Searching For the Meaning of “Good” Friday

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God, Good Friday, Jesus, love, religion

I’ve never been quite sure what the “good” in Good Friday meant. Perhaps we see beyond the pain, torture and death of Christ to the event of Easter. We live in those awful moments not in the moment itself, but in the promise of Sunday.

That seems to trivialize it a bit for me, and it doesn’t satisfy. I know that the Passover, celebrated as the Last Supper by Christians is that wonderful celebration by Jews of the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. It celebrates freedom. And no doubt as the Synoptic Gospels relate, this date for the Last Supper of Jesus (the first night of Passover) serves to symbolize our liberation from sin.

John changes the mix a bit by placing the Last Supper not on the first night of Passover, but the day before, when the lambs are slain for the meal. He likens Jesus to the lamb slain. The general symbolism remains the same.

I am not a believer of substitutionary sin–the theory that Jesus took upon himself our sins and died for them– a demand of a God who requires payment for a sinful world. Such a God, to me at least, is both harsh and ugly–sending his own son to die in the most horrible of ways.

Rather I see, (note that these ideas are surely not my own, but are the theology of many a learned scholar and teacher as well as believers) that Jesus by his willingness to die for his beliefs, shows us the perfect way to engage with this creator we call God. Jesus, in dying, pays the ultimate price for principle, the foundational principle of life–love, no matter what the cost.

For this is the essence of the God that Jesus points us towards. A God who is unimpressed by formulaic ritual and a God saddened by our tendencies to divide ourselves into groups of “saved” “faithful” or “pious” and all others who somehow by human standards fail to reach the mark. So saddened is God by our divisiveness that Jesus shows through his willingness to endure scorn, beating and tortuous death, that even the least among us is worthy of dying for.

As we struggle in our daily lives to come to grips with the deep agonies that divide us as a people and as a world, Jesus on the Cross, stands as testament to the strength that we too can express if we are willing to take up that Cross ourselves and stand for love at all costs.

Jesus stands against those whose primary goal is to protect “number one”. He stands against those who are motivated by greed, self-preservation, and egotistical individual ruggedness. He points the way to a God of grace and love, who calls us daily to be bigger than our selves in our love of brother and sister. This God, so real, so in love with His creation that He becomes one of us, in an effort to show us, by his teaching, suffering and death, what He is really all about.

I speak not of Jesus as the son of God, but as the Son of Man, for the reality or fantasy of Jesus as the incarnate God is beside the point really. If Jesus is so infused with the Spirit of the Transcendent One, then it matters not the creeds we dutifully recite each Sunday. Jesus moved aside as human, and allowed the Spirit of God to envelop him so completely that God really was among us.

All the more important that we be especially careful to separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of the Church. More and more I find them quite different beings, with quite different agendas. After having read much, I am still in love with Paul and his exuberance for the Gospel, but I recognize that Paul molded the ensuing Church and molded Jesus into that Church. I’m not so sure that it is the Jesus of history whom he never met in the flesh.

We must comb the Gospels carefully I think to find that Jesus–that gentle yet firebrand individual who sought to bring all into the house of God, as true and perfect children. He tenderly attended to the needs of the most broken and rejected in society without asking of them anything in return, other than to put God first in their lives. His anger was invoked by those whom he saw as impeding the people in their attempt to know their God. He pointed the finger and accused them of having lost all sense of why they were doing what they did. It had all become for show, for power, and for accolades.

True piety rested with the many Marys who lived with the Master, the self-less women who sat at his feet, absorbing his wisdom, who anointed his head, washed his feet, and knelt at the foot of the cross, and ultimately went to dress his broken and dead body, and found to their amazement that his real presence washed over them.

If we learn anything from the Friday, called Good, it is that we too can approach God in these simple acts of service–not by asking questions about who deserves and who doesn’t deserve our acts, but in simply being willing to give in love, knowing that the Spirit of God inhabits each and every one of God’s created beings.

Have a blessed Easter Time.

(I know that many of you who read this are not religious, and at best agnostic if not actually atheistic in your outlook. But I think that whatever you believe, you are beloved and understood and accepted by God as you are, and I hope the sentiments I express, resonate in that “human” way that knows no faith.)

It’s a Good Good Friday

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Art, atonement, crucifixion, Jesus, religion, Zoology

I am aware of course that many of you are not believers, at least in a traditional way. And because of that, I try not to spend too much time on things having to do with faith, especially denominational faith. I leave that to my other blog, Walking in the Shadows. However I found this article so compelling that I thought I would share it with you, in keeping with the day.

I have for a long time not believed in what is referred to as “substitutionary atonement” or the tenet that God sent Jesus to earth with the express purpose of suffering and dying for our sins, the sin we carry from Adam’s original sin. It doesn’t comport with my view of God quite simply. As Kenneth R Overburg, SJ suggests, it takes Jesus out as Plan B, and replaced Him with the Word, foundational in creation, planned from the beginning to dwell among creation in the fullness of time.

It is the Incarnational model and centers Jesus as love offering, come among humanity at the right moment in time to offer the WAY to unity with the Godhead. Overburg writes a beautiful and compelling explanation of this interpretation which I think allows many who have rejected Christianity specifically because of the implications of the substitutionary atonement theory. Please enjoy, The Incarnation: Why God Wanted to Become Human.

♦

Isn’t he cute?

And aren’t they lovely?

Blessings to you all!

Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?

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Book Reviews, Christianity, God, James DG Dunn, Jesus, New Testament

Let me extend my thanks to Westminster John Knox Press for providing me a copy of James D. G. Dunn’s latest, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?

Professor Dunn is Lightfoot Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Durham in England. He is the author of numerous books and writings, and is accepted as an authority in the field. He put forth the PhD candidacy of Dr. James McGrath, Butler University professor, who occasionally stops by here for a comment and who has authored a book on Christianity and monotheism, and runs the blog  Exploring our Matrix. I include this in fairness, since Dr. Dunn refers to McGrath’s work and opinions in various footnotes throughout his book.

I am, as most of you know, no more than a humble amateur student of the Bible. It has been my privilege to read many books over the years, written by experts, and if I have come to have some small modicum of understanding, I hope that it come forth here in reviewing this work.

The question posed by Dr. Dunn is provocative to some no doubt, and undoubtedly, some would dismiss it with a “of course they did!” and go about their business. But the question is much more tricky that might be assumed, the answer is not what I expected, and I learned a good deal that I would not have assumed.

As anyone who has taken the time to try to understand what Jesus said and what he taught knows, understanding the mind of the first century Jew is essential to that understanding. The faulty interpretations that are so prevalent among “it says what it means and means what it says” crowd stem precisely from giving 21st century meaning to translated words of 1st century Jews.

If we try to attach our means, we most assuredly will get the wrong answer. Dunn thus begins by giving us a definitional tour of the word “worship”. He concludes, and I think supports well that worship as understood in that time, was reserved for God the Father alone.

In chapter two, Dr. Dunn looks at prayer, hymns, sacred space, times, meals, sacrifice, and looks to see if there were relevant portions of New Testament writings that support that in action, the early church prayed to Jesus as God and so forth. He would argue that no such things were not present in the early liturgy as such.

Jesus was present to them assuredly, and thus God. Jesus was prayed to essentially as a conduit to God. This comports well with the NT evidence that Jesus is historically remembered by the community of followers as declaring that there was One God, and of course there are numerous instances where Jesus prayed to his Father.

Probably the most useful to me of the chapters was chapter three, in which Dr. Dunn presents examples of how God in the Hebrew scriptures often appeared to humanity in the guise of  angels, Spirit, Wisdom and Word. This is where we start to see a sense of the Risen Jesus as Lord.

Jewish theologians often used these agents as a means of expressing God’s contact and involvement with humanity. Jesus thus emerges as mediator between God and humanity. For Judaism in no way saw those agents of God or perhaps those “personas” of God to be other Gods. They were guises in which the One God could be experienced.

Early Christians, Dunn argues, also saw Jesus in this way, as the means by which to experience God. We are reminded in Chapter four, that Jesus commanded that the two great commandments were to love God (the Shema) and to love neighbor. In various sayings, Jesus makes most clear that he is NOT God the Father, as in for instance, Mark 10.17-18, when he is addressed as “good teacher” and replies, “No one is good but God alone.”

What I discern here is really valuable. We are accustomed to thinking that of course Jesus is God. We, in our simplicity, don’t really get what Trinity is, but we somehow think of their appearing to be three Gods, but not really. That is about the best we can do. This of course is precisely why Judaism and Islam both charge that Christianity is not a monotheistic faith.

Dunn helps us to see that we miss the incredible awe-inspiring reality of Jesus when we simply answer yes or no with no further attention. For Jesus embodied the most complete humanity that was envisioned in the concept of being made in God’s image. He was the Adam who did not fail. He was the completion, the perfection of that which was first created.

Moreover, God so exalted Jesus, that he comes to be God for us. He shows us by his life and death, resurrection and teachings, who and what God is, in the fullest sense that we humans can comprehend. As Paul suggests, it is as if seeing through a glass darkly, but at least it is not opaque.

For all practical purposes, Jesus shows us God, yet is the prism through which we view God, rather than being God himself. As such he mediates God to us, and us to God. We pray in and through him and by him to the One God.

If I have understood Dr. Dunn at all, this is what I take from his book. This to me is deeply moving and satisfying. This is a book well worth your time. It is eminently readable and while you are free to get into the “nuances” all you wish, you can feel just as satisfied with a more general reading as well. Scholars will find much here to continue the ongoing study, but the average reader will gain much spiritually from the reading.

Contemporary Christologies

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Book Reviews, Christianity, Contemporary Christologies, Don Schweitzer, religion, theology

Let me first thank Fortress Press for their gracious offering to me  of Don Schweitzer’s Contemporary Christologies, for review.

I always feel a bit of a fraud, daring to review a book, the subject of which is either theology or biblical studies. I have no degrees in either and am at best a lay student. Yet, on the other hand, Fortress realizes the value of people such as myself in widening the appeal of books usually reserved for the university and formal student. 

Which is all to say, that knowing my audience is not by and large the college campus, I’ll make no attempt to be too technical here.

Professor Schweitzer starts off with the question, “Who do you say that I am?” from Mark 8:29, and indeed that is exactly what Christology is all about. Our human attempts to define Christ for us, and for the larger community in which we engage.

In this introductory look at the subject, Schweitzer gives us three models of atonement (ways of looking at Jesus saving grace). He then shows us how fifteen modern theologians approach this issue, and how they vision the Christ as impacting our world today.

Indeed, perhaps in each generation or century, there are times when we ask: Is Christ still relevant to our current problems?  All of these theologians, albeit by different means, would argue a resounding “Yes!”

The first model is that of Christus Victor, an objective classical model which sees the world in terms of good and evil, with Jesus being a transformative figure who brings hope and promise into the world, that in the end,will see good prevail.

The second model is the moral theory. In following this model, Jesus transforms people by the power of his example. He models perfect love, and we, his followers emulate him, thus turning aside from evil to good. It seeks to transform our faulty understanding of God, replacing it with a correct one.

In the third model we find salvation theory via substitutionary satisfaction. Jesus in his full humanity offered himself as sacrifice for our sins which we could never repay. We thus are reconciled again with God.

Schweitzer, then turns to fleshing out these models by reference to various theologians today. I would admit that I was aware, and had read something of seven of the fifteen. Some of them are dear favorites of mine, namely Jon Sobrino, and Elizabeth Johnson.

Each theologian’s Christology is explained and placed against the model it most closely follows. Strengths and weaknesses are explored. Always, attention is paid to the main issue before us: how Christologies impact and can be relevant to the world today. Each sees Jesus as providing a framework for addressing our most pressing problems, a blueprint, if you will, for assessing whether we are indeed “putting on the mind of Christ.”

As such, this book is extraordinarily relevant. It is easy today for many to reduce Jesus to prophet, healer, and consciousness of humanity. It is convenient and easy to simply read the Gospels in order to get a “good idea” of how to treat others and our world. It is easy to dismiss the great work done by those who have gone before.

But it is not profitable I would argue, and I think that this book argues the same. There is a much deeper and more compelling depth of belief that awaits the one who seeks Jesus in a traditional theological methodology. While some may argue that we must bow to secular repugnance at “mystical” explanations of the resurrection and offer Jesus as fully human prophet,  I think the answer is more complicated.

We indeed may need to relate Jesus to a world today that is inclined to pooh-pooh anything mystical or God-like in Jesus. But that need not mean, and should not mean that we discard that way of looking completely. What I believe Schweitzer shows, is that, while we need not focus on the resurrection as actual divine event, we can use it to enter into God more fully, and the wonder of right relationship with the divine.

No doubt, I don’t express this at all adequately, but I can only relate that after reading, and, sometimes for the first time actually understanding in some poor way the well framed theologies of various deeply thoughtful people herein, I come away with a much more awe-inspiring belief than that which I started with.

As a bonus, to anyone who reads this introduction, comes a beginning for where you want to move next in your travels into theology. Are you compelled by a Elizabeth Johnson and her feminist vision? Or are you intrigued with Douglas John Hall’s contention that modern America’s pursuit of optimism actually hampers our growth as human beings and our increasing need to empathize with all in our world?

What Professor Schweitzer does so well, in my estimation, is to “turn” you on to new voices you may have been totally unaware of. He might as well, turn you off to others. At the very least he helps each of us lay persons to begin, or continue as the case may be, toward a personal theology that is well-informed. In the end, it is what each of us should do, if we are to be truly Christian.

If you admit yourself to be, as I do, fairly ignorant when it comes to anything more than the generalities of theology, then this book is a great starting point to a more informed and mature theology. I recommend it.