Atoning for Bad Theology

14 March 2010 ~ Umstead Park UCC ~ Doug Long
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
Readings: Romans 3:21-31

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Maybe you’ve seen this story recently. A former Texan sent it to me last week:

In a small Texas town, Mount Vernon, Drummond's Bar began construction on a new building to increase their business...
The local Baptist church started a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayers. Work progressed right up till the week before opening when lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.
The church folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means.
The church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building's demise in its reply to the court. As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork...
At the hearing he commented, "I don't know how I'm going to decide this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that does not."

Though this specific incident appears to be fabricated, the obvious question it raises is pertinent.
When push comes to shove, what do we really believe?
(In The Simpson’s Movie there is a similar scene when an ominous shadow falls over the city… assuming the end is near everyone in the bar runs next door to the church, while at the same time everyone in the church runs next door to the bar.)
This morning I don’t want to talk about hypocrisy, though. Instead, I want to speak rather straightforwardly about what I think might be best referred to as ‘lazy belief’ or maybe ‘peer pressured belief’ or ‘belief by majority’ … and I want to think with you about clarifying our real belief before we find ourselves squirming in a tight spot.

The passage that Ann just read is absolutely full of all sorts of verbiage that has kept theological conversation going late into the night century after century. In these 11 verses Paul takes on:

-Jews and Gentiles,
-insiders and outsiders,
-equality for all,
-human depravity,
-divine grace,
-the will of God,
-the message of Jesus,
-righteous living,
-law,
-justification,
-and faith.

We could spend a while on these verses ...and though I publicized earlier that I would be speaking about 'grace', in truth, I’m going to talk more this morning about what grace is not. Why? Well, we’ve so thoroughly misunderstood some aspects of grace that it is impossible to talk about what grace IS until we diffuse the rampant bad theology we literally drown in.

Let me back up briefly… We’re talking about Paul during a major portion of Lent this year and I’ve already stated that this is new, or at least not recently discussed territory, for many of us. The reason is, simply, that the Apostle Paul is associated with so many backward ideas we have found it easier to ignore him. (Backward ideas? Anti-Semitism, acceptance of slavery, homophobia and the repression of women, to name just a few).
Let me say, first of all, that we may have saddled Paul incorrectly with these ‘unpopular’ ideas (more than unpopular, un-Christian I would argue, un-Christ-like anyway)… but let me go on to say, for the sake of time this morning… that all those horrible issues pale in comparison to the one theological construct that most attribute to Paul, the one theological construct that has, in our day, more than any other, led to a perversion of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

And that is the widely accepted understanding/belief that God required the death of Jesus in exchange for our sinfulness…

Variously expressed as-
God demanded the blood of Jesus for our sake,
Jesus died in our place, or
Jesus is the payment for sin.

You heard me right. I believe that that is a misunderstanding of Paul and certainly a misunderstanding of the work of God through Jesus.

If you have been taught this all your life, as I was… you may want to pay close attention. This may be one of the most important messages you’ve ever listened to. I say that in all humility knowing that I am going to quote liberally (no pun intended) from other theologians.

And with that understanding of Jesus life and death comes the common understanding, mis-understanding, I should say, of grace. Put together, it goes like this:

“We deserve to be punished by God for our sins, but Jesus was the substitute who paid the price.”

The second part is the grace…. Jesus paid it all.

(“Jesus paid it all… all to him I owe, sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.”)

This is so central to one understanding of Christianity, and I would say the 'status quo norm' of Christianity as most of us have come to be taught, that we are utterly confounded when confronted with it.
Recently someone came to my office declaring (but actually questioning me), “Jesus’ blood, Jesus dying for our sins, is the center of the message of Christianity. You believe that, don’t you?!”
“Actually,” I replied, “it depends on what you mean by that.”
“There’s only one thing it can mean,” they replied. “God had Jesus die in our place!”
“Well,” I offered in response, “not to be picky, but stated that way: No, No, I don’t believe that.”

For this person, we deserve to be punished by God for our sins, but Jesus was the substitute who paid the price.
Do you see how irreconcilable this theology is with the God that we affirm… the God of love and justice, the God of mercy and of peace, the God of Jesus?
The god who demands blood as an appeasement clashes so thoroughly with our God that there is no reconciliation to be had.
Indeed, if God demanded the killing of Jesus, then God becomes a horrific monster of cosmic proportions.
Yikes!

So, let me explain why I don’t think Paul intended for us to EVER think that God required/demanded Jesus’ death as a payment for our sins… and then let me tell you, briefly, what Paul did mean by a phrase he uses over and over…. "Christ Crucified."

First, let it be clear that this mis-understanding of Jesus death (as a substitutionary atonement… and that is what it is classically known as, “substitutionary atonement”) this understanding first appears about 1000 years ago, in the writing of Anselm… St. Anselm in the year 1097.
(“But,” you say, “here is the same message in the writings of Paul in his letter to the Romans!”
Well, no, in that case we’re projecting back onto Paul what Anselm interpreted and what has, since Anselm, become a dominant interpretation.)
First, Anselm.
Here is Anselm’s argument -
…and I’m reporting it as summarized by Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg in their recent book, “The First Paul.” (p. 128) [A book, by the way, that Jim Elza introduced me to last Sunday evening in our study of Paul. It’s hard to keep up with you guys!]

OK, Anselm’s argument:

“-Because of our disobedience to God, we are all sinners.
-Forgiveness requires that compensation be made. For God to forgive sin without payment would imply that sin doesn’t matter very much to God. The price of our disobedience must be paid.
-But our debt to God as an infinite being is infinite. Therefore, no one who is finite can pay the price. Only an infinite being can pay an infinite debt.
-Thus the necessity of Jesus. As the incarnation of God, he is that infinite being whose death as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin pays the price of our disobedience. Therefore we can be forgiven.”

(Borg and Crossan, "The First Paul." p. 125)

Now, this line of reasoning became, over the course of the centuries, adopted by much of the Church and today evangelical preachers on TV and Mel Gibson on the big screen have adopted this theology wholesale.

It finds its seeds in Paul, is derived from Paul, BUT this is not what Paul meant. The passage in Romans contains the heart of the matter- the verse in fact, from which this whole theological world finds its source…
Romans 3:25-

God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. (The Message)

That’s not a bad translation by the way.
Other translations make us even more uncomfortable:

NIV- God presented him [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.

And still, I contend, along with Borg, Crossan and many others, an understanding of substitutionary atonement, of God demanding an appeasement for our sins through the bloody death of Jesus… is not what Paul intended.

Now, hear me carefully here:
In order to understand what Paul was driving at, first of all, we have to back up and lose Anselm’s interpretation.

In speaking of the meaning of Jesus’ death, Paul uses several metaphors and images and we often blend all of them together. For example, being a good Jew he was quite familiar with the central themes of the Passover in the Jewish tradition. Part of the tradition was the ritualistic slaying of an unblemished lamb. …a Sacrificial Lamb. … a Passover Lamb. It was just too good a metaphor for Paul not to pick up on. So, reads Galatians 2:7b, "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." Taken with our Romans 3:25 passage, we find Paul speaking of sacrifice more than once.

But, to put it simply the metaphor has, over the course of history, become concrete … we are now often presented with a dominant image of Jesus, laid on an altar, a human sacrifice to a demanding God.
…and, when we pause to think about it, we recoil.

As I mentioned, Paul uses several images to speak of Jesus’ death, and I will briefly get to some of the others, but first let me address what is the crucial issue for most of us here… Paul’s use of the word sacrifice.

3:25 God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin.

“Dying ‘for’ someone and ‘sacrifice’ do not in themselves imply substitution. …In ordinary language, when people talk about somebody dying ‘for’ somebody, they seldom if ever mean in that person’s place. Rather, they mean for that person’s sake or benefit.
A parent risks her life and dies in order to save her child from a burning house. A soldier leaps on a grenade in order to save the lives of his buddies. One might say the mother and soldier died instead of the child and the buddies. But one wouldn’t mean as a substitute. Rather, they gave up their lives for the sake of others. They died that others might live.

Thinking about three twentieth-century martyrs makes the same point. Archbishop Oscar Romero- advocate of the poor and critic of the ruling class in El Salvador, killed by an assassin sent by the powerful- died because of his love for the Salvadoran people. In this sense, he died for them.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed because of his involvement in the plot to overthrow Hitler, died because of his love for the German people and those [Hitler] victimized.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed because of his love for his people and his passion for a different kind of world.
In these examples, dying for others does not mean dying in their place. Rather, these martyrs died because of their love for their people and their passion for a different kind of life for their people. Love and passion led them to their deaths. Their deaths were an epiphany of the depth of their love and passion.
In ordinary language, the word sacrifice is often used in the same way. In the examples above, the mother sacrificed her life to rescue the child, the soldier sacrificed his life to save his friends. Romero sacrificed his life for the Salvadoran people, and so on. Once again, there is no notion that these people died as substitutes for somebody else- they sacrificed their lives, but not because a substitute was required.” (p. 141)

OH!!!! You may be saying… Paul didn’t mean Jesus died in our place but Jesus did die for our sake!!
So what else did Paul mean when he spoke so often of “Christ Crucified”….
And here, my friends, is where the real meat comes.
(Again, the following is borrowed heavily from Borg and Crossan's "The First Paul.")
Christ, of course, is the title given Jesus, signifying the Messiah, the awaited one... the exalted one, the one who ushers in God’s realm.
Paul doesn’t say 'Jesus' crucified, but 'Christ.' Implicit, of course, in that designation is the assertion that Jesus IS the Christ.
…and 'crucified'? Paul didn’t say Christ 'killed', Christ 'murdered', Christ 'put to death', but intentionally, repetitiously, Christ crucified.
You could only be 'crucified' by Rome. It was, exclusively, the Imperial death sentence. And so in that two word formula you have powerfully, succinctly, the power of the world (Rome) attempting to extinguish the power of God.
Got it?
It's the domination system at its most powerful, crucifying the manifestation of God.

Furthermore, when Paul says 'like Jesus' we die to the old and are raised to the new we are participating in the radical power of God’s overtaking the power of the Empire. Jesus is not our substitute but invites us to participate.
Jesus, for Paul, is the decisive revelation of God, exhibiting in his death, for our sakes, the depth of God’s love.
…and so Paul says to the Galatians, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me!" This is not substitution at all, but participation!

Which brings us back, full circle, to grace.

Says Paul, no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want to achieve it, we will not, by our own efforts, gain God’s favor. Why? Precisely because of our sinful condition, which prevents us from doing anything but sin.

… at our core we are helpless and hopeless wretches. We do fall short of the glory of God. We have great need for grace. …which is given to us in abundance through Jesus the Christ, who invites us to participate in his victory over the forces and powers of this world.
We are made one with God not by way of substitution, but participation.
Amazing…
Amazing grace…

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.

I don’t know about you, but it kinda makes me want to sing.
How ‘bout you?

Amen.