Sermon on May 2, 2010
Sermon for the Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist, Capitola,
given by Rev. Steve Ellis
The Episcopal Church of Saint John the Baptist welcomes all to worship God and to share Christ's love in the world. We are a parish family committed to provide liturgy, Bible study, music, counseling, and Christian education for children, youth, and adults, and to equip all our members for life and for service to others.
Sermon: Atonement #3 - The Pattern Theory
Over the last few weeks I’ve given you a series on theories of the atonement. There are copies on the web site and in the back of the church if any of you want to catch up. Anslem’s diagnosis is that we’ve affronted God and broken the relationship and lost our strength of will in the process. Abelard’s diagnosis of our predicament is that we’ve fearfully rebelled against God and hardened our hearts.
I’ve had responses from many of you, and enjoyed the discussion in forums. One of you wrote me that you appreciated Jesus’ life much more than his death and resurrection. I wrote back, "I appreciate your analysis, and your not taking theological words for granted. But I submit that Jesus' impact makes no sense without his death and resurrection. These three are one piece. The fundamentalists and the guilt-ridden try to have his death without much of his life, and to make his resurrection an act of aggression that will eventually lead to brutal triumph over all who aren't fundamentalists. We don't want to reverse their error by having only his life, without the death and resurrection. Frankly, without his ignoble death and his stunning transformation, he would have been forgotten. Until then his followers were not courageous people.
Because of this perspective I was very pleased with the closing thought in this email which said: "I [accept] and love Him because He lived dangerously and did not run in order to keep the faith for my sake, so that I would know about Him 2000 yrs. later." [Italics not original]
Let’s look today at another theory espoused by Blessed Odo of Tournais in the twelfth century and C.S. Lewis in the twentieth. What if it weren’t that God was unable to forgive us unless someone died in our place, or just that our hearts were hard, but rather that we were drowning and needed a lifeguard? Or that we were sinking as a culture because we were all so engrossed with ourselves that we didn’t invest in a common good, afraid we might come out losers otherwise, more interested in being ahead of others than in being whole?
What if we were, to be specific, more interested in what was fashionable than what was true? More interested in what was entertaining than what made us wise? More interested in what kept us distracted than in the basic needs of the poor? More interested in how we look than in who we actually were? (Looking good has become a competitive sport). More interested in relief from stress than in making God ‘s world better? More interested in getting ahead than in doing an honest day’s work? Because all these things pit us against one another. They all rob our common life of our concern and energy, so that the common life suffers, and humanity is in trouble.
And what if human institutions are structured after this fear and posturing, so that they make it very hard to be loving even when we try? Governments, languages, financial systems, church hierarchies, the lot. What if our institutions are the powers and principalities that hold us afraid and they need to be held accountable as much as we do?
What if God in heaven saw all of us drowning because we were all trying to get out of the pool at once? Or just amusing ourselves going off the diving board willy-nilly without looking to see who might be in harm’s way? What if God saw that our careless behavior was not only risking our lives but making them hateful as we damage one another. The stories are awful about how people trample one another trying to get away from a fire in a crowded theater, or at a European soccer game in a stampede when they all could have made it without trampling anyone to death, if they had thought of one another. That is closer to the situation we really experience, isn’t it, so many people trying to be kings in their little fiefdoms?
Perhaps God sees us as whitewashed sepulchers, as nicely dressed dead people, rotting inside, but "lookin’ good!" And perhaps God is sad and has great compassion for us in our foolishness. And if the Christ comes from heaven and enters this life as Jesus to live and die and rise for such folks, it is not because God wants vengeance, or because their hearts are hard, but because these unpretty things God loves just don’t know how to die. God doesn’t want them to claw at and destroy one another any more. God doesn’t want them to pathetically pretend to be living anymore. Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”
Trouble is, these creatures won’t be alive as long as they try to be good-looking enough, fun enough, rich enough, secure enough. So long as they try to be good enough or better than, they’ll continue to hide their true selves, and compete for respect and no one will really know them. The life they are clinging to is really death, and till they let it go there is no transformation.
According to this theory, in other words, they need not someone to save their sorry lives, but someone to show them how to die. If they can turn their suffering and fear into a willing surrender of self God will be able to give them a birth from above. But it can’t be done because we cling so to the only life we know.
Then Jesus came along. . . and looking back from the vantage point of the resurrection, they realized his death was no an accident. God shows up and lives a life that isn’t posturing. How does Jesus manage this? He is God come to live among us. How does God make it authentic? By living a real human life, full of sorrow and struggle, joy and striving. But in this one life, God is never out of sight and mind. In this one life, there is no play-acting, no posturing to manipulate what others are thinking, no dressing up his clothes or his story so that he will be accepted or envied. He lives full of God, and so he gives people to one another as gifts, not competitors. He demands surrender of all posturing and fear and ego so that God’s love can flow thorough them to others.
His authenticity embarrasses the most powerful pretenders, those determined to be better than others. What he offers is to love and be loved, not to be "better than". So he is opposed, hated, disposed of. But his death turns out to be God’s triumph. God returns him to the scene, victor now over the more terrible death. And his friends, some of whom were his sworn enemies before, find in him a pattern of life, a way of death that leads to life.
So Jesus has freed those who love him from egocentricity, so their gift now is to be one with others. They are freed by a community of love that Jesus began, to be the sign of God’s reign. Freed to be a body that needs all its parts in submission to their rightful head, a body that keeps them in the abundant life. And what are the results. Prophetic people who don’t submit to the seductions of the powers and principalities. Shakers adopting children and raising them in God’s love. Christians building hospitals for those who can’t afford them, or refusing to accept that the way things are is the way they’ll always be, changing the culture, whatever culture, to more resemble God’s vision.
In the breakthrough humanity that Jesus began, we have hope and we live as citizens of the kingdom to come. For us this means, "carrying our cross" and "being a fool for Christ". This is the way of hope. It doesn’t hurt us to be misunderstood, maligned, or hated for following the master’s way. It does give us the deepest joy as we learn to love one another in the Body and in the world God has given us. Conversion and baptism aren’t the end, but just the beginning of what God is working in us. The way is sometimes difficult, but it is abundant, full of worth, a life well-spent. Alleluia.