“Peace with
God”
Romans
5:1-11
Rev. Jason Alspaugh
First United Methodist Church
First Baptist Church of Dayton
Sunday, March 15, 2020
If you were
to read Paul’s writings about Jesus and his death and resurrection, without
reading any of the Gospels, you might miss the fact that the road to the
reconciliation, the path to “peace with God,” that Paul speaks of was rather
messy. Read any of the Gospels and
you’ll see that there was fear and doubt, people running away, people looking for
a way out, as the threat of crucifixion grew.
And after it happened, even after Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples are
left to wonder at the significance of it all.
The death of Jesus on a cross was a particular challenge to wrap one’s
head around.
Rowan
Williams notes that “in the world in which Christianity began, a place of
worship was the last place you would expect to see a cross […] The cross was a
sign of suffering, humiliation, disgrace.
It was a sign of an all-powerful empire that held life very cheap indeed
[…] So a group of people who proclaimed the sign of their allegiance was a cross
had a lot of explaining to do.”[1]
If we’re
honest, we are still trying to get a grip, to make sense of it all. In his book, The Cross and the Lynching
Tree, James Cone said, “No human language can fully describe what salvation
through the cross means. Salvation
through the cross is a mystery and can only be apprehended though faith,
repentance, and humility.”[2] And because of the limits of our language to describe
this mystery, I think it’s a good Lenten practice to meditate on the various meanings
of the cross we have inherited in Scripture and tradition.
Ever since
that day on Calvary, people have been trying to understand what happened. Consequently, the cross has accumulated a lot
of theological baggage. To borrow the
words of John Donne, people still “reckon what it did and meant.” However familiar we may be with the image of
the cross—e.g., the sterling silver cross on your necklace, the wood cross that
appears every Lent, the brass cross on the altar, the backlit cross on the
baptistery—it’s likely that we each have a somewhat different understanding
about it. That might make some of us
uneasy, but if you were to look closely enough you’d see that it’s always been
this way.
Look through
the letters of the New Testament and you’ll find numerous explanations for
Jesus’ death on the cross. Rob Bell once
did this and found that in Hebrews 9 it says that Jesus “has appeared once and
for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of
himself”; and in Colossians 1, Paul writes that through the cross God was
reconciling “to himself all things, whether on earth or things in heaven, by
making peace through his blood, shed on the cross”; and in 2 Timothy 1 and in 1
John 5, we read that Jesus has “destroyed death,” and that “this is the victory
that has overcome the world”; and in Ephesians 1, Paul writes that “We have
redemption through his blood.” So Bell
asks, “Is the cross about the end of the sacrificial system, or a broken
relationship that’s been reconciled […] or a battle that’s been won, or the
redeeming of something that was lost?
Which is it? Which perspective is
the right one? Which metaphor is
correct? Which explanation is true?”[3]
Some of us might be asking the same
questions.
Going
beyond the Scriptures we’d find that the dominant message of the cross for
about the first thousand years of Christianity went something like this (in the
words of James McClendon): “Satan, by successfully tempting human beings, had
acquired a claim to them; they were his prisoners awaiting redemption. Christ is offered to the devil as a payment
of that ransom; the exchange was duly made at the cross; but in the
resurrection God reclaimed [Jesus], so that both [God’s] risen Son and redeemed
sinners are [once again] God’s.”[4] Is this the right message? Is this what the cross was all about?
Well there
were others for whom this message was unconvincing. One such person was Anselm of Canterbury,
whose alternative message still dominates to this day. It goes something like this (in the words of
Marcus Borg): “God’s retributive justice requires that the penalty for our sins
must be paid from the human side. But we
are all sinners and thus cannot adequately make the payment. Only a perfect human can. But a human can’t be perfect unless also
divine. So God became human in Jesus in
order to pay the price for our sins.”[5] Is this the right message? Is this what the cross was all about?
A Parisian
monk in Anselm’s time, named Abelard, said “No.” “No” to Anselm’s message, and “No” to the
messages before him. Arguing “against
both the ‘ransom’ and ‘satisfaction’ views of atonement,” Abelard wrote:
How cruel and unjust it appears,
that anyone should demand the blood of the innocent as any kind of ransom, or
be in any way delighted with the death of the innocent, let alone that God
should find the death of His Son so acceptable, that through it He should be
reconciled to the world! (Commentary on
Romans, quoted by McClendon, 209)
(According
to McClendon) “Abelard’s own view [was] that it was love […] that was the sole
cause of redemption. Christ’s
perseverance in love to us (“even unto death”) evokes a like love in [us]…” so
it goes.
We could go
on exploring the messages of the cross put forth by countless others, men and
women, but what I’ve mentioned so far should be enough for us to begin to see
that the cross has presented a challenge to Christians in every age.
In Paul’s
time, the cross, the proclamation of “Christ crucified” was “a stumbling-block to Jews and
foolishness to Gentiles” who would not, could not believe it. It’s been said that “…there was no
‘expectation’ of Christ in Scripture that could have enabled even the keenest
Hebrew reader […] to foretell Jesus’ ministry, his suffering, his death and resurrection…”
(Doctrine, 216). No one had considered that the Messiah-King
and Suffering Servant figures in the prophecy of Isaiah might be the same
person. No one had considered that the
Christ would “[grow] up […] like a root out of dry
ground; [or have] no form or majesty that we should look at him”; no one had considered that he would be “despised
and rejected by others; a man of suffering […] oppressed […]
afflicted”; no one had considered that the Christ would be “taken away” by “a
perversion of justice” and buried “with the wicked” (Is.53:1-9). And certainly they did not think that such
things could happen to one who was in any way divine.
The cross was
an impediment, incredible and absurd for Paul’s generation; and it has been so for many in every age. And so, in every age Christians have made use
of the language at hand to convey the importance of “Christ crucified” in the
most intelligible, the most convincing way they knew how. The first Christians, Bell says,
“looked at the world around them, identifying examples, pictures, experiences,
and metaphors that their listeners and readers would have been familiar with,
and…said: What happened on the cross is like...a relationship being reconciled,
something lost being redeemed, a battle being won, a final sacrifice being
offered…” (Love Wins, 128). In other words, they told stories. And, when it comes to the cross, the most
effective narratives (for me) have been the Gospels.
McClendon
has said that the Gospels “directly address the chief hindrance to
participation faced by Jew and pagan alike—namely, the cross […] the Gospels
make sense of the cross exactly by setting it within their own larger story” (Doctrine, 228). So if you ever find yourself hindered or even
embarrassed by the cross, by the message of “Christ crucified”; if you’re ever
confused or unconvinced by all of the messages of the cross, with all of their
attendant metaphors and theological jargon; I would suggest you read at least
one of the Gospels. During Holy Week the
Revised Common Lectionary prescribes large passages of scripture from the
Gospels, and I’ve come to find that such readings help ground my understanding
of Jesus’ death; because they account for what happened before and after.
Reading the
Gospel of Mark, for example, you’d see that Jesus’ passion for God’s kingdom
put him at odds with religious authorities, who then looked for a way to kill
him (Mk. 11:18). You’d find that every
time Jesus tells of his impending death, “those predictions are never about his
dying for our sins, but always about the fact that the authorities will kill
him” (Mk. 8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34 / Borg).
You’d see that the cross was not God’s idea, it was Rome’s. You’d see that there were three crosses on
Calvary, not one, because Jesus was crucified alongside two criminals; which
reminds us that it was “a form of Roman execution used for…those who defied
Roman authority.”[6] And you’d be astounded and overjoyed to find
that the story of Jesus ends with neither his crucifixion nor his burial, for
the women are told: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth,
who was crucified. He has been raised;
he is not here” (Mk. 16:6). So in fact,
the story does not end!
McClendon
says, “The enemies did not prevail as
they intended”—they wanted to stamp the words “The End” on this picture and
run the credits. But instead the story
was “To Be Continued…”—“The disciples,
doubting, returned to follow him.”
With the Gospel narrative in mind, then, we can turn back to Paul, who
himself represents a continuation of the story.
And when Paul says that we are “justified by faith,” by trusting Jesus,
we remember how difficult it was for his disciples to trust him in the face of
violence.
When Paul says that we have “peace with God,” that
we have been forgiven and reconciled to God, we remember that Jesus was bold to
do so in his life, while he was hanging on the cross, and after his resurrection.
And when Paul says that “Christ died for us,” we
remember that Jesus didn’t just die—he was killed, he was executed—and it was
agony.
When Paul says that through Jesus’ death “God
proves his love for us” we remember that God did not order Jesus’ execution,
Pilate did; and we remember that it was not God’s need or desire for blood that
led to Jesus’ death, but that his commitment to God’s ways put him in harm’s
way. As Williams has said, “This is a
world in which if you try to give your heart to God you may find your blood
shed; it’s that kind of world.”[7]
And when Paul says that “at the right time Christ
died for the ungodly,” we remember that Jesus never waited for someone to be “perfect,”
but in love he came to seek and to save the lost, crossing barriers, confronting prejudice, and
challenging tradition along the way. And
we remember that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and that
there will never be a time when we do not need the grace of God’s love and forgiveness.
And when Paul says that “we have now received reconciliation,”
we remember that the peace we have with God is God’s own gift to us, not
something we have earned; and it is to be shared with the world.
The way
we continue the Gospel story, Paul would say, is the “ministry of
reconciliation.” “So if anyone is in Christ,” he says,
there
is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become
new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God
was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against
them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.[8]
Even as we trust in Jesus, God trusts us to
carry on the ministry of helping people to draw closer to God and one another. This is the work of seeking God’s kingdom, of
doing all we can to build beloved community.
The forgiving, compassionate, self-giving work of Jesus is entrusted to us. The peace you have been given is not for you
alone; it is meant for the world.
I do not expect that we will ever exhaust the
meaning-fullness of the cross of Christ, that we will discover all of the “right”
words to explain it, that we will one day come away from the cross with every
question settled. But I do hope that you
will come away in awe at the depth of God’s grace and love; and then “go in
peace to love and serve the Lord.” So be
it. Amen.
[1]
Rowan Williams, The Sign and the Sacrifice, 3-4.
[2]
James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, 158.
[3]
Rob Bell, Love Wins, 127.
[4]
McClendon, Doctrine, 201.
[5]
Marcus Borg, Speaking Christian, 98.
[6]
Speaking Christian, 99.
[7]
The Sign and the Sacrifice, 31.
[8]
2 Cor. 5:17-19
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