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scapegoat

Good Friday Homily

Here is my short homily for tonight. We are doing a Tenebrae service where we start in total light and descend into darkness.

He didn’t deserve this.

He never deserved this.

For what?

Telling people to be nice to each other and speaking in riddles? For healing people and feeding people?

No.

But he made them nervous – so they made an example out of him.

But they didn’t need to do it like this – they could have just killed him and been done with it.

Crosses are cruel. They are torture.  They are not just death – they are spectacle.

Crosses are designed to humiliate the victim and intimidate the rest of us.

They are tools of terror meant to scare the rest of us into submission.

He didn’t deserve this. He got scapegoated.  They always do this.

When the pressure builds too much it has be vented. The machine has to blow off steam before there is a rebellion.

They choose a goat and they blame and place all the guilt on its head.

What do you do when the goat is innocent and goes silently like a lamb led to slaughter?

He said nothing when he had the chance to defend himself. Now he says things like ‘forgive them, they know not what they are doing’.

The angels are not coming to save him. They would if he would cry out. But he won’t.

Instead he is exposing the system. He is laying bare the powers that be and exposing the scapegoat mechanism.  IT doesn’t work … to scapegoat others. It never worked.

God sent us this man some call the Christ. And we killed him.

It is almost as if God is saying through him, “you do this to the innocent, you do this to my servants, and you would even do this to me”.

Someone needs to break this system of scapegoating. Someone needs finish this once and for all.   Someone needs to say, “don’t do this to anyone anymore … it is finished.”

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What if we miss what was ‘finished’?

Imagine that the God of the universe arranged to stage a magnificent pageant – a cosmic drama – that would right the wrongs of the world and change the course of history. The stage would be set with the most intense consequences and most elaborate circumstances.

Imagine that this drama would unfold in such a way that God’s covenant people would be delivered and their prayers would be answered. The only way that such a drama could be staged would be that God’s own self would have to be a player! The generation that experienced this engagement – and the generations that would follow – came to believe that the divine was at work in the central actor in such a unique way that this new character was worthy of worship as God.

The above scenario is exactly what the Easter is to the church. God staged drama so cataclysmic that nothing (we proclaim) would ever be the same. Humanity’s relationship to the divine and even they way we practice religion – not to mention who gets to practice the religion – was radically altered. In fact, a new religion was born with new scriptures and new methods and even new truths.

The central event, the climax, of this pageant was the violent death of the central character and his eventual vindication in life conquering death and the systems of domination in religion and politics.

In Christ, God exposed the violent and fraudulent scheme of scapegoating when ‘the one who knew no sin became sin for us’. Something happened in the heart and person of the Godhead when Christ died a martyr and scapegoat. The dark events on this little blue planet we call earth had cosmic ramifications. Creation and all that had gone wrong since Eden was being deemed with value again. Sin itself was being destroyed and the life of the ages was being made available for all creation – past and forever.

 When Jesus was lifted up on the cross, God lifted a mirror to show humanity its true face.

The violence of the cross and the political/religious trial that led up to it unmasked the authorities and institutions of power. Our violence and blaming of the other was exposed – as if God was saying “do you see what you do? You do this over and over again, lashing out at each other with blame and cruelty and bloodshed. You even do this to me! Then you claim to do it in my name and for my glory … Stop it.”

cross-150x150“No one needs to be treated like this anymore. No more scapegoats. No more violence in my name and for my sake. This has gone far enough and I am putting an end to this … It is finished.”

And with that he breathed his last and gave up his spirit – according to the scriptures.

Let that set in.

Now let’s ask a second question. What if God staged this grand pageant and even participated in this cosmic drama … and we missed it.

Is it possible that we as humanity and as Christians in particular could have seen all of this, organized a yearly remembrance of it, written songs about it, created ceremonies and rituals to enact every week and then proceed to reinforce and re-entrench that very thing that drama was meant to expose?

It that even possible?

Could it be that we were visited by the divine in a unique and particular way, that we received that King of Glory and then turned around to set up the very structures and systems of violence and domination that were exposed in Jesus’ way? It seems unimaginable.

We proclaim, worship and claim to serve a God who became humble as a servant and even unto death (Philippians 2) to unmask the powers that be and show a different way to be in the world. Jesus calls us to take up our cross daily and to follow this example.

Jesus died on the cross not just for our sin but because of it. We needed a savior to save us from ourselves and this vicious cycle of aggression and violence we perpetuate , sometimes in God’s name. We killed the Prince of Peace but God vindicated the victim and by God’s mighty love and sacrifice destroyed the need to ever do this to anyone else.

The scapegoat mechanism was unmasked as God held up a mirror to humanity and exposed the destructive and unending cycle of violence for political stability, national security or religious purity. The great drama has shown us the conclusion of this damnable way of thinking: we do this is God’s name and we even did to the Son of God.

This never has to happen again. The lesson of the Easter drama is that Life itself has ruined these cycles of death and destruction so that we can stop perpetuating this unsatisfying and unproductive way of treating each other.

It is finished.

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Christianity Without a Cross?

On last week’s TNT I introduced a thought experiment: take the cross out of the Jesus story and see what you can still do.cross-150x150

This thought experiment appeals to me for two reasons:

  1. Modern Protestants have overdone it on the cross.
  2. The incarnation and resurrection hold far more interest and power.

I have started to get some great responses to my assertion that one could still come up with over 90% of Christianity without the cross.

I thought it would be good to give it more form here and open it up for conversation.

Keep in mind what I’m saying and what I am not saying:

  • Just because Jesus’ story went the way it did doesn’t mean that it had to go that way.
  • Just because things are the way they are doesn’t mean that they have to stay this way.
  • Jesus’ resurrection could have followed any death – not just the cross.
  • The incarnation is where the old formulation of divine/human or transcendent/imminent are breached or fused.
  • The Christianity that we have was formed in the aftermath of the cross and resurrection … that is not evidence of the cross’ necessity.
  • Had Jesus died some other way, he still would have died once for all.
  • The satisfaction, propitiation, expiation and reconciliation that so many focus on in atonement theories are still there without the cross.
  • The Christianity that would have emerged would have been slightly different but still largely the same.
  • Jesus’ jewishness, the incarnation, resurrection and Pentecost are the 4 things that still anchor the Christian church.
  • The cross really doesn’t play that important of a role – not like the previous 4 – it’s main purpose is decoration on our buildings, necklaces and t-shirts.

Those are some of my thoughts about the variable of the cross.

My final point is not included in the same manner as those above, but to be honest: once the Roman Empire co-opted christianity (the Constantinian Compromise) the cross has mostly been a hood-ornament on the machine of empire. Except for a few places on the periphery and during a few periods of severe oppression and domination … the powerful church has been better, as Tripp says, at building crosses than bearing them.

This point does not prove the thought-experiment, so I don’t want it to distract the conversation, but in the end … I’m not sure how much the cross really does for us.

This is one of the many reasons that I promote being an Incarnational Christian. That is where the power is – incarnation and resurrection!

  • Jesus could have died of sudden-infant-death-syndrome or of old age and still died once for all.
  • Jesus could have been stabbed or beaten to death and it is still the resurrection where God vindicates the victim.

I would go as far as to say what the cross was meant to expose – the scapegoating and victimization mechanism – is still firmly in place and actually still employed by those who sing ‘The wonderful cross’ and ‘on a hill far away’ on Sundays.

There ya go! I have tried to make a case with this thought experiment – I would love your feedback, concerns, and questions!

Let’s have some fun with this.

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