(You can watch this sermon being delivered, with explanatory slides, at this link: https://youtu.be/1Uveemp666E )
Today (the 5th Sunday of Lent) is traditionally known as Passion Sunday – marking the beginning of Passiontide, which will of course culminate at the Cross. Passion Sunday brings Jesus’ suffering to the fore. It invites us to focus on the depth of meaning that suffering contains. But what does it mean? What is the significance of Christ’s passion? Perhaps a story will help…
Picture a scene. It’s the second
world war, and the Japanese army is forcing British prisoners to build a
railway, from Burma to China, crossing over the famous River Kwai. At the end of each day’s labour in the sun,
the prisoners are lined up and counted – along with their shovels, to make sure
that none can be used for escape attempts.
But one day, it is discovered that one shovel is missing. The Japanese soldiers scream their anger at
the lined-up prisoners. “Unless you tell
us now who has taken the shovel, you will all be shot!”. For a moment, there is stunned silence, as
each man comes to terms with the news that he might be about to die. Then, one soldier steps forward. “It was me,” he says. “I took the
shovel”. A Japanese soldier puts his gun
to the man’s head, and shoots him dead on the spot.
Later that day, the shovels are counted again – and it is discovered that
there has been a mistake. All the
shovels are present and correct. There
are no shovels missing! The soldier who
apparently confessed his crime, was in fact completely innocent. He took the punishment that had been
threatened to all his brothers. He died
so that they might live.
And there, in what I’m told is a true story, we find an eloquently simple
parable of what the death of Jesus has meant for many Christians over the
centuries. The church has generally taught that Jesus took the punishment which
should be ours. It’s a theory known as
the doctrine of ‘penal substitution’.
Jesus takes the punishment due to human beings who ignited the righteous
anger of God. It’s the picture – or at
least something like it - that I guess many of us have in our minds, when we
think about the death of Christ. But
there are many other ways of grappling with this idea.
Most theologies of the Cross rest on the idea of atonement: that is 'at one-ment' - the idea that by his
death, Jesus managed to bring fallen, sinful humanity to one-ness with
God. Many different images are used in
pursuit of this idea. Drawing from
Isaiah's visions of the Suffering Servant, theologians have proclaimed that 'it
is by his wounds that we are healed'. In
other words, through his suffering, Jesus atones for us. It is as if Jesus says ‘sorry’ for us – to a
wrathful God - and makes amends by suffering.
His atonement is a substitute for the atonement that we ought to offer. Which is why this theory is called
‘substitutionary atonement’.
Another theory is the idea of ransom.
According to that theory, our sins make us the moral property of the
devil. Because we sin, the theory goes, we
belong to Satan – whom Jesus described as ‘the ruler of this World’ in today’s
Gospel reading. Jesus, as the only
sinless human being who has ever lived, was the only price which could be paid
to 'redeem' us from the devil. This is
what the hymn writer Fanny Crosby was referring to in the second verse of our
opening hymn. ‘O perfect redemption –
the purchase of blood’. She was clearly
drawn to the idea that only with his blood could Jesus purchase our souls back
from the Devil, and by doing so, defeat the him and (as Jesus is quoted as
saying in today’s Gospel, thereby ‘driving him out’).
But we must remember that all these images are just that...images deployed by theologians like St
Paul, and many after him, to try to get a handle on precisely what Jesus was
doing that day. And that, crucially – is
because Jesus himself never really explained how his death dealt with the problem of human sin, nor precisely how his death obtains the forgiveness of
our sin.
Other theologians have shied away from these images of punishment,
substitution and ransom. Many have
struggled with the idea of the Satan having so much power over creation that an
omnipotent God – who created all things, even Satan himself - should have to
die in order to regain control. Surely,
they have said, if God is all powerful, as the Bible says, he could click his
fingers and take care of Satan – assuming he really exists at all.
Other thinkers have wondered what it says about God to suggest that he
insists on a universal, cosmic punishment for all sin, which can only be paid
by his own Son. The Baptist minister,
Steve Chalke, gained much notoriety a few years ago when he described this idea
as a form of ‘cosmic child abuse’.
Surely, goes the argument, a God who defines himself as merciful Love can choose to give his amazing
grace without requiring first some mechanism of torture and punishment.
Such theologians – amongst which I dare to count myself – have wondered
whether something else was really going on upon the cross. Rather than Jesus paying a price for our sin,
to the Devil or to a wrathful God, perhaps Jesus’ death was, instead, God’s
message to the world. Not a purchase of
blood, or a price to be paid, but a monumental, unmissable, unforgettable sign, which would be imprinted on all of
humanity’s hearts throughout history.
What did that sign say? Well, drawing
from the thinking of Rowan Williams (the previous Archbishop of Canterbury) I
think it looks something like this: “Ignore
God at your peril!” Let me explain…
On the cross, Jesus takes upon himself the very worst that humanity can
do to itself. He takes all the hate, all
the power-games, all the might of the greatest army of the world, all the
control-freakery of the religious leaders.
He takes it all. In doing so, he
paints an enormous sign of warning across the sky of the Universe…it says “This is what happens when you ignore God,
when you refuse to listen to God, when you drive God out of your politics, your
education systems, and your society. You
end up putting God, outside your city wall.
You exclude God from your decisions and from your lives. You cast him out, and you let the very idea
of God die, alone and friendless outside the thin walls of your self-built
cities.”.
But what Jesus does with this death is magnificent! Having let the hatred and indifference of
human power overwhelm him, to the very point of death – he bursts out of his
tomb, powerfully demonstrating for all time that Love will always win over hate;
true life, eternal life, will always overcome death. There
is hope – despite the worst that humanity can do to itself. Jesus says ‘come to me, all ye that travail
and are heavy laden (by the world and its ways) and I will give you rest. Take my ways – my yoke – upon your shoulders,
for my burden is light’.
So, for me, the Cross is a symbol of the worst that humanity can do, but
also a sign of the hope we have in Christ.
It stands for hope that better days are
coming. It stands for hope that we can turn our swords into
ploughshares. It stands for hope that we
can include God in our decisions, and
in our life as a society. It shouts out
that selfishness, consumerism, power, greed, hatred, racism, and all the rest
do not have to be the only way to
live. That there is another way.
The downward thrust of the cross, from heaven into earth, calls us to let
all those human patterns die, and having sought forgiveness for our complicity
with them, calls us to rise again, with Christ, to life anew. Amen!
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