It's Good Friday.
This day picks us up and sets us squarely into the matrix of Christian understanding known as the "atonement." Increasingly these days I hear people decrying atonement theology. The claim is that atonement has to do with God killing (his) Son as a blood sacrifice to make up for our horrific and countless sins. This is a mean, vengeful God. This is not the God of love. We want to put as much distance as possible between us and a God who would murder (his) own son, and that's exactly what we do.
I also hear a growing number of voices telling me and anyone who will listen that they don't like any mention of blood in their Christian story. We like the nice Jesus who has the children on his lap and leads the gentle sheep into safe pastures. So, away with all those songs about the blood of Christ. Away with references to being "washed in the blood." Moreover, let's not even have the Good Friday worship service. Really? I like the Resurrection pieces, but all that blood? I don't think so.
Such images of gore and bloodshed offend sensibilities of contemporary people and set us on edge because it is about.....suffering. Suffering is a non-starter. It's not something we want to witness, ponder or consider. Mind you, we willingly pay for it with our taxes and thus cause unspeakable suffering around the world, but please please don't put it in our religion. And not only religion, but in any corner of our comfortless, numb lives.
This traditional or prevailing understanding of the atonement betrays a stunning misunderstanding of two things in our Christian tradition. The first is the understanding of "The Trinity," and the second is our understanding of "sacrifice."
Let me begin with the much maligned and seldom understood notion of the Trinity. The trinity is an ancient church understanding that names God is a unity of three "persons." The Creator, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. This understanding was born in the days of the early Church as people of faith began to grasp that Jesus was "Emmanuel," or God with us. Simply put, it dawned on people to ask the question, "If Jesus is God among us, then who was minding the universal store when Jesus was here with us?" Add to this the powerful scene in the Gospel of John where Jesus breathes the Spirit into the Disciples (John 20:23f) and poof, we have the recipe for the trinity. One God, three entities or persons.
For more than two millennia we have had a hard time grasping this idea of One God in Three Persons. But there it is. God is One and self expressed in three entities. And if we understand the unity of these three persons in One God then the whole notion of God killing (his) son kind of falls apart. God didn't kill another person, God, in Christ, gave (him)self on the cross for us. It was a willing act of self-giving love, not infanticide.
And this, friends, brings us to the notion of sacrifice.
Sacrifice in our culture is seen as a bad thing. Indeed, someone who sacrifices themselves for others is seen to have a psychological malady known as a "martyr complex or syndrome." This is so much the case that this complex has been codified in to the "Diagnostic and Stastical Manual (IV)" as a diagnosable illness. In other words, someone who routinely sacrifices their needs to meet the needs of others has a personality disorder.
But the truth is that sacrifice is not a bad thing at all. In fact, without others sacrificing for us, many of us would not even be alive today. If parents didn't sacrifice for their children, if husbands, wives and partners did not sacrifice for one another, if soldiers did not sacrifice on the battlefield, if our heroes did not give their lives, the world would be a much different place. From Jesus himself to Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and beyond, sacrifices have brought, not evil, but good.
Indeed, if a people are no longer willing to give of themselves for the greater good, then the whole culture is in danger of collapse.
Here we are, at the crux of the atonement. Allow me to offer another view based on the forgoing.
The sacrifice made by Jesus was not murder, but in fact, was an act of self-giving love. God didn't kill Jesus, God gave God's self for us. The typical wording here would be that this happened to save us from our sins. But let's forget that language and go to the core of it all.
When we give ourselves for others, things change. It's really that simple.
This is the atonement.
It is also at the core of contemporary nonviolent theory lived and written about by Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Daniel Berrigan.
When you pour out yourself for others, for something larger than yourself, things change. You change. The people for whom you give yourself change. It is this transformational dynamic, rooted in self-giving love that sits at the center of Christian understanding, on this Good Friday it is something I challenge us all to ponder.
What happened on the cross is not some distant vaguely historic event that we are called to accept as a matter of doctrine. It is, instead, a call to action. God gave God's self for us and calls us to go and do likewise; to pour our lives out for the healing and hope of the world. The cross and the pursuant resurrection of Jesus is a model for how we are to live.
Think of the new life that grew in so many places because of the willing sacrifice of Martin Luther King, Jr. He poured himself out, and new life was the result. Think of the millions of self-giving acts of love performed by parents, lovers, siblings and friends every day. All these acts create a storm of grace, a current of new life, a table for us all to gather round in community and joy.
So there it is, having sat long in my heart, but unrehearsed here in the writing.
This Good Friday is not some religious dictate or savage act of violence.
It is, a loving God pouring God's self out for us and yearning for us to go and pour ourselves out in love for the world.
My utterances shared here come with prayers that we might all give ourselves for others so that healing, hope, and new life might spring up in our wake as we pass through this life.
SR
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