Crucifixion

I Peter 3:13-18, Mark 15:1-15

August 24, 2008

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

I heard a story about a boy who sang in the St. Thomas Choir in New York several years ago who was learning the St. Matthew Passion to sing during Lent. His father, an Episcopal priest, came to visit him one Saturday after morning rehearsal, and the boy ran up to his father in some distress saying, “Dad, do you know what they did to Jesus?”

Yes, the father did know, and undoubtedly the boy had sat through Lenten services, but somehow never connected with the story of Jesus’ death. It’s a very hard story to explain to children, both what happened and even more, why it happened. I still struggle with this, both with my own children and with the children of the church.

“Jesus died for us.” “Jesus died for me.” “Crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.”

We say these words in the Christian church as fairly common statements of faith. The last one comes from the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith said weekly in many Christian churches. We mark Good Friday, the yearly remembrance of Jesus’ death on a cross, as one of the holiest days of the Christian year, although the services on Good Friday don’t get the turnout we have on Christmas and Easter!

But what in heaven’s name does it mean that Jesus died for us. What does his death 2000 years ago have to do with us at all? What was the whole point of it then or now? What does it mean to you in your faith and in your life that Jesus actually died on a cross, the Roman equivalent of the electric chair or hypodermic needle in execution chambers in our country today? And why do we use the symbol of the cross, the instrument of Jesus’ death, as the central, identifying symbol of Christians around the world? How do we explain this to adults, let alone children?

Over the millennia, there have been many answers to those questions suggested by faithful Christians and theologians. Actually a recent film for children repeated a theological understanding of the crucifixion that has been prominent since the Middle Ages, though not so much in the early church. C. S. Lewis’ book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, made into a film a couple of years ago, illustrates what is known as the theology of “substitutionary atonement.” In the story, a child, Edmond, has committed a crime. By the universal law, he should be punished. But Aslan, the lion who represents Christ in the story, agrees to die in Edmond’s place in order to satisfy the requirement that sin should be punished. He “substitutes” himself for Edmond, thus fulfilling the law.

The understanding of the crucifixion with which Lewis was working asserted that all humans sin against God and therefore should be punished. Sacrificing animals to atone for sin simply wasn’t adequate. We had become separated from God by sin, and the only way to get back into relationship with God was to satisfy the requirements of justice. So Jesus agreed to die, although he was divine and therefore innocent of all sin, in order to satisfy the condition of justice that humanity should be punished for disobeying God. God died to satisfy God’s requirement for punishment for sin. So, Jesus died for our sins, reconnecting us with God and making forgiveness possible. As a Lenten hymn puts it, “Mine, mine was the transgression and thine the deadly pain.”

While that theology is a great comfort and hope to many people, others are bothered by the implications of it. They find it odd that a God described by Jesus as loving and forgiving would require a death to satisfy some legal requirement. Some find this theology too much like pagan theologies that led to animal and human sacrifice to appease angry gods and goddesses. It makes God primarily a judge, angry and punishing.

The problem lies, I think, in trying to make the cross too simple, trying to give it only one meaning. It’s too big and complex to be simplified or given only one narrow meaning. And since the earliest days of the church, other understandings of the cross have emerged. Two other theologies of the cross (among others) have been prominent from the early churches and among more modern theologians. The first is the theme of Christ victorious. The first hymn we sang today has the emotional feel of this theology, a triumphant song urging us to lift high the cross. This theology ties the crucifixion to the resurrection and the belief that Christ conquered the evil powers of the world who sought to destroy him by killing him, as well as destroying the finality of death itself, opening to all of us the possibility of eternal life. To a people suffering under oppression and persecution of many kinds, this belief that the instrument of death can be turned into a symbol for life would be very powerful. Christ did not defeat the powers of the world by raising an army or by zapping them from on high, but by appearing to let them win and then turning their whole world upside down. No more can the unjust powers of the world control us, for just like Moses at the Red Sea, God is revealed as a liberator. The power of love brought life, a power that all of us, whether or not we have an army at our command, can tap into to use to defeat those who would defeat us. Christ died for us, so that we might be freed from the powers of evil and death and be liberated into true life. W can find power to defeat evil without becoming evil.

Unfortunately, from time to time, Christians have taken this theology of the cross and used it along with worldly powers of death to persecute others, as in the Crusades and Inquisitions. But taken in its purest form, this theology is especially good news for the powerless in the world, who have always embraced the cross as a powerful symbol. It also gives us a model for how to deal with the powerful who seek to hurt us or others.

Another theology of crucifixion, also ancient, but more prominent in recent years in both liberation and feminist theology, has also given hope to the powerless of the world. This theology focuses on Christ’s suffering on the cross as a sign that God knows what it is to suffer and so is one with us when we suffer. The writer of the letter we call I Peter lifts up this theology, urging the persecuted Christians to remember Christ’s suffering and therefore be able to account to anyone for the hope that is in them because of Christ’s suffering and death.

The modern feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson explains it this way: the suffering of God helps “by signaling that the mystery of God is here in solidarity with those who suffer. In the midst of the isolation of suffering the presence of divine compassion as companion to the pain transforms suffering, not mitigating its evil, but bringing an inexplicable consolation and comfort. [This] communion becomes a profound source of energy for the healing of suffering. Knowing that we are not abandoned makes all the difference.” (She Who Is, p. 267). I heard a similar faith expressed by a black South African woman during the years of apartheid when she spoke with amazement at how few people attended Good Friday services in the U.S. compared to Easter’s attendance. She said that in her church, Good Friday services were packed because people knew suffering and needed to be with the Christ who knew suffering.

This cross, then, is for some the symbol of sin being forgiven and a right relationship with God restored; for some it is a sign of victory over all the powers of evil in the world, a victory won not by might but in faith; for some it is a sign that God is in solidarity with all who suffer, standing by them and with them through the deep nights of pain until they come to life and hope again. There is no right answer, at least not that we can yet understand, and they may all have some truth in them. But all of us who claim the name of Christian are called to come to some understanding of the cross deep within us, for Jesus said to those who would be disciples that they must take up their crosses and follow. The cross, then, was not just for Jesus; it is for us.

This is what Jesus’ death on the cross means to me. I do not believe that God’s intent from Jesus’ birth was that he would die as a sacrifice. I believe that God came, knowing the odds were not good, but still deeply hoping by Jesus’ life, teaching, healing, and truth-telling to re-connect people with God, to hear the good news of forgiveness, to learn of a way of life that would bring joy and abundant life to all. I believe that this news was deeply threatening to those who found personal power by exerting control over other people, people Jesus sought to free. They killed him in an act of supreme injustice. In the suffering and death of crucifixion, Jesus did indeed become one with all who suffer and die unjustly in this world, just as in his life Jesus had become one with all of us who struggle to live and love in broken human societies. I find comfort in knowing that God knows suffering. I find hope in the fact that Jesus exerted power not by force of arms, but by refusing to give in to those who would have used him for their own advancement, by refusing to water down his message or give up his work of truth-telling and religious reformation. I am humbled and grief-stricken when I realize how much God loved humanity, that God was willing to die in human form rather than simply write us off and disappear, and quite frankly I am amazed and a bit confused that God did not simply wipe out human life there and then. I am profoundly grateful that Jesus spoke words of forgiveness from the cross, even to those who killed him; for I believe in that act Jesus opened the door for all people to be forgiven. I am ecstatic that God did not allow death to be the final word, but brought life out of a tomb, because that gives me hope that no kind of suffering and death is ever the final word, even if it seems like it at the time. I find strength in knowing that evil can be defeated without the use of evil means. I believe that Jesus calls me to consider how in my life all these different emotions lead me to actions in taking up whatever difficult challenge the world places at my feet.

I wear the empty cross, rather than a fish or some other Christian symbol, because I believe there is power in going to the deepest places of life, the most difficult, and finding God acting there. You really can’t enter into the cross and stay swimming on the surface of faith; you have to dive into the deep end of the pool.

That’s what this means for me. On a bright summer Sunday, I do not find the cross depressing or a downer, but rather the most amazing symbol upon which to meditate and celebrate life. A priest I know says that on the cross everything falls apart and everything comes back together. Between now and next Good Friday, I hope you will think about this each time you see or wear a cross and so come to that holy day, however you understand the event, singing with deep belief, “What wondrous love is this.” Amen.