I Don't Think Good Friday Was God's Idea

“I despise your feasts.” - God

My first and second sermons were delivered to the congregation that sent me off to seminary, Christ UMC in Venice, Florida.  My first sermon was preached just as I departed for my theological education.    My wife also spoke briefly on that first occasion and one of the members of the congregation said to us as he was headed out the door, “Are you sure it’s not her who’s been called to preach?”

Nevertheless, I’m the one who pursued Biblical studies, while she took care of me and our first child during that first year of graduate school.  When I went back to that Florida congregation the next summer I was perhaps a bit more polished in the pulpit and my message was essentially this - that what God did in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ told us nothing new about God.  To read the Old Testament rightly is to see that God has always been in the business of offering grace to the world - first, in creation, then through the formation of Israel (a people who were to be a “light to the nations”), then culminating in the Incarnation (Jesus) and Pentecost (the gift of the Holy Spirit).  John, the Gospel-writer, attests to this in his first chapter when he declares, “In the beginning was the Word . . .”  Jesus was in the beginning with God offering grace all along. 

Of course, the Bible is also the story of our/human rejection of grace in preference to following our own course (SIN!).  Sin is accompanied by guilt  which causes the people of God to think that something must be done about it.  After all, surely God must be angry at us for all our sinning.  Then we find God’s people creating a host of cleanliness laws and ritual sacrifices intended to appease the supposed wrath of God.  The temple in Jerusalem, and before it was built, the tabernacle in the wilderness, was the scene of the slaughter/sacrifice of untold numbers of animals to “pay the price” of guilt for sin.  I can only imagine the rivers of blood dripping from the altar, and the stains on the priests’ garments.

All of this is well-attested in scripture, as though the purity and justice of God required these sacrifices.  Even the death of Jesus is interpreted in this way in the New Testament.  For example, Romans 5:9, “[N]ow that we have been justified by [Jesus’] blood, [we will] be saved through him from the wrath of God.” 

But what if most of these passages of scripture have gotten it wrong?  [What?  Scripture is wrong?].  Hear me out.  I’m not discounting scripture.  For me the Bible has always been authoritative for my spiritual formation and for the formation of the church.  In fact, I’m building my argument on a classic bit of prophecy from Amos.  Let’s hear him as the voice of God:

I hate, I despise your festivals,

    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

    I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals

    I will not look upon. 

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

    I will not listen to the melody of your harps.

But let justice roll down like waters,

    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:21-24)

If I take Amos seriously, as scripture, then what he is saying is that all those ritual sacrifices making atonement for the guilt and sin of God’s people is not something that God ever desired.  What God, through Amos, is saying is that somehow Israel had gotten it all wrong.  What God wants is for us to be gracious in the world, the way God has been gracious to us.  How are we gracious in the world?  Amos says, by doing justice, by being righteous.  

Not convinced?  Well, how about the prophet Micah’s take on this subject:

With what shall I come before the Lord,

    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

    with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” 

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

    and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

    and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6-8)

Okay, so if we did a quantitative study of all the passages on this subject I would be on the losing side of the argument.  There is ample scriptural attestation to substitutionary atonement.  But for me what hangs in the balance is not the number of verses on one side or the other, but which verses more clearly reveal the nature of God.  And if God is exactly as revealed in the person of Jesus, then grace trumps wrath every time.  You see, I don’t believe salvation was offered to us ONLY in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Salvation is the modus operandi of God from the very beginning of creation.  Again, John:  

He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:2-5)

But wait a minute.  Wasn’t Jesus himself a ritual sacrifice?  Didn’t he have to die to atone for the sins of all humanity?  Wasn’t he the second Adam who had to atone for the sin of the first Adam (oh, let’s ignore Eve)?  Wasn’t that the whole point of Good Friday?  I admit there is a kind of logic to this argument, except that a god would have to be some kind of monster to require the death of his son before accepting all the rest of us into his arms.  

And yet that is the overwhelming historical argument.  The Suffering Servant in Isaiah cannot help but be interpreted as the precursive model for Jesus’ atonement.  And there is plenty of the New Testament that claims that God made Jesus to be sin that we might be made righteous (2 Cor. 5:21).  The apostle Paul seems to have bought into the theology of the sacrificial cultus to explain what God has done in Jesus Christ. But I don’t buy it.  I think the theology of Christ’s atonement is a misreading of the Biblical story in light of ancient Israel’s sacrificial cult rather than as a judgment on that sacrificial cult.   The God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and mediated to us through the Holy Spirit is not a monster, even if the weight of scripture seems to suggest otherwise.  

After all, there are the voices of Amos and Micah.  Minor prophets, yes.  But with something major to say.  I might add Luke’s Gospel to the mix as well.  When Luke records the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus is preaching at his hometown synagogue and he quotes the prophet Isaiah to outline the purpose of his mission.  Here is what it says:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

    and recovery of sight to the blind, 

        to let the oppressed go free, 

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Not a word about being the sacrificial lamb that takes away the sins of the world.  And while John the Baptist in John’s Gospel points to Jesus as just such a Lamb, Jesus, himself, in his “I am,” statements makes no allusions to atonement.  

I am the bread of life.

I am the light of the world.

I am the door.

I am the good shepherd (not the sheep!).

I am the resurrection and the life.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

I am the true vine.

Sounds like grace to me.  

You don’t have to agree with me.  My thoughts are not orthodoxy though I don’t think I am a heretic.  I am, admittedly, dispensing with a vast trove of Biblical theology.  But my thoughts are also based on scripture, and I believe they are more congruent with the portrait of Jesus we find in the Gospels.

You see, I don’t think Jesus was predestined to die for the sins of the world.  What I think is that any one who lives like Jesus did is going to raise an alarm with the powers and principalities.  The authorities of the status quo are going to be threatened by a person like Jesus, and it is no surprise that Jesus was killed.  His death may not have been predetermined, but it was inevitable.  There is profundity in Jesus’ words from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”   Perhaps God took the death of Jesus as an opportunity to say, “Okay, let’s stop all this nonsense!”  Good Friday was not part of God’s plan, but the resurrection turned the tables on God’s opponents, so to speak. And yet, the nonsense of the sacrificial cult continued as the church through the ages required mental gymnastics to support a theology that proclaims God is love at the same time that God acts like a monster.  

I have had enough of the nonsense.  I cringe when I remember the tortured theology of some of my early sermons trying to make sense of a God who demands expiation propitiation, payment, etc.  I think Jesus died because the authorities saw his life as a threat.  When we choose to live a similar life, the very life Jesus invites us into, then we should not be surprised when the powers are threatened by us, and then in turn threaten us, even unto death.  Jesus often says to his disciples, “Take up your cross and follow me.”  Christlike living is not the avoidance of sacrifice, but such sacrifice is not what God requires of us, but what the world will demand of us when we love like Jesus loves.  When we do unto others as we would have them do unto us, there will be sacrifice.  When we love God and neighbor, there will be sacrifice - not to appease the wrath of God, but because the life of righteousness is inimical to the powers and principalities.       

Still, “the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not over come it.”  Let us then shine our lights before others that they may see our good works and give glory to God until the day the kingdom comes and the world demands no more sacrifices of anyone.  Good Friday was not God's doing, but Easter Sunday was . . . is.

 

 

The Beautiful Struggle - the Way

Follow Me. . .

I know  

the Way

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  Jesus

In the early days disciples of Jesus were called people of the Way.

They might as well have been people “on” the Way.

Followers of Jesus are going somewhere.

What’s our destination?  Heaven?  The kingdom of God?  

Yes, I suppose . . . but is that it?

Some of my bitterest conflicts have arisen from my suggestion 

that what we’re doing “along” the Way 

may be more important than the destination.

The means justify the ends.  Not the other way around.

If we’re so focused on the kingdom of heaven “in the sweet bye and bye,”

I fear we miss it right here.

Jesus said, “the kingdom is among you.”  

“Those who have eyes to see . . . and ears to hear.”

Pay attention.

Be mobile, on the move.  The word “church” should be a verb.

Not a noun.

We are following.  We are on the Way.

Jesus had a cousin whose name was John.  

John had followers, too.  

John sent them to Jesus and they asked, 

“Are you the One who is to come, or should we look for another?”

Jesus said to them,
“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Now, what do you think we ought to be doing along the Way?

The Beautiful Struggle - the journey

For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.  Philippians 1:21

The end doesn’t matter, so much - 

at least if you’re talking about heaven.

Paul is right about the first part,

but I disagree about the second.

I’m not concerned about heaven,

tho’ some make it the center of their faith.

Maybe we can trust God with the after-life

and just get on with this one.

(As my father said, “If the streets are paved with gold,

I’ll be disappointed.”)

So, it’s about the journey more than the destination,

you’ve heard that before.

But what’s the journey about?

Paying attention.

Smelling the roses.

Kindness.

Faith, hope, and love.

The journey is a test, as someone said,

and the answer to every life test that you’ll ever face 

            is the same - 

                                      Christlikeness.

 

For me, to live is Christ.

 

Joe E. Lewis said,

“You only live once, but if you work it right, 

    once is enough.”

 

                                                        Cape Canaveral National Seashore Road

 

The Beautiful Struggle - the start

Every day is a tooth-and-nail fight to live the life I was baptized into -                      

this strange and peculiar calling of the baptized to see the world and people in a new way, as both helplessly lost and beautifully gifted all at once.  To look at the tragic violence of life without despair, and to embrace the joy without sentimentality, knowing that most happiness is transitory and every life, no matter how blessed is marked by suffering, and yet to call it all good.

                                    Virginia Creeper Trail

Racism's Legacy and Biblical Restitution

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.  Matthew 23:23-24

“Perhaps we, as folk of simpler soul and more primitive type, have been most struck in the welter of recent years by the utter failure of white religion. We have curled our lips in something like contempt as we have witnessed glib apology and weary explanation. Nothing of the sort deceived us. A nation's religion is its life, and as such white Christianity is a miserable failure.”  (W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Souls of White Folk,” 1920)

W. E. B. Du Bois, who passed away in 1963, was a scholar and sociologist who provided an intellectual analysis of racism as it affected the souls of both black and white folk.  His assessment of the failure of white Christianity underlines my own reflections on my vocation as a pastor in United Methodism for over thirty years.  As the son of a Methodist pastor, my reflections go back even further.  In fact, I count one of my ancestors as Bishop James Osgood Andrew, who found himself at the center of ecclesiastical controversy in 1844 over the issue of slave ownership.  Through inheritance and marriage, Bishop Andrew owned a number of slaves and this fact became the catalyst for the schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church leading up to the Civil War and thereafter.

The southern church’s justification of slavery was not an aberration.  The Church, not only Methodist, and not only southern, has regularly condoned the status quo of racism, if not in words, then in practice, giving a tenth of our spices while neglecting the weightier matters of the law.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., offered this gem:  “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”  Too often white Christians in the U.S. have been silent, carrying on our fellowship dinners and Bible studies while allowing our institutions to do our sinning for us.

The antidote to this historic failure of white Christianity is repentance, atonement and restitution.  Recent public discourse has conjured up the word reparations, to the dismay of some.  And yet, the Bible makes a strong case for restitution, reparation’s cousin.  From Leviticus 6:2-5:

When any of you sin and commit a trespass against the Lord by deceiving a neighbor in a matter of a deposit or a pledge, or by robbery, or if you have defrauded a neighbor, or have found something lost and lied about it—if you swear falsely regarding any of the various things that one may do and sin thereby— when you have sinned and realize your guilt, and would restore what you took by robbery or by fraud or the deposit that was committed to you, or the lost thing that you found, or anything else about which you have sworn falsely, you shall repay the principal amount and shall add one-fifth to it.

We also find the New Testament example of Zaccheus, who upon receiving the largesse of Jesus, promises four-fold restitution to any he has defrauded.  As a friend said to me, the intent of restitution, or reparations, is not to impose guilt upon the transgressor but to repair that which is broken.  The legacy of slavery and racism continues into the 21st Century.  While I have not personally intended harm or oppression to people of color I nevertheless can see the brokenness of our caste system, and the burden that people of color still bear.  How do we fix that brokenness except by some form of restitution?  

Until the Church comes to terms with its (our) failure to address the evils of racism, we will continue to be as the Pharisaical hypocrites of Matthew 23.  Christ has atoned for our sins, individual and collective, but in response there remains for us the necessity of repentance and restitution - the weightier matters of the law - justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

No More Azazels

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.  Hebrews 10:14

Steve Bartman was sitting in Seat 113, Row 8, Aisle 4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago, wearing his ball cap, during the sixth game of the NLCS between the Florida Marlins and his beloved Cubs.  The Cubs were up 3-0 in the eighth inning with one out when Marlins batter Luis Castillo hit a fly ball into foul territory in the direction of Steve Bartman.  Focused on nothing else but the ball coming his way, Mr. Bartman, along with others, reached over the rail to attempt a catch only to deflect the ball enough to spoil left fielder Moisés Alou’s chance of catching the ball for the second out of the inning.

What followed was a series of fielding errors by the Cubs in an apocalyptic meltdown, with periodic camera shots of Mr. Bartman, leading to an 8-run inning and eventual win for the Marlins.  Cubs fans jeered Mr. Bartman and grew increasingly more hostile, throwing drinks and other items at him until he was eventually escorted out of the stadium by security guards.  After the Cubs loss of their next game, disqualifying them from the World Series, Mr. Bartman and his family became a target of threats as his personal information was spread in various media.  The governor of Florida even offered him asylum.

It seems there is a human need to place blame on someone for society’s woes.  When bad news strikes, or events turn tragic, we apparently want to find a scapegoat to take responsibility, to be the victim of our anger, our fear, our despair.

In the early 1930’s, Germany was still struggling to reconstitute itself after World War I.  Adolph Hitler took advantage of the societal unrest to blame their woes on the Jews.  The more he raged, the more unified the population grew in their common distrust and suspicion of the Jewish people.  Their utter annihilation was Hitler’s ultimate solution, as they became the victims to satisfy Germany’s need for a scapegoat to blame for the nation’s troubles.

The Old Testament outlines a ritual practice on Israel’s Day of Atonement in which two goats would be chosen - one to be sacrificed on the altar to God (YHWH), and the other to be the azazel, to be destroyed after the priest had laid hands on it signifying the transfer of the people’s sins.  That goat was then led into the wilderness with a red thread tied on its horns.  It was the azazel, the scapegoat.    

Maybe having a scapegoat to bear the blame for our sins, our ills, our troubles, is cathartic - releasing us from some existential burden.  Or perhaps having a victim to blame helps unite society around a common purpose.

After 9/11 the U.S. was united in grief, but also in our suspicion of Islam.  Middle Eastern, Arab, and Muslim people became targets of U.S. anger.  Our national hunger for a scapegoat coalesced around a common enemy, stereotyped in ethnic and religious terms.  Our country’s mourning turned to hatred and the victimization of entire peoples regardless of their innocence.  Travel bans and public humiliation of people from certain countries or who fit a certain profile became common.  The nation was united in its destructive prejudice and perverse hatred.

We have seen this repeated throughout human history.  Black men have been targeted for lynching, declared guilty without being tried, providing a scapegoat for community anger.  There is a phenomenon of police arrest known among African-Americans as “driving while Black,” which attests to the tendency of Black people to be considered guilty of something regardless of the facts.  Before Anthony Spearman was elected President of the North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP, he was a pastor of an AME-Zion congregation in Hickory, NC.  He tells of arriving in Hickory driving his car which he described as a “hoopdie.”  This is a car that, when new, merited some status, but which is much older, yet retaining some of its original cachet.  For no reason whatsoever, Reverend Spearman was pulled over by Hickory police because he had obviously been profiled.  Not the first time he, and many other African-Americans, had been stopped for driving while Black. 

This victimization and stereotyping of people happens to minorities on a regular basis:  Latinos often blamed for job losses, or Asians blamed for the pandemic.  These scapegoats often experience violence at the hands of those who blame them.  White supremacy feels justified in its desire for an azazel, just as the Nazis felt justified in their extermination of the Jews.

Christianity has often been hijacked by the supremacists, the victimizers, and blamers, to serve their self-justifying needs.  However, there is no theological foundation to do so.  Indeed, the Christian gospel suggests the exact opposite of scapegoating.  The doctrine of Christ’s atonement, in which he became the crucified one, the victim, the azazel, heralded the end of all scapegoating.  As Paul writes in Romans 6:10, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.”  And as Hebrews 10:14 expresses with even greater clarity, “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”

The priests of Israel offered sacrifices routinely for the redemption of the people.  Day after day, the sacrificial victims - sheep, goats, turtledoves - were slaughtered and offered up.  But Jesus, the Son of God, helps us see the futility of these sacrifices and by offering himself as one final victim, he essentially declares all further scapegoating as both unnecessary and destructive.

In today’s political climate this is particularly relevant.  As people on the Left and Right castigate each other we splinter into factions of victims and victimizers.  Rational, civil conversation is forfeited in favor of self-righteous ranting.  Both extremes cancel each other, scapegoating the “other” while turning a deaf ear to one’s own complicity in our current problems.  Is there no humility left?  Whatever became of the common good?

How ludicrous to think that when Steve Bartman reached for that foul ball at Wrigley Field he caused the Cubs to lose.  No, the Cubs lost all on their own.  Whenever we assign blame to anyone person, or peoples, for society’s ills, we are participating in destructive scapegoating which is a distraction from what we need to do - engaging in community action for the common good.  That’s what politics was supposed to be about.  There’s more than enough blame to go around for the troubles of the world.  Let’s stop making people into victims, including acting like ones ourselves.  Let us clasp hands together to join in with what God is doing in the world - a world with no more victims.   

   

     

No Sure Thing

Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
    or you yourself will be just like him.

Answer a fool according to his folly,
    or he will be wise in his own eyes.

Proverbs 26:4-5

Father Roland Murphy would call on my seminary classmates at random at the beginning of each Intro to Old Testament class and ask for a reading.  He laughed at the choice of the passage above and proceeded to warn us to not take verses out of context.  After all, both sentiments are true, even if they seem to contradict each other.  “You need to understand the whole story,” he’d say, as a warning lest we go off on some tangent.

This is a cautionary tale in our search for some objective authority, some absolute foundation upon which to erect our ethics and decision-making.  Everybody seems to want a “sure thing,” like the gambling detective, Nick Yemana, in TV’s “Barney Miller,” but uncertainty seems to be endemic to the cosmos.   We may find ourselves to be fools if we claim certainty in the physical or the metaphysical universe.  In a recent book, “In Praise of Doubt,” the author begins, “You’re not as certain as you think you are.”  

Often the Bible is used as a blunt hammer to get one’s point across, preceded by the words, “The scriptures are clear . . .,” when the truth is actually less certain.  David Wilcox sings of a man who wields the scriptures, like a dagger doing damage.  Meanwhile, in Hebrews 4:12, we find a two-edged sword to describe the more positive way that scripture may be used to discern the “thoughts and intents of the heart.”  Arguments are often fought on two sides of the same coin and we can often find both sides in our canonical scriptures.

In the 1800’s scripture was used to justify the institution of slavery as proponents pointed to Genesis 9:18-27 (the cursing of Canaan) and Ephesians 6:5-7 (“Slaves, obey your earthly masters”).  On the other hand, Paul makes the argument that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free . . . we are one in Christ Jesus” - a theological building block which essentially eliminates not only the institution of slavery but also any partiality between human beings (Galatians 3:28).

The Ezra-Nehemiah cycle of scriptures denounces any Hebrews who have married “foreigners,” thus tainting the purity of Hebrew ethnicity.  Yet the prophet Jeremiah gives specific instruction to the exilic community (29:6) to do exactly what will later infuriate Ezra and Nehemiah (“Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.”).  The theological emphasis in a particular portion of scripture is often very specific to the historical setting.  What seems necessary in one setting is contradicted in another.  Context.  Context.  Context.

Scripture describes a (G)od who seems bloodthirsty.  In just one of an incredible number of Old Testament examples, the armies of Israel completely annihilate King Sihon of Heshbon and his people.  As we are told in Deuteronomy 2:34, “We left no survivors.”  And just to be clear that this is done under (G)od’s authority we are hear (2:36), “The Lord our God gave us all of them.”

Yet we find Jesus, who Christians claim is the Incarnation of God, telling us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, and warning us that if we live by the sword we will die by the sword.  Jesus seems to take seriously the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”  But what are we to make of the numerous references to a (G)od who is all too happy to see blood shed.  Even the New Testament occasionally glorifies violence as Revelation 21:8 damns a list of folks (including “cowards”) into “the fiery lake of burning sulfur.”

Again, context, if not everything, is nevertheless essential to our understanding of how to weigh the scriptures.  And critical interpretation must be claimed afresh in each generation to take advantage of continuing scholarship, including an openness to the movement of God’s Spirit. My mother’s advice to me written as a dedication in the first Bible she gave me includes this passage from 2 Timothy 2:15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.”  Interpretation of scripture is a task to be done not with bold bravado but with humility.

Of course, all of us need some authority in our lives.  There is within us a need for a compass to direct our paths.  As they say, if we don’t stand for something we’ll fall for anything.  In uncertain times we long for certainty and are uncomfortable with ambiguity.  There are considerable numbers of religious people who are distressed by uncertainty.  Unfortunately, this discomfort often leads to an uncritical acceptance of distorted and abusive authority.  Such authority is a contradiction to the gospel of grace which is central to the Bible.

Still, gray areas make us anxious.  But part of growing up from childhood to maturity is the recognition that life is nuanced.  There are few clearcut answers.  The good is sometimes tainted.  The dark cloud often contains a silver lining.  Things are not always as they appear.  There is mystery in the journey and we will do well to embrace the unknown and unknowable with wonder rather than with certitude.   

In my own search for an authority in my life I have been compelled by the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  So often, when his questioners looked to him for definitive answers, he told stories which allowed his listeners to draw their own conclusions.  This rabbinical approach frustrated his hearers then, and perplexes his hearers now, but provides us with a way of navigating our own search for authority.  Jesus exemplifies a state of wonder which accepts the reality of a nuanced world.  So, to follow his example is to be comfortable with a considerable amount of ambiguity.  

In Andrew Greeley’s novels featuring amateur detective and full-time priest Blackie Ryan, Father Blackie frustratedly admits uncertainty about much Roman Catholic dogma, but then says, “. . . but what I do believe, I believe with all my heart.”  That’s a good place to begin in our search for absolute authority.  Indeed, that may be a good place to end as well.