The meaning of Jesus’ death is not to be understood in terms of punishment for sin. Christ was the victim of human and institutional forces of blindness and self-interest, but his death is the source of redemption for all. Powerful quotation from Kamel Hussein.
The signs of evil surround us on every side. Our television screens are filled with nightly horrors of despairing people being driven from their homes – men shot, women raped, houses burned, and pathetic streams of sick, tired, famished and grieving refugees crossing national borders seeking a safe haven.
A television documentary analysed the massacre of more than a million people in Rwanda a few years ago and showed how the United Nations sat idly by, failing to intervene in the face of urgent reports and appeals from Rwanda. Retaining pleasant diplomatic relationships with Rwandan representatives in New York took precedence over intervening to save the lives of a million people.
We are also aware of the abject poverty of many in the third and fourth worlds, of interpersonal conflicts in our own lives, and the culture of drugs, hopelessness, crime, violence and suicide that infects most Western societies like a canker.
The causes of such evils are manifold. In too many places, nationalism and racial superiority became the ends which justify the slaughtering of thousands of innocents. The economic “reforms” which sweep around the globe are often driven by an ideology based on text books and computers which do not include human well-being as part of their calculus. When profit becomes the bottom line, life is stripped of ethics, humanity and spirituality. Other elements in this devil’s brew are greed, self-advancement on the backs of others, the unthinking carrying out of orders from above, complicity in the face of manifest suffering, and a fulsome process of rationalisation to ease any lurking doubts that all might not be well.
On this latter point, an architect of economic rationalist policies said to me once: “We’re all just ordinary people you know; you’ll see us at the supermarket, dropping our kids off at play-school, and launching our boats at the beach like anybody else”. (“Like anybody else?”, I wondered). A less anecdotal portrayal of the rationalisation comes from a Muslim novelist, Kamel Hussein, of Egypt. In his book about Good Friday, City of Wrong, Hussein writes :
The day was a Friday. But it was quite unlike any other day. It was a day when people went very grievously astray, so far astray in fact that they involved themselves in the utmost iniquity. Evil overwhelmed them and they were blind to the truth, though it was as clear as the morning sky. Yet for all that they were people of religion and character and most careful about following the right. They were endeared to the good, tenderly affected towards their nation, sincere in their religious practice, and characterised by fervour, courage and integrity. Yet this thorough competence in their religion did not save them from wrong-doing, nor immunise their minds from error. Their sincerity did not guide them to the good. They were a people who took counsel among themselves, yet their counsels led them astray. The people of Jerusalem were caught that day in a vortex of seducing factors and, taken unaware amid them, they faltered. Lacking sound and valid criteria of action, they foundered utterly, as if they had been a people with neither reason nor religion.
It was forces and factors such as these that brought Christ to his Cross. As we reflect on that evil, and our own contemporary participation in it, we are crushed. Jesus too was crushed by the evil : “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53.3). And yet that very suffering has the capacity to heal and to transform: “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (v.5).
Here we come to the heart of the matter, and one of the enduring mysteries of a God who suffers with us even to the point of death, but in dying gives new life. How do we understand this mystery? And in particular how can we read the words of Isaiah that “upon him was the punishment that made us whole”? Did Jesus die as a punishment for our sins, or did he die as the innocent victim who suffered from the evil actions of others?
The role of an innocent victim who suffers, by which suffering others are redeemed, is a central biblical concept. It undergirds the practice of animal sacrifices in the Jewish religion of Jesus’ time, and provided the conceptual framework for seeing Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice that transcended all others, and made all others unnecessary. To see Jesus dying, however, as a punishment for our sins, is, I believe, contrary to the Gospel view of a God who loves, and for whom punishment is therefore an alien concept. God takes sin seriously, and requires repentance and renewal of life, but that is not punishment. We may suffer as a result of our own actions, but that is a self-inflicted wound, not punishment. The idea of one being punished for the sins of others also contravenes concepts of justice and fairness.
For those reasons I reject the concept of punishment, and see Christ’s suffering as the consequence of the evil actions of others – someone who was martyred for speaking the truth, and for displaying an ultimate quality of life and love that proved too threatening for the religious and political authorities to cope with. That explains why Christ died, but leaves the bigger question : how does his death heal us, redeem us and set us free?
There are multiple theories of the Atonement, and no theory can put into human words what is ultimately one of the great divine mysteries. But there are times when we see with crystal clarity the contrast between good and evil, between God and Satan, between truth and falsehood, between love and hate. Such moments are moments of discernment when all the false trappings and rationalisations of life are stripped away and the truth stands clear with a starkness that crushes us as we become aware of our own participation and complicity in evil. Such a moment came to the Cardinal in The Mission as he perceived the inherent goodness and faith of the indigenous communities as compared with the self-serving forces of the colonial powers.
At such times, if we are willing, we engage in an act of profound metanoia, repentance, change of heart; we return to God, and find healing of life and spirit. Such was the impact of Christ’s death – Christ being lifted up on the Cross, towering over human history, the Son of God who by bearing the pain wrought by human sin draws all people to himself, calling us to repent, to change our lives so that we ourselves become pain-bearers rather than pain-causers, and like him become wounded healers, the channels of God’s love to others, sons and daughters of God following the pattern of Christ, the foremost Son of God.
In that healing light, as we look around our world, we see not just the evil-doers but also the Christ-figures in our midst. (In truth, both elements are mixed up in each of us : we have the capacity to be agents of darkness as well as bearers of the light). The Christlike actions of people in our own day surround us. The name of Martin Luther King is rightly quoted in this regard. We recall also the Anglican priest in South Africa, Michael Lapsley, his hands blown off, his sight all but extinguished by a parcel-bomb which reached him for his activities in opposing apartheid in that country.
A priest colleague of mine in New Zealand, George Armstrong, was the one who initiated the flotillas of small boats in the 1970s that put to sea in Auckland Harbour to protest each time a nuclear-armed vessel of war came to the port. His actions over a decade gathered a momentum that led to the Government declaring New Zealand a nuclear-free nation. George was the architect of a nation-wide initiative for peace, yet when his name came up for a chaplaincy appointment another diocese turned it down, believing the appointment of a “radical” might threaten church finances. In all such sufferings for the truth, and in all who follow the path of costly obedience, the pattern of the Cross is repeated from age to age.
Let me conclude by noting two other features of such suffering. First, the way of the Cross is always a path chosen in obedience to God’s call. Jesus Christ was not a puppet in some pre-determined divine drama. He chose freely to take the road to the Cross, the pain of that choice being clearly visible in his agony at Gethsemane: “Lord, take this cup away from me: nevertheless, not what I will but what you will”. When we choose such paths we may not know what or when the cost will be, but we hunch there will be one. Doubtless Martin Luther King had more than a hunch about the likely consequences of his choices, as Jesus did also, even if the time and manner of what might lie in store could not be foreseen.
Second, the achievements of Christlike suffering cannot be foretold either. It is our role to be faithful, even if we cannot see what positive good will come from our action. It was like this for Jesus. His death was the end of his mission on earth, and he doubtless agonised as to whether it had been worthwhile. Faced with being rejected by almost everyone, he would be scarcely likely to have very positive thoughts about his life’s work.
We go through the same torment of wondering if what we have worked for in life has been worthwhile. Have our efforts for peace and justice achieved anything? Have we spread God’s word to anyone? Have we done something to build a more human community? Or has it all just been an idle effort that will wither like grass or be crumpled by the forces of evil?
Here we need to listen to Jesus’ final words from the Cross: “Father into your hands I commit my spirit”. In making the same prayer of faith as Jesus did, we recognise that the final outcome of our life and work rests not with us, but with God. Trusting God is more important than the results. In fact it is only as we give our life to God in trust that God can use it in any way that helps. To use words from a prayer by Michael Quoist:
Thus, Lord, I must gather my body, my heart, my spirit
And stretch myself at full length on the Cross of the present moment.
The Good Friday narrative ends just as our life and work will end. Jesus dies just as we will die, with the final results not seen, our deepest questions unanswered. Let us, then, seek to cast aside any burden of anxiety we carry about outcomes, and instead commend ourselves into God’s hands, knowing that God will care for us and use us in ways none of us can ever predict.
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”
To Discuss
- When we say “Jesus died for our sins”, what does that mean for you?
- What times in life do you recall when you have suffered in vain, or done the right thing and been rejected?
- What positive good have you seen come from costly actions you have taken?
- If we see no positive outcome of costly actions, why would we not say “well, if you can’t beat them, join them”?
