Easter sermon preached 27 Mar 2005 by Rev. Mary Katherine Morn
How glorious it is to gather together with those who seek hope and believe in hope and find hope. What joy is found here. The prophets foretold that “there shall be a day.” And this is the day for us. We have a message of hope to share, a message of love. May this be our day of hope—and may the redeeming message of love we have received save us.
All of a sudden it seems there are messages all around about sacrifice and suffering. Perhaps it is the influence of last year’s release of Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” Maybe it’s been around all along. Maybe I missed it because of my liberal Christian upbringing. Episcopalians tend to find it unseemly to focus on the cross. All of a sudden, though, the cross, and the blood of the cross are everywhere. It seems all of a sudden anyway: that people are very focused on suffering and sacrifice.
It feels like it is the nature of the world we live in. In a time of war, we have to work hard to justify violence and suffering. In some pockets of Islamic culture we can see the extreme manifestation of this fascination with violence as a means of redemption.
Just yesterday I heard a disturbing story on the radio about a twenty year old woman Palestinian named Ahmed whose boyfriend was killed by Israelis. One night she was with some friends talking about the conflict. Much to her own surprise she heard herself saying, “I am going to be a suicide bomber.” In less than a week she was contacted by a terrorist group and instructed to go with another young person to a crowded place in the city. They both were wearing back packs filled with explosives. The young man was to go first. He would walk into the crowd and ignite the bombs. Then, a few minutes later, she was to follow the crowd as they scattered, position herself wherever most of the people were standing to watch the scene, and blow herself up, killing as many others as possible.
She watched as the young man became a human bomb. She walked away. In that moment she changed her mind. The leaders of the terrorist group were furious with her. Eventually she was turned over to the Israelis. After she was in their custody the head of the Israeli defense forces arranged a meeting with her. He explained that he wanted to “know his enemy.” A reporter was present who made a transcript of the discussion. When asked what she wanted to do now, she replied, “I want to draw a line across the past and never come back here.” The Israeli official admitted he was moved by her story and her remorse. But, he pointed out, she did not prevent the first part of the attack from happening. She had been willing, until the last minute, to blow herself up and kill innocent people. She had become convinced that this action would save her and redeem her boyfriend’s death.
It’s not unusual for us to get confused about what will save us. Idolatries of all kinds seduce us. We must ask ourselves again and again what it is that truly saves. What saves us from meaninglessness, lifelessness? What saves us from cynicism, from turning away from life, from rejecting hope and love? What saves us for love?
Whether we are struggling with the loss of a dear loved one, our own failing health, or the loss of faith that often comes in the midst of the reality of violence and oppression in the world or in our own lives, reconciling these many losses in our lives is the work of resurrection. Resurrection is coming back to life. Which we do again and again. We do it when we glimpse the power of human love in action through healing and justice and courage. We do it when we know in our hearts that we cannot ever lose connection with love, even in death. When we trust that our lives are truly a part of a larger Life, and finally, that we needn’t fear death.
I take the side of those theologians and prophets who have said that it is not Jesus’ death that saves us, but his life and his love. This was my primary objection to the movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” It presents the view that it is Jesus’ suffering and death that is our salvation. As one theologian, a professor of New Testament at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley said of the movie, “It’s just bad theology to say God had to kill his son as a payback for sin. It makes God sound bloodthirsty.”
I believe this theological position on atonement, far from atoning for violence and sin, perpetuates it. Rebecca Ann Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock present this view in their book Proverbs of Ashes. They argue that any theology of the cross mystifies and glorifies violence and offers “dangerously false comfort.” In the context of this kind of theology we are easily taken in by calls to sacrificial violence. Or at least by the idea of suffering for righteousness sake. We construct elaborate rationalizations that make violence almost make sense.
Forget the suicide bomber for a moment and consider the woman who believes the beatings are not enough reason for her to leave her husband. We rationalize, as I’ve already suggested, in times of war. We also do this to justify oppression or mollify those who are oppressed. We are part of a culture that rationalizes many kinds of violence as a way to solve things. A culture that kills killers. A culture that would tear lover from lover because they say some kinds of love are not acceptable. The message is all around us that we will save ourselves through this kind of violence. It is a dangerous false comfort.
Ours is a tradition that stepped away from the idea that it was necessary for Jesus to suffer and die for us to be reconciled with God. This traditional view, that there had to be a ransom to satisfy God for human sin, is definitely not the only view.
In the eleventh century, Abelard broke with his teacher, Anselm, and rejected the idea of satisfaction and put forth a theory of atonement that has come to be known as “moral influence.” He argued that Jesus’ death was the ultimate act of love, designed to inspire loving behavior in his followers. Saved by love.
Later Universalists like Hosea Ballou would pick up on these ideas and incorporate them into a theological foundation for a belief in universal salvation. In 1805 Ballou’s very famous A Treatise on Atonement, was published, in which he argues that God is a loving God and that a loving God would not find “satisfaction” in the death of his son. In 1834 he published An Examination of the Doctrine of Future Retribution. In these works he uses scripture and reason to argue that if God is Infinite, then it is impossible for us, as finite creatures to cause God offense. An infinite God would not need to be appeased. A loving God would not demand the suffering and death of Jesus for the sake of God’s coming into right relation with humanity. This is the crux of it. Ballou argued that God does not need the sacrifice, does not need to be glorified in this way. It is humanity that needs reconciliation with God.
In this 1834 work, Ballou points out that fear of future retribution for sins does not demonstrate faith. (Earlier Universalists had argued that there would be future retribution for sins, but that it would not be an eternal punishment. Some of these more traditional Universalists and other Christians at that time were challenging Ballou’s ideas with the argument that without fear of future retribution humanity would have no reason to behave morally.) Ballou answered that fear of sin was enough. That moral living was reward (and incentive) enough.
This is a great divide among religious peoples still. It has to do with our understanding of human nature and our beliefs about God. And it comes right down to the question I asked at the beginning of this sermon: what saves us?
Fear does not. Fear keeps us apart. A theology based on fear, an idea of the atonement based on fear, will not bring us to wholeness, to salvation. The crucifixion of Jesus was an inevitable result of his radical teaching. It would have been impossible for the powers of his day to let him live. He went to his death because he would not deny what he had lived for. Even in his darkest hour of fear, he would not recant what he knew about God, what he knew about the power of love.
And so he was killed on the cross. The Romans in power, and some of the Jewish leaders, too, believed this humiliation would put an end to all the nonsense. They (too) believed that their redemption might be found through violence. They believed their act of violence would discourage Jesus’ followers.
It did not. They remembered what Jesus had taught them. God’s love would not leave them. Nothing would separate them from this. There was much grief, of course, in the communities of disciples after his death. But their despair was answered by the resurrection of life. The blessed assurance that nothing is stronger than love. That love will not die. That fear and violence will not triumph.
What saves us? What saves us from the wounds of life so that we can come back, again and again, to full, rich, vibrant Life?
Forget sacrifice. Nothing is tied so firmly that the wind won’t tear it from us at last. We do not have to work at loss. The ground is always littered with our longings. Suffering will come, bidden or not. Forget sacrifice. Hear, though, the last line of the poem: The question is how to remain faithful to all the impossible, necessary resurrections. Faithfulness comes in our openness to new life. In the gentle hands touching us where we are most tender. Witnessing our pain. Not denying that suffering and death accompany us, but denying that this means an end to love. There is no end to love.
How glorious it is to gather together with those who seek hope and believe in hope and find hope. What joy is found here. The prophets foretold that “there shall be a day.” May this be the day for us.
Alleluia. Jesus is Risen. Love triumphs. Alleluia.