Atonement

Here we are coming to the end of summer, the very lazy days of late August, things should be laid back and simple. Time for one last deep inhale before diving back into life – one more long weekend to stretch out at the beach when “Bam!” Jesus hits us right between the eyes with his ominous claim that he is going to suffer and be killed in Jerusalem. When I read the Gospel earlier in the week, I felt like “Why do we have to do this now, it’s too hard to think about!” No sooner had the thought escaped my neurons than I heard Jesus’ admonition to get out of the way. Did I think this was supposed to easy – or even fun?

It has been a lot of fun to be a Christian at Faith so far this year. We have babies and children all over the place, we rattled the roof with our Mardi Gras, we rocked on the Halleluiah Chorus on Easter, much to our own amazement, people are taking time to consider what being on a spiritual journey looks like, new people are finding us all the time…how could it not be fun around here? I’m sure that Jesus had times like that – walking between towns with his friends, meeting people who wanted to take in what he had to offer, going to weddings, making people feel better…but always lurking around the edges of the sunny days was the knowledge that if you anger the powerful long enough, they will squash you. He knew that what he was doing would end in his death on a cross.

We’ve heard Martin Luther King’s voice a lot recently – it was 45 years ago on Thursday that he spoke of his dream to the crowd on the open spaces in Washington. On April 3, 1968 he told a crowd that he had been to the mountain top but that he did not know if he would be with them by the time they got to the promised land. Martin knew that lots of people wanted him dead – and the next day it happened.

The saint of El Salvador – Archbishop Oscar Romero also knew that lots of people wanted him dead – the brutal military government and even those within the church. He just wouldn’t stop asking those questions – why are my people hungry? Why are so many people poor while you are so rich? When will liberation come? The people’s bishop refused to hide and protect himself and he refused to stop speaking the truth to power. Only the bullets that tore through him as he celebrated his beloved Eucharist could stop him from shouting – “Set my people free!”

This silencing of the voices that speak the truth to power is shockingly common. Whether it’s by locking them up or ending their lives, toxic power terrorizes the children of God. We see it over and over and we cry, what can stop it? When will it end? I would love to be able to stand here and tell you that the empty tomb on Easter morning was the end of cruel, violent power but you would know that I was not being truthful. It’s not over, the madness continues but it does so at its peril now. Jesus’ gruesome death shone a spotlight on this ancient sin – the killing of the innocent brother. And he taught us how to meet it face to face and to disarm it with love. I think that’s what Jesus meant to do.

It is strange how we have taken his courageous self-sacrifice and turned it into a theological knot. In the centuries after his death, the church tried to explain what Jesus told his disciples today – that his death had to happen. The best thinkers put their minds to developing the theory of atonement – the $5 word for why Jesus died. Jesus died to save us from our sins – what does that mean?

To atone for something meant to try to set it right. The word itself has connotations of payment and compensation. The church has come up with all sorts of ways to apply this idea of compensation to Jesus death – first there was the idea that Satan was holding us captive and so Jesus was the ransom paid to set us free. This idea was around in the first three centuries. By the Middle Ages, atonement was rethought to that of satisfaction that was necessary to restore the dishonor that God suffered by our sin. That this kind of honor killing theory was unappealing was clear from the idea that was put forward shortly after by Peter Abelard. He posited that the crucifixion was to be for us a moral example and by which we could chose to live lives that would bring us closer to God. For some reason, the idea that we might be able to play a role in our own salvation has been roundly denigrated and rejected by the Church, as was this understanding of Jesus death. By the time of Luther and Calvin in the 16^th century, the idea that God’s honor needed to be satisfied became more dire. The theory of atonement during the Reformation became one of penal substitution. Our sin was so offensive to God that it required punishment and Jesus is the one on whom the sentence was meted out.

There is scripture to support each of these ideas but I wonder if any of them resonate with how Jesus understood the inevitability of his death by the hands of Rome. Jesus insisted that God’s presence and favor – what he referred to as the Kingdom of Heaven – was to be found in within in us. His plan was to preach it, teach it and live it so that we would get it. That presence of God looks like love and justice. For some reason liberty and justice for all is a dangerous thing – maybe because what of happens when people begin to know that they are worthy and powerful, they become dangerous to the powers of the world. Hope makes people hard to keep down, hard to control. To me, what Jesus death on the cross does is to say that God’s presence in our midst is worth sacrifice – bringing that message to us was more important than life itself.

I have very mixed feelings about most of the atonement theories. I really don’t like the idea of God as a blood-thirsty supernatural being that could somehow be satisfied by someone’s death. What I am very clear about is what Jesus thought was worth dying for, and that’s you. Jesus was willing to head for Jerusalem so the downtrodden would know that they were not merely vassals of a cruel overlord but keepers of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus died so every prisoner, whether behind bars or trapped in an emotional hell were still able to touch and be touched by God’s love. Jesus had to die so that the forces of hatred, violence and despair would be exposed and neutralized. Jesus had to march to his death so you could know how loved you are. This morning we heard Henri Nouwen’s words about compassion – compassion is the power behind Jesus death on the cross – he became us and in his death and resurrection, we become him.

Thanks be to God!