4 Windows on the Cross: Suffering, Sin, Shame, Scars

Okay, so this is really a Good Friday post rather than an Easter Sunday post, but I am just now getting around to writing it.
This really started out as comments on the page of my Facebook Friend, Lance Schmitz, pastor of the "World's Largest Nano-Church", Capitol Hill Church of the Nazarene in Oklahoma City.


Lance likes to post thought provoking articles and get input and this is one that he posted: No, the Crucifixion is Not About Bloody Child Sacrifice Being Necessary for Forgiveness  by someone named Hellen Painter Dollar. Her post is long but she is arguing against the theological idea of "substitutionary atonement", that is that God required an innocent blood sacrifice in the person of Jesus to pay for our sins. She is not, however, saying that it is without meaning or purpose, but rather posits that cross is God's way of becoming fully human and identifying with all who suffer.

My first reaction to the comments on this article was to say that there is good scriptural backing to the idea of Christ as a substitution for us. 

• In John 1:29, John the Baptist declares that Jesus is "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world". "Lamb of God" really could only have one reference and that would be the sacrificial lambs in the temple.  An interesting thing to say as the death and sacrifice was not in focus at all in this point in the story. I wonder what people took away from that statement in the context of Jesus' baptism.

• Peter and Paul's epistles are rife with the metaphor of substitution
  

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.  1 Peter 3:18

Of course, the actual theological construct of "substitutionary atonement" went through various phases and precisions in church history: ransom theory, Christus Victor, penal subsitution. (See substitutionary atonement).  Each of these has verses that will back them up. 

I remember hearing church historian Professor Andrew Walls speak at a conference in 2002. He posited that the church develops doctrines (already existent in scripture) as the gospel message is carried across cultural boundaries. "Christ as Messiah" (Jewish context) becomes "Christ as Lord" when the gospel goes from Israel to Greece and Rome. According to Walls, the concept of the "atonement" was crystallized as the message was taken to the germanic tribes of northern Europe.

Could it be that these different theological ideas are all just windows looking out on the same central truth, providing different views of the same reality? 

In the original post above, Hellen Painter Dollar says that the cross is about Christ joining in our suffering. I believe that is true. And Philippians 3:10  turns this on its side when it talks about the fellowship we have of sharing in Christ's suffering.

And in shame-based cultures (Africa and the Middle East), people are not as concerned about the GUILT aspect of sin (as we are in Western cultures) but the SHAME that comes with our own sin or the sin of others around us. In these cultures, an important part of the Good News is that Christ taking our shame when he dies on the cross. (The shame aspect is what causes fathers to kill daughters who have been raped due to the excessive shame that has been brought on the family.)


As I reflected on this late Friday evening, I was drawn to Isaiah 53. Assuming you see this passage as a prophecy about Jesus' crucifixion, then you can see that the cross works in so many areas, and they are so intertwined it is almost hard to extract the quotes from each other. (quotes taken from NIV)

  1. Suffering and Injustice

• "A man of suffering, familiar with pain" v. 3
• "Surely he took our pain and bore our suffering. . . Afflicted" v. 4
• He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;  v. 7
•  Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, v. 10a
• After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; vs 11a
  

 2. Shame (He was Shamed on the Cross and bore that for us)

•  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. v. 2  

• He was despised and rejected by mankind ..... Like one from whom people hide their faces
  he was despised, and we held him in low esteem v. 3
  (For more on the shame side of things, see Psalms 22:6-7  "But I am a worm and not a man,
  

  scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads."  Also consider that a major aspect of the problem for the "first Adam" was shame, so the Second Adam needs to address that).

3. Healing

• and by his wounds we are healed. v.5

4. Guilt of Sin

• But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him,v. 5
• and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. v. 6
• for the transgression of my people he was punished. v. 8
• and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, v. 10 b 

• by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. v. 11b

Different aspects of the Cross speak more to different people and cultures and also as we go through different phases of life - shame, sickness, guilt of sin, shame, suffering.  

 
What a beautiful mystery! Let's thank
God for the Cross and revel in all that it means and so much that we will never understand. 

Dancing in the Margins

Anyone who has had any management or life coaching will tell you the importance of “building margin” into your life – down time, times of rest and reflection. Like a page filled to the edges with no margin, a life with no margin is illegible. But what if the page is all gone and you are forced to write ONLY in the margins? 

In April, most of my colleagues and I were “strategically withdrawn” from our country of service due to unrest. The immediate effects of this were described in several blog posts entitled “thoughts from the pressure cooker”.

In the meantime, I have become a nomad and it looks like that is unlikely to change before year-end, by which time I will have made 14 border crossings going back and forth between 6 different countries, averaging just 3 weeks per country. 

Our group has adapted to having at least half of our people working remotely. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who is not separated from at least some of his “direct reports.”

The logistics of managing money and houses and cars and salaries at a distance is quite complicated.  The extra travel and rent were not budgeted. Some of us have taken up new assignments in other countries or their home countries, which leaves serious personnel holes.

In addition to ongoing uncertainty about the security situation and the very real possibility of war, the local economy has made things difficult for most of general population. 

Whereas it is fairly normal in our work to have  crises arrive that take energy and time, we normally seem to be able to come up with a work around. However, so many thing have come to a head since the crisis that it seems we do nothing but shuffle things around with no room to maneuver. 

The other day I was in a meeting and something came up and I said offhandedly, “It’s like we are always dancing in the margins”. 

This image really seemed to resonate and I mulled it over for a few days and worked it into my main director’s report to our group. 

Life is a Dance

Life is a dance, that we do for the glory of God. We all dance, according to our gifts, background and culture, each one bringing something different to the mix. Our dancing should attract others to the dance, so that there is someone from each tongue and tribe and nation dancing with us in the “Great Dance” described so nicely by CS Lewis in Perelandra.

  

 Sometimes life will send an obstacle our way, opening up a hole in the dance floor.  But if you know it’s there, you can dance around it.  Even if there are TWO holes, you can keep dancing, with some modifications.

But occasionally, your world turns upside down and a sinkhole opens up in your living room, relegating you to dancing in the margins.

So what is our response to being forced into the margin?

Can we ignore the sinkhole and just imagine it does not exist? Not really, without some serious psychological consequences down the road. 

Can we continue to dance? Do we have to, or can we just give up? This is a valid question and the answer depends a lot on your individual and family needs, and your calling. In our context, it is obvious that our group needs to keep working as long as it is day, “Because night is coming, when no one can work." (John 9:4-5) 

  

Okay, so if you we decide that we are called to continue to work “in the margins”, how do we go about that? 

• Meet Jesus in the Margins.  He who so frequently sought out the marginal meets us there, too. As I mulled over this, I imagined our Good Shepherd preparing us a table right there in the margins, next to our gaping sinkhole. If he can do it in the presences of our enemies, why not? And he provides not just sustenance but a joyful banquet.
• Don’t just soldier on in your own human strength. Realize, like God does, that we are "but dust". HE is the one who rescues us from the pit, renews my strength like the Eagle’s and fills my life with good things! (Psalm 103)
• Share in the death of Jesus so that HIS life is shared with us!  

2 Corinthians 4-8-10 We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

I am not sure how this works. I can certainly relate to the “pressed on every side, perplexed, knocked down. . .” but it seems that these painful things are accompanied with this promise of Jesus sharing his life with us, through us. 

• Do what you can to change the internal factors, realizing you cannot do anything about the external factors. You may not be able to fill in the sinkhole, but you can clear out the furniture that is blocking the rest of the floor.P
• Pray for God to bring justice and cause rivers to flow in the desert. Isaiah 35.

 Keep Dancing with Jesus in the margins!

Parallels, or Widening Spirals

 

In much of the reading I have been doing over the past months, I have come across people saying that Jesus did X, Y and Z in the New Testament and that those things parallel A, B and C in the Old Testament part of God’s salvation story.  We miss the ties between these events because the words that screamed out a connection to those First Century readers fly past us so quickly and mean nothing to us given the cultural and historical distance. 

Think about certain phrases, places or objects today that are so loaded with baggage that just to use them sends obvious messages. Consider these situations:  

• A biography in which the main character shows up and begins his public exposure on Wall Street or at Ground Zero or in San Francisco or on Skid Row. What would the setting evoke to the readers?
• A potential but unannounced Presidential candidate shows up at Iowa State Fair. The relevance is not lost on most Americans but may be totally missed by Europeans, even those familiar with our politics.
• A musician journeys to Abbey Road to record their first album.
• A politician talks about “choice” or “life” or “big government” or the “little guy”.  We know instantly where they stand.

I often wonder how much we miss in the Bible because we miss the cultural clues. I know most of these parallel storylines have never dawned on me. It’s probably wrong to call them parallel storylines, as God’s intentionally is obvious. they are more like the same story, being looped back around again in an ever-widening spiral.  

The most famous example is made explicit by Paul in Romans 5 where Adam and Jesus are compared and contrasted.

Here are the ones I have come across so far (listed in chronological order from the Old Testament).

1. Genesis 2: God breathes on Adam to give him the breath of life and makes him a living soul. John 20:22 – Jesus (resurrected) appears to disciples, breathes on them and says “receive the Holy Spirit  (Eugene Peterson, Christ plays in 10,000 places, p. 106)
2. The Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane and the Garden in which Jesus was buried and resurrected. I have seen at least four authors talk about the fact that Jews had an automatic flashing of thought towards the Garden of Eden whenever the word garden was mentioned. They argue that all references to the garden locations in the gospels was intentional, to make a point.

In a garden we fell; In a garden he prayed, ‘Not my will but yours be done’. The cross has made a way so we can enter in to go back to the Garden once again. The cross has made a way. Forever I will say, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.’ (Jonathan David Helser, from the song“The Reward”.)

• In the first garden, man chose to live outside of the way God made for them to live and death entered the picture.
• Jesus was buried in the second garden and was rose again. The message is that there is a “new Adam on the scene, and he is reversing the curse of death by conquering it.. . . He’s reclaiming ccreation. He’s entering into it and restoring it and renewing God’s plan for the world.” (Rob Bell, Velvet Jesus, p. 156 – 157)

3. Jesus was stripped at his crucifixion. This parallels the genesis account of the fall, where Adam was naked and unashamed until he sinned. Jesus was shamed and stripped naked in order to free us from our sin. In this, Jesus shows the ultimate vulnerability of the defenseless. (from the Stations of the Cross)
4. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple parallels the 10 plagues of Egypt. The Plagues were not a punishment on Egypt, but rather a display of God’s sovereignty compared with Pharaoh’s lack of control over the physical world. The Jerusalem temple had become godless place, constructed by a godless King (Herod). Jesus’ sovereignty was obscured there. Pharisees recognized this as the issue when they asked, “By whose authority do you do this?” (Peterson, Christ plays in 10,000 places. p. 168)
5. Passover meal parallels Communion. An ordinary meal eaten in community the night before salvation was provided. No special food or clothes or candles. The Passover celebration took 7 days which again parallels Creation. (Peterson, p. 175)
6. Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years & Jesus temptation for 40 days. His temptation parallels Israel’s 40 years in the desert. Israel faced demons of comfort and food. Jesus faced them all. (Charles Foster: The Sacred Journey, p. 66)

Surely there are more. Feel free to suggest some.

Glorified - That word you keep using, I don't think it means what you think it means.

Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
27 “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.

28 Father, glorify your name!” (John 12:23, 27-28)

I've been reading in Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" (p. 100-103) where he writes about Christ reveal God's glory:  "the presence of God among us; the brightness radiating from God as he moves into our neighborhood".

But here Jesus is talking about being publicly humiliated, stripped, spat on, crucified and calls it being glorified.

Glorified?... That word you keep using, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Peterson says

"At the pivotal centerpoint of his Gospel, John gives us Jesus' most significant and critical, but also most disconcerting, statement on the glory. Jesus is anticipating his imminent death....

Glory, the brightness of God's presence right here on our home ground, clearly has something, maybe everything, to do with his approaching death and burial.

Jesus takes the brightest word in our vocabularies and plunges it into the darkest pit of experience, violent and excruciating death."

Picture I took yesterday at the Nelson-Atkins museum of Art. (didn't get the Artist's name).Note the blood that has fallen on the ground.

Oh, and the best part of Jesus' glory - he prays for his disciples (us included) that we will be glorified with the same glory! "The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one." (John 17:23)

Are you ready for that: "obscurity, rejection and humiliation, incomprehension, and misapprehension, a sacrificial life and an obedient death: the bright presence of God backlighting what the world despises or ignores"?
Am I?