The Cross for Today; Salvation for Today

Grunewald's Crucifixion

That God the Father sent his Son to absorb the Father’s justified wrath at sinful humanity, thereby getting us sinners off the hook, is a theology that needs to be retired. The world we inhabit needs saved in a different way– a way that sees humanity’s greatest brokenness being not  guilt, but fear.

If our brokenness is fear, then salvation is in faith, or better (since faith is a tired word), in trust. I used to think courage was the opposite of fear, but the fear we have is all about isolation– about being cut off, and crying into a darkness so thick that the silence that meets our cry only deepens our anxious loneliness. Courage isn’t enough. Only the trust that gets shaped by compassion into a human form, a human face, can heal the fear. The embrace of a relationship, over time, is today’s salvation.

So what does that have to do with the Cross? Everything. It’s not that God the Father was so angry that he sent his Son to suffer in our place: such a theology is not faithful to the unity of God. Jesus is God– so if Jesus suffers, God suffers. It’s the suffering God (not the angry God) whom we can trust. He suffers with us, and so his Passion is a com-passion, a suffering-with.

This is not a god who makes everything okay– who prevents pain in the first place. This is the God whose very being contains suffering; the God whose divine essence includes vulnerability, even weakness.

The temptation is to think that the god of Power is the one who can save us from fear, much like the way a child turns to the idealized omnipotent father for protection. That god is a failure. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Only a suffering God can help.”

via Grünewald’s Crucifixion: “The Lockjaw Christ” | Superfluities Redux.

 

A Theologian Who Knows What Time It Is

Rev. Douglas John Hall is a United Church minister and a professor emeritus of Christian theology at McGill University in Montreal

I am reading Douglas John Hall’s The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World. While a re-contextualized theology of the cross may not be sufficient to return Christianity to relevance in the 21st century, it is certainly a necessary part of such a return. Hall’s thinking is a gift for those of us who find most expressions of today’s Christianity to be either limp or reactionary– and therefore unhelpful and irrelevant.

A heading in an early chapter of the book defines discipleship as “the church’s journey toward the world.” The object of discipleship, according to Hall, is “solidarity”: a “greater and ever greater solidarity with the creation that God loves and, in Jesus Christ, seeks to redeem from within.” In a world that rejects daily– out of a largely unconscious fear– any intimations of its own vulnerability and death, suffering comes to all who love the world not despite, but in all its brokenness and pain. Hall’s theology of the cross is about a God who plumbs the depths of self-giving love– a love that the world, in its delusions of mastery and control, rejects.

In a post-Christian age, in which the Christian religion has been either sidelined by a largely indifferent consumer materialistic/imperial militaristic culture– or serves as the legitimizing cult of that culture– Hall helps us rethink the cross. In such rethinking is the possibility of a renewed Christianity, in which a renewed Church– no longer triumphant, and therefore able to be its faithful, counter-cultural self– re-visions God as primarily the God of Love (rather than primarily the God of Power). Then, as disciples, we can journey with Christ (never an easy or unambiguous journey) to “greater and ever greater solidarity” with the creation that God loves, and seeks to redeem.

 

Revenge, Blood, and the Victimization of Victims

One compelling theology of the Cross is that God in Christ interrupts the machine of blood-for-blood justice by refusing to retaliate. God in Christ suffers, thereby laying legitimate claim to revenge– and then freely chooses to forgive: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In affirming the divinity of Jesus, Christianity affirms non-violence and redemptive suffering  as being of God’s essence. It follows, then, that to practice Christianity is to practice mercy and forgiveness– in short, to practice ways of being in the world that interrupt the machine of blood-for-blood justice. This can be done in international diplomacy, at New England town meetings, and at home over the dinner table. Wherever people are in relationships, there will be pain and the desire to settle scores.

Neither the security apparatus of the United States, nor Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, will act as Christ did on the Cross. Blood for blood is the way of the world– has been, always will be. Meanwhile, faithful and courageous followers of Jesus will continue to witness to another way– God’s way– and give bodily expression to the possibilities for reconciliation and new life: a life that is stronger than death.

Here is Al Jazeera’s report on Al-Qaeda’s desire for revenge:

Al-Qaeda has confirmed the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden, and said in an online posting that it would continue to launch attacks on the West. The group said it would not deviate from the path of armed struggle and that bin Laden’s blood “is more precious to us and to every Muslim than to be wasted in vain.”

The statement was released on forums sympathetic to al-Qaeda and translated by the SITE monitoring service on Friday. “It [bin Laden's blood] will remain, with permission from Allah the Almighty, a curse that chases the Americans and their agents, and goes after them inside and outside their countries,” al-Qaeda said.

The message called upon Pakistan, where bin Laden was discovered, to “rise up and revolt to cleanse this shame that has been attached to them… and to clean their country from the filth of the Americans who spread corruption in it.”

via Al-Qaeda vows revenge for bin Laden death – Central & South Asia – Al Jazeera English.

 

Enmity and the Syrian Ambassador

Imad Moustapha is the Syrian ambassador to the United States. He is Western-educated (Ph.D. from Surrey, United Kingdom), witty, and loves some of the greatest music ever composed in Europe: Bach’s cello suites; Mahler’s symphonies. He comes across as fair-minded (if understandably biased toward Syrian interests), proud of Arab (and particularly Syrian) culture, and passionate for learning and life.

He is also the official representative of a country that we officially consider an enemy, which, I suppose, makes the ambassador an enemy too.

Christian theology is, of its essence, about the relationship of Other to Self. Trinitarian theology (to rashly sum up 2000 years of conversation and debate in one sentence) understands the very nature of divinity as the participation of Persons one with another, in a unity that does not erase distinction. Christ on the Cross is the divine refusal to seek just revenge for having been wronged; put positively, Christ on the Cross (to paraphrase Miroslav Volf) is God’s act of making God’s very Self an open space that welcomes the Other, turning enmity into the possibility of embrace.

Christian discipleship– to be a follower of Jesus– means imitating Christ in this assertion of refusing to participate in cycles of revenge. (This assertion of refusing revenge can operate at all levels of human relationships: spousal, familial, communal, national, and international. For Christians, this refusal of revenge is the life-affirming, life-transforming power of God.)

All of which brings us back to the Syrian ambassador.

US policy toward Syria will be determined by the forces of politics. However, that is not– and never will be– the whole story. Additionally, thoughtful Christian theology reminds us of another power that is always at work, if mostly unnoticed– the power of seeing divinity in the Other, even in the midst of distrust and enmity. Jesus was shrewdly correct: we need to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, at one and the very same time.

For the blog of Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha, click here