“We are going up to Jerusalem” Jesus told his disciples.

“This week, we are going up to Jerusalem” Jesus tells us on this Palm Sunday.

And there, in Jerusalem, everything that has been prophesized in the Hebrew scriptures will be accomplished.  Jesus tells us what this means for him….“I will be handed over to the Gentiles.  I will be mocked, insulted and spat upon.  And after I have been flogged, I will be killed.  On the third day, I will rise again.”

Like Jesus original disciples, we are shocked at what we hear.  It continues to be difficult to understand these things.  In fact, we continue to try to grasp, to understand why it was that Jesus had to suffer and die on a cross in Jerusalem.

This morning, I invite you to ponder with me the meaning of Jesus’ suffering and death.  And as we set out to do this, let me acknowledge my own discomfort in struggling with the central symbol, the religious icon of our Christian faith.  As your pastor, I wish that I could offer you a sure, certain, and single truth about the cross and interpret its meaning once and for all times.  But instead, I stand before you to confess that, like Jesus’ disciples who were with him on that first Palm Sunday, I too have questions about his suffering and death.  I too do not fully grasp why he had to die on a cross.  I question whether his death on that cross was part of God’s plan.

This morning’s sermon has been in the making for about a decade!  It has been written and rewritten, revised and reworked as liberation, feminists, and African American womanist theologians have pressed me to rethink my theology of the cross and my understanding of salvation.  I credit a number of people for influencing me and inviting me to liberate my views on the cross, particularly Dolores Williams, Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker (Brock and Parker have recently published an excellent book on atonement, Proverbs of Ashes), Ched Myers, colleagues, my spiritual director Leith Speiden, and my daughter Nancy, who wrote a profound paper on this topic during her recent studies at Boston University School of Theology. 

This morning I invite you to join me in asking some difficult questions about what our tradition has taught us about Jesus’ crucifixion, and then to take these questions with you into Holy Week, as we go up to Jerusalem together with our Lord.  Perhaps your questions will so trouble you that you will want to read more.  Perhaps we will want to organize a study group around this vital topic?

I draw comfort from the fact that I am not alone in asking these questions or in seeking to use my experience and context to question and interpret the events of Holy Week.  Throughout the history of Chrisitanity, theologians have suggested a variety of interpretations of Jesus’ death on the cross.  So, my theological work is nothing new; yet it feels so risky to suggest that our traditional understanding of the cross (which we hold so dear) calls for revisioning.

But given our Lenten theme on the restorative love of Jesus, and his modeling for us non-violent, passionate justice-making, I hear Jesus himself inviting us to consider what the Christian church has asked us to believe, to examine its merit, and to use our own experience and reason as we rethink the meaning of the cross.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s begin with what we have been taught.

As early as the 2nd century AD, the theologian Irenaeus developed a theory of atonement that  claimed that because God and Satan were at odds, God sent Jesus Christ as a ransom payment needed for God to reclaim humankind from the Devil.  This theology of atonement prevailed for many centuries until, in the 11th century, Anslem of Canterbury reinterpreted  this “ransom theory” and proposed that it was out of a sense of justice that God required payment for humans’ sinful nature.  And since there was no way that humans could pay this enormous debt that would return them to right relationship with God (at-one-ment), God came to earth as a human, died for our sins, thereby paying the price for our fallen nature.  In the 16th century,  John Calvin developed this “theology of substitution” even further, placing more emphasis on the wrath of God.  “Jesus,” he wrote, “bore the weight of divine severity, since he was stricken and afflicted by God’s hand and experienced all the signs of a wrathful and avenging God.” 

And so, tradition has taught us that on the cross, Jesus bears the punishment we deserve, and because of it, we are saved.

The cross has become equated with our means of salvation.

Composers and hymn writers, painters and sculptors have reinforced these atonement theories. 

He died that we may be forgiven, He died to make us good,
that we might go at last to heaven, saved by his precious blood

What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?

Alas! and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die?
Would he devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?

In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.
Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, by the cross are sanctified.
Lo! it glows with peace and joy.

Can we, with a good conscience, believe in a God who requires such violence?  such cruelty? in order to be appeased?  Is our God a fatherly torturer, insisting, even planning, to save us through such violence?

Let’s pause and recall what our Lenten scripture lessons have taught us about the God that we worship and adore. 

As part of God’s original blessing, we believe that we are beloved children of God.  God’s intention at creation was and continues to be for peace and harmony, for justice and well being of all humankind.  Our God is not one who seeks revenge and retribution, but who sent Jesus Christ to teach us how to love God, neighbor and self.

Throughout Lent, we have heard personal witnesses and thoughtful sermons on how the restorative love of Jesus brought redeemed life to Nicodemus, forgiveness to the Samaritan woman, healing and light to the dark world of the blind man, and restored, abundant life to Lazarus.  Jesus’ restorative love touched individual lives, and more importantly, it transformed entire communities and demanded dignity and welfare for all.  Through non-violent, restorative love, Jesus confronted injustices and risked opposition rather than conform to an empire that enforced its oppressive will through violence.

Jesus’ death, therefore, can be understood as the result of the way he lived, the choices he made, the risks that he took on behalf of the poor, the oppressed, and the disenfranchised.

Jesus was a threat to the Jewish religious leaders and to the Roman political leaders of his day.  He lived out the truth of restorative love and imparted this truth through parables and miracles and relationships.  His life threatened those who did not want to embrace this truth.  It was they who argued with him, threatened him, denied him, and plotted to kill him. 

Jesus death was a terrible tragedy.

And he died as he lived, offering himself non-violently to his enemies.  The cross represents Jesus’ ultimate act of non-violence. 

Perhaps our salvation has little to do with Jesus dying for our personal sins and everything to do with what Jesus taught us about living. 

Jesus did not incarnate God in dying:  Jesus incarnated God in living.

Could it be that it is in living like Jesus that we are saved? 

Could it be that, like Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, the blind man and Lazarus, we are saved when we recognize the gift of amazing grace, accept it, and then, like Jesus, commit ourselves to the struggle for justice, the hope of non-violence, and the joy of right relationships?  Ah, yes!  perhaps that is the real essence of salvation!

Could the right question be “What did Jesus live for?” rather than “What did Jesus die for?”  for truly it is Jesus’ life and vision of restoration that redeems humanity.

And yet, at the center of our Christian faith is the story of Jesus’ death on the cross.  He crucifixion does not and cannot change.  But how we understand his death, how we interpret it theologically, is most critical because of how it informs our understanding of God and how we treat one another.

I truly believe that our 21st century context calls into question a theology which claims that God the Father required the death of His Son to save us.

As long as there are wars and weapons, retaliation and retribution, a plethora of violence that haunts every corner of our world; as long as violence is visited upon homosexuals and people of color, as long as there are victims and offenders of domestic violence and of clergy sexual abuse, we must wrestle with and question a theology of the cross that glorifies violence and encourages victims to endure it.

Jesus died a violent death.  Are we willing to continue to see it as holy and salvific? or are we called to mourn it as a tragedy?  to experience the torture, the anguish, the ultimate grueling death even as we grieve more recent crucifixions?  the atrocities in the Holy Land?  the innocent victims of Afghanistan?  the rape and abuse of women and children? the death of species from environmental destruction?

Holy Week is upon us.  With Jesus, we journey to Jerusalem.  I invite you to join his disciples this week with your own questions.  Let us admit that we do not fully understand or grasp the events that are about to unfold.  Yet let us dare to believe that it is the questions themselves that might offer us new life-giving truths.  With that hope, let us go with Jesus to Jerusalem.