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During most of my ministry I have accepted the obvious meaning of Jesus' predictions of his suffering. In many statements such as the one printed on the bulletin cover, Jesus said, and throughout the ages the church has affirmed, that Jesus MUST suffer and be rejected and be killed. But in recent years, I have often found myself on Peter's side, resisting the necessity of the suffering, and wondering just exactly why it had to be that way. We can see clearly that Peter loved Jesus, that Peter was committed to the ministry they were sharing, and the Peter wanted to protect Jesus. I suspect that anyone who has loved another human being, whether it be friend, spouse, or child, has wondered too. What is wrong with wanting to shield someone from suffering? When we care deeply about someone, we want "the best" for them, whatever that may be. In this last week, I have talked with three families about baptism, and I glimpsed the hope they have for their children: naturally they want their children to be happy, to have opportunities in life, and to be able to choose their own path. Few of us realize what modern hopes these are. In the 20th and 21st centuries, happiness is an emotion, a blend of contentment with well-being and joy and satisfaction. It is fascinating that our Declaration of Independence says that we have a right, not to happiness itself, but to the pursuit of happiness. The founding fathers realized that happiness is elusive, and there is no guarantee that we will catch the happiness we are pursuing. I have an image of running after a bird, which always moves just as I am swinging my net toward it, which may be a realistic picture of the kind of life we lead today. A historian named Darrin McMahon, has recently published a book called Happiness: A History . He points out that the original meaning of happiness is good luck--in all the Indo European languages, the word for happy means fortunate, lucky. Life is what happens to you: if mostly good things happen, then you are fortunate, whether or not you feel happy. That root word happ, also shows up in English in the words perhaps, and haphazard. All of this reflects reality through most of history: people had very little control over their lives. They had less protection from the climate than we do, less control over their food supply, no protection from injury and disease, and not much protection from the decisions of overlords and kings. Until the Enlightenment, the pursuit of happiness consisted of prayer on the one hand, and lucky charms on the other. What changed at the time of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, was the perception of control. The idea that the universe is governed by rational principles is ancient; the new idea, was that the human mind could understand those principles, AND that the human will, is capable of acting on those principles. Out of those perceptions, came an acceleration of scientific research and technological invention, which has led to the growing perception that we can control our lives. We can make our own luck; we can create our own happiness. For all of these reasons, Peter seems to us to be right: even as a human being, Jesus could control what happened to him. His suffering was not necessary. Through the ages, the church has given an explanation of the suffering of Jesus: it is called the doctrine of the atonement. The basic idea is that sinful human beings can only be reconciled to God by some action or event. In ancient Israel, reconciliation was effected by the sacrifice of animals. But some of the prophets said that sacrifice was not enough: repentance was also necessary. The four evangelists tell us that Jesus applied the idea of sacrifice to himself: that his death is offered for our sins. St. Paul developed this idea further by explaining how we are joined to Christ in baptism--joined both to the death of Christ and to the victory of Christ over death. Baptism is what makes the victory of Christ applicable to a particular individual, even 2000 years later. As time went on, other theories of atonement were developed. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, some of the early theologians said the death of Christ was a ransom paid to Satan. St. Athanasius believed that Christ took upon himself sinful human nature, and thereby created a change in the nature of all human beings. Others thought of Christ as our representative. In the Middle Ages, St. Anselm proposed that sin was so offensive to God, that satisfaction had to be made to God--perhaps we would use the word restitution. Martin Luther taught that Christ took upon himself the punishment for sin that we should have received: he substituted himself for us. It is important for us to understand that no one of these theories has been chosen as definitive. Both the Apostles' Creed, which we use in baptism, and the Nicene Creed, simply state that Christ died "for us". So each of us may choose the theory that makes most sense to us. What all these theories have ignored, has finally been articulated in the last 20 years. For example, the theologians Rebecca Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock in their book Proverbs of Ashes have asked why the God of love and forgiveness whom Jesus knew as Abba, required sacrifice, or satisfaction, or punishment? Don't all those theories of atonement conflict with the picture Jesus gave us, of the father who runs out to welcome the prodigal son? Don't the atonement theories conflict with the good news of God's forgiveness? Parker and Brock go one step further to ask, what is the nature of a God who requires suffering of his son? Isn't this all too close to the abusive parent who beats their child? Most abused children do believe they themselves are bad, and deserved the beating, and believe their parent is good. So I ask, is it possible that the early church misunderstood what Jesus meant, when he said, "the Son of Man MUST undergo great suffering ..." ?? Another group of theologians, beginning with Rene Girard 3 and continuing with Gil Baillie 4 and James Allison 5 , have proposed an explanation which makes sense psychologically and historically. They propose that human consciouseness is constructed around feelings of rivalry, competition, and violence. They believe this is largely unconscious, and is manifest in the universal tendency to blame other people, and ultimately to pick out a victim, a scapegoat, who is either persecuted, or killed. These theologians propose that Jesus was unique precisely because he was not involved in such rivalry, either consciously or unconsciously. The evidence for this is in the Gospels: think about his compassion for the victims in his world: the Samaritans, the lepers, the women, the tax collectors, the prostitutes. And remember his teaching: turn the other cheek, go the second mile, beyond the commandment not to kill, do not be angry, forgive seventy times seven. In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus rejected the righteousness of the Pharisee because it was based on competition: the "I'm more righteous than the tax collector" attitude. In the parables of the Prodigal Son, and the Good Samaritan, the principal characters had no regard for their own status or position: they reached out in compassion. Jesus was completely free of judgment, of competition, and of violence: he could not be "hooked" by the emotions, or the actions, of others. And, this meant inevitably, that he would become the victim of those around him. They would, and did, feel threatened by his freedom and his love in reaching out to everyone he met. Precisely because he had no fear, those engaged in rivalry feared him. Perhaps we see this most clearly at the last supper, when Jesus said to Judas Iscariot, "do what you have to do". This, then, is the context in which Jesus said, "the Son of Man must undergo great suffering . . " He was NOT destined for this suffering by his Father in heaven, and it was not necessary. Jesus chose to live in this way, giving his love and attention and healing freely and gladly, not counting the cost. Today we might express this by saying, he was centered in a peaceful non-retaliatory way of being. And so when he said, "those who want to save their life will lose it", he meant that those who live in rivalry with others, trying to be better, or stronger or smarter or richer, will indeed lose their lives. And when Jesus said, "those who lose their life for my sake and for the gospel, will save it", he meant that we can choose to live as he did. We can refuse to be manipulated by the rivalry, the fear, and the violence of others. In refusing to strike back, refusing to judge, and refusing to compete, we may not be able to control our lives, and we may even become victims, but we will save our souls, we will be sustained by God, and we will have eternal life. And so the invitation of Jesus to his followers, comes also to us, today. If any of us want to be his followers, we too may choose to deny ourselves, that is, to deny ourselves the pleasure of putting others down, of beating someone else to the best deal, of gloating over the losers, and of despising those who are different. The cross that Jesus invites us to carry is commitment to non-retaliation, to peaceful companionship with everyone we meet, good and bad, poor and rich, friend and enemy. The followers of Jesus will have to accept, as he did, misunderstanding, criticism, mockery, lies, persecution and rejection, until GodŐs kingdom comes. "Take up your cross, the Savior said,
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