An Easter Reverie: Can you Believe it?

At this Easter season, I am informed that Jesus took my place under judgment; that his suffering and death satisfied the verdict against my sins. Jesus’ compliance during the Passion Week trauma and God’s approval of the process means that if we believe in this “work of redemption,” we will be “saved.”

This is great news! But hard to believe. (Belief is supposed to be difficult, is it not?}As explained to me, the ritual seems overly clever. I can hear you retort, “It doesn’t need to make sense; the Bible says it, so believe it. Belief is not supposed to make sense.”

I respond by noting that the Passion Week accounts do not bundle up ruling doctrine, ready for print-out distribution. Doctrine is the root word imbedded in “indoctrination.” I attribute my confusion to a common form of less than careful indoctrination. Doctrine is the ebook Cliff’s Notes version of the Bible; you click on the link for quick, easy downloading. But to really understand and connect with Easter, I turn instead to the full narration of Jesus’ life and death available in New Testament hard copy. Here is what I find there.  It is all in clear print.

- Virgin Birth as a combination of opposites.
- Divine Incarnation uniquely happening only once.
- Sacrificial Death appeasing God with ritual.
- Judicial Satisfaction by a miscarriage of justice
- A Violent Death to end death’s violence
- An Impassible God who suffers.
- Resurrection followed by another disappearance.

Easter is a montage of all the above, and more, that leaves my head spinning. I will refrain from digressing about the definition of “belief,” but the whole Easter passion event actually can make sense, though only as we go deeper. It begins to clear up when I ask a few stark questions and do a little straight ahead thinking-- two things we acolytes are usually discouraged from doing.

Question # 1: Are you O.K. with God using an unjust, violent killing (of Jesus) to ward off the recrimination we deserve as sinners?

No Christian denies that the charges against Jesus were unjust; even Pontius Pilate admitted this. But Jesus knew his execution was inevitable, and quoted Scripture predicting it. We speak of what happened as God “working out his plan for our salvation.” But a Cliff’s Notes’ doctrinal explanation of the “plan” tends to trip over its own feet. If violence is God’s method for dealing with sin, maybe the National Rifle Association has a good point.

You might respond by saying God condoned the killing of Jesus for the greater good it introduced. Needing a proper way to assuage divine wrath against the abhorrent sins of mankind, God sent Jesus to experientially symbolize the vindication. But think again. Jesus did not need to die for our sins for us to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a foregone conclusion with God. Jesus many times facilitated the recognition of this forgiveness throughout his ministry before his death on the cross. Jesus’ earthly demise was not God’s doing. The angry crowd of accusers and Roman officials did the dirty work. It was going to happen; God and Jesus both knew that. Jesus had to die, but he did not need to.

I am told to “just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” But the questions are still there. Answering them rather than stuffing them supplies a power that strengthens my faith. I see real virtue in making consistent good sense of what I “believe.” Sometimes doors swing open at the whiff of a thought question.

Question #2: What about the victims who suffered harm at the hands of the real criminal, Barabbas?

Was justice served by Herod’s court executing the wrong man, setting the real terrorist free? It doesn’t sound to me as if legal ”justice” was what the crucifixion of Jesus was all about if divine consistency is important.

Question #3: If Jesus “suffered in our place,” why are we still suffering; why are we advised to “take up our cross” as Jesus did once?

Students of sacrificial appeasement in the Old Testament observe that this longstanding ritual was practiced to restore unanimity of spirit and peace before God. The reasoning goes like this: Bringing justice—by administering suffering to a chosen victim—dissipates the spirit of rebellion. God sanctioned this practice by offering his Son as the victim. There are two problems with this reasoning. First, God was not complicit in victimizing Jesus. Jesus lived to reconcile us to God and he died as a result, but the sacrifice makers were the wrong party. Rather than dying “to” save us from our sins, Jesus died “because” he showed the way back to God, which was a threat to the “authorities” who instigated his death. He had to die in order to be resurrected. He knew this. He knew he was the “emblem” of God’s love, and he understood his role. The word “sacrifice” is ritual vocabulary that compares in certain ways with what happened in the turmoil of the Passion Week, but in the process Jesus was fulfilling God’s “plan” at a deeper level. God, through Jesus, asks us to “believe” in the efficacy of this spiritual weapon that can raise a human from a grave. What Jesus conquered was the idea of sacrifice as a gimmick. Second, mischaracterization of the Passion Week events can lead to inappropriate acts “in the name of Christ.” History tells us of how God’s unusual manipulation of violence (the “use” of sacrifice) has been made a rationale by the Christian Church and “Christian” politicians for acts of official violence through wars, persecution, and capital punishment, as if we are miming God’s salvation technique, in Jesus’ name.

Don’t misread me. I am not trying to erase the relevance of Jesus’ role as “atoner.” I’m only trying to probe what the image of a sacrificial lamb reflects, and I am wary of shorthand doctrine. I gratefully believe in Jesus as my Savior, but there is something else going on that I feel is mishandled by the Church. The Easter event has two parts, three days separating. The “saving” comes not from Jesus’ death, nor from the reason it happened. The “saving” comes from the resurrection. We spend a whole week commiserating over the injustice, the gore, and the shame of it all, but only one day commemorating Jesus’ return to life (after complete death) by God displaying triumph over Satan’s schemes.

What really happened was that in a remarkable display of God’s inspiriting power, Jesus put the ritual of sacrificing to an end. Even in the Old Testament we learn that God considered the ritual of animal sacrificing a poor substitute for genuine regret for sins committed. All we have to do now is “believe” in who Christ proved to be--a man who knew and pleased his Father. Jesus is my “savior” because he showed the Way for us to follow on the path to reconciliation with God and the prospect of life after death. My “belief” is entwined in hope based on confidence in God’s intent for me as exemplified by Jesus, a man just like me who by God’s help passed tests that make my troubles seem piddling.

I don’t hang a crucifix on my car rearview mirror or go faint before stained glass portrayals of Calvary’s hill. To choke on pity is a projection of weak hope. We know what happened Easter morning. We need to be realistic about what life throws at us, but Jesus’ resurrection is the trump card, if we “believe” it. But back to the questions whose answers give heft to my belief.

Question #4: Why do we insist that Jesus’ “sacrifice” fulfilled the demands of Old Testament ritual?

What God seeks in us is a pure heart; and Jesus proclaimed a “new covenant” that bypasses ritual. Jesus requested his followers to sacramentally remember his commitment that led him through a gauntlet of trials, but “remembrance” is not “ritual.” Christ did not “save” us by a certifying “mechanism.” Rather, he provided in his living and teaching a fully tested mode of the Way to God.

If the medium (ritual) is not the message, neither is the legal jargon of “justification” spiritually helpful. Mixing ritual and legal jargon, as in “take up your cross,” obscures the point of Jesus’ story. Bad things happen, even very bad things, as Jesus found out. My cross, my troubles are not punishment for my sins. And my punishment is not deflected by vicarious acceptance of Jesus’ passion experience, because Jesus’ suffering was not punishment. What Jesus did for me through his death was to set the scene for God to resurrect him. With Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, Satan played his best card. Satan must have been expecting the “sacrificial ritual,” facilitated by Pilate, to be as clumsy as the Old Testament substitution ritual had long proved to be.

But God understands sin. God knows what to do with sin. God loves sin to (its) death, literally. Jesus showed how this works. Jesus was killed for standing up to Satan, but he remarkably eschewed violence (ask Peter about this). Jesus’ answer was not a “mechanism” of repair. It was a power show of mettle not metal. You may have noticed that God has not killed the Devil; God niftily puts him in his “place” of self immolation. God “processes” evil; Jesus was “sent” as a human to show how to apply God’s process in fine detail.

Those who committed the unjust treatment of Jesus were the ones performing the ritual of killing. This is not the way “sacrificing” was traditionally thought to work. The characters are miscast. Jesus “nailed” the point that the Old Testament script writers misunderstood the plot. Jesus was a “slain lamb,” but the “atonement” works because Jesus was God‘s man through it all, a perfect model who is the hope we can embrace. Following Jesus’ Way opens up the flow of atoning grace. The mechanistic model of “burnt offerings” and juridical slang about justice and ransom miss the point that Jesus’ manner in dying marked the futility and end of sacrifice ritual. The meaning of Easter lies in the Way God atones. Jesus died to shut the door on the long chain of violent sacrifices. He lived, through his life story and his resurrection, as God’s signification of redemption’s accessibility. To gather around the “cross” can serve as a “reality check” on the way ungodliness functions, but was never meant to be the challenge around which the Church rallies to motivate the spread of Christianity amidst its foes.

I see no virtue in making a pageant out of a week of civil prosecution--the disintegration of Satan’s bungling. Let’s cut the anticipation short and focus on the end game. On Easter morning God effectively unmasked Satan as the fool. If I could find an emblem of the rolled away stone, I would hang it from my car rearview mirror this Easter morning. There was a lot more “rolled away” than I first “believed.”