This is actually brilliant. I'm doing something quite like this leading up to Easter this year. We've over read the story. But the simplicity of the obvious is powerful. The other piece of it, which you don't highlight here, is the routine way we work through grief that is embodied in the narrative ending with the road to Emmaus.
Paul's atonement theology introduces more problems than it solves and it doesn't really square with the plain narrative of the gospel either. Small problem.
nice ... yes, i've been thinking of it as one big invitation recently (not least because of what my friend jay mcdaniel wrote about atonement on his open horizons website), but your writing here reminded me of an invite. thanks.
I tackled atonement theology last Easter in a post called “The Power of a Preposition.” It’s not exactly what you’ve laid out here, but it does question why Jesus died on a cross. This is not an easy topic, nor is it widely accepted as an “ok” practice among Christians. But I figure God can handle my questions even if my sisters and brothers cannot.
Jesus is clear on this question: What does God want as a condition of his forgiveness and love? Nothing. Just be there, just turn toward home, like the Prodigal Son. God’s love is for free, and it’s for everyone.
But Jesus is also clear that while there is no price to pay for God’s love, there is a sacrifice God wants in response to his love. And that sacrifice is the most precious thing. The pagans thought the most precious thing was the blood of a child. The Jews, as they established their religion thought it was the blood of an unblemished animal. These spiritual forerunners of ours were partly right; they were just thinking too immaturely, too concretely, on too small a scale. The Prophets called out a more mature message over the centuries, but it took Jesus’ life--and the sacrifice of his death-- to really get the message through. God does want what is most precious:
-- not animal blood as a symbol of a life,
-- not Jesus’ blood as a symbol of all lives,
-- but, literally, for each of us to offer our own life. In so many ways, Jesus tells us that to find our lives we must lose them, in love of God and neighbor.
There's the both and option. Jesus both did this for us, and in order that we would follow in his footsteps, even unto death, and death upon a cross. Death being framed as more than physical death. Also greater love has no man but that he lay down his life for a friend
You should be preaching this during Holy Week and you need to make it clear that Jesus did not rise from the dead that those meetings of him after he died that are in the Bible or more a memory than a physical presence. People don’t come back from the dead when you die life is over you also have to give up any kind of feeling that there is a God out there that controls our lives we control our lives and we’ve had plenty of people that have given great advice on how to do that Jesus being the best so far in that category, but there’s much wisdom other than the wisdom of Jesus and we need to get wisdom from wherever we can and put it into action.
It's both, I think. What Jesus did for us, and how we're called to take up our cross. I don't think we can take forgiveness of sin out of it. We've believed it for millennia because it's true.
What do you really know about what Saint Jesus of Galilee may or may not have intended or even taught and demonstrated while he was alive in a living-breathing-feeling bodily human form?
FWIW, I like to think of the Crucifixion and Resurrection as the repair and reconstruction of a bridge. When someone, somewhere, somewhen, removed God from the center of the cosmos and inserted human beings in his place, an essential connection between God and Humanity was broken. And, since Humanity was the keystone of the arch of God’s Creation, the whole thing fell apart, and Humanity was separated from the only source of Light and Life and Love and Joy. I don’t know how this worked, nor do I understand why the Son of God had to die an agonizing and humiliating death to achieve it. Nevertheless somehow these actions restored a connexion that was broken and corrupted, but slowly—oh, how agonizingly slowly—the Light and Life and Joy and Love of God is spreading through the whole Creation, and it won’t stop until the whole Creation shall be filled with God’s love—and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
This is actually brilliant. I'm doing something quite like this leading up to Easter this year. We've over read the story. But the simplicity of the obvious is powerful. The other piece of it, which you don't highlight here, is the routine way we work through grief that is embodied in the narrative ending with the road to Emmaus.
Paul's atonement theology introduces more problems than it solves and it doesn't really square with the plain narrative of the gospel either. Small problem.
A hi is h
O8
An excellent and challenging essay, for which I thank you.
nice ... yes, i've been thinking of it as one big invitation recently (not least because of what my friend jay mcdaniel wrote about atonement on his open horizons website), but your writing here reminded me of an invite. thanks.
I tackled atonement theology last Easter in a post called “The Power of a Preposition.” It’s not exactly what you’ve laid out here, but it does question why Jesus died on a cross. This is not an easy topic, nor is it widely accepted as an “ok” practice among Christians. But I figure God can handle my questions even if my sisters and brothers cannot.
Kudos for your bravery and vulnerability.
If Not Blood, then What Does God Want from Us?
Jesus is clear on this question: What does God want as a condition of his forgiveness and love? Nothing. Just be there, just turn toward home, like the Prodigal Son. God’s love is for free, and it’s for everyone.
But Jesus is also clear that while there is no price to pay for God’s love, there is a sacrifice God wants in response to his love. And that sacrifice is the most precious thing. The pagans thought the most precious thing was the blood of a child. The Jews, as they established their religion thought it was the blood of an unblemished animal. These spiritual forerunners of ours were partly right; they were just thinking too immaturely, too concretely, on too small a scale. The Prophets called out a more mature message over the centuries, but it took Jesus’ life--and the sacrifice of his death-- to really get the message through. God does want what is most precious:
-- not animal blood as a symbol of a life,
-- not Jesus’ blood as a symbol of all lives,
-- but, literally, for each of us to offer our own life. In so many ways, Jesus tells us that to find our lives we must lose them, in love of God and neighbor.
There's the both and option. Jesus both did this for us, and in order that we would follow in his footsteps, even unto death, and death upon a cross. Death being framed as more than physical death. Also greater love has no man but that he lay down his life for a friend
Everything for all of humanity
It is God's perfect gift for humanity. No strings attached.
You should be preaching this during Holy Week and you need to make it clear that Jesus did not rise from the dead that those meetings of him after he died that are in the Bible or more a memory than a physical presence. People don’t come back from the dead when you die life is over you also have to give up any kind of feeling that there is a God out there that controls our lives we control our lives and we’ve had plenty of people that have given great advice on how to do that Jesus being the best so far in that category, but there’s much wisdom other than the wisdom of Jesus and we need to get wisdom from wherever we can and put it into action.
It's both, I think. What Jesus did for us, and how we're called to take up our cross. I don't think we can take forgiveness of sin out of it. We've believed it for millennia because it's true.
What do you really know about what Saint Jesus of Galilee may or may not have intended or even taught and demonstrated while he was alive in a living-breathing-feeling bodily human form?
http://www.dabase.org/up-5-1.htm The Forgotten Spiritual Esotericism of Saint Jesus of Galilee
http://beezone.com/current/christ_equals_emsquared.html Christ & Quantum Reality
FWIW, I like to think of the Crucifixion and Resurrection as the repair and reconstruction of a bridge. When someone, somewhere, somewhen, removed God from the center of the cosmos and inserted human beings in his place, an essential connection between God and Humanity was broken. And, since Humanity was the keystone of the arch of God’s Creation, the whole thing fell apart, and Humanity was separated from the only source of Light and Life and Love and Joy. I don’t know how this worked, nor do I understand why the Son of God had to die an agonizing and humiliating death to achieve it. Nevertheless somehow these actions restored a connexion that was broken and corrupted, but slowly—oh, how agonizingly slowly—the Light and Life and Joy and Love of God is spreading through the whole Creation, and it won’t stop until the whole Creation shall be filled with God’s love—and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.