in the Garden of Eden, at Sinai, or later demanding a king, in the temple, or just through the drunkenness and dissipation of this life, we sinned and tore at the relationship with God which we were to keep by being just with each other, particularly the poor, the widow and the stranger in the land, with the land/creation, and with God. We did not do those things and pulled away from God. We pull away now. The definition of sin is separation from God and God's ways.

 This is a relational problem that gets bigger than the relationship itself. It begins to affect generations, nations, and the very earth itself. This makes sense with what we see around us today.

 We live in layers and layers of relationships defined in sin and self-interest above the good of the other. How could God enter into those strata of relationships again and show us how to live, how to live in relationship with each other and with God? That is what the life of Jesus is all about. He calls it the Rule of God, or traditionally the Kingdom of God.

 We are to leave behind all those strata of relationships and live purely connected to God and in service to each other and to the creation. This is Wisdom. This is the Way we find in the teachings of Jesus and the Law. It is the Rule of Grace. God knows that if someone comes into all those relationships and teaches that it is possible to live in freedom, without all of the obligations and payoffs that the stratified life demands, that person is going to die. They still do. But you cannot teach what Jesus taught and then seek revenge, fight for power, accumulate riches, or turn away from the costs. Jesus sacrificed himself for us in that he did not cheat. He faced the full repercussions of our sin on the cross.

 This is only one facet of the cross. But it is consistent with Jesus and God in a way that Anselm, in its popular form, is not.

Getting God Wrong

Often where our understanding of Jesus and his teachings goes awry is simply in our beliefs about God. We have half-formed thoughts based in systems of thinking or popular culture that do not adequately respond to Jesus' teachings.

 Jesus is remarkably consistent about God the Father, or more properly Abba, throughout all four Gospels. God is Abba, "daddy", and loves "his" children. [a brief aside about sexism in language: the primary image of God in the New Testament is male and parental. This does not exhaust the person of God and should not be seen as limiting who God is. We cannot and should not expect a two thousand year old writing to reflect our current recognition of the limitations people have now of responding to images of other genders. This is a new recognition, and maybe a new problem, but it is not the Bible's problem. We have to choose how we are going to reflect the Gospel in our day. That is our problem, and a wonderful one to live into.] God is merciful, quick to forgive, slow to anger, of great kindness, compassionate; God is a god of love. God is creator and larger than the creation itself. We live with a God who is more than us.

 Jesus teaches us how to be with God, neither bowing and scraping with a flurry of words and titles meant to appease God nor carelessly blathering in God's presence. God is God. And so we are to be direct and love in response to God.

 The consistent, sneaky image of God as a mix of Santa Claus and Zeus is pagan and deeply disturbing to healthy discipleship. Santa Claus is always watching and judging, waiting to reward or punish. Zeus is all powerful, fickle but angry, always trying to teach a lesson when not blinded by rage. These images of God do not sit comfortably in the New Testament picture of Jesus.

 They are destructive to the relationship that Jesus teaches and encourages in his disciples. But, it is these pictures that often underlie our practices and pieties. We are scared of God, and who wouldn't be? A God just waiting on a slip to release punishment, to send cancer, hurricanes, or invading armies is not a God to put trust in, the real meaning of belief. Further, neither Santa nor Zeus is about justice, fairness, or equality. They have a standard or pleasure to guide them, but not the justice and care for the least and less that the God of Israel and Jesus so consistently hold up as our standard.

 This brings us to the other side of Jesus' picture of God. Jesus teaches us that God loves us and our neighbor, but God also demands that his children live up to his love. We are required to show love and pursue justice by that same love that we lean into in trust. In fact, that is the way that Jesus teaches that we can lose God's love, mercy, and forgiveness: by not loving, being merciful, and forgiving sins. It is remarkably consistent, isn't it? God is here with us in Jesus' teachings, the meaning of Emmanuel. We are to walk with God and to grow up to be like our Dad, loving and just. It is the Rule of Grace.