Thank You, Lord, For Not Killing Me

[F]or Paul, salvation does not primarily mean the end of past disaster and the forgiving cancellation of former guilt. It is . . . freedom from the power of sin, death and the divine wrath; that is to say, it is the possibility of new life.  –Ernst Kasemann

Preachers get paid the big bucks to think on such things as did Jesus have to die on the cross?  If so, why?  What happened with his death?  How do we put that in words?  

With that comes my own discomfort on the emphasis of atonement and words like justification and redemption.  Too often, these concepts (that Jesus ‘had to’ suffer the cross in order for humanity to be restored, redeemed, reclaimed, reconnected, reconciled [notice all the ‘re-’s?] to/with/for God) echo in my own mind with the sharp feminist critiques of thinking that such views somehow require God to turn to murder (if not Jesus, then it would have to be us) in order for everything to work out right.

This thinking makes (for me) the most fervent prayer: Thank You, Lord, for not killing me.  

Is that really the prayer God desires?  It seems small enough thanks to offer – the cringing plea of the undeserving supplicant grateful to be spared what she surely had coming.

Somehow this line of reasoning seems to me to combine in an artificial way The Fall (original sin) and Jesus as the curative restorative that reduces the thing ‘saved (humanity) to a thing pitiable beyond recognition.

I am a grateful woman and offer regular thanks . . . for the beauty of the world and all within it . . . for the many graces I have experienced in a lifetime on this planet . . . for the very gift of life itself . . . for each new marvel of ingenuity . . . for children and laughter and good food and quiet times and playing bridge and big thoughts and night-sky wonders and . . . and . . . and . . .

But I find that I am never grateful that God didn’t kill me as I so richly (according to some) deserve . . .

Perhaps that makes me a bad Christian.

Perhaps.

But it also makes me, perhaps coincidentally, a thankful one.

Violence Was Jesus' Problem, Not His Solution

Jesus is not a terrorist, but we make him out to be one
we insist that the cross was foreordained by God
that Jesus/God decreed that not only would God die, but that God’s followers would too
die violently
on a cross
a torturers rack
in an explosion of violence

Why?
Because, we say, nothing else would do
human sin is so great
that only this death will suffice

we say that Jesus had to die this way

as if Jesus/God dying wasn’t sufficient to ‘atone’ for the sins of humanity
as if death itself wasn’t at the heart of the matter
after all, what original sin gave the world was death
what the cross took away was death

did the manner of Jesus’ death have to be violent?
No
it was, but it didn’t have to be

others have said that it wouldn’t have been ‘enough’ for
Jesus to have died an old man in his bed

why not?
Death, after all, is the ‘it’ Jesus came to free us from
by taking on death, Jesus frees us from death

wouldn’t any death have done?
Violent death captures our imaginations

but is that not simply evidence that our imaginations are as corrupt as our bodies?  As our world?

Death, you see, is our bogey man
most won’t die on the torturer’s rack
but all will die

and that is our existential crisis
our collective holocaust reality -
we will all cease

even earth itself will cease
with the death of our sun
will come the winter of no existence

every old man dying in bed is just as pain-filled
just as afraid
as the man dying on the cross

and at the end, one is not more dead than the other

so why do we insist that Jesus had to die by the torturers’ hands?

Why do we glorify torture?
Why do we find such ghastly beauty in the dance of the macabre?

I am not scholar or theologian enough to even ponder these things
let alone speak them well

all I can say is that

Jesus was no terrorist
leading his followers to intentional suicide
in the cause for God

Jesus led his followers in the cause for God
knowing that the reactions of others
might well lead to their untimely deaths by violence

but violence was Jesus’ problem,
not his solution