Sermon for Good Friday

April 6, 2007

Why did Jesus have to die?

Every year on Good Friday we read this story of Jesus' suffering and death from John's Gospel; and of all the Gospels, John's version of this story seems to me the most intense, the most demanding, in some ways the most disturbing. John is the only one to point out that Caiaphas said it was better to have one person die for the people. John is the only one to show a lengthy debate about truth between Jesus and Pilate. John is the only one to show Jesus, from his very cross, reaching out in tender compassion to his mother and to the disciple whom he loved. John's might be the most thoughtful of all the Passion stories. And precisely because of that, it makes us stop and think: Why did Jesus, the compassionate, the truthful, the loving--why did Jesus have to die?

Some people say that Jesus had to die as a punishment. That Jesus took on himself the punishment for sin that really should have fallen on all of us. The logic goes something like this: because humanity had sinned against God, God's justice demanded that humanity be punished; but because humanity is created out of God's love, God's mercy demanded that humanity be spared; so in order to resolve the paradox, God became human in Jesus, so that Jesus could bear the punishment, and the rest of humanity--all of us--could go free. Jesus had to die so that we could be allowed to live.

And there is truth in that. Forgiveness is costly, and God's forgiveness of our sins was costly to God. But I have to admit that there are dimensions to the idea that "Jesus had to die as punishment for our sins" that seem to me to raise more questions than they answer. Questions like: How could God's justice and God's mercy be in conflict with each other? God is one, and God is love; so how could there be two parts of God that are set over against each other like that? More importantly, the Bible speaks again and again--Jesus especially speaks again and again--of how God forgives our sins; and forgiveness doesn't mean arranging for someone else to bear the punishment; forgiveness means giving up the punishing, forgiveness means not asking anyone to be punished, forgiveness means replacing punishment with love. To say that God could only forgive us by punishing Jesus seems to make God a very narrow-minded forgiver, it seems to make God a very stingy lover of souls, it seems to make God even less merciful than most of us would try to be. Certainly Jesus on the cross shows us the cost of forgiveness; but to say that Jesus had to die as a punishment for our sins seems to leave some very important things still unsaid. There has to be more to the answer than that.

So why did Jesus have to die?

Some people say that Jesus had to die as an act of witness, as a kind of ultimate protest against the worldly power of the Roman government and the Sadducee Temple authorities. All of Jesus' ministry, all of Jesus' life was dedicated to proclaiming the Reign of God, to embodying in himself and among his followers the commonwealth of heaven, a way of being together and a way of being in right relationship that did not depend on the power-plays and the manipulations and the coercions and the tit-for-tats that make up so much of ordinary, worldly human life. Everything that Jesus did--from healing the sick to having table fellowship with sinners--showed people a radical equality before God that undermined the power of all the powers that be. And when government and religion saw their power being undermined by Jesus, they fought back. They fought back against Jesus with every weapon they had: lies, slander, suspicion, informants, police, soldiers, secret trials, torture, execution. And through it all, according to this point of view, Jesus knew that if he treated the governors and the religious authorities the way they treated him, then he would be no better than they were, he would stoop to the same kind of power they abused. So he remained true to his mission of non-violence and equality and the Reign of God rather than the reign of worldly power--and in the end worldly power killed him. Jesus had to die, some people say, as an ultimate protest against the power of violence.

And there is truth in that. Jesus' proclamation of the Reign of God, Jesus' gathering of a community of right relationships in mutual well-being, did bear witness against the coercive and violent powers of the world. Jesus' proclamation and Jesus' community are still called to bear that witness. But to say that Jesus died as a form of protest seems to me to give too much power to the Romans and the Sadducees; it seems to me to say too much that the Romans and the Sadducees were in control and all Jesus could do was go along with it as a non-violent victim. But John in his telling of the Passion makes it clear that Jesus was far from being a victim, and that the only reason Pilate had any power over him is because that power has been given from above. There is a larger power at work here, larger than the political power of the Romans and the Sadducees, and that power does more than just witness against the violent power of the world. Jesus' death is more than just a protest. There has to be more to the answer than that.

So why did Jesus have to die?

Some people say that Jesus died out of love. That Jesus loved people so much, that the Word of God incarnate in Jesus loved the whole creation so much, that Jesus took into himself everything it is to be a creature, everything it is to be human--including all the difficult and scary and painful and destructive parts of being human. Jesus took all that into his human self, and in his divine love, he transformed it. On the cross, Jesus shows us, in the most concrete and ultimate way possible, there is no place he will not go with us, there is no place his love will abandon us and leave us all on our own. On the cross, willingly accepting rejection and betrayal and denial and suffering and death, Jesus shows us that he will be with us in all our crosses, in every time we feel rejection and betrayal and denial and suffering--Jesus will be with us even in our deaths. Jesus had to die because we will all have to die--and by dying with us as one of us, Jesus opens up the way for us to live as one with him.

And there is truth in that. There is truth in that that any one of us can recognize, any one of us who has ever wanted to be with someone we love when they are hurting or lost or broken, wanted to be with them and lift them up out of their hurt. There is truth in that that brings these other truths and holds them together and makes them make sense. Jesus giving costly forgiveness for our sins; Jesus confronting the power of violence with the non-violent power of God's Reign; both of these pictures of Jesus come together in the picture of Jesus taking even death into himself and raising it up and transforming it in the power of divine love. This is the Jesus who was lifted high upon the cross so that he might draw the whole world to himself. This is the Jesus who calls us and empowers us to pray in his name for the whole world, as we do in our Solemn Collects. This is the Jesus who calls us and empowers us to work in the world to transform poverty and hunger and violence, as we will see in our Stations of the Cross. This is the Jesus who calls and empowers us to give of our lives in love, even as he shares his life of love with us.

And so we gather tonight, on this Good Friday, and we ask why Jesus had to die, and in anser to that we pray--we pray in thanksgiving and gratitude and, yes, even paradoxical as it seems, we pray in joy, as we say We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you: because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

Amen.