There is a very important question, for me, about the teaching and traditions of the Crucifixion. I wonder if there is more about sinful man than about the love of God? Humans have such an agenda about inadequacy, failure, and downright wickedness that this underlying sense of never being good enough becomes more important than the love that wants them to feel loved – “No I refuse to be ok, I am wicked, dreadful and look I am so bad I crucified the Son of God.”
Is there is a kind of inverse arrogance here where man’s sin takes the centre of the stage that is meant to be starring the Divine Love? Because of this inversion the Crucifixion is treated as though it is the most important event (thus enabling the human side of the equation to be the operative) whereas it is the means to the most important event, which is the Resurrection. If the Cross is the most significant ‘man’ can be at the centre of the action, if the Resurrection is then clearly humankind can only be the recipients.
Sacrificing to the gods for sins, for appeasement, for favours was a constant theme in the evolution of human consciousness. That the Crucifixion of Jesus should come to be understood in sacrificial terms is entirely explicable given the world view into which it occurred. However, perhaps we need to question whether we are stuck with that view as eternal truth or whether the whole Passiontide – Resurrection Event can be legitimately explored and interpreted in ways that make sense to our understanding of the universe.
I am not convinced that the New Testament writers shared a common understanding of the Crucifixion – Resurrection events. The sequence was too profound; they struggled to find a way of explaining what had happened to this Man they had known, loved or heard about. Paul was amazing in his grasp of it and his explications have stood the test of time, but there is still this double query, one, whether the interpretation in terms of sacrifice is the only possible explanation and two, whether, perhaps the Resurrection was ‘what it was all about’.
Humanity, universally has had one big insoluble fear, problem, unavoidable truth which religion was invented to solve in various ways, and that is the inevitable fact of death. Anthropologists commonly date the beginning of human consciousness from the point that creatures became aware of death, and among the oldest human artifacts are things pertaining to death and the appeasement of the gods.
Perhaps the whole point of the Life, Death and Resurrection was directed to this end, that humanity should come to know that death is not the end, that this life is the gateway to something infinitely greater. The appalling reality is that even when the teaching that death is not the end has been uppermost only a few happy souls seem to have got the point. Once the flush of martyrdom had run its course and Christianity had become the settled religion in what was called ‘the known world’ the teaching was used not primarily for comfort but for instilling fear, for controlling the populace, and for enriching the church. Think of the amazing art works depicting the frightful punishments awaiting the unwary after death. Think of the sale of Indulgences which were designed to pave the way to an easy time post mortem. It was this practice that most prominently urged Luther to the action that kicked off the Reformation. Troubling the populace by activating their fear of life after death used to be the simplest and most effective way of control and a ready source of income for the church.
The manipulation of humanity’s anxiety about death and mankind’s obsession with unworthiness, sin and punishment together obscure the reality of Divine Love and make the preaching of that Love sound somewhat hollow and most certainly not unconditional. (And I mean mankind’s obsession because the accepted definitions of what is sin have been entirely constructed in patriarchal societies with masculine views on what is right and what is wrong.)
The rules and the doctrine were laid down long long ago by men, taking men’s reality as The reality, any other point of view was not seriously questioned until around 100 years ago. The fundamentals are still not questioned and remain true to the definitions men made about 1700 years ago. For me this is very important when I come to try to understand the meaning of the Pre-existent Christ, the Passion-Resurrection Event, the Eucharist, or life after life. This is why I ask the questions that I do, not from an avid stridently feminist anti-men perspective but from a very real desire that the church should find resurrection and fulfil its true mission in the world. That sounds a wee bit pompous but I actually am passionate about the church even though my criticisms might seem to suggest otherwise.
We keep hearing about how vastly the world is changing and daily we experience the changes, both for good and ill. The scientific, quantum world is turning traditional views of reality upside-down and it is making actual and available experiences otherwise known only to mystics and advanced souls of various faiths. Neuro-science is putting foundations under and normalizing a wide variety of human experiences which have formerly been either inexplicable miracles or seen in the ’woo-woo’ category believed only by people a bit way out or cranky. These explorations border on the religious or spiritual. Even to talk about ‘the spiritual’ in medical or scientific contexts has only very recently become respectable. Surely with all this exciting foment around us it is time to re-evaluate and re-interpret our understanding of those things that pertain to the faith. It is time to find language which honours both the traditions and the world two thousand years on, and even to catch up with the many people outside of the church who are ready to talk about things divine and the Love which contains and infuses the whole without commitment to an ancient world view and a fourth century interpretations of God.
