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Problems Facing the Idea of Substitutionary Atonement

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Anselm(On St Anselm of Canterbury’s feast day I thought I would honor him by addressing some of the issues that have troubled people about various “theories” of substitutionary atonement. Anselm himself is often blamed for views he never held. This article is excerpted from an essay which was later included, in an edited form, in my book on atonement, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross: Reflections on the Atonement. Wipf and Stock, 2010}

Even if one accepts that the interpretation of Christ’s death as a substitutionary atonement is thoroughly biblical, there remain any number of problems and objections to understanding it this way, especially if one is putting forth a view that claims for the cross both objective divine activity and universal implications for human salvation. I turn to the following works which lay out some of the criticisms of substitutionary atonement theories:  Vernon White, Atonement and Incarnation: An Essay in Universalism and Particularity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) Gerald O’Collins, The Calvary Christ (London:  SCM Press, 1977), especially Chapter VI, Atonement for All, and Richard Bauckham, “Criticisms of Penal Substitution”(unpublished paper, no date).

A theology that claims that universal reconciliation came about through an historically particular event  or person faces many difficulties from outside as well as from within the Christian faith.  The expanded view of the universe in the Twentieth Century makes the universal claims of the Christ event incredible to many people. Widespread travel and world-wide communications make religious pluralism a fact of modern life and put a human face on the previously abstract “unsaved heathen” (now our neighbors) of former centuries.  In addition, the conceptual difficulties of ideas like atonement and incarnation puts pressure from within theology to abandon its traditional claims. The tendency in much recent theology is to solve these problems and objections by giving ground on both objectivity and universality. These theologies counter the outside pressures facing atonement by proposing that atonement is merely illustrative of rather than constitutive for salvation, and that salvation is particular and limited rather than universal in scope.  White summarizes from Maurice Wiles The Remaking of Christian Doctrine to give a typical example of a theology that has  responded to these pressures:

 (Wiles) proposes that there need be no more to the meaning of the passion of Christ than the following: first, a revelation of the character of God; secondly, an historical phenomenon effective in the transformation of people’s lives.  Thus he has no wish to deny that it concerns only the comparatively small proportion of mankind which has heard of and responded to the preaching of the cross; to claim anything more would be “chasing a will o’the whisp”. (White, p 3)

White himself offers an atonement theory that attempts to preserve objectivity  on God’s part and the universal implications of God’s act by using the language of recreation  rather than retribution. White wants to answer the modern objection to a theology that claims universal implications from a particular event.  He phrases the question he wants to answer thus:  “What is it about any particular act that could constitute possibilities for the effectiveness of every other act the agent untertakes in relation to other agents throughout time and space?” He rightly notes that such a form safeguards both the universality of divine action and the uniqueness of the particular event.  (p 52)  As White’s title implies, it is an incarnational Christology that provides the locus for divine activity with universal human implications. To support his view he points to Paul’s soteriology, expressed in terms such as “one , in “one spirit”, “Christ’s” and “in Christ”, referring to E.P. Sanders recent work on participation in Pauline atonement theory. (p 58)

White draws attention also to C.F.D. Moule’s writings on corporate personality  and to the Patristic idea of recapitulation as articulated by Irenaeus, where Christ is understood to be the representative of the whole human race. (p  `59) White’s soteriology here hangs on his Christology: “It requires that the man Jesus and the eternal God share a common personal identity, as subject of the same incarnational experiences.” He sees that “the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ constitute a particular experience for God which is then offered throughout all time and space with the potential to “save” all peoples. (p 87) The cross then, as here construed,  is primarily an event in God’s “life” and only secondarily an act in history. That lack of historical grounding shows elsewhere in White’s essay, as for example, in the implications of his theory for personal faith and for the church, which seem strangely irrelevant. Since his position needs no human agency (such as the church) to witness to the Christ event, which seems to have accomplished all that is necessary  in eternity, he avoids any charge of religious imperialism in the face of the world religions. To his credit he holds fast to the two elements that one wants in an atonement  doctrine, objectivity and universalism, and tries to deal with the pressures facing atonement from the modern world.

But these more general pressures on theology from the corrosive effects of the “acids of modernity” are not the only  objections faced by an atonement doctrine. There are objections from within theology as well.  There are any number of ways to organize these.  Gerald O’Collins, for example, summarizes these objections in three categories:  (1) God misrepresented,  (2) Christ misrepresented, (3) mankind misrepresented.  Let us look at each in turn: (1)  O’Collins wants to distance himself from atonement views in which God’s character or nature is misrepresented. For example, some articulations of the atonement  can too easily  speak of God as a vindictive punisher. For O’Collins, Christ death on the cross is better understood as retributive suffering freely undertaken for others rather than punishment imposed by God as a substitute for guilty humanity. (2)  Similarly, O’Collins thinks Christ is misrepresented by substitution language which inclines toward the impersonal and lacks the intentionality of the language of “representation.”

Representation implies conscious acceptance by free moral agents on both sides. He also wants to carefully limit the way we talk of sacrifice, avoiding talk of an expiatory sacrifice that propitiates the anger of God and wins forgiveness for humankind. He admits that Paul uses sacrificial language (as in 1 Cor. 5:7;11:25; Romans 3:24f) but  claims that Paul doesn’t make much of it as either an expiatory sacrifice or as a sacrifice that brings a new covenant with God. The reason for this reluctance is because Paul see God as the initiator of the Christ event. It was God who “put forward” his Son to expiate human sins and usher in the “new covenant.” Once we see the crucifixion as an act of God toward mankind, we can hardly turn round and speak of God sacrificing to himself.  Likewise, any stress on Calvary’s consequences “for us” tends to exclude the theme if its consequences “for God” and hence its sacrificial quality.  Paul knows the cross to be an effect of God’s saving will,  not  its cause.  And that belief restrains the apostle’s readiness to proclaim Good Friday as an atoning sacrifice which establishes a new relationship between God and Man.. (O’Collins, p 108) Paul’s understanding of Christ’s role in the crucifixion  includes both obedience to the Father and suffering undertaken for humankind.  In two senses, then, he acted as our representative, becoming obedient unto death (Philippians 2:8) and dying for us (Galatians 3:13). (p 108-109) (3) Finally, O’Collins wants to avoid articulations of the atonement  in which mankind is misrepresented in regard to human involvement.  He asks, “Does belief in atonement (i) fail to produce a sense of commitment and (ii) suggest a world that smells of masochism?” (p 109)  These are in fact opposite problems. In the first, believers in atonement reverently refer to amends made in the past by Christ and become complacent about the world around them, and in the second case, a neurotic preoccupation with self-inflicted suffering is fostered.  This latter is similar to the criticisms of the cross offered by some feminists, that it fosters a victim mentality among those already prone to victimization.  While admitting that atonement theories can go wildly astray, O’Collins concludes that

. . . a healthy atonement theology invites well-founded action and acceptance.  Just as the reconciliation and liberation brought by Christ impels believers to act in genuinely reconciling and liberating ways, so the atonement he made on our behalf should alert us to our responsibility for the good state of the moral order.  (p 109)

While O’Collins’ caveat about the language of substitution is a good one in the light of the many impersonal and mechanical atonement theories that have been proposed, and his highlighting of the language of representation reminds us of important and often neglected dimensions of Christ’s solidarity and identification with us and his freely-chosen way of obedience, I am not persuaded that we can dispense with substitution language altogether. Christ’s death is a death for us and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. That is substitution. Representation adds some important notes, but it cannot carry the whole melody.

Likewise, O’Collins’ warnings about expiation are helpful in protecting against a notion that Jesus was sacrificed to the Father in some way , yet again I think expiation language is biblical and retains a place in any doctrine of atonement as  long as we keep in view O’Collins’ reminder that God is the initiator and not the vindictive punisher whose anger gets assuaged by the act. I wonder too about O’Collins’ statement, “Paul knows the cross to be an effect of God’s saving will and not its cause.” On one hand, that is right, that the cross can be seen in retrospect to be entirely consistent with God’s nature and character as seen throughout the biblical narrative to that point. On the other hand, to speak of the cross as an “effect” of God’s saving will could be construed to support an illustrative soteriology rather than one in which the cross is understood as constitutive for salvation. Richard Bauckham’s paper outlines the four classical criticisms of the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement as put forward by Socinus (Fausto Sozzini, 1539-1604), who was criticising the logic of the Reformers. The four criticisms are (1) Satisfaction and forgiveness are incompatible, (2)  Substitution is unjust, (3) Christ’s sufferings are not equivalent to the punishment that sinners deserve, (4) Substitution fosters antinomianism.

Bauckham notes that Socinus makes his criticisms apart from the context of the Reformer’s theologies and that he neglects two significant aspects of the Reformers views of the atonement, (a) that the work of Christ is not the activity of a third party, but rather the divine Son of God become man, who has come into the world to do the Father’s will for human salvation, and (b) that the purpose of the atonement was not merely to save sinners, but to reconcile them to God.  He then discusses each criticism in reverse order. (4)  Substitution ought to lead to antinomianism.

Bauckham notes that this charge ignores (b) above, that the atonement puts sinners into relationship with God, thereby not leaving them unchanged. Such criticisms stem from a moralistic misunderstanding of Christianity. We do not first need to be good, we need first to be in a right relationship with God. (3) Christ’s sufferings are not equivalent to the punishment required.  Bauckham concedes that this charge is unanswerable, that attempts to answer it have failed in the past, and that if anything like penal substitution is to be retained it must be shown that this quantifying of amounts of punishment is unnecessary. (2)  Substitution is unjust. Socinus says that substitution is doubly unjust in that the guilty party goes unpunished, and an innocent party is punished undeservedly. Socinus did not believe in the incarnation, but according to it, it is not that God spares sinners and inflicts their penalty on an innocent third party, but rather in Christ, God himself takes on the suffering instead of inflicting it on sinful humanity. This answers Socinus’ charge about punishing the innocent, but leaves the charge that the guilty go unpunished. Some sort of articulation of Christ’s identification or solidarity with the sinner goes part way to meeting this objection and most atonement theories have elements of this in them, but by the standards of human law courts to which Socinus refers, these motifs of identification cannot be strong enough to fully overcome his criticism.

Bauckham refers to  Wolfhart Pannenburg’s defence of this criticism where he charges Socinus with excessive ethical individualism. Bauckham goes on to illustrate this point by drawing an analogy from human courts of law. We can see in the criminal justice system, for example, how the punishment of an individual in some very real way punishes their family. In some cases this shared suffering, through active sympathy, might even be considered a kind of vicarious suffering of punishment that we could consider to not be unjust. This is outside the competence of the courts, of course, where “each person must bear the penalty he deserves” is the proper ideal for administering justice. But in real life the interdependence of humanity is such that the innocent do as a matter of fact suffer for the crimes of others. Though sometimes we see this as evil and seek to prevent it as far as possible, in other cases we applaud it. The cases in which we applaud it are those of voluntary fellow-suffering in love. We recognise at this point that love goes beyond the ethical individualism in which the courts must largely deal, and that the vicarious suffering of love may and can go beyond the ethical individualism of the courts because it corresponds more fully to the reality of human life and relationships than the justice of the courts is able to do. (p 8) To speak of Christ bearing our punishment is only possible because God in Christ goes beyond the justice of human law courts. Since Socinus’ criticism stays within the analogy of human courts, those theories of atonement that have accepted that framework are most vulnerable to his criticism. But if God’s justice in the cross transcends the justice of human law courts than the criticism is avoided.

Bauckham says that he has hinted at how this happens by his description of what he has called “the voluntary fellow-suffering of love.” “God’s love in Christ enables him to accomplish what, as a judge in a human law court, he could not accomplish.” (p 10)  To do this means going beyond the merely retributive understanding of justice which both Socinus and his opponents shared. (1)  Satisfaction and forgiveness are incompatible. Socinus uses the analogy of a debt, where if the debt is paid, the creditor is obliged to renounce any claim on the debtor. Neither mercy nor forgiveness come into play. Again, Socinus takes no account of the incarnation. Since it is not a third party but God himself who pays the debt, he balances the books, so to speak, by paying himself off, at a cost to himself. For Socinus, God is free to do as he wills in response to human sin: justice and mercy are seen as alternatives. Penal substitutionary theory, however, makes two points against this view of God’s freedom:  (a) God is not free without cost to himself, and (b) The cost is necessary because God does not set aside justice when he exercises mercy; rather he forgives in such a way as to satisfy justice. Justice and mercy are not alternatives, and in the cross, God administers both without contradiction.

To sum up, the problems and objections to a substitutionary atonement theory come from both  the outside world of modernity, and from within the theological circle. The former seem either to be conceptual, such as how the particular can impact the universal, or socio-political, such as the “imperialism ” of universal religious claims or the negative impact of such views on victims or on people’s mental health. These outside pressures need to be addressed in formulating an adequate atonement theory, but, in my view, they are not decicisive and must not be allowed to pre-empt the discussion. The modern theologies that have  responded to these external pressures by giving ground on important features of traditional soteriology are uniformly unsatisfactory  and in the end raise as many questions as they answer.

More  challenging, I think, are the criticisms from within the theological circle.  An attempt to make a credible case for an atonement theory that does justice to both the nuances of the biblical narrative and the experience of real people is difficult at best.  Some of the pitfalls we have reviewed are as follows: views of God which are morally offensive, that see him as a vindictive punisher (or, on the other hand, failing to deal with sin and evil, which we did not mention); views which emphasize retributive justice at the expense of other elements; views which emphasize sacrifice so as to imply that  Christ died to propitiate God’s anger;  views which separate God’s justice from God’s mercy; views that are moralistic or legalistic; views in which substitution language is used mechanically and impersonally, neglecting the intentionality of the cross and the dimensions of Christ’s obedience; views which either emphasize the finished nature of atonement so strongly that they invite human moral complacency, or, conversely, views which develop a morbid preoccupation with self-inflicted suffering.   To read this list is to quickly realize that there are partial truths imbedded within all these various misconceptions and distortions.  The complexity of the biblical materials insures that no one theory will be comprehensive.  But  awareness of the problems prepares us for the important task of asking which elements are profitable for a credible atonement theory and which should be avoided.

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Advice to Preachers: One Sermon at a Time Please!

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pulpit

Has this ever happened to you when you are captive in a pew?

I was at a house of worship not long ago, where the preacher is a long-time friend of mine. I was looking forward to hearing him preach, and I when he started I was pleased with his voice and his manner. He said some wise things and I could feel that he was wrapping up, but then . . . he started on a new tack. He did this three times, and each time I thought he was done. It was a very long sermon; in fact it was three long sermons.

The next day I was at a seminar with a bunch of pastors and I mentioned  the experience to my friend Scott, who provided me with one of my favorite axioms: “If you don’t know what you are doing, you don’t know when you have done it.”

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“Behind Locked Doors” A sermon on John 20:24-29

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caravaggio_-_the_incredulity_of_saint_thomasThe Second Sunday of Easter, traditionally called “Low Sunday,”  is a tough Sunday for a preacher for a number of reasons.  First of all, the context of our preaching can be a bit discouraging. We have fewer than half the people we had last week, and I always preach better for some reason when there are more people present. It must have something to do with group dynamics. Easter is always a high holy day in the church, a bright and festive day, and though the church in theory believes that Easter lasts for the Great Fifty Days, the second Sunday is, well you know, Low Sunday.  Plus I am always exhausted and worn thin after Easter.  But having said all that let me make a confession: I like low Sunday.

 I like it for two reasons. First, the folks who come on Low Sunday tend to be the faithful core of the congregation and I feel I don’t have to explain so much of the Gospel to you. To use Eugene Peterson’s helpful distinction, on Low Sunday there are more pilgrims and fewer tourists. I say that not to disparage religious tourists, God knows we have all been that at one time or another. God meets us where we are and even spiritual tourists need God’s mercy and love. My point is just that hardly anyone feels a pressing social or cultural need to get up and come to church on Low Sunday, so those who are here tend to be serious about what we are doing here, and I appreciate that, since I am serious about what we are doing here.

But the second and more important reason I like Low Sunday is that it speaks deep truths about how the risen Christ comes to us. Low Sunday is sort of a down and out Sunday, and the Lord Jesus seems to appear especially to the down and out. If you read the stories of the resurrection appearances it is startling that without exception the disciples are doing nothing especially religious when Jesus appears to them. They aren’t praying or worshipping. In Luke they are walking on the road lamenting what had happened, or they are fishing, having given up their discipleship to return to their day job. Here in John’s Gospel on Easter night the disciples are in a locked room, hiding in fear.

And it occurs to me that is the church’s natural state: a bunch of scared people locking out the world. You might argue that the disciples are not yet the church, until Jesus comes to them and gives them the Holy Spirit (John’s version of Pentecost) and you would be right.  The church without the risen Christ and the Holy Spirit is just a bunch of quite literally dispirited people hiding in fear from real and imagined enemies.

And that is one of the reasons I like Low Sunday. The disciples are so obviously failures at being disciples and so they share that in common with us. It’s Easter and they don’t even know it. They have nothing to offer as the church, no vision, no energy, no courage, no conviction. They are hiding. They are afraid. As far as they know Jesus is dead and done. The shepherd has been struck down and the sheep have scattered.

They should have believed the witnesses. Peter and the beloved disciple have been to the empty tomb. They have told the disciples what they have seen. Mary has told them she has seen the Lord. They should have believed, but they didn’t, and yet Jesus still comes to them.

So this isn’t a story about the disciples or doubting Thomas so much as it is a story about Jesus. We always want Jesus to meet us at our best, to help us to improve us, but instead he meets us at our worst, and he doesn’t care about improving us. He comes not to offer improvement, but resurrection. He comes not to bring the world as it is, only “better oiled,” but a new heaven and a new earth.

And so he comes to these dispirited disciples hiding behind locked doors, and he comes to us hiding among our manifold fears and anxieties. He comes among us and finds us worrying about our money and our health and our future, worrying about our image and our reputations. He finds us ready to hide behind locked doors to keep the world out.

He finds us afraid that we will be found out, that it will become known that we are not as courageous, virtuous and committed as we have led people to believe. If people really knew how self-centered and selfish we are; if they only knew that we can be stinkers and schemers, can act dishonorably and shamefully, childishly stubbornly. If they only knew.

But Jesus does know and still he comes among us and stands there with his wounded side and those dreadful broken hands and says “Peace be with you.”  And if that isn’t good news, I don’t know what is.

And then he says something most astonishing: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” There must be some mistake. He can’t mean us. We are hiding in fear behind locked doors. But there is no mistake. And this is the beauty of the church. We are the ones he sends, not the virtuous, the strong, the wise, the courageous. No, he wants us, sends us, foolish men and women, and slow of heart to believe.

And Thomas missed it and can’t buy it, can’t believe it. They said, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in  the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” So there!

And Thomas is the church, too. Practical, not given to flights of fancy or imagination. Thomas is the church in all its stubborn, hard–headed practicality. He had been a disciple, sure, but look what happened to Jesus. It was time to get back to reality, back to basics, back to practicalities. Show me or I won’t believe. And once again the good news of Low Sunday is Jesus comes to Thomas, comes to the church in all shortsightedness, in all its stingy fearfulness, all its ingratitude. Jesus comes and says, you want to see, see, you want to touch, touch.

That’s the beauty of Low Sunday, the real Easter story is not so much last week among the lilies as it is here among the few of us who have gathered to hear how the church began with these fearful disciples.

And if we can dare to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, can we not dare to believe that he can raise us too, not just when we die or at the resurrection of the last day, but now, raise up a church, a people who on their own are dead or as good as dead, afraid and hiding, but who when he comes among them are raised to life, raised to become the church. To love as he loves, to forgive as he forgives.

On Wednesday I dragged myself to come to church to two committees meetings that met at the same time.  When I came in there was one person at the first meeting, and when I went down the hall there was only one at the other.  There were some important things to be done by each committee, but it was not to be done that night. On the way home I was complaining a little bit to the Lord, and I thought, well, people are busy, and they are volunteers, and its Easter, and finally I said, Lord, if you want something to happen here, you better do it, because we are not up to it on our own. And then I had my sermon. Of course we’re not up to it on our own. What was I thinking? We never have been and we never will be. But still he comes among us, still he sends us, still he calls us to be the church.

And then I had two funerals, one Friday and one yesterday, and at those funerals I saw the faces of the people as I told them the good news of the Resurrection, the good news of the Gospel, the Good news of Easter, and I thought, yes, this is the church. This is why we’re here, this is what we are here to do. To be witnesses to the risen Christ. To tell people he lives, and we can live too with him.

So I may feel a little low this Sunday, and you may feel a little low this Sunday, and this Sunday may feel a little low this Sunday, but the Risen Christ comes to meet us when we’re low, in fact, more likely than when we’re  not, and when he comes he bids us peace and send us out in the power of his resurrection. We’re coming out of our locked doors. We don’t need to hide. There is nothing to fear. Because it may be Low Sunday, but its still Easter.  Amen.

(I preached this sermon on April 30, 2000 at First Church of Christ, Congregational, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

(Painting: Caravaggio)

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“The Day after Easter”

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Easter lamb

 The Day after Easter

Today the tomb is empty, the fridge full:

Rare lamb, green beans, potatoes in plastic bags,

The remains of yesterday’s moveable feast.

When a gathered family, pilgrims and exiles,

Weary from work and travel and churchgoing,

Held hands, gave thanks, tucked into the meal:

Meat and mint jelly, fine red wine, a homemade torte,

And flaky baklava from the St George’s Greek pastry sale.

Glad to be alive, glad to be together,

Glad to celebrate the promise of new life,

And the hope of other such days and such feasts.

Richard L. Floyd, 2013

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One of my favorites: “Easter” by Arnold Kenseth

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Sunrise

An Easter offering by my late friend and colleague Arnold Kenseth:

“Easter”

On Easter the great tower of me falls.
I had built it well; my mind had planned it
After being schooled; my will had special wit
To dig me deep foundations, solid walls,
Blocks of moral toughness, windows to see
The enemy, the friend; large rooms, I thought
For light; and storey upon storey me
I raised, and famously my fame I sought.
So driven to prove the world with my estate.
I had not heard Christ on Good Friday die,
His body crooked, broke, and all friends fled.
I had not wept his cause in my carouse.
But now bold bells scatter against the sky,
And Christ is shattering my death, my pride;
As walls, blocks, windows, rooms, my silly penthouse
Spill into the dust I am, my narrow fate.
At last set free from virtue, knowledge, strife,
I mourn, then praise my God, and enter life.

(“Easter” by Arnold Kenseth

The Ritual Year, Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 1993)

(Photo by Rebecca M. Floyd)

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“I Crucified Thee!” A Sermon for Palm/Passion Sunday

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Crucifixion(As we prepare for Holy Week I offer this sermon of mine from 2004, my last year (as it turned out) as pastor at First Church in Pittsfield. Mel Gibson’s controversial film Passion of the Christ had brought the issues of the cross into the public view, and provided an opportunity to address this (quite literally) “crucial” subject.)

“This year  more than other years, there has been interest in the meaning of the passion of Christ because of the new Mel Gibson movie. I am not going to talk about the movie very much since I haven’t seen it. Seth Rogovoy from the Berkshire Eagle asked me to see it and be on a panel, but I said I wasn’t going to see it. But I had read the book!

I haven’t seen it for two reasons. The first is the same reason I have never seen Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan. I’m a wimp. I experience film as a powerful medium, and I am emotionally effected by movie violence. Somehow I can deal with battles between hobbits and orcs, but the depiction of historical violence I find very disturbing.

The second reason I haven’t seen it is subtler, and perhaps harder to understand. It is my feeling that there are some things that shouldn’t be put on film, and I personally feel that the death of Jesus is one of them. That may seem hypocritical since I have a reproduction of Matthias Grünwald’s Crucifixion on the wall of my study. Artists have always depicted biblical events. Why not film artists? For me, it is the appearance of reality about film, that “You Were There” quality that makes it so powerful.

I know people who have loved this movie and people who have hated it, people who have felt their life changed by it and people who have walked out of it. I have spoken to people who felt the movie was anti-Semitic and people who didn’t. It seems the movie for some people has served as a kind of cinematic Rorschach test for beliefs people already hold.

However accurate the film is, there is at least one sense in which the movie is not quite biblical, and that is in its detailed depiction of the event. None of the Gospels really describe the crucifixion. There is a restraint about the Gospel accounts, a kind of modesty before the obscenity and horror of the event. Of course, the harsh truth is that none of the Evangelists needed to be told what a crucifixion was like. Whether they wanted to or not most of them had seen crucified slaves along the roads. Tens of thousands of the enemies of Rome, real or perceived, were crucified in the first century AD, so Jesus’ crucifixion was just another one of those.

When the movie came out the cover of Newsweek asked in boldface type: “Who really killed Jesus?” That question arises out of a long and shameful history of Christian anti-Semitism. The foundation of this anti-Semitism has been the attempt to attach historical blame for the crucifixion to the Jews. For centuries in Christian Europe violence toward Jews frequently took place on Good Friday.

We must acknowledge the sad truth that for Jews the cross has been an emblem of persecution just as for Islam it has been an emblem of the Crusades. To admit this is not to apologize for the cross, but it is to apologize for the reprehensible acts that have been done in its name.

The truth is that the responsibility for Jesus’ death lies at the feet of all humankind. That the characters in the Gospel accounts of the Passion were Romans or Jews is incidental to the significance of the cross. We must never forget that Jesus and all his followers were Jewish. Let us remember, too, that “Second Temple Judaism” was not monolithic, but had parties and factions, and some of them were hostile to Jesus.

We do know that crucifixion was never a Jewish method of execution; that would have been death by stoning. A cross was a Roman device, and his executioners were Roman soldiers. So from a strictly historical point of view it must be said that Jesus was the victim of a Roman state execution.

But to the question, “Who killed Jesus? The better answer must be, “I did.  You did.  We did.”  Which is to say that it was human sin that killed Jesus. He not only died for our sins, he died because of our sins. That is expressed in the second verse of the hymn “Ah, holy Jesus,” which asks:

“Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!

Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;

I crucified thee.”

And the second station of the cross in the Roman Catholic Church prays: “My Jesus, this cross should be mine, not Thine; my sins crucified Thee.”

How can this be? How can a man who died two thousand years ago in Jerusalem have anything to do with me? How can I be guilty? In much the same way church members have sometimes told me that they don’t feel like the confession of sin in our service relates to them. They don’t feel as if they have done any of the things we confess, such as being unjust to their neighbors, or fouling the environment, or what have you.

I try to explain to them that a general confession is just that, general. The prayer speaks for a broader constituency that any of us, or even all of us within the congregation. For when we come before God we don’t come merely as individuals, we come as part of the human family. And as part of the human family we participate in vast social, political and economic networks, many of them unjust and even evil.

Which is to say, that to some extent, we all have blood on our hands, although none of us likes to think about it. In Dostoevsky’s profound novel The Brothers Karamazov, he tells the story of “The Grand Inquisitor.” Christ comes back again to earth, and who he is and what he stands for are too threatening to the status quo for him to be allowed to live. The question is asked, “If Christ walked among us again, would we kill him again?”

John Thomas has written, “Our fingerprints on the nails are easy to overlook, but they are there. Holy Week presses us to see that we too, are violators. Some years ago,” he writes, “I watched a documentary on the Holocaust, titled “Shoah,” which included expected scenes of horror. But for me, the most disturbing portrait of evil was the benign face of an elderly man who had worked for the German state railroad. His job was to issue tickets to Jews forced into cattle cars for transport to the gas chambers. This bewildered-looking man couldn’t comprehend that his bureaucratic job had anything to do with the horror of the Holocaust. He didn’t shoot Jews or toss them in the ovens. He just issued tickets.”  Thomas concludes, “You and I don’t flay the skin off Jesus. But we do issue tickets. Our complicity in evil is real and often profoundly undramatic. Until we face that reality, the Passion is little more than a tragic movie, and we will miss the truth of our own profound need for the redemption of Easter.” (United Church News, April 2004)

But at the foot of the cross we can be set free to recognize ourselves among the guilty. We can identify ourselves among the crowd, both on Palm Sunday when they cried, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” and on Good Friday, when they shouted “Crucify him.” A disappointed angry mob is dangerous, probably not all that different from the crowd that mutilated the bodies of the slain American workers in Fallujah in Iraq this week. Such shameful acts of violence and horror take place all the time, not just in the past, not just “in history.” At the foot of the cross can we acknowledge that even the very best of us bears some resemblance to the worst of us? Can we recognize ourselves as sinners in need of redemption?

Can we put aside the tendency to blame “the other” for human sin and evil? Can we leave behind the need to point an accusing finger at those who are not like us, whether they are poor, or black, or Muslim or Jewish, so that we don’t have to confront our own sin?

This sounds like a grim exercise, but it is a necessary one. Because the Gospel is often bad news before it is able to be Good News. God’s judgment and mercy are two sides of the same coin. And so when we admit our sin, and the sin of the human family of which we are a part, we can then receive the forgiveness God wants for us. At the foot of the cross we can see that Jesus died not only because of our sins, but also for our sins, to take them away and free us for new life with him and for each other.

And this is only possible because Jesus’ death is not just any death. No, the incredible claim we make is that “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.” If Jesus had been just another man, even a very good man, then he is, at best, an example to us of the power of sacrifice, and, at worst, just another martyr to human violence. Then his death is merely a tragedy. Because suffering is never, in and of itself, redemptive. Just ask anyone who suffers. To believe otherwise is masochism.

But why is his death redemptive? Why is Jesus’ death different from all the other tragic deaths in history? Why is his death different from all the other men who ended up on Roman crosses? The answer is not that he suffered more. Others have suffered more, even at the hand of Christians.

So what is it that makes his death different, and makes his cross not a symbol of shame, but a symbol of faith? The full story will be told next Sunday on Easter. It is the resurrection that makes the difference. It is the resurrection that transforms the cross from an emblem of horror into an emblem of God’s wondrous love.

To the eyes of Easter faith the bitter cross is viewed as an act of Israel’s God, consistent with who God had been in the past, a God who rescues and saves, who liberates and reconciles. So the cross is transformed into an atoning, redeeming, reconciling divine act of grace. God in Jesus Christ gives up his life in humble obedience. He takes our sin and the judgment that goes with it and puts it to death on the cross with himself. That is how the cross becomes the symbol of Christian faith, not as a way to blame others for sin, but to admit our own sin and marvel at the lengths that God will go to take it away.

If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus, and him crucified! There you will see the very nature of God. As C. S. Dinsmore once wrote, “There was a cross in the heart of God before there was one planted on the green hill outside Jerusalem.”

The cross tells us that God’s grace is bigger than our sin. The extent of that love should humble us. As Isaac Watts penned, “When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the prince of glory died, my richest gain, I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.”

That is what the cross stands for, the vast love of God, and our humble contrition before it when we consider the weight of our now-forgiven sins. To turn the cross into a symbol of Christian triumphalism, or of a Crusade, or of persecution is to betray its meaning. To make the cross an emblem of hate like the twisted crosses of Nazism or the Ku Klux Klan is to crucify Christ all over again.

But to admit “I crucified Thee” is not an empty pious gesture. Nor is it mere breast-beating. It is an honest admission of our need to have our sins forgiven, and not only ours but the sins of the whole world, our need to be reconciled to God and to our neighbors. The Good News that we preach is that God has already accomplished this for us through the cross. We need only take what he gives us, and we will find that when we turn to him, he is already coming to meet us.

So let us come to his table today in humility and contrition as those who need forgiveness, as those who need God’s grace.  And let us find in him, whose body was broken for us, and whose blood was shed for us, both bread for the journey and food for eternal life.  Amen.

(I preached this sermon on Palm/Passion Sunday, April 4, 2004 at First Church of Christ, Congregational in Pittsfield, Massachusetts)

(Painting: “Crucifixion” by Matthias Grunewald)

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Retired Clergy in the Pews

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Retired clergyI was blessed during my several pastorates to have  a number of clergy sitting in the pews. Some were retired, some were pastoral counselors, and several were seminary professors from nearby schools. With very few exceptions these colleagues were always encouraging and supportive, and I valued their comments, conversation and friendship.

Now I am a pew sitter myself for the most part, except for the odd pulpit supply invitation. I enjoy hearing a good sermon and have been blessed to hear many in recent years.

But not everyone finds the presence of clergy in the pews a blessing (see cartoon above). I have active colleagues who tell me that some of their retired clergy colleagues can be a burden to them, that they know they will be critical of them and they make them nervous.

When this happens it is a failure of a basic kind of collegiality that should prevail among the ordained clergy, the ministry of encouragement. Our role as pew sitters is to support our pastors. We of all people know the nature of the job. And out of that knowledge should come from us a great measure of appreciation for all they have to do. We should be praying for them regularly. We were once where they are and were blessed with elder teachers, mentors, and friends.

I have learned these past few years that it is a difficult transition to go from being regularly in the pulpit for decades to finding oneself in the new role of congregant. It takes patience and humility.

But the thing we retired clergy have in common with the one who now leads our community in worship is worship itself, and the reality that pastor and people stand under the Word of God, and the grace and love that is proclaimed in it. And there is a blessing in being a worshipper without the responsibility of presiding, a chance to open oneself to God’s presence and power without having to wonder if the absent-minded reader will find the right lesson or whether the kids will be so sugared up that they will hijack your children’s message.

So sit back my friends and let the new kids on the block take their turn. As our brother Paul said to the church in Corinth, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gives the growth.”

(I would give attribution to the cartoonist if I knew who they were. If you know let me know.)

(Update on the cartoon from Dave Macy:

“The cartoon appeared on a Church Pension Group (Episcopal Church) calendar. The cartoonist is The Rev. Jay Sidebotham. From this year’s calendar: “Fr. Sidebotham serves as rector of Church of the Holy Spirit, Lake Forest, Illinois. Before hearing a call to ordained ministry, he worked in New York in the fields of animation, illustration and advertising. (Some would say he is still working in advertising.) He is grateful not only for the opportunity that parish work affords to continue expressing himself through his drawing, but also for the abundant supply of cartoon material that emerges in parish life.””

Thanks, Dave.)

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The 28th MCCM Summer Barth Session for Pastors

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BarthThe Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers will hold the 28th Summer Karl Barth Session for Pastors on June 10 and 11, 2013 at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts. The topic is “Karl Barth’s Theological Ethics and the Public Square: The Economy.” Our leader will be Dr. Daniel L. Migliore, the Charles Hodge Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.

We will take up CD III/4, pages 509-64 on work as a part of the active life formed by God’s covenant of creation.. Professor Migliore asks, “Do we have a theology that understands the importance of work from the perspective of God’s intention for human life?” Our afternoon sessions will ponder statements by the administration on “jobs.”

The fee for the two-day session is $50, which includes breakfast and lunch and snacks and an optional dinner at the parsonage on the evening of the 11th. Enrollment is limited. To register e-mail raliweaver@dedhamuu.org or call the Reverend Rali Weaver at 617-495-5979.

These sessions are designed for pastors. They typically have about 15 participants in a seminar setting. I have attended most of them over the years, and we have been led by notable Barth scholars such as Hans Frei, George Hunsinger, Eberhard Busch and Robert Jensen. It has been mostly UCC and UUA pastors, but we are open to all denominations.

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Are the banks too big for trial? Seems so!

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WarrenMy Senator, Elizabeth Warren, wants to protect you and me from fraudulent and criminal practices that hurt consumers. She fought to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she should have been asked to lead. If she had she wouldn’t have been free to run and win a seat in the Senate, and some of those who feared her might be wishing now that they had let her run the agency, which Congress is trying to cripple into impotence anyway.

Today we can see why Wall Street and the banking industry poured a record number of dollars into Scott Brown’s campaign to try to defeat her. They fear her honesty and tenacity, and that was on display in her questioning of top regulators.

Many have wondered why nobody went to jail for the criminal banking practices that led to the international financial crisis. Now, because of Warren, we know the answer. Because no governemental regulatory agency brought any one to trial.

That was the ‘take away” from Warren’s first hearing of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

According to Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post:

Warren questioned top regulators from the alphabet soup that is the nation’s financial regulatory structure: the FDIC, SEC, OCC, CFPB, CFTC, Fed and Treasury.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts had a straightforward question for them: When was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial? It was a harder question than it seemed.

One after another regulators obfuscated until Warren finally got them all to admit that they had never brought anybody to trial. She responded by saying,

There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I’m really concerned that ‘too big to fail’ has become ‘too big for trial.’

I applaud Senator Warren for speaking truth to power and getting at the essential unfairness and inequality of our legal system, and for exposing the federal regulators who are supposed to be protecting us. If banks are too big for trial it means they are above the law.

Warren herself summed it up pretty well when she concluded:

‎If they can break the law and drag in billions in profits, and then turn around and settle, paying out of those profits, they don’t have much incentive to follow the law.

Or no incentive at all. Because several days of a trial would bring out to the public their fraudulent and criminal practices and embarrass them.

So what can any of us do about it? Well, for one thing we can vote and support courageous candidates like Warren. And we can put pressure on our representatives for more transparency and action around these issues. We can pressure Congress to strengthen the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and confirm director Richard Cordray. And we can use social media to embarrass the banks and the regulators. Because they should be embarrassed. They should be embarrassed that they made huge sums of money at the public’s expense, and got away with it.

Marilynne Robinson writing about the limits of science criticizes our current culture’s lack of ethics or morality, which she sees as part of the loss of religion (and the religious imagination.) She writes: “Science cannot serve in the place of religion because it cannot generate an ethics or a morality. It can give us no reason to prefer a child to a dog, or to choose honorable poverty over fraudulent wealth.” Religious people may want to speculate on how it is that the disparity between rich and poor in our country grew at the very same time that the world financial system came apart? And why nobody faced any consequences. Was it that nobody was at fault? Seems unlikely.

So those who were at fault should be embarrassed. More correctly they should be ashamed. And some of them should go to trial.

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“What’s the Point?” Reflections on a Christian Eschatology

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In Woody Allen’s movie Annie Hall, there is a great scene (click picture above) in which Alvy Singer, the character played by Woody Allen, flashes back to his childhood in Brooklyn.  His mother takes him to the family Doctor, Dr. Flicker, an avuncular man wearing a stethoscope, and smoking a cigarette. Alvy’s mom tells Dr. Flicker that 9 year-old Alvy is depressed.

Doctor Flicker: Why are you depressed, Alvy?

Alvy’s Mom: Tell Dr. Flicker.

[Alvy sits, his head down, his mother answers for him]

Alvy’s Mom: It’s something he read.

Doctor Flicker: Something he read, huh?

Alvy: [his head still down, quietly] The universe is expanding.

Doctor Flicker: The universe is expanding?

Alvy: Well, the universe is everything, and if it’s expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything!

Alvy’s Mom: What is that your business?

[she turns back to the doctor]

Alvy’s Mom: He stopped doing his homework!

Alvy: What’s the point?

Alvy’s Mom: What has the universe got to do with it? You’re here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding!

Doctor Flicker: It won’t be expanding for billions of years yet, Alvy. And we’ve gotta try to enjoy ourselves while we’re here!”

I was looking for this quote yesterday, and when I found it I put the Yahoo clip on my FB page. A child psychologist friend of mine, who is also a professor, wrote this comment:

I always refer to it when I teach developmental psychology, and I ask how many students remember feeling this way: “What’s the point in doing anything because the sun is going to go out in several billion years?” Many, many young people remember the precise moment when they first felt this way….

Alvy the young fatalist is a stand-in for all of us faced with the futility of a finite world, and with our own mortality. Because Alvy is right that everything comes to an end.

That is our topic for today, “the End.” I loved the way Gail (Miller, our chair) framed the subject for us for this meeting: “The End! How do we talk about the End? – End of time – End of life – End of… Where are Christians headed? In this life and the next? What does Christian Eschatology look like?”

There are many directions one could go with this set of questions, but the common assumption that they would all share is that there is an end. And (pun intended) this is where I want to begin.

I want to begin with Alvy Singer’s question, “What’s the point?” If there’s an end, “What’s the point?” And there is an end. Both our life and the life of the planet we live on are finite. The mortality rate as of this morning is still 100%, and the very best science predicts the likelihood that our sun, which is a star, will some day in the distant future blink out leaving earth without the conditions for life. Whether the expanding universe itself is finite is an open question, but for the purposes of this discussion finitude is what we are faced with.

So how do we talk about Christian hope in the face of our finitude and the finitude of our world? My own answer to this is quite simple. First let me say what we cannot do. We cannot construct hope out of the materials given to us by the fact of our finitude. Christian hope lies elsewhere.

Alvy read the best science and rightly despairs of what that narrative has to offer. But that narrative, though the reigning one, is not the only one. Science can tell us what it can tell us and we are grateful for it.

But science, so good at measuring our universe and examining our bodies, can not tell us what either means.

Marilynne Robinson writes,

The modern fable is that science exposed religion as a delusion and more or less supplanted it. But science cannot serve in the place of religion because it cannot generate an ethics or a morality. It can give us no reason to prefer a child to a dog, or to choose honorable poverty over fraudulent wealth. It can give us not grounds for preferring what it is excellent over what is sensationalistic. And this is more or less where we are now. (The Death of Adam, p 71)

To enlarge our thinking and engage our imagination about what the end of things means we need to look elsewhere than science, and the elsewhere I want to look at is the Christian Story, and especially what it tells us about the character and identity of God.

And, as those who know me will not be surprised, that among the many places in the Christian Story we can turn to know the character and identity of God, it is in the cross of Christ that we get a particularly decisive picture. And by the cross I mean, as our brother Paul did, the decisive act of God that focuses on Good Friday and culminates in Easter.

Here is the love that will not let us go, a love so deep, so broad, so high, as one of our hymns describes it, that it will die for us. So again like Paul, to the facts of finitude, “we preach Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 1:23)

Which is to say I want to argue for a cross-shaped eschatology, one that sees the facts of finitude for us and our world in the template of Good Friday and Easter. ( For a fuller working out of this idea see my “The Cross as an Eschatological Act of God” in Hope for your Future: Theological Voices from the Pastorate. Edited by William H. Lazareth. Eerdmans, 2002.)

Jesus’ death ends his life. But beyond the discontinuity of death, God raises him to new life. There is continuity in that he remains identifiably himself; he bears the marks of the Roman nails on his hands and feet. Yet he is also different. Some don’t recognize him. His glorified body is and isn’t his earthly body.

Imagining this continuity and discontinuity of Good Friday and Easter provide us the model for a proper Christian eschatology.

In that light how do we think and talk about the end? First of all we need to be honest about the impact of the end, just as we need to be honest about the fact of our own death.  I once got in trouble for opening my Easter sermon by saying, “On Good Friday Jesus was as dead as a door-nail.”  But it’s true. Good Friday was a dead end, and symbolizes all the other ends that flesh is heir to, the end of promise, the end of hope, and the end of all human possibilities.

To get a sense for how it felt then, recall that story you all know well when Jesus meets some of his followers on the road to Emmaus. He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”

They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

“What things?” Jesus asked.

“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” (Luke 24:13-35)

That was the end of that, so, as young Alvy would ask, “What’s the point?”

But that wasn’t that. That wasn’t that. The resurrection changed all that, and changed the world.

But it wasn’t too long before the earliest Christians realized that the kingdom of God in its fullness had not arrived, and so they looked for a second Advent, in which what had begun, even in their midst, and what was promised, would be completed and fulfilled.

So even now, all these years later, we Christians, and our church, live between the times, between the first coming and the second coming. We live in the already of Christ’s appearing, and the not yet of his reappearing in glory to consummate all things.

So our faith is profoundly eschatological. But you would often never know it from being in our worship. For example, the church year has a peculiar feature about it. We end the year on Christ the King Sunday with a flurry of eschatological texts, and then we immediately begin a new year in Advent with another flurry of eschatological texts, and then we don’t really have to think about eschatology in between.

But we should think about. I have been reflecting on something Steven (Small, the local pastor) once wrote to me in reflecting on his Advent Christian background:

A deep hope in the return of Christ is at the center of my eschatology in particular and it informs my theology in general. The Adventists gave us some real gifts: a more gracious view of a loving God through their understanding of conditional immortality for one. There is a tendency to snicker in mainline circles when it comes to discussions of the Second Coming. (But) if we truly believe that Christ has died, and Christ is risen, why would we not be quite certain that Christ will come again.

And as pastors, if we have not thought carefully about eschatology, what do we have to say to those who are facing the end, whatever that end may be: the end of their life, the end of their vocation, the end of their marriage, the end of a relationship with a family member, the end of a dream, a hope, a promise?

Alvy’s question, “What’s the point?” has no good answer apart from faith, and that faith is an Easter faith that lies on the other side of Good Friday.

Because when there was no hope, no human possibilities, when we were done and there was no point, God was not done. And that is who we are, the community that looks for more at the end. The community that believes that God is not done. That God is never done.

The end of life is a fearsome thing. But the God who raised Jesus from the dead is the God we worship.  Can that end have dominion over us?

The end of the world is a scary thing. Even 9 year-old Alvy knew this. But the God who created the world, can not this same God redeem and save this world, and create a new heaven and a new earth?

What can we say at the end? What can we say at the several endings that mark our life and our world?

This is what we can say: That God is with us at the end as at the beginning, and all the way through.  “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord. Behold, I make all things new!” Amen.

I preached this sermon on February 7, 2013, at the First Congregational Church (UCC) of West Boylston, Massachusetts for a meeting of the New England chapter of Confessing Christ in the United Church of Christ.