From the Interim Rector

Dear friends in Christ,

He did not die to save me.

The title for this week’s Bell & Tower sounds heretical.

The idea that Jesus did die to save me is so thoroughly woven into hymnody and the tradition of the church. The penal substitutionary model (Anselm, 11th century; hardened by Calvin, 16th century) claims that God’s justice requires punishment for sin.

The punishment is death. God’s wrath is then satisfied. A legal and cosmic transaction is required. The penalty is paid. Acquittal is granted.

This theology feels like bedrock Christianity.

Jesus died because of human sin, not as a payment to God for it. This takes us to the heart of the life and teachings of Jesus.

Do we believe that God is like Jesus or not?

Do we hold on to an image of a God of Wrath?

Is this God hiding in the crevices of soul and heart?

What kind of God would require a blood payment before forgiveness becomes possible?

Jesus heals various people before any mention of sacrifice. The God Jesus reveals is already and always forgiving. The cross does not unlock forgiveness; it demonstrates the love that was never withheld.

The incarnation itself is the saving event, not only the crucifixion. Athanasius (4th century), considered both Catholic and Orthodox, said, “God became human so that humans might become divine.” With the excessive emphasis on human sin in Western Christianity, such statements come across as heretical, but wait, look at John 14:12-14, where Jesus tells disciples that they will do even greater things than he. Here is a Teacher who has no rivalry with his students and applauds their exceeding him.

The idea of “saving” needs reexamination. Save from what, exactly?

If the answer is “from God’s wrath,” then God is the problem Jesus saves us from—which is a barely concealed form of cosmic child abuse.

If saving means wholeness, healing, liberation from the powers of sin and death, reconciliation, the restoration of the image of God—then the whole life saves.

The healings save.

The table fellowship saves.

The teachings save.

The resurrection saves.

The cross is not the mechanism; it is the cost.

The resurrection then, is not God saying “the payment has been accepted”—it is God saying “This is what I look like, this is what life looks like, and death does not have the final word over it.”

I do not know

Jesus, arrested, remains calm.
But I panic.
Jesus, I wonder at your strength.
How do you do that?
I marvel at the love
with which you treat even your captors.
Who are you?
I doubt that I can actually follow you.
I am not that loving, that committed.
I haven’t paid enough attention.
I’ve hardly learned a thing you’ve taught me.
I try to be so forgiving, but—no.
I don’t know how you do it.
I don’t deserve your friendship.
I can’t claim to be close enough to you.
I’m not worthy to be called your follower.
Go away from me, I am a sinful man.
Who is this who so deeply astounds me?
I don’t know the first thing about him.
I don’t even know who he is.
I do not know the man!
—Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard