SPOILER ALERT [12-30-20]

Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

SPOILER ALERT   [12-30-20]   

 

A friend of daughter Mary Beth recently sent her a photo of a nativity scene. It depicted the baby Jesus, surrounded as usual with parents and farm animals and shepherds and magi. It was in a European/American style barn, which is historically inaccurate, but Christmasly truthy. On the barn was a crucifix. Mary Beth’s friend had circled the crucifix and written in beside it, “Spoiler alert.” [1]

It’s really quite funny, but not accurate. The Christmas story is not the beginning of the crucifixion story, but the beginning of the resurrection story. So a crucifix in the nativity scene doesn’t require a spoiler alert. An empty tomb would.

The only reason we focus on the crucifixion of Jesus, have a whole theology about it, is because it’s so much easier to wear a cross around your neck instead of an empty tomb.

Symbols don’t grow out of theology or politics or economics. Those philosophies grow out of the symbols. Notice how the true believers of American patriotism focus not on defending democracy but upon protecting the flag. It’s all about honoring the flag, the symbol, not about assuring democracy, the reality.

The theology of substitutionary atonement developed because the early theologians said, “We need to explain why all these people are wearing crosses around their necks!” Well, not really. It came first out of the Hebrew sacrificial system and then the Roman legal system.

The Hebrews, like most ancient peoples, believed you had to propitiate God in order to get along with Him. He would smite you if you displeased Him. The God of the Hebrew scriptures is not very nice at all, and rather capricious.

Along came Jesus, who said, “No, God is loving and merciful. You don’t need to sacrifice something to get something back. Just ask for forgiveness. Ask and you will receive.”

As more gentiles became Christians, the old Hebrew assumption of sacrifice faded, but gentiles were part of the Roman legalistic philosophy. Every crime required a punishment. So, since people sinned—as told in the story of Garden of Eden—someone had to be punished. Jesus took the punishment on behalf of all of us. The Roman legal system was satisfied, even though it obviated the whole point of God’s mercy, that God forgives us “just as I am, without one plea.” [Our hymns have always tussled with one another about grace and law. We just sing the ones with the best tunes and don’t think about the contradictions.]

A young man in a church I pastored started going with a girl from another church, so he began attending there. He got saved. He came to see me, to explain that I, and the other folks in our church, were going to hell because we did not believe in the substitutionary atonement. Note that the problem was “believing” in it; in other words, we are saved by believing, in the correct theology, or in the terms of Marcus Borg, we are “saved by syllables.”

According to my young friend, anyone who did not believe in the substitutionary atonement was going to hell. “What about Kathy? I asked. She was a part of our church. About 28 years old then, but with the mentality of a four-year-old. She would always be like that. She loved coming to church, saying the Lord’s Prayer and singing the hymns, even though she was usually on a different line from everyone else. “She can’t even say substitutionary atonement, yet alone believe in it. Is she going to hell?” He was somewhat reluctant to send Kathy to hell, but, yes, he said, that’s where she would have to go.

So, spoiler alert: Crucifixion is about legalistic debt paying. Christmas and resurrection are about new beginnings. It is resurrection that fulfills the Christmas story, not crucifixion.

John Robert McFarland

If the substitutionary atonement is important to you, don’t worry. I’ll probably go to hell for this column, anyway.

1] “Spoiler alert” is a fairly new term. According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary, it was used first in 1982.