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.
No comments:
Post a Comment