In the violent situation of the cross Jesus showed us his
deepest character.
Christianity has tended at points toward a cult of the
crucifixion, a glorification of his death bordering on the morbid. But his
death, and how he died, tell us something crucial about who he was and what God
is up to in this world.
James Hillman, the provocative American psychiatrist, reflects
on Socrates’ death and how his daimon, his inner spiritual guide, told
him not to escape imprisonment and execution: "His death belonged to the
integrity of his image, to his innate form."
Jesus’ death -- and these seven utterances -- belong to the
integrity of his image and to his innate form.
They also point to the effective transformative power of his
death and may help us re-examine the meaning of the doctrine of the atonement.
There are forms of this doctrine which are morally repugnant to us. How, for
example, could a loving God require the death of his son in order to forgive our
sins? But we do not abandon the doctrine of creation because we feel the
language of Genesis chapter 2 quaint, or because we find Bishop Ussher’s
dating of creation at 4004 B.C. E. preposterous. So let us probe its meaning
from another angle today.
I
Today’s word from the cross is "Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)
It was a word which followed, among other things, betrayal.
Judas betrayed him in exchange for the thirty pieces of silver, our Lenten
symbol for today.
He betrayed him with a kiss. Are not our most painful
betrayals by those close enough for the intimacy of a kiss?
As he kissed Jesus, Jesus said, "Friend, do what you have
to do." Perhaps if Judas could have heard those words as Jesus meant them,
he would not have committed suicide.
Then Jesus said on the cross for all to hear, including Judas:
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The evil we do, the harm we inflict is often on a level beyond
our knowing, or full knowing. Albert Speer, one of the leaders of the Third
Reich, repented of his involvement in the Nazi regime. Part of the working out
of his repentance was the writing of the book, Inside the Third Reich. In
a recent book entitled Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth, the
author says that for all his truth-telling Speer was never able to face the
truth about how early he learned about the Final Solution against the
Jews. The reason, she theorized, was that he could not admit the truth and live.
His psyche could not bear the full truth.
So on the cross we hear a word we need more than we know we
need it: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." God,
forgive us not only the evil we know we have done but also the evil we will not
let ourselves know.
II
Now to the doctrine of the atonement in a new way. One meaning
of the cross is that Jesus died at the hands of sacred violence in order to
expose its hidden mechanism in our hearts and at the heart of society and
thereby to bring about its eventual abolition. The cross opened a crack in the
system of sacrificing others for the sake of God or the good of society, a crack
which is bringing about its end.
There is a sacred violence near the heart of all religion and
of every social group. This is the insight of French social philosopher René
Girard. We create scapegoats, people or groups, and do violence to them in order
to maintain our unity and purity. It is the impetus behind human sacrifice and
inquisition, witch-hunt, lynching, war and hate crimes. It was the logic of
Caiaphas the high priest, who said during Jesus’ last days:
It is better that one man should die than the whole nation be
destroyed.
Rome was happy to oblige.
Jesus’ death is the beginning of a nonviolent revolution
against all forms of sacred violence. His death exposes the deadly virus in the
human soul and is its cure. It is we who carry the medicine to the world.
When Judas betrayed him with the kiss, soldiers came to arrest
him. Sacred violence does its worst when religion and state get together. One of
the disciples took out his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s
servant. Jesus said, "No, those who take by the sword die by it."
Later in the trial Pilate asked, "Are you the King of the
Jews?" Jesus answered:
My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were
of this world, my servants would be fighting.
When Jesus said, "My kingship is not of this world,"
he was not talking about life in heaven. He was talking about a way of living in
this life not bound up in the ways of sacred violence: a way based on
forgiveness, in a community of shalom.
III
Sacred violence is the violence people engage in in the name
of God or in the name of our highest allegiance, whatever that is. Its hope is
that it will preserve the social, political or moral order of the world. If we
can identify a scapegoat to cast out or kill, then we will preserve all that is
holy and good.
It happens in board rooms and churches, war rooms, governor’s
offices, schoolyards and cocktail parties.
We and the British performed an air raid in Iraq the other
day, and the stock market temporarily bounced up. "War is good for the
economy," we hear in the air. Is there an economist in the house? Is this
true? Is it an economic or psychological mechanism? And if sometimes true, are
we willing to trade human life for the Dow Jones Average? The new American
religion: The Market as God. Dowism. (Spelled not Tao-ism but Dow-ism.)
Fundamentalist leaders in America have said over the past ten
years that the decay of the western world can be attributed to homosexuality.
Does capital punishment instead of lifetime imprisonment make
us a better people and a safer nation?
Orlando Patterson, Harvard social scientist, has written a
devastating new book, Rituals of Blood, in which he documents that the
large number of lynchings in the south had the character of religious ritual.
They were public events; ministers were almost always present to give their
blessing. Sunday was the preferred day, crosses were burned and the two favorite
songs sung were Onward Christian Soldiers and The Old Rugged Cross1.
We have come a long way. The lynching of James Byrd on June 7,
1998, in Jasper, Texas, drew community outrage rather than silent assent.
But the legacy of racism still infects our land, segregates
our churches and creates a society of disproportionate inequality. Predominantly
white churches like ours need to make racial reconciliation a priority, which
includes friendship with African-American churches and the work of justice in
our community.
Why bring up all this dreadful stuff? Because dreadful things
still happen -- and religion is often in the mix. As Pascal said:
Men never do evil so completely
and so cheerfully as when they
do it from religious conviction.
Oliver Cromwell once said that he "would rather fight all
the armies of France than ten Scottish Presbyterians who think they are doing
the will of God."
Baptists are not exempt. Carlyle Marney loved to tell the
story about the Quaker farmer in Texas with pacifist convictions who owned an
ill-tempered milk cow. One day the cow bit him; the next day the cow kicked over
the full milk bucket; the third day the cow swatted him with its tail. The
Quaker looked at his cow and said,
And he was speaking first of himself.
The church was called into being to become a colony of
reconciled humanity, the New Creation, a community where the walls of hostility
are broken down and we are made one, where we learn and practice kindness and
compassion, where we bear with one another in our weakness, and where we are
given grace to forgive as we have been forgiven. I am paraphrasing Colossians
3:12-16. It should be the covenant by which we live. If we did, we would more
truly live the church covenant we voted in 1981.
I close with three vignettes, the first an Associated Press
photograph, duplicated for you. Evidently there’s been a Klan rally in Ann
Arbor, Michigan. Some anti-Klan protesters have begun beating a Klan member
wearing a Confederate flag.
Keshia Thomas, an eighteen-year-old African-American woman, is
shielding the racist from those beating him, shielding him with her own body!
There he is, skin-headed, tattooed, with what looks like a
racist slur on his shirt. And there is Keshia, daughter of God, member of the
atonement community of Christ, laying her body between him and them.
Second story. I got it from Frye Gaillard this week at lunch.
He’s writing a book about the civil rights movement. He had talked with John
Lewis, one of the great black leaders of the movement, probably second only to
Martin Luther King in stature.
Lewis had been in the first Selma-to-Montgomery march, one of
its leaders. Governor George Wallace sent his troops to beat them back, which
they did with uncontrolled brutality. Lewis had his skull-cracked open.
Years later, between terms as governor, Wallace, now in a
wheel chair, paralyzed by a bullet, called John and asked him to come visit. He
did.
Governor Wallace said, "John, I need your forgiveness.
Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?" John said, "Yes,
Governor, I forgive you." Then Wallace asked: "Do you think God has it
in his heart to forgive me?" John replied, "Governor Wallace, I’m
even more certain about that."
The last story, a prayer scrawled on a scrap piece of paper by
someone killed in the German death camp at Buchenwald:
O Lord, when I shall come with glory in your kingdom,
do not remember only the men of good will, remember
also the men of evil. May they be remembered not only
for their acts of cruelty in this camp, the evil they have
done to us prisoners, but balance against their cruelty
the fruits we have reaped under the stress and in the pain:
the comradeship, the courage, the greatness of heart, the
humility and patience which have been born in us and
become part of our lives, because we have suffered at
their hand . . . . May the memory of us not be a nightmare
to them when they stand in judgment. May all that we
have suffered be acceptable to you as a ransom for them.
Then at the end, the person quoted these words of Jesus from
John’s gospel:
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and
dies.2"
This is what is saving the world. This is what is saving the
world.
_______________________________________________________________
1 Orlando Patterson, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in
Two American Centuries (Washington, D. C., Counterpoint: 1998) pp. 193-194.
2 Rest of John 12:24 " . . .it remains alone; but if it dies, it
bears much fruit."
Return to Main Sermons Page
