The Passion of Christ:

Suffering and Death in Themselves do not Save

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Transcribed from the Sermon preached

 March 28, 2004

Marc and I met when he decided to steal my girl. We fought over her for the good part of the school year. It was too fun to quit. Then in first grade things changed. Other kids started to make fun of Marc. Marc was not only trying to steal my girlfriend, he was overweight, uncoordinated, and Jewish.

One day when I came out to the playground and saw Marc in the center of about ten boys. They were yapping insults and picking at him like a pack of hungry coyotes. "You fat Jew" one would yell from the front, while one or two others would sneak up from behind and kick him down or throw a ball at the back of his head. "Jew, Fatso, Fag," some would yell while two boys, having planned together, would throw their balls at the same time. One sneaks up behind Marc and kneels down, another pushes Marc over the back of the boy on the ground. Everyone laughs uncontrollably. Except, Marc who is now crying in rage.

Marc and I had tripped each other and threw balls at each other, but this was different. It was a vicious pack motivated by something deeper than our conscious minds could reason. Something told me it was wrong. I stepped into the circle and said "Stop." There was a hesitation, but then one kid who had retrieved the loose ball wanted his chance at Marc's head. Jimmy, a member of my church, straight A student and son of a doctor threw the ball. "Jew," bam! The ball hit Marc Marc was bawling uncontrollably, holding his sides where he had been kicked, clothes dirty, face red with rage. "I mean it. Back off or I will beat you up," I said. I wound up having to throw a few kids to the ground before the teacher finally arrived.

That night I asked my father and mother if Jews were bad people. "Everyone is a child of God," my father said. And he showed me where Jesus said, "If you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me." "Jesus must be sick to his stomach when he sees people picking on others in his name," my mom said. "He died, trying to get people to love and forgive. Those who pick on someone different from themselves are more like those who killed Jesus than someone who happens to be Jewish."

Why did Christ die, and what does his death have to do with our salvation? The common understanding of the cross says that punishment we deserve is taken on by Jesus. We are guilty of sin against God and our neighbors, and through our sin have separated ourselves from God and one another. We deserve condemnation, but Jesus steps in and takes the punishment. After the punishment is paid by Jesus on the cross, we are released and forgiven from our sin. Jesus is the perfect lamb offered as a sacrifice for the benefit of us sinners.

There are several reasons why we may be uncomfortable with this interpretation of the life and death of Jesus. Mark Heim, in an article in the March 7, 2001 Christian Century gives some examples. First, few should be unaware that the cross has been the keystone of anti-Semitism "The libel that charges Jews with Jesus' death draws its virulent strength from the companion assumption that this death was somehow uniquely horrible and uniquely important.

"Second, the language of sacrifice to many people is either empty because it is unintelligible, or offensive because it is morally primitive...We can hardly imagine God planning suffering and death of one innocent as the condition of releasing guilty others. Heim continues, "Transactional views of Jesus’ death depend upon categories that themselves pose problems. Legal or economic understandings of atonement frame human sin in terms of a debt that must be paid. Feudal terms present sin as an offense against God's honor that must be satisfied." But if the debt is actually paid, "in what sense is God actually merciful? If it is God who in fact pays the debt humans owe, how is justice truly satisfied?"

Third, "In exalting Christ's death, do we not glorify innocent suffering and encourage people to accept it passively 'in imitation of Christ?'" Does the Church's theology, which has the divine Father punish his innocent child to redeem the world, look uncomfortably like child abuse? If we combine the doctrine of the trinity (There is one God in three persons), and the doctrine of sovereignty (God controls everything and preordained the crucifixion) with this idea of how we are saved, Christianity seems even more silly. If Jesus is also fully God, then God sends himself in human form, kills and tortures himself, blames it on us, and then forgives us for it.

These are some of the problems we may have with substitutionary images of atonement: now let’s look at another understanding. Let me suggest that there is one fundamental question that the Gospels respond to. Are the forces of evil, sin, pain, sickness, and death more powerful than the forces of joy, hope, love and peace? God could stay in heaven and cheer us on. He could tell us, "this is how you should live, and yes, you can do it. But it is awfully easy for him to say Mr. All Powerful and Good. How tough is it for God to be good when he out-powers everything? That is like Michael Jordan trying to teach people to be brave by betting a thousand dollars on a pick-up game down at the YMCA. First off, he is filthy rich so a thousand dollars is nothing. Second, the chance that MJ would lose a pick-up game at the local YMCA is slim to none. There is nothing brave about it. Now if God can show that love can triumph even under duress, then that is something. If love and forgiveness can live under the most horrendous of circumstances, when one is powerless and at the mercy of the brutal and greedy, then there is hope for us all.

Elizabeth Johnson writes, "Jesus’ death included everything that makes death terrifying:

state torture, physical anguish, brutal injustice, hatred by enemies, the mockery of their victorious voices, the collapse of his life's work in ruins, betrayal by some close friends, the experience of abandonment by God and the powerlessness in which one ceases to be heroic." In the midst of all this, Christ Jesus remained faithful, full of grace and truth.

It is important that the life of Jesus remain connected to the resurrection For it is not death and blood that save, but love and forgiveness that lasts even in the midst of pain, suffering, evil and death. In George Orwell's 1984 the story begins by the main character writing in a little diary: 2+2= 4. But Big Brother is watching and the thought police come and take him away. They torture him until he admits that 2+2=5. He is released, and at the end of the book he is seated at a dusty table. He writes in the dust: 2+2=4. And then erases it.

In my mind, the truth of the Gospel is even more important than 2+2=4. The truth of the Gospel is that love is more powerful than evil and death. The world would have us believe that evil and hate prevail over love. The point is driven home, not only in the suffering of Jesus but in the suffering of so many throughout history. There was nothing unique about the pain and suffering Jesus experienced. The suffering of Jesus is just an exclamation mark on the Devil's argument: "Death wins. I will even kill God." But the Devil unwittingly plays into Jesus’ hand. Jesus remains full of love, grace and truth until the very end.

Jesus knows he needs to do this, to maintain his integrity, his message of love and grace even to the point of death. He knows that if he keeps it up he will be killed. It is not hard to predict that he must be handed over and suffer. Every time he does something powerful the ruling elite feel threatened. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Archbishop Romero predicted their deaths. They could have saved themselves if they would have been willing to compromise their message of love and justice. Like Christ, they knew that if nobody is willing to risk death to keep hope alive, then when death is a risk, hope will not live. They had to go on. Jesus had to go to Jerusalem. In this sense we can say Jesus had to suffer, that he sacrificed his life for ours, for our forgiveness and hope. There is nothing about the blood and suffering itself that saves. The blood is only a reminder of how far Jesus was willing to go to keep alive the grace that saves us. It is grace that saves, not blood and suffering. But if love doesn't go to death, if his blood is not shed, then we do not know how love will fare in the face of death. In that sense his blood and death is necessary. For me, the Gospel message is not that God sent his son to die, but that God sent his son to live, to live a life as it was intended to be lived, in unconditional love with God and humanity, indeed all creation, no matter what.

You could also say that the point of the Gospel is that there is torture and suffering worse than flogging and crucifixion Jesus was so in tune with the love that is God that any compromise of that love would have been the greater sacrifice. "The one who loses his life," says Jesus, will save it." Jesus suffered flogging and crucifixion rather than suffer the torture of compromising his very being and a separation from God. In other words, Jesus would have done the same thing, even if his act would save nothing except his divine integrity.

What the cross enables us to do is to extrapolate out to our lives. Would Jesus love and forgive me for all I have done? We all fall short of the glory of God. Our compromise of love, our blindness and ignorance cause pain and suffering. Is our sin, we ask, more powerful than God's love? We look at the life and death of Jesus and say, "No, God's love is even more powerful than my failures. There is a place for me in the Kingdom of God."

Over the next four years Marc and I became the best of friends, and it soon came to be known that if you messed with Marc you would be messing with me. But there were plenty of times when I was not around and the boys and girls would attack.

One day in fifth grade I was at the drinking fountain and I heard Marc yell from out on the soccer field. I went running over to discover that the two toughest sixth graders in the school had stolen his ball and were taunting him. Marc saw me and said, "If you don't give that ball back Max is going to beat you up."

I was scared to death. And new questions popped into my mind for the first time. Not only was this the first time I had encountered a formidable opponent when I intended to do good, but it was also the first time I consciously agonized over a moral decision. What was my friendship with Marc going to cost me? Not only did these boys have the reputation for being the toughest kids in the school, they were also the coolest. I was learning in fifth grade that cool was a very high virtue. Fonzi of Happy days was cool. Ritchie was the athlete and a geek. Ritchie could throw a baseball, Fonzi got the girls.

I had always had a special covenant with God. I was David or Samson. As long as I kept my faith I could do anything. "You come at me with sword and spear," David said to Goliath, "but I come with the Lord God almighty." But then on that playground I stood before two Goliaths and I doubted. They gave the ball back but the damage was done in my mind. My faith was in doubt. This was the first time I had been in competition with myself. For the first time in my life I felt like God was distant. I felt like I was Marc, encircled by vicious voices nipping at me like coyotes, except these voices were in my head. "You have eaten from the forbidden tree and now are cast out of the garden. You are like Peter denying God for the first time." "No, I'm not God's follower; I don't feel like standing up for righteousness today." "You are like Judas, it seems; there is a price at which your loyalty can be bought. Some friend you are. You will never be cool, no matter how hard you try."

It would take a few years, and I would deny God multiple times, but I discovered that the cross meant that Jesus would not allow anything to distract or frighten him from loving me. I may leave Marc, but Jesus would always be there with him, no matter what his religion. I may abandon God, but God would not abandon me. He would take the risk, whatever the risk, to stand before my accusers and Marc’s accusers and say, "He who has not sinned cast the first stone." And "He who is coolest is the servant of all."

"My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" These are Jesus’ words of doubt and loneliness on the cross. He has the human doubt but he still doesn't back down from his radical love. No matter what. Like Job, Jesus maintains his integrity, even if God seems not to. If nobody is willing to risk death to keep hope and love alive, then when death is a risk, hope will not live. Jesus takes the risk. It doesn't matter what you have done, even to Jesus. You are forgiven, and he calls you to a new and radical life of love.

Before I end, I want to point out the dangers of the Gospel according to Hollywood, "The Passion" In putting words to film, the director has to fill in blanks of the imagination and decide what people will look like. Good in Hollywood tends to be translated into Good Looking. It is OK that Jesus was not frail looking, but he probably wasn’t Anglo European.

I had a slight problem with the devil character, not that she didn’t effectively creep me out. I couldn’t tell her gender until I read that the Devil was played by a woman. There was a scene at the cross, just as Jesus was close to death, when the Devil comes swooshing by in her black cape carrying what we think is a baby. Apparently this is a mockery of the birth of Jesus, the Beautiful Savior.

The Devil’ baby was not beautiful. Clearly it had suffered from developmental problems. At first the scene worked on me; I was taken aback and shocked. But then I started to think: "That baby is in the wrong hands."

Not long after I started my ministry in Houston, a pregnant couple came in, distraught after having received a report that their baby was not developing as planned. He would be born without a brain, and was not expected to live long. When I heard Kathy was in labor I went to the hospital. When I arrived little Dennis was in infant ICU, no brain, no nose on his face. I was afraid. But then Jesus said to me, "This is my child and we are going to hold him. Not through audible words, but indeed Christ Jesus was a woman – the ICU nurse.

We were able to take Dennis to Church and put him in a beautiful baptismal gown. I held him; we the Body of Christ held him and baptized him in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Dennis, a Child of God. Not long after Dennis died we held a memorial service thanking God for love that cannot be stopped by disease, suffering or death. Jesus died making the claim that all are included, all are loved and all are Children of God. Christ Jesus will hold us in His arms, no matter what, forever.