The Second Sunday of Easter

This is the transcript of my podcast for the Second Sunday of Easter.

The Second Sunday of Easter

Reading: 1 John 1:1-2:2

Last week’s podcast for Easter was in two parts. In it, I looked at the death of Jesus and how it is popularly understood. I argued that, in the New Testament, the death of Jesus is understood very differently to how it is commonly understood, even in our churches.

I suggested that the contemporary way of understanding the death of Jesus uses bits of the New Testament to construct a model for understanding the death of Jesus. On this understanding, the death of Jesus was as a consequence of the life he led and the teaching he gave. What matters now is not that he died, but that he is alive and calls us to follow his example of love and acceptance of people, keeping his teaching as we reach out to those who are oppressed and in need.

I said in my talk that this popular understanding of the death of Jesus leaves out crucial elements, which are essential to the New Testament understanding of the death of Jesus. We can identify four in particular:

Firstly, in the New Testament, the death of Jesus is central to what Jesus came to do.

Secondly, the death of Jesus is seen as a sacrifice for sin.

Thirdly, the death of Jesus is divinely ordained.

Fourthly, the death of Jesus satisfies the justice of God

In the New Testament, the main purpose of Jesus’ life and death is to deal with our sin. Jesus died as a sacrifice for sin according to the plan and purpose of God to satisfy God’s demand for justice. Jesus’ death wasn’t as a consequence of what he came to do; it was what he came to do. Yes, of course, Jesus’ life and death teaches us more, but the more it teaches is based on this understanding of it.

For example, Jesus, by dying for our sins ‘according to the Scriptures’, also gives us an example of how we are to live as his followers by denying ourselves and taking up our cross (Mark 8:34). Jesus’ death in obedience to the will of God shows us that, in our service of God, we are to have the same mind as he had (Philippians 2:5). We too are to become ‘obedient unto death, even death on a cross’ (Philippians 2:8).

But we cannot love and serve God or love others as Jesus commanded us to unless sin is dealt with in our lives. The Cross was a one-off event, but it is an event that still has power and relevance in the present. When we are baptized, we are baptized into Jesus’ death (Romans 6:3). We are now to become like him in his death (Philippians 3:10).

I have been quoting from St Paul, but St Paul’s understanding of the death of Jesus is one that is also shared by all the New Testament writers. Indeed, St Paul himself makes the point that the understanding of Jesus’ death that he shared with people when he first preached to them was one that he himself had received from other believers (1 Corinthians 11:23-26; 15:3).

We see this shared understanding in our reading this week from the first letter of St John. St John writes:

‘… the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.’ (1 John 1:7)

St John tells those he is writing to:

‘… he [Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.’ (1 John 2:2)

We resist what the New Testament tells us about the death of Jesus, because we don’t want to be confronted with the truth about ourselves. The New Testament repeatedly tells us that our problem as human beings is our sin and that we are all, without exception, sinners. So why do we find it so hard to accept this plain teaching? As I have said many times, the dominant worldview of people today is one that puts ‘self’ at the centre.

We have an extremely high opinion of ourselves and our abilities. It is an opinion that flies in the face of the evidence. Yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, we persist in telling ourselves that we are fundamentally good and that there is nothing we cannot do or achieve if we but put our minds to it and follow our dreams. Self-fulfilment and self-realization, doing and being what we want to do and be, is what we are constantly told our life is, or should be, all about.

We simply don’t want to admit and face up to the fact that we are sinners by birth and choice, incapable of freeing ourselves from sin’s power and influence in our lives. Even when we are prepared to admit that we are capable of sin and wrong-doing, we want to minimize and relativize it. We point instead to the good we do and ignore the bad. We see ourselves as more sinned against than sinning.

Increasingly in our age, sin is seen in non-personal terms. So, we talk instead about institutional and systemic sin: sins such as sexism and racism. We prefer to focus on society’s evils rather than our own. This allows us to be angry about sin without having to take any direct and personal responsibility for it. St John explicitly challenges this attitude.

St John tells his readers that ‘if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8). Worse still, St John writes, ‘if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us’ (1 John 1:10). When we refuse to admit that we personally are sinners, not only are we refusing to face up to the truth about ourselves, we are calling God a liar, because God has plainly and unambiguously told us that we are sinners, so sinful, in fact, that it was only the death of his Son that could deal with our sin.

The Risen Jesus, in this week’s Gospel reading, makes forgiving and retaining people’s sin central to the task he commissions his disciples to do (John 20:23). The Gospel the Church is entrusted to proclaim is the good news that if we confess our sins, that is to admit fully to them without reservation and qualification, God through Jesus will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all that is wrong.

St John tells those he is writing to that he is writing these things so that they may not sin (1 John 2:1). St John wants us to stop sinning, but, knowing our weakness, he also continues to tell us that if we do sin, Jesus is on our side. Jesus understands and forgives. But he cannot forgive what we refuse to admit; he cannot give what we refuse to accept.

It is like someone who has got seriously into debt. A friend pays off the debt for them, but the person in debt refuses to admit there was ever a problem and continues to live in poverty. They won’t accept either the reality of their situation or what their friend has done for them.

As long as we persist in the delusion and lie that we are not sinners, we remain in our sin. Jesus has commissioned me as a priest to tell you that if you refuse to accept that you are a sinner who needs forgiving, then your sins are retained, and you face the judgement and condemnation of God (John 20:23).

This really is serious, and we need to start taking it more seriously. It is not a game or something we say in Church because we are expected to but can then forget the rest of the time.

This is a matter of life and death: yours and mine.

For an addict freedom and healing begin when the addict is prepared to admit openly and unreservedly that they are an addict. As addicts to sin, join me today in saying for yourself:

‘I’m Ross and I am a sinner. I’m Ross and God has forgiven my sins and cleansed me from all unrighteousness.’

Thanks be to God that he is ‘faithful and just’.

Amen.

The Death of Jesus (Part Two)

The following is the transcript of the second part of my two part podcast talk for Easter.

The Death of Jesus – Part Two

This is the second part of a two-part talk (podcast) for Easter on the death of Jesus. In my previous talk, I described how the death of Jesus is popularly understood. Jesus’ death, on the common understanding of it, was a consequence of the life he led and the teaching he gave. The resurrection of Jesus is understood as God vindicating Jesus.

God, on this understanding, by raising Jesus from the dead is telling us that Jesus got it right. Jesus is now to be our example and guide and one day God will raise us too. The death of Jesus is a fact of history, but, on this understanding, it is his life both before and after his death that matters to us now. His life shows us how to live our lives and his resurrection inspires us and gives us the strength we need. I called this the LEGO model of the atonement: (L) A loving God, (E) enters our existence as one of us, (G) gives us freedom and forgiveness, and (O) offers a new way of living. Jesus’ death was historically inevitable given his life, but hardly the purpose of it or the reason why he came.

This model of the atonement uses bits of the New Testament to construct it. The problem, however, lies in the bits it does not use. It treats these unused bits as unnecessary. In this second part of the talk, I want to identify the bits missing from the LEGO model of the atonement and to argue that far from being unimportant, they are in fact essential to understanding what our Lord has done for us on the Cross.

1. The Centrality of Jesus’ Death

St Mark devotes three-fifths of his Gospel to the suffering and death of Jesus; St Matthew two-fifths; St Luke a third. St John divides his Gospel in two. The second part begins on the night before Jesus’ death. What are known as the passion narratives are central to the story of Jesus in all four Gospels.

In St John’s Gospel, as we have seen during Lent, what Jesus refers to as ‘his hour’ is there from the very beginning (John 2:4) and everything builds up to it. The same is true in the other Gospels, St Mark, for example, writes:

‘Then he [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.’ (Mark 8:31)

In St Luke’s Gospel, after the resurrection, Jesus says to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

‘Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ (Luke 24:26)

The LEGO model of the atonement is right to stress that in the life and teaching of Jesus, we see God revealing himself. As Jesus says, ‘He and the Father are one’ (John 10:30). The LEGO model of the atonement, however, treats the death of Jesus, not as the central part, but as just one part of the story. While in the LEGO model of the atonement, the death of Jesus may have been an ‘historical inevitability’, an unavoidable consequence of the life Jesus lived, it was not, on this understanding of Jesus’ death, strictly necessary.

Instead, Jesus’ death serves to emphasize what was already there in his life rather than to add anything new as such to it. Yes, Jesus’ death shows Jesus commitment to the truth and to his message. It illustrates the length that Jesus was willing to go to demonstrate his love for us. If, however, we ask if it would ultimately have mattered if Jesus had not been put to death, then, based on the LEGO model of the atonement, it is hard to see how it would. The impact of Jesus’ life may not have been as great; a martyr dying for what they believe in always leaves a mark. There is, however, nothing about Jesus’ death, on this understanding of it, that can’t be explained in purely historical terms.

There is, in other words, a marked difference in the significance that is attached to the death of Jesus in the New Testament compared to how the death of Jesus is regarded in the LEGO model of the atonement. In the New Testament, the death of Jesus is central and significant in a way that in the LEGO model it is not. In the New Testament, Jesus has to die; he was born to die; it’s why he came. At the end of his public ministry in St John’s Gospel, Jesus says:

‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say — ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.’ (John 12:27)

Advocates of the model may argue that this is all about emphasis, but at the very least the difference in emphasis should alert us to the fact that there may be a problem in the way many people today understand the death of Jesus.

2. The Lamb of God and the Sacrifice in his Blood

The last thing Jesus did before his arrest and crucifixion was to have a Meal with his closest disciples. This Meal is described in the Gospels as a Passover Meal to which Jesus gave a new meaning. The original Passover, still celebrated by Jews today, remembered how God told the people of Israel to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood out on the door posts of the houses where they lived, so that the angel of death would ‘pass over’ them and they would be saved from the death that God brought to the first born of Egypt (Exodus 12:1-32).

At the Meal with his disciples, Jesus took the bread with which the Meal began and told them it was his body given for them. At the end of the Meal, he took the cup and told them it was his blood that was shed for them. By doing this, Jesus makes clear that he sees his death as itself a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. It is the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20; see also: 1 Corinthians 11:25).

Jesus’ death, in other words, was not just that of a martyr dying for what he believed in, but more like the sacrifice of a lamb in the way the Passover Lamb was sacrificed in the Temple. Jesus’ sacrifice would change things in a way that they could not be changed without it. What is more, Jesus by linking his sacrifice with the forgiveness of sins also implies that without it they would not be forgiven. The first words spoken by anyone in St John’s Gospel to describe Jesus are spoken by John the Baptist who says:

‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ (John 1:29)

St Paul describes Jesus using the same imagery. He writes:

‘For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.’ (1 Corinthians 5:7)

This sort of language is used throughout the New Testament. It isn’t the only thing that the New Testament says about the death of Jesus, and it is not the only image used in the New Testament to describe it, but it is an image that is absolutely central. So central that believers made repeating the Meal the focus of their meeting together.

The institution of the Meal is also described by St Paul just 20 years or so later this time in writing, not to Jews used to celebrating the Passover in Jerusalem, but to ex-pagans in the Greek city of Corinth. The Meal had already become central to the Church’s life there. St Paul writes that he had passed on to them what he had himself received, received that is from the first believers in Jerusalem (1 Corinthians 11:23). St Paul had established the Meal in Corinth when he first came there, suggesting that this was what he did everywhere he went. St Paul writes:

‘For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’ (1 Corinthians 11:26)

The LEGO model of the atonement passes over this sort of language and imagery. It is an embarrassment to many in the Church that our worship is so centred on sin, death, and the shedding of blood. This is one reason so many, when they celebrate the Eucharist, want to focus instead on the elements of bread and wine as the gifts of creation rather than the body and blood of Christ.

The Eucharist, however, puts Christ’s bloody death at the centre of the Church and of what it means to be his followers. St Paul tells us that we have ‘redemption through his blood’ (Ephesians 1:7). St John tells us that it is the blood of Jesus that cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7). The writer to the Hebrews even goes as far as telling us that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins’ (Hebrews 9:22). St Peter describes those he writes to as ‘chosen and destined by God the Father’ to ‘be sprinkled’ with Jesus’ blood (1 Peter 1:2). In the book of Revelation, those who have died for Jesus are described as having conquered the Devil by the ‘blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony’ (Revelation 12:11).

The blood of Jesus flows through the pages of the New Testament. In the LEGO model, it is scarcely to be seen.

3. Jesus’ Death Divinely Ordained

As I have said repeatedly now, the common way today of understanding the death of Jesus is by reference to historical circumstances and forces. We are told by advocates of this understanding that Jesus himself, seeing where his situation was heading, could have avoided his death by turning back or escaping while there was time. Jesus, however, remained true to his convictions and provides us in so doing with an example of courage and commitment.

Jesus’ death, then, on this understanding, is understood as being the death of a someone who stood up for what they believed in, accepting the consequences of doing so. In this, Jesus was like those before and since who have also suffered death for what they stood for. Again, as I have said, Gandhi is a good example of such a person, but he is by no means alone.

According to the LEGO model of the atonement, Jesus’ death shows how the powerful will always act to protect their privilege and position. Those, then, who were responsible for Jesus’ death are the Roman Governor Pilate, who ordered it, the Jewish authorities who handed him over to it, and the crowds who called for it.

The LEGO model of the atonement explains Jesus’ death using historical cause and effect, putting the blame on the powerful, who conspired to bring it about. But here it stops. The New Testament doesn’t. St Peter says to the crowds on the Day of Pentecost:

‘… this man [Jesus], handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.’ (Acts 2:23)

The shocking message of the New Testament is that ultimately it was God who was responsible for the death of Jesus and the historical circumstances that led to it. The people who carried it out were only acting according to his purpose and plan. As far as we are concerned, the death of Jesus took place on what has become known as Good Friday in AD 30 or AD 33. In reality, it took place before human history even began.

God gave his Son, not simply in the sense that he gave his Son over to historical forces, but gave him in the sense that God was actively involved in Christ’s sacrifice as the Lamb of God. God was guiding and controlling historical events to bring them to this conclusion. That God was in control was certainly Jesus’ own understanding of what was going on. In the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, Jesus prayed that, ‘if it were possible, the hour might pass from him’ (Mark 14:36). St Mark writes that Jesus said:

‘Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.’ (Mark 14:36)

Then, when they came to arrest him and Peter tried to prevent it, St John tells us that Jesus said to Peter:

‘Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?’ (John 18:11)

The reason that the Son of Man must ‘suffer and be killed’ is that God says he must.

The idea that God was actively involved in the death of his Son is repugnant to many in the Church today. In many ways, the LEGO model of the atonement that I have been describing is a reaction to it. The sacrifice of God’s Son has been described as ‘cosmic child abuse’. It is, however, one thing to reject it and another altogether to refuse to acknowledge that this is how the New Testament writers understand it. It is not the only way they describe the death of Jesus, but it is a way that is integral and foundational to all the other ways that they describe it. Rather than rejecting it out of hand because it offends our present day prejudices and sensibilities, it is better to try to understand it.

As far as the New Testament is concerned, Jesus was not a helpless victim, nor did he simply choose to die for what he believed in. Jesus died because that was God’s will for him; it was the path God had chosen for him.

4. The Wrath and Justice of God

One aspect of New Testament that is resolutely rejected today, and which the contemporary understanding of the death of Jesus refuses to recognize, is that of the wrath of God. The idea that God could be angry with us because of our sin and wrong-doing is completely alien to us. The idea that God could be so angry that he would punish us is seen to belong to primitive and outdated ideas about God. Hell is, for us, a thing of the past not something that faces us in the future. Any suggestion that the death of Jesus was in some way meant to appease an angry God and so enable us to avoid judgement in the future is simply not taken seriously.

That we today should find the idea of God being angry about sin is, when you think about it, somewhat strange and surprising. When an activist such as Greta Thunberg gets angry about climate change and the damage we are doing to the environment, everyone applauds her for it and nominates her for the Nobel Peace Prize, not just once but several times. But when we read that God is angry with us for the damage we have done to his creation that is a different matter altogether. And yet the New Testament is unambiguous that God is angry with us. St Paul writes:

‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.’ (Romans 1:18)

The reason that the creation is such a mess, St Paul writes, is because of our idolatry, our insistence on putting ourselves first and creating our own objects of worship. The New Testament is insistent that one day God will hold us all to account. A day will come when we will be judged. There will be justice.

St Peter, in our first reading, for Easter Sunday writes:

‘He [Jesus] commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.’ (Acts 10:42)

The New Testament writers all look to this Day when God will hold everyone to account for the sin they have committed. It will be a day when evil will be punished, and wrongs righted. The only way, the only way, we can be saved from the wrath of God and the judgement to come, the New Testament writers tell us, is through the blood of the Cross. The death of Jesus is seen as the sole basis for finding forgiveness and on which we can face a just and righteous God. And yet we hear almost no mention of this in our Churches today.

It is the scandal of what passes for Christianity in the present.

The very idea that God will judge and punish people is also simply dismissed out of hand. God is expected to forgive us unconditionally and accept us with no questions asked.

Which is, again, very strange given our present concern with social justice and righting the perceived wrongs of the past. Not only must the statues of past offenders be torn down, reparations must also be made and all wrongs atoned for. The language used is itself all very religious and all very New Testament. The only problem is that you are not allowed any more to use it in reference to God.

At this moment, the trial is taking place of George Chauvin who is charged in Minneapolis of the murder of George Floyd, the black man whose death while being arrested sparked riots and protests the world over and gave added impetus to the Black Lives Matter movement.

On Monday just past (March 29, 2021), the Floyd family gathered outside the courtroom before the trial began to protest against racism and to call for justice. They led those who gathered there with them in a chant of ‘no justice; no peace.’

Exactly.

Without justice, there can be no peace. And God is entitled to justice, which is what the New Testament tells us the death of Jesus is all about. There is nothing in the LEGO model of the atonement specifically about the justice of God and so, for all its fine sounding words, it can offer no peace with God. St Peter, again in our first reading for Easter Sunday says:

‘You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ – he is Lord of all.’ (Acts 10:36)

St Paul writes that God through Christ has reconciled all things ‘by making peace through the blood of his cross’ (Colossians 1:20). ‘Christ’, St Paul writes in Ephesians, ‘is our peace’ (Ephesians 2:14).

By the death of Jesus, forgiveness and peace with God is now offered to us through faith in Christ (Romans 5:1). This is the good news. This is the Gospel. And this is why the death of Jesus is not something we can pass over and leave behind us. The Cross is not an empty symbol, but a statement of what it cost to settle what we owed. ‘Christ died for our sins’ (1 Corinthians 15:3). When he was crucified, Jesus didn’t simply pay the price of his convictions, he paid the price of our sin. As the famous hymn puts it:

‘There was no other good enough
to pay the price of sin;
he only could unlock the gate
of heaven, and let us in.’

Only the divinely ordained death of Jesus as the Lamb of God, sent out of love by the Father was sufficient to meet the demands of justice and to bring forgiveness and peace.

We are shocked nowadays that St Paul sent a slave, Onesimus, back to his master, Philemon, and didn’t do more to free him from slavery. St Paul, we think, should have used the occasion to teach the Church about the evils of slavery and to right a social injustice.

St Paul didn’t think slavery was a good thing, but he knew that the slavery to sin that we are all in is the very worst form of slavery. It is Jesus himself who describes us as ‘slaves of sin’ (John 8:34), and it is only Jesus who can set us free. Jesus said, ‘So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed’ (John 8:36). It is Jesus alone who can break the power and slavery of sin and release those held captive by it.

The power of sin lies not only in the structures and systems of this world, but also where sin is at its most powerful: in the hearts and lives of each one of us.

‘We preach Christ crucified’, writes St Paul (1 Corinthians 1:23). There is a reason for that. It is because the death of Jesus isn’t about a good man dying for what he believes in. It is about the death of the Son God, dying as the Lamb of God for our sin and because of our sin; the sin that brings the wrath of God on us and demands justice.

The sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the Cross meets the demand for justice and brings us peace through his blood. We who believe in him no longer fear the judgement. As St Paul writes:

‘Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.’ (Romans 5:9)

We know that we who have become one with him in his death, shall become one with him in his resurrection (Romans 6:5).

‘Alleluia. Christ is risen.’

And one day we too will rise with him to be with him forever.

Amen.

The Death of Jesus (Part One)

The following is the transcript of the first part of a podcast talk I have posted for Easter.  I hope to post the second part in time for Easter Sunday.  

The Death of Jesus (Part One)

At Easter, and especially on Good Friday, we think of the death of our Lord on the Cross. For most believers at Easter, however, this is not their main focus. Their main focus at Easter is the celebration on Easter Sunday of the resurrection of our Lord. But this does raise the question of what our Lord’s death was all about. Ask most ordinary believers and they will struggle to give an answer. They are not alone. A quick glance through scholarly works on the crucifixion will soon show that professional theologians also find it hard to explain. The death of our Lord has been understood in a variety of ways. Indeed, different ways of understanding the death of Jesus have dominated the Church’s thinking at different times in the Church’s history.

In the present time, the understanding of the death of Jesus that is most common in the Church, and which most believers have in mind when thinking of our Lord’s death, is one that combines belief in the love of God and what can best be described as the historical inevitability of Jesus’ death.

There are four basic ideas which are central to this understanding.

1. God saw that we as humans are in a mess for all sorts of reasons. While some of them are our own fault, many of them are not. God, out of pure love, sent his Son to help us get out of the mess we are in, regardless of how we got into it, and to show us how to live so as not to get in a mess in the future.

2. God sent his Son knowing that most people would not listen to him and, worse still, knowing that even when they did listen, they would not like what they heard. God knew that people would turn on his Son and try to silence him. God realized that many, especially the powerful, would find his Son challenging and threatening. But because God loved us so much, he still sent his Son to us.

3. Jesus himself knew that if he did what the Father asked of him there would be those who opposed him and that his death would be inevitable. Jesus could have avoided his death on the Cross, but he chose instead to accept the mission that God had given him. He did this to reveal God to us and God’s love for us. By his teaching and example, Jesus shows us the way to have rich and satisfying lives ourselves and inspires us to work to make it possible for others to have them too.

4. Although he knew that his death was inevitable, Jesus trusted that God would not let him down and that his death would not be the end. Jesus believed that God would raise him from the dead and bring him back into the Father’s presence. The resurrection, then, shows that Jesus was who he said he was and that his teaching was true and should be accepted by us as coming from God himself. The resurrection of Jesus points us to a new way of living.

So, then, although there was a historical inevitability to Jesus’ death, God still sent his Son to us and his Son came willingly out of love for us. God not only sent his Son so we could find forgiveness - after all God could have just gone on forgiving us as he had been doing all along - but so we would know God understands us, accepts us, and forgives us when we need forgiving. What is more, Jesus came to show us by his life and teaching how we can live fulfilling lives and create a society in which others can live fulfilling lives too.

The death of Jesus, while foreseen by God, was accepted by him in order to accomplish God’s goal of revealing himself to us and showing us how to live. The resurrection is both the proof and guarantee that God is on our side and will one day raise us too. We need have no fear of death. We can get on with our lives and building the sort of world God wants, secure in the knowledge that when we die, all will be well.

The wonderful thing about this understanding of the life and death of Jesus is that it can accommodate the various opposing beliefs that Christians have and disagree over.

So, for example, if you want to believe in the Virgin Birth, you can, but you don’t have to; nothing is affected by it. If you want to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus you can, but if you prefer to think of it in more spiritual terms, that’s fine too. If you want to believe in a literal second coming of Jesus, you can; however, if you prefer to see it as more of a metaphor that’s also perfectly OK.

What we believe or do not believe about these various issues, about which Christians have different opinions, do not affect the basic structure of this understanding of what God has revealed to us and done for us and in Christ.

It is an understanding of the life and death of Jesus that makes sense and enables us to explain the death of Jesus in an historically credible way. While Jesus’ death, on this way of understanding it, was inevitable given Jesus’ life, nevertheless in Jesus’ acceptance of his death, he demonstrates the love of God for us.

The answer to the question of whether there was anything else going on in the death of Jesus is quite simply: what more do we need? If pressed about the nature of evil and the existence of the Devil, most of those who advocate this understanding of the death of Jesus will respond that the Devil is not an actual being, but the personification of all that is bad in the world. The figure of the Devil, they say, is a way of representing evil. Jesus, however, by not giving into evil and choosing to die rather than to compromise the truth, has shown that evil can be overcome. And even if we insist on believing that the Devil is real, the message is still the same: it is God who has the last word, not evil or the devil.

The great appeal of this understanding of Jesus’ death is that we can understand it. It not only makes sense of what happened, but gives us a framework for understanding the story of Jesus and for how we should live as followers of him now.

So where does ‘sin’ fit into all this? After all, traditionally the Church has believed that Christ ‘died for our sins’ (1 Corinthians 15:3). Sin, on this understanding of the death of Jesus, is overcome by the love and goodness of God in Jesus. Jesus teaches us how to avoid sin in our own lives and shows us how to free others from it in theirs.

I call this way of understanding the death of Jesus, the LEGO model of the atonement. (Atonement is the word given by theologians to how we understand the death of Jesus.) So, taking the word LEGO, L-E-G-O:

(L) A Loving God, (E) Enters our existence as one of us, (G) Gives us freedom and forgiveness, and (O) Offers a new way of living. Jesus’ death on the Cross shows just how much God loves us.

It is a model that explains and accounts for much that we read in the New Testament. It answers many of the questions that people have about the life and death of Jesus. Take the following three questions for example:

1. Was there no other way? Answer: There was certainly no better way than for God himself to become one of us and to reveal himself to us in the person of his Son.

2. But did Jesus have to die? Answer (again, on this way of understanding Jesus’ death): Jesus had to die, not because his death was desirable, but, again, because it was inevitable given what he taught and how he lived. Jesus’ message was such that there would be people who would want to get rid of him as they have many others who have stood for what is good, right, and true. Take Gandhi, for example.

3. Couldn’t God just have forgiven us? Answer: Yes, he could and, indeed, God has been doing so for all our history. However, God wanted to do more than forgive us; he wanted to demonstrate how much he loves us and to show us the way to live that enables us to be the people he made us to be and motivate us to create the sort of society where all his children can flourish.

The attractiveness of the LEGO model of the atonement is how it answers, explains, and accounts for so much in the story of Jesus and gives a rational and plausible reason for his death.

It is like someone making a model with actual Lego. The bricks are all there; it is up the person making the model to put them together. The LEGO model of the atonement takes various parts of the Gospel story and puts them together to create a model for understanding both the life and death of Jesus.

So, what’s the problem? It seems a perfectly good way to understand the death of Jesus. The problem with it, to change the metaphor, is what I call the IKEA problem.

Much of the furniture that you buy at IKEA is self-assembly. It’s often not easy making sense of the instructions, and frequently, even when you think you have understood them and have put it all together, you still discover that you have bits left over.

These left-over bits fall into one of three categories:

1. Bits that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and so can be safely ignored.

2. Bits which are not really needed, and so you don’t have to worry about them.

3. Bits which are essential, and so if you try to use what you have assembled without them, what you have assembled will all fall apart.

The LEGO model of the atonement quite deliberately doesn’t use all the bricks in the set. There are statements in the New Testament that don’t easily fit into the model. So, using our IKEA analogy, which category do they fall into? Are they bits of the New Testament that can be ignored, perhaps because they are incidental to the story? Are they bits that aren’t needed because they were only relevant to the particular time and culture in which they were written? Or are they essential so that our model, nice though it is, is the wrong one?

The majority in the Church, I would suggest, have decided that the LEGO model of the atonement is very much the right one. If you listen to the various Christian leaders talking about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus this Easter, you will soon see that the LEGO model of the atonement is behind much of what they say and preach. The question, then, is: are they right? You will have probably gathered by now that I don’t think they are. In fact, I not only think they are wrong, but dangerously wrong.

I realize that this leaves me open to the accusation of arrogance. Who do I think I am to disagree with people who cleverer and more important than I am? I would, to begin with, say in my defence that while I may be in a minority at the present time, I am not in a minority historically. The LEGO model of the atonement, while it has been around for some time, has never been the dominant model in the past in the way it is in the present. But, in any case, God’s truth cannot be decided by majority vote. It was the majority vote that got Jesus crucified.

It is, then, perhaps worth asking why the LEGO model of the atonement is so appealing at the present time. The answer is that it fits with other ideas that have now taken centre stage in the Church.

Firstly, I have talked much in previous sermons about the ‘ideology of self’. This is the belief, central to our age that life should be about self-fulfilment and self-realization; that our goal in life should be to believe in ourselves and to realize our potential. The LEGO model of the atonement tells us that this is what God wants for us too. Why else would he have sent Jesus? By his life and death, Jesus shows us that God is on our side and wants to help us to be the person we want to be. God wants to help us achieve our dreams and Jesus shows us how to.

Secondly, the ‘narrative of oppression’, which I spoke about in the sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent this year, describes what prevents people from living fulfilled lives. It is not because there is any deficiency in them that they need saving from, but because of unjust structures and systemic evil in society, which they need liberating from. These are structures such as patriarchy, which oppresses women, and evils such as racism, which privileges those who are white. The LEGO model of the atonement shows us how Jesus in his life sought to free people from what oppressed them and how it was precisely because he opposed such structures and evil that Jesus was killed by those who had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

The LEGO model for understanding the death of Jesus is demanded by both the Ideology of Self and the Narrative of Oppression. Indeed, it is the only way of understanding the death of Jesus that fits. Together these three are three legs to the stool that is contemporary Christianity. It is why, as I explained in my ‘Thought for the Week’ on March 7, that I no longer call myself a Christian. These three ideas are now so central to how many understand Christianity that to call oneself a Christian is to identify with a philosophy that I believe to be both demonic and deceptive.

But to return to the LEGO model of the atonement itself. Just because it is associated with these other ideas doesn’t in and of itself make it wrong. It may sound a note of caution about accepting it, but we still need to explain why it is wrong.

In trying to understand what is wrong with the LEGO model of the atonement, we need to see which parts get left out. Are these parts, using our IKEA analogy, parts which can safely be left out or are they parts that are essential? What is there in the New Testament about the death of Jesus that the LEGO model of the atonement leaves out and does not include? How important is what is left out? And does it matter?

In the next part, I want to identify 4 areas that the LEGO model of the atonement does its best to ignore. Each area needs at least a sermon on their own, but, at the least, I hope I can show why I think that this common understanding of the death of Jesus both fails and misleads, so much so, that it is not only inadequate but false.

I also hope at the same time to suggest a way of understanding the death of Jesus that is truer to how Jesus himself understood his death and to what the New Testament teaches us about it.

Good Friday

This is the transcription of my sermon for Good Friday on April 10, 2020.

Good Friday

Readings:

• Isaiah 52:13-53:12

• Hebrews 10:16-25

• John 19:1-19:42

Good Friday is all about the death of our Lord.  Our Gospel reading is St John’s account of the crucifixion.  Sermons for Good Friday, quite rightly, focus on the Cross.  Normally, here at Christ Church, we have a service of the ‘Last Hour at the Cross’ when we think of the ‘seven last words’ of Jesus from the Cross.
There we tend to stop.  Once our Lord has died, we leave the story, and wait expectantly for Easter Sunday and the good news of his resurrection.  Good Friday, however, didn’t end there.  Our Lord’s body had to be taken down from the Cross and buried.

The Gospels are all agreed that Joseph of Arimathea was the one who stood up to do this.  We are told that he went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.  This was rather brave.  Jesus, after all, despite Pilate’s reluctance, had been crucified as a rebel against Rome.  The Jewish authorities had made their views plain.  By asking for the body and taking responsibility for Jesus’ burial, Joseph was putting himself out there.

Interestingly, St John tells us that another person helped bury the body with Joseph.  This was none other than Nicodemus, who has appeared earlier in the Gospel.

It gets more interesting still when we stop to look at the two characters involved.

First of all, Joseph of Arimathea.  Joseph was a common name, and Arimathea, the town from which he came, identifies which Joseph we are talking about.  All four of the Gospels tell us that Joseph was involved in Jesus’ burial, and each of the four Gospels provide us with a bit of information about him. 

St Mark tells us that he was a respected member of the Council ‘who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God’ (Mark 15:43). 

St Luke describes Joseph as a ‘good and righteous man’, who, ‘though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action’ (Luke 23:50-51).  St Luke tells us it was a ‘new tomb where no-one had ever been laid’ that Joseph laid Jesus’ body. 

St Matthew tells us that Joseph was a ‘rich man’ and a ‘disciple of Jesus’ (Matthew 27:57).  St Matthew also tells us that the new tomb that Joseph laid Jesus’ body in was his own, which ‘he had hewn in the rock’.

St John tells us that Joseph was a ‘disciple of Jesus, but a secret one because of his fear’ of others among his people.  St John also tells us that ‘there was a garden in the place where he was crucified’ (John 19:41) and it is here that the tomb is located.

Putting all this together, we learn that Joseph came from a town called Arimathea.  He was a rich man, who was a devout, observant Jew and much respected.  He was a member of the ruling Council and was, therefore, a person of some power and influence.  He had become a disciple of Jesus, although he kept it secret because of his fear of others.  He had not gone along with his fellow Council members in their plan to get rid of Jesus and have him killed.

It was Jesus’ death, however, ironically that changed everything for him.  Although he had kept his faith in Jesus secret while Jesus had been alive, seeing Jesus die, he could do so no longer.  St Mark tells us he went ‘boldly’ to Pilate to ask for the body.  Joseph made his faith known when in many ways there was nothing to be gained from doing so.  Jesus, after all, was dead and no-one expected anything to come of it.  Joseph had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Was this an act of repentance and regret for not having been open about his faith when Jesus was alive?  Is it shame at having been a part of the body responsible for Jesus’ death?  We just don’t know.  Whatever his motivation, it took courage and he backed up his courage by giving Jesus the tomb he had made for himself.

St John, however, adds something that the other Gospel writers don’t tell us.  St John tells us that when Joseph took the body to the tomb, he was not alone. 

The second character involved was another rich man and a fellow member of the ruling Council.  It is someone we have met before: Nicodemus.  Nicodemus, St John tells us, went with Joseph to the tomb (John 19:39).

Nicodemus you may remember from the Broadcast Service for the Second Sunday of Lent was a Pharisee, who came to Jesus by night and who found Jesus’ words about being ‘born again from above’ hard to understand. 

Nicodemus appears three times in St John’s Gospel.  In John 3, when he first approaches Jesus.  Then in John 7, when he argues with his fellow Pharisees, telling them that Jesus should not be condemned without being given a ‘fair hearing’ (John 7:51).

Now, in John 19, he comes with Joseph and brings with him a large quantity of spices to embalm Jesus’ body.  The cost of these spices would have been very great.  Jesus was crucified as the King of the Jews in a way which made a mockery of the very idea.  Jesus was, however, buried in a manner befitting royalty.  Crucified as a criminal, he was buried as a King.  The title on the Cross had been right all along.

But now it was too late.  Or so everyone thought, but that story must wait for Easter Sunday.  For now, it is all over.  What did Joseph and Nicodemus think would happen to them next?  How would they face their fellow Council members?  Their fellow Council members may have taken the attitude that it didn’t much matter.  They had got what they wanted.  It was, nevertheless, brave of Joseph and Nicodemus to come out in the open.  Intriguingly, we are told that after Jesus’ resurrection many Pharisees became believers.  Were Nicodemus and Joseph amongst them.  I think so.

Nicodemus is always described in St John’s Gospel as the ‘one who came to Jesus by night’.  At the beginning, he can’t see what Jesus is trying to show him.  It is he who is in darkness.  We get a sense that he is coming to faith in his argument with his fellow Council members over Jesus in John 7.  Now, after Jesus death, he at last comes out of the darkness.

What does all this say to us this Good Friday? 

1. Jesus really did die for everyone. 

Quite rightly in the Church, we are anxious to reach out to the poor and those in the past whom the Church has either ignored or failed to reach; to those who are excluded and oppressed.  But we need to remember that Jesus loves both rich and poor alike. 

Jesus preached ‘good news to the poor’.  The good news, however, is not that they are poor as if poverty is a state that we should seek.  Nor that the good news is for the poor rather than for others who are not.  The good news to the poor is that God loves them and that while the kingdoms of this world might exclude them because of their poverty, God does not.

Jesus was a friend of the poor.  He was a friend of the rich as well.  This doesn’t mean he didn’t challenge both rich and poor.  He did.  He challenged the rich about their wealth and about putting their trust in riches, but he did not exclude them, any more than he excluded the poor.  Quite the reverse.  The poor too were challenged not to think that their hope lay in gaining riches.  Instead, it lay in trusting God.

The Church too easily can make it sound as if there is virtue in being poor for being poor’s sake.  It is true that often not having this world’s wealth leads people to see what really matters in life and so to put their trust in God.  It is true too that those with money can put their trust in their wealth rather than in God.  The issue, however, is not whether someone is rich or poor, but whether they trust in God and how they regard and use their poverty or wealth to bring glory to God.

All of us rich, poor, and anywhere in between, need to be concerned, first and above all, not with the state of our bank balance, but with the state of our relationship with God.

2. Sometimes it just takes time.

St Luke describes Joseph as a ‘good and righteous man’.  He was ‘waiting expectantly for the Kingdom of God’.  There is no open criticism of him in the Gospels.  The Kingdom of God obviously mattered to him.  He was focused on God and not just on himself.  He had obviously been affected by Jesus and was attracted to him.  It just wasn’t strong enough to get him to come out in the open.  In addition to his fear, what doubts, if any, did he harbour?

Nicodemus ‘came to Jesus by night’ and that description of him has stuck.  It is used as a description of him each time he is mentioned in the Gospel.  He knew that there was something special about Jesus: 

‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ (John 3:2)

But he couldn’t work Jesus out.  He didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about.  ‘How can these things be?’ he replied to what Jesus told him.  His inability to understand provoked from Jesus the question:

‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?’ (John 3:10)

There are those of us who feel just like this.  We are attracted to Jesus.  We do think that he has something important to tell us.  But we are confused and can’t quite get there.  It’s difficult and hard to understand.  No matter how much we try, we seem to remain in the dark.

Jesus said:

‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ (John 12:32)

St Luke tells us that as Jesus was being crucified, darkness covered the land from noon to midday (Luke 23:44).  Today, as Jesus is being lifted up, it may be us who are amongst those who are being drawn out of the darkness to Jesus. 

Jesus said:

‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ (John 8:12)

Good Friday is not simply about an event in the past that we remember each year, nor is it something we only think of today and then forget as we move on to think of happier things.  The Cross is where we see God’s light shining in the darkness.  Shining in the figure of the one dying there for us and because of us and who invites us to be drawn from the darkness to himself.

St Paul wrote:

For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ (2 Corinthians 4:6)

As we look on the face of Jesus Christ this afternoon, we need God to shine in our hearts to give us too the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

Sometimes it just takes time as it seems to have done for Nicodemus, but at last at the Cross he seems to have got there.

The Cross changes everything.

3. The Cross challenges us to decide.

Both Joseph and Nicodemus kept their faith in Jesus secret.  Both had much to lose.  I am not thinking here of their money.  They were unlikely to lose that.  But they were members of a powerful body.  They were respected; had influence; and exercised authority.  They stood to lose that power.

It would be so interesting to know what part they played in the trial and examination of Jesus.  We simply do not know.  The suspicion is that, even though we are told Joseph did not agree with their plan, being heavily outnumbered they kept quiet.  Feelings were running high, and the Chief Priest had already made his mind up.  Anyone going against the majority would certainly be unpopular at the very least. 

We shouldn’t underestimate how important being popular can be to us as humans.  We see in popular culture how people crave to be celebrities; how they love getting their photos in the media and having everyone looking up to them and wanting to be like them.  Some celebrities are famous simply for being famous.  The rest of us can be a bit smug about this.  We, of course, are not like that. 

Maybe not.  We do, however, rather like being well-connected or well-thought of by those above us in the social hierarchy or at the places where we work.  Some bosses use this as a tool to manipulate their employees.  And we all do rather like being liked, even if it is only getting likes on social media.  And, at the opposite end to being liked, many of those who find themselves not being liked but receiving hate messages, often end up suicidal, even if those hate messages are only anonymous and online.

But in addition to making them unpopular, there would be another price for Joseph and Nicodemus to pay in loss of power and influence.  Who now would trust these two who had been secret disciples of Jesus all along? 

Power is a powerful drug.  Politicians crave it and will bend the rules and abandon their principles to get it.  Being in authority and having control, together with the trappings of power that go with it, are addictive, and not easily given up.

The Cross shows what happens when you refuse to put your trust in riches; when you reject power, position, and prestige; when you speak the truth and reject the values, priorities, and attitudes of this world.

We may want to believe in Christ and yet hang on as well to our place in this world, but ultimately there must come a time of decision.  The Cross challenges us to choose.  ‘We preach Christ crucified’ wrote St Paul.  We cannot hide forever.  We cannot be secret disciples for long. 

It sometimes takes time, but the choice has to be made.

It took the Cross for Joseph and Nicodemus to make it.  Today, however, we only know the names of two people apart from the Chief Priests who were on the Council that sentenced Jesus.  ‘Whoever serves me, the Father will honour,’ Jesus had said (John 12:26).  Today we honour Joseph and Nicodemus.  Now we need to do as they did and end the secrecy.

Whose side are we on? 

The Cross challenges us to decide.

As we spend time at the Cross today, may we come out of the darkness and follow Christ in the days that lie ahead.

Amen.

Jesus and his Death

I intend over the few weeks to post some studies I have written for my Church here in Hong Kong.  They are about our image of Jesus and how we can discover the Real Jesus.  They particularly focus on the significance of the crucifixion, hence the title: Jesus and his Death.

1. The Popular Jesus

Jesus as a person is quite popular in popular culture. In fact, it has become quite fashionable for someone in the public eye to say that while they have problems with the Church, they have great respect for Jesus. Further questioning, however, reveals it is a certain image of Jesus that they have respect for. This image has certain facets:

1. Inclusive: Jesus is hailed as someone who welcomed all regardless of social class and background, gender, or lifestyle.

2. Peace-loving: Jesus is seen as a prophet who taught the importance of love and peace and rejected the use of force and violence.

3. Radical: Jesus is presented as one who challenges corrupt authority and obedience to tradition.

What is dismissed either explicitly or implicitly by those holding this sort of image of Jesus is any suggestion that Jesus was anything other then human. The belief in the divinity of Jesus is seen as an invention of the Church not having any connection with the historical Jesus.

This popular image of Jesus has become so pervasive that it has also been taken up in varying degrees by people in the Church. Not all would want to go the whole way and reject Jesus' divinity altogether, but it receives considerably less emphasis than once in did. The emphasis now is on Jesus as one of us.

Jesus is thus able to take his place as one of the good guys: a candidate for a first century version of the Nobel Peace Prize or, at least, its first century equivalent. His death on the Cross is explained as that of a martyr prepared to die for what he believed to be true.

The only question is why anyone would want to kill him in the first place if this is what he was really like!

Now I can see why someone resembling this popular image might upset or irritate people. (In this form, he certainly rather irritates me if I am honest.) It might even be possible to imagine a crowd being so upset with him on occasion that it turned on him, as, indeed, happened at Nazareth, though quite why they should be quite so upset is more difficult to explain.

What, however, is impossible to explain is why, if Jesus was like the popular image of him, they should determinedly plan and plot to have him killed. And it would take some planning and plotting as the Jewish authorities did not have the power to order capital punishment, that power lay with the Roman authority, and the Romans for all their faults tended not to have people killed for preaching love and peace. They saved such punishments for those who preached hate and war: hate and war, that is, against Roman rulers and rule.

The problem with many presentations of Jesus, both inside and outside the Church, is that the death of Christ becomes a complete mystery. Unless our presentation of Jesus presents someone who otherwise good religious people would hate and explains how they could get Rome to crucify him, then the chances are that we are not presenting the Real Jesus.

It also suggests that the Jesus we are following and worshipping is not the Real Jesus either. In other words, the Jesus we follow and worship must not simply be one who was crucified, but one who was crucifiable!