My sermon for this Palm/Passion Sunday is entitled "Letting Go of the "Good" in Good Friday." It is the next installment in my Lenten series of sermons regarding beliefs to let go in order to grow. I and I imagine others have let go of the need for substitutionary atonement. This is the idea that Christ dying on the cross was part of God's plan. Here is the story in a nutshell:
Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden. In so doing they sinned. They committed the original sin. By sinning they dishonored God and could not be in God's presence. So they were cast from the garden. Not only that, but their sin was transmuted generation by generation. All humanity, by nature of its humanity, is in a state of sin. They owe a debt to God that they cannot pay. Humans owe the debt but only God can forgive the debt. But God just can't cancel it. So God becomes human. Because Jesus is born of a virgin, he is not tainted by human sin. Jesus, the God/human cancels the debt by dying on the cross taking the sin of the world onto himself. Jesus is substituted for us. All who believe in this story have their debt of sin cancelled. They get to go to heaven when they die. All who do not believe in this story are still in their sin. They get to go to hell. One could tell the story more elegantly, but that is the story in essence.
I raised a bit of hoopla at my previous church when I wrote an article in the local paper challenging this doctrine. I offered a critique of Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ." I wrote that instead of his death we could benefit more by reflecting on his life:
I believe there are more important things about Jesus' life than his death, namely his parables, which were an invitation to cross over to a new way of thinking, loving and living. Jesus' passion for justice, his acceptance and elevation of the marginalized, his love of enemies are just some of the things that mark his greatness as well as the hope for humankind, in my view.I think ultimately, it was Charles Darwin's theory of evolution that put this dogma in the museum of "fossilized beliefs that once were interesting." If humans evolved from lower life-forms and over billions of years of evolution, then the Adam and Eve story is obviously a myth. They didn't exist. There was no garden, no fruit, no command not to eat of it, no disobedience, no sin, no need for atonement. Jesus dying on the cross was not part of any great plan of salvation since humans didn't need saving. I wonder if this is the real objection to evolution by fundamentalist Christians. It isn't that they need Genesis to be literal, but the theory of evolution casts the whole theory of Christianity as it is popularly conceived into doubt.
I suppose one could find the "truth" of the Adam and Eve story, original sin, virgin birth, and substitutionary atonement in a mythical/metaphorical way, but I don't really see the point. I think the idea of Jesus dying for our sins makes of mockery of the execution of Jesus. The historical person of Jesus died on a Roman cross. There were not just three lonely crosses on a hill. There could have been hundreds perhaps thousands of crosses. Rome crucified anyone who it perceived could make trouble. Rome brought the peace that way.
A good read for "good" Friday is Josephus. You can read his works on-line. He describes the bloody executions by Rome. Jesus wasn't alone. He was executed as a Jew like many of his countrymen. To suggest that his death was somehow "good" is to suggest that the burnings of Jews at Auschwitz was "good" or that the genocide in Darfur is "good." There is nothing good about it. The cross symbolizes the meaninglessness of terror, cruelty, and violence for which there is no answer. If the cross is to mean anything for us today, it is that it represents the absence of goodness. It is the horror of humanity's crimes against humanity.
What does the cross mean to you?
I agree with you.
ReplyDeleteRobert Funk points out in "Honest to Jesus" that the Nicean and Apostle's creeds make almost no mention of Jesus's life and teachings, as if none of those things were what mattered to Christianity. It is a shame that his life and what he stood for gets ignored in favor of an alleged atoning sacrifice. His death was not a good thing, as you suggest--he was executed by Roman authorities as a state criminal, and it was a terrible death inflicted on him by domination system of oppression. His message and life were acts of sedition against imperial authority.
His parables and teachings point the way to the Kingdom of God. It is a shame that all of this gets ignored in favor of creedal statements that de-emphasize what his life was about and instead focus on his alleged virgin birth and resurrection.
As for Adam and Eve--I think they are interesting stories and they have something to say as metaphors of the human condition, but of course they are not historical and integrating them into any doctrine of atonement doesn't make sense.
To discard the atonement is to discard Christ. There is no forgivness of sins without the Cross - which is why it is mentioned in the Apostles Creed.
ReplyDeleteTo leave the Cross behind is to place your own pride in front. What you are all expressing is an ancient Gnostic heresy of Christ not needing to be or actually being crucified on the Cross.
1 Corinthians 1:18
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
NIV
John:
ReplyDeleteI'm unchurched, so maybe I misunderstood some of the nutshell story.
"They committed the original sin."
I thought original sin wasn't an act (as in the first human sin), but rather just hereditary sin (i.e. the sin nature).
"All humanity, by nature of its humanity, is in a state of sin."
I'm pretty sure that this one would raise the hackles of the orthodox since it would condemn the sinless Christ becaus of his much-touted humanity. Wouldn't "by its origin in this Adamic nature" be a more creedally correct formulation?
And I would have to agree with stushie that this does seem to have been the most important thing to them about Jesus... at least according to the genuinely Pauline epistles and the surviving early creeds.
Thanks all for the comments. I think that there were a variety of ways of interpreting and following Jesus. The substitutionary atonement doctrine (which was one of several) took literally centuries to be established.
ReplyDeleteEarly forms of the Jesus movement, such as that preserved in Q, the Didache, didn't regard the death of Jesus to be theologically important.
Perhaps a 21st century Christianity can find a resource of wisdom there and leave the Christ-mythology or at least regard it as one of many ways of understanding Jesus.
I agree with Seeker and Kay on this one.
Why is it necessary to regard our primary relationship to the Divine as one of being sinful?
I tend to prefer Matthew Fox's idea of original goodness or original blessing.
Then let the cross be what it is, the symbol of humanity's cruelty.
Again, thanks for all your views.
I know better than posting something as a persuasion point; I was wondering if that is a factual corrective to the orthodoxy foxhole. I wouldn't imagine you toeing their line, but I thought it might be helpful to clarify where it stands. Unless, I'm way off-base in my understanding of said view.
ReplyDeleteThanks Fauxreal,
ReplyDeleteI am not sure I am understanding your question. Could you reframe it for me?
Here's an old story
ReplyDeleteDuring the Middle Ages there was a popular story which circulated about Martin of Tours, the saint for whom Martin Luther was named. It was said that Satan once appeared to St Martin in the guise of the Savior himself. St. Martin was ready to fall to his feet and worship this resplendent being of glory and light. Then, suddenly, he looked up into the palms of his hands and asked, "Where are the nail prints?" Whereupon the apparition vanished.
What does the cross mean to you?
ReplyDeleteIt means the awfulness of humanity and the power of God to blot that awfulness out.
Happy Easter. He is risen, indeed!
Funny how dissenters throughout the ages have wanted to jettison Christ's atoning death, prefering a talking head (whether docetic or wandering cynic) instead of the lamb who is worthy.
ReplyDeleteI think that's what Paul had in mind when - prompted by the Holy Spirit - he said:
"Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."
Not Christ and his parables (though that came with it), but a Christ who saves by his definitive act - rather than one who waits on us to "catch on" through our cleverness.
This is the ultimate outworking of your panentheism: a God who is unable to act apart from natural process; a Jesus who dies in disgrace and rots on the ground; and a Christianity that - in order to survive - evolves fanciful myths and then hardens into patriarchal oppression.
Could you reframe it for me?
ReplyDeleteSure, it was the "by nature of its humanity" bit... is that the accurate representation of the orthodox view? It seems that this wording is more misanthropic in laying blame to our very existance rather than placing it on some inherited propensity to sin (which, while part of our humanity is not necessary to it).
OK, FauxReal, I see what you are saying. Yes, you are right. As far as I understand the mythology, Adam sinned. Therefore all humanity inherited this sin through procreation. Therefore all have sinned. The only exception of course, was Jesus because he was born of God and a Virgin. The Calvinists are the most severe about human nature (that is, after the Fall), calling it totally depraved.
ReplyDeleteJesus died on a Wednesday not on a Friday. Once a year the Jews celebrate a special Sabbath and it's on a Thursday of the week. This Sabbath is capitalized with and "S" not a small "s", in the book of John in the bible. The sabbath on Saturday of the week is the small "s".
ReplyDeleteJesus had to be dead and buried for three days and three nights, the same length as Jonah was in the big fish. If Jesus was killed on a Friday, he would have only been dead a day and a half.
Satan is a liar and has everyone believing in a "Good Friday!" It's a hoax from him and it's a day where he, (Satan) literally crucifies a person on a cross and re-inacts the death of Jesus. Satans people have bought this lie into beleiving that Satan won over Jesus. Jesus won when he rose from the grave. "Three" days later, not a day and a half.