Here's a sermon I wrote nearly two years ago on the atonement and how a person comes to faith.
Paul’s letter and Philip’s encounter
This morning I’m not going to pour over the two New Testament passages
we heard earlier. The first reading was
from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he makes the point that God was in
the world, in Christ, seeking to reconcile humanity to God’s self, and in turn
entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation. And in the Acts passage we have the story of
Philip interacting with an Ethiopian court official, hopping on his chariot
with him, presumably continuing their discussion of Isaiah, and then the next
thing you know, they halt the chariot and jump into a little body of water, so
that the Ethiopian eunuch can be baptized.
I want these two passages to stand in the background of my
remarks. They both, I think, have much
to do with getting right with God, coming to faith, and accepting Jesus as
Savior and Lord. They have to do with
conversion, salvation, following Jesus—or any other of a host of expressions we
employ to communicate the convergence of heart, mind, and will turning to Jesus
in allegiance, faith, and trust.
The cross
We’ve just come through the Lenten season, the forty days leading up to
the Easter celebration. Lent climaxes
with the events of Holy Week…the triumphal entry, the Last Supper, the
betrayal, the trial, the crucifixion, and then, the resurrection. The cross is a centerpiece of this week, and
the great Christian symbol. There’s a
cross here in front of me on the communion table. There’s one in one of our
stained glass windows. Some of us are
probably wearing jewelry right now with a cross in it. When you see someone wearing a cross you
think, that person claims Christ.
And the cross is understood as essential and necessary for our very
salvation. We sing:
Was it for sins that I have done
he groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown, and
love beyond degree.
“Man of sorrows,” what a name for
the Son of God who came,
Ruined sinners to reclaim!
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Forbid it, Lord, that I should
boast, save in the death of Christ, my God!
All the vain things that charm me
most, I sacrifice them through his blood.
Explicitly in the theology of these words is the idea that the cross is
crucial to our salvation. We humans are
hopeless sinners. The love of God is
infinite. And Jesus’ death on a
cross—his blood shed for us—is
necessary for our salvation.
But how, exactly does this work?
How does the death of one man 2,000 years ago somehow relate to my
personal failings and shortcomings, your missteps, or corporate, systemic sins
that conspire to keep the poor in their place and inflict lethal violence on
those who get out of line?
Atonement
This leads us directly into thinking about the atonement. How does what Jesus did on the cross make us
right, clean, and justified before God?
What do we have to do?
The prevailing doctrine of the atonement in Protestant circles has for
about a thousand years been some version of “satisfaction” atonement. A medieval theologian, Anselm of Canterbury,
articulated how salvation happens in a way that has influenced Christian
thinking for all these centuries.
Satisfaction atonement takes sin seriously. Though God created the world good, sin
quickly crept in. And it has continued,
infecting the heart of every single human being. And so there is a great gulf between a
perfect God and imperfect humanity. No
human sacrifice could appease God’s righteous indignation over our sinful state
because God needed a perfect sacrifice.
So God sent his son, Jesus, who lived the perfect life. He was killed, dying in our place on the
cross, and so, by his wounds, we are healed and made right in God’s sight. God’s righteous anger is satisfied.
I came to faith in Christ with this kind of understanding of what Jesus
did for me. This was an act of great
love, I was always taught. Jesus loved
me so much he was willing to die for me.
That’s what I learned. And you
know, those precise words (Jesus loved me so much he was willing to die for me)
I can still say. But somehow for me, and
this journey began many decades ago, this whole way of understanding what God
was about in Jesus didn’t resonate deep within.
How does this happen, really? All
I have to do is confess belief and then a celestial deal is made, high in the
heavens, and I’m saved? Now the
satisfaction understanding of the work of Christ on the cross has the great
advantage of taking seriously our sins, both individual and corporate. And it has the great advantage of simplicity
with its wondrous reliance on God’s grace, which I believe in. But still I wonder if there could be a better
way of understanding the work of Christ on the cross.
Justice and the death of Osama bin Laden
Last Sunday evening we all learned the stunning news of the dramatic
American raid, engineered by extraordinarily skilled and highly trained Navy
SEALS, in Pakistan that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden. Sunday night a sober-minded, grimly
determined President Obama announced the news.
Then the television screen filled with images of young revelers shaking
their fists in the air and triumphantly shouting USA, USA, USA. Black and
white, male and female, they partied, proclaiming their joy.
There were interviews with people who were in New York on 9/11, and
interviews with family members of office workers and firemen who were in the
twin towers on that awful day nearly ten years ago.
And from the president to the people on the street, from the
newscasters to the family members, one heard this repeated refrain: now Justice has been served. After all these years, there is justice!
The logic is this. Osama bin
Laden was the man ultimately responsible for the mass murder of about 3,000
people on that glorious September morning of nearly ten years ago. For the scales to be balanced, for a sense of
rightness and order to be regained, the one responsible for the 9/11 atrocity
has to be killed. Now that this has
happened, and his body eased into the North Indian Sea, justice has been
served.
But already, just a week later, things don’t seem all that
different. The euphoric chanting in the
streets has faded away. Whatever
vengeful satisfaction there was in the thought of waking a tall, ascetic guy up
in the night and shooting him above the eye, that satisfaction doesn’t prove
very lasting. And though I can’t pretend
to put myself in their shoes, I just don’t think that Osama bin Laden’s death
really eases the pain or the sense of loss all that much of those who so
unfairly lost loved ones nearly ten years ago.
For this sense of justice, a justice that demands the killing of one
because of the killing of others, really doesn’t bring any kind of ultimate
closure. There’s just more blood. There’s just more tears. There’s just more anger.
But still this way of understanding is dominant in our country, and I
suppose all over the world. If someone
does something evil and bad, justice demands a response commensurate with the
gravity of the evil committed. We call
this retributive justice. It’s the
understanding of justice undergirding all those justice has been served remarks.
In the biblical framework we think of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This teaching served as a helpful restraint
on extreme vengeance in response to an evil.
But then Jesus comes along and says you
have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist one who is
evil…
Satisfaction, retributive justice, and the atonement
You can see how the way we think about justice fits into the
satisfaction understanding of Jesus’ death on the cross. To make things right God needed the perfect
sacrifice to balance the scales, to make up for all the sins of sinful
humanity.
But wait a second. Does a loving
God actually get angry enough to arrange for his own son to be killed? The death of Jesus was an actual event in
real history, so, what did it mean in its own historical moment? And furthermore, what about the
resurrection? If all God needed was a
perfect sacrifice, and then Jesus is killed, what’s the point of the
resurrection? It’s a nice exclamation
point but in terms of appeasing God’s righteous anger, it does very little.
Non-violent Christus Victor
Another way of understanding the meaning of the cross fall under the
label “Christus Victor,” (or Christ the Victor). This understanding goes back to the early
Church Fathers. It fell out of favor
with Anselm in the middle ages and has been making a comeback in the last fifty
years or so. Mennonite scholars like John Howard Yoder,
Norman Kraus, Thomas Finger, Mark Baker, and J. Denny Weaver have all tried to
understand the work of Christ in this way.
Contemporary writers from Greg Boyd to Marcus Borg to Jim Wallis to
Walter Wink all seem to resonate with this understanding of the atonement.
Christus Victor understood from an Anabaptist theological perspective
tries to take sin (both personal and corporate) very seriously, insists on
incorporating the entire witness of Jesus (his teachings and his deeds),
understands the crucifixion in historical context, and believes in the
resurrection.
Let’s not forget the verses we heard early in the service from II
Corinthians. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. So how does sin-infested humanity become reconciled
to God in this model? Sin is not
short-changed. It is real and understood
as our bondage to the forces and powers of evil in our world. It’s understood personally as our violations
of the holiness God would have for us.
Salvation is in the becoming free of these chains that bind, and being
transformed by the renewing Spirit of God into the realm of the Kingdom of God.
Now Jesus himself, in living out his mission, the kingdom, ran into the
powers of evil all around him. He stood
up to them and was executed by them. His
death was less a blood payment to ensure a celestial transaction, and more a
rejection of the rule of God, of the kingdom, by the forces of evil hostile to
the kingdom, the way, Jesus lived and proclaimed. In his death he revealed the true nature of
the evil of his time. The cross vividly
contrasts the way of power and violence exhibited by those who killed him, and
the nonviolent way of the rule of God.
So evil did its worst but in the resurrection Jesus proved triumphant
even over death. As Weaver puts it: The power of the reign of God over the
forces of evil is made manifest in the resurrection of Jesus. (Weaver, p. 44, The Nonviolent Atonement) He goes on to say:
Those who believe in the resurrection perceive the true nature of power
in the universe. Resurrection means that
appearances can be deceiving. Regardless
of what appears to be the case from an earth-limited or earth-bound
perspective, such as the seeming crescendo of evil…..resurrection demonstrates
the power of God’s rule over evil.
The invitation
God’s victory over the power of evil is our invitation to join in God’s
kingdom and to embrace salvation. We do
so by saying our “yes” to a new, transformed life, a life no longer held in
bondage to evil because we know that, in the end, Jesus is triumphant. Our yes is our pledge of allegiance to the
totality of the way of Jesus, an allegiance to the life and teachings, the
death and resurrection of Jesus. When
our united heart and mind turn to Jesus, whispering or shouting our allegiance,
we know salvation.
In the course of our lives we do this over and over again. Just like a life-long relationship on this
earth begins with a tentative “I love you,” so we may haltingly say yes to
Jesus for the first time. But over time
we sing it over and over again, in song, in the quiet of our hearts, at the
foot of the cross, in the silence of a contemplative heart, and in the taking
of the bread and cup.
In the face of the evil within and the powers of evil around us we
place our hope in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, living and
trusting in the power of love to overcome evil.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
