Post-Easter
In the throes of post-Easter lethargy—that feeling of limp exhaustion brought on by a four-day break that is just long enough to drain out some adrenalin but not long enough to provide any refreshment—I reflected on the rituals of Easter.
The Thursday afternoon traffic jams out of Sydney. The Good Friday service where we can't quite make up our minds whether to be sombre or glad. The Stawell Gift. The overpriced chocolate. The bland ‘Easter Messages’ from Christian leaders (the Jensen brothers both distinguishing themselves this year by being exceptions). The obligatory new documentary or book calling into question some aspect of the authenticity of the Gospels (this year it was the Lenten release of James Cameron's The Lost Tomb of Jesus).
And then of course there is the well-publicised sermon from a radical cleric (usually a bishop) denying some core aspect of Easter theology. This year it was Jeffrey John's turn. You may remember the name—he was the gay clergyman who looked like becoming bishop of Reading back in 2003, but in the end didn't.
In an Easter message for BBC Radio 4, Mr John showed that it's not only in the bedroom that he bats for the other side. Normally we leave it up to anti-Christians like Richard Dawkins to sneer at the message of the cross, with its angry God and atoning sacrifice, but who needs Dawkins when you've got Jeffrey John. Here's what he had to say:
But hang on—you may well say—what exactly does that mean—‘Jesus took our place’? Does it mean, then, that we are back with a punishing God after all, and that the Cross is somehow to be understood as God's ultimate punishment for sin?
That's certainly what I was told in my Calvinistic childhood. The explanation I was given went something like this. God was very angry with us for our sins, and because he is a just God, our sin had to be punished. But instead of punishing us he sent his Son, Jesus, as a substitute to suffer and die in our place. The blood of Jesus paid the price of our sins, and because of him God stopped being angry with us. In other words, Jesus took the rap, and we got forgiven, provided we said we believed in him.
Well, I don't know about you, but even at the age of ten I thought this explanation was pretty repulsive as well as nonsensical. What sort of God was this, getting so angry with the world and the people he created, and then, to calm himself down, demanding the blood of his own Son? And anyway, why should God forgive us through punishing somebody else? It was worse than illogical, it was insane. It made God sound like a psychopath. If any human being behaved like this we'd say they were a monster.
Well, I haven't changed my mind since. That explanation of the cross just doesn't work, though sadly it's one that's still all too often preached. It just doesn't make sense to talk about a nice Jesus down here, placating the wrath of a nasty, angry Father God in heaven. Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate. As he said, ‘Whoever sees me has seen the Father’. Jesus is what God is: he is the one who shows us God's nature. And the most basic truth about God's nature is that He is Love, not wrath and punishment.
Some Christians go through their lives without grasping this. I recently came across an interview given by an elderly priest who said it wasn't till he was nearly seventy that he was finally set free from his picture of an angry God
So, dear children, if you are still so immature as actually to believe this insane, psychopathic nonsense about Jesus dying to take the punishment for our sins, surely it's time you grew up. Mr John, after all, saw it clearly when he was but 10. It takes other poor souls until they are nearly 70.
Me, I think I'll stick with the Bible, and flee to the foot of that despised cross, where God put forth his son as a propitiation for our sins. I'll weep quiet tears of joy that God should be so weak and foolish as to use a cross to save me. And for my Easter ritual, I'll sing the old song once more:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.