How to understand, explain and practice the saving significance of Jesus on the cross?
Holy Week is almost upon us, and it's time to return to this journey and try to bring it some good end. Or at least find an inn or some other resting place where I can hang my hat for this Good Friday, before continuing on.
Some time ago I was directed to a youtube video of Wm. Paul Young in which, among other things, he offered a few thoughts about the notion of sacrificial atonement, and its limitations. Here's my recollection of what he had to offer:
God is greater than we are, and God's truth is higher than we can know or put into words or action.
In seeking to know God and hear God's ways, we don't have to learn God's language because God, being God, is able to speak our language -- any language we have. Over the centuries, God uses our language (even though it's not God's native language) to have a conversation with us in which God leads us bit by bit to be able to see and comprehend the greater reality beyond us and our language.
One place this happens is around the great question of how to deal with sin and evil, and how to make or keep the world good. In this matter, the "language" most societies and cultures naturally speak is that of sacrificial atonement -- the idea (and practice) that sin and evil are best dealt with by projecting them on to another, a scapegoat of some kind or a sacrificial creature, and that by banishing the scapegoat or sacrificing the creature, sin and evil are done away with, and the rest of society is cleansed and made good.
In the Bible we see God talk with us about this, starting with Abraham.
Like everyone else of his time, Abraham thinks that to be right with God at some critical point he will have to sacrifice a child. So at a critical point, God calls him to do that. But then at a crucial point in the process, just as Abe is about to kill his first-born and only son, God says, "No! ... not your son. I believe you are willing. But let's do something a little different. How about a ram? I have a ram for you to sacrifice instead, and that will be all I need."
Step one: work with the human language of sacrificial offering, but change it from a kid to another kind of kid (forgive the pun, please).
So people develop a whole cult of sacrificial offering of animals. It's a step up from children, and for a while it works okay. It gives people a way to feel loved by God no matter what they've done, and to re-commit to God's ways of living without killing children.
Over time, though, the sacrificial system loses its moral imperative. It becomes, on one hand a kind of cheap grace for some people, and on the other a source of power, control and oppressive wealth for a corrupted priestly class. The limitations of the system become clear.
Through the prophets, then, God takes the conversation one step further. "You know those sacrifices I asked you to make?" God says. "Well, it's not really animals I want sacrificed, and it's not rivers of blood I delight in. The sacrifice I want is sacrificial love of the poor and the stranger, and the rivers I want to see flowing through your land are rivers of justice and mercy flowing to all."
Step two: switch from sacrifices of animals to self-giving, sacrificial love of others, especially the poor and marginalized. "Oh! So much better." And in due time, God comes in Jesus (in so many ways a direct heir of the prophets) to show us what that really looks like.
But given human nature, people (both those in power and those who try to follow Jesus) aren't quite ready just to follow. Feeling judged and, because of Jesus, aware of how wrong things are all around them and inside them, they can't help but fall back on the old language and say to God, "How about one last sacrifice? One big and perfect one that will do it and make things right for all time?"
To which God, ever the willing conversation partner, says, "Okay, if you must. But ... I should tell you, there'll be a surprise in this sacrifice for you. At some point you'll see who it is you've sacrificed, and what your notion of atoning sacrifice ends up doing to all of us. And maybe, just maybe, you'll learn how pointless and misguided this whole practice and language of atoning sacrifice is. And maybe then you'll be ready to hear what my way really is."
And that way is what Jesus says from the cross at the point of being killed. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing."
Forgive them.
Not because I am paying for their sins. Not because I am a good and perfect sacrifice. Not because this language and practice of atoning sacrifice makes sense.
Forgive them.
In spite of how mistaken they are in this language and system of sacrificial atonement, and of thinking that someone or something has to suffer and pay to make things right.
Just forgive them.
Because just-forgiveness is the only thing worth doing, if anything is to be made better when things go wrong and people make mistakes.
And maybe this time they'll get it. Maybe where this history-long conversation about atoning sacrifice has got us to, will finally help them see your way.
That, at least, is what I recall of Young's presentation. And next, hopefully soon, what I think I have learned about Good Friday from Diana Butler Bass.
