Caine: Reflecting on the day Jesus died
Today is one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar. We call it Good Friday. It is the day that we believe Jesus was crucified, died and was buried. Christians believe it is not only the way in which Jesus lived his life that was instructive and saving, but it also was the way he died that unites us with God. Somehow, we claim that Jesus' death on the cross saves us.
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At the crucifixion, a thief being crucified along with Jesus cried "Save yourself and us." And throughout the centuries, the big questions have been, how and why does Jesus' dying on a cross save us, and from what and for what are we saved?
Most of the theories about this event have to do with ransom, debt, redemption through blood sacrifice or the payment of a price. The most widely accepted and widely known understanding is that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins. Our sins put him there, and his death was payment for our sins.
According to this theory, God's devotion and loyalty to creation had been so completely betrayed by humanity's disobedience that God was caught in a bind. On the one hand, God loved the world, but on the other hand, as a God of justice, God's wrath was kindled against the world. He could not just forgive and forget; the sins were too great. But neither could God destroy that which had been made with such great love.
There was no way that the sinful creation could make up all of its mistakes, no way to pay back the debt that was owed, no way an imperfect humanity could repent perfectly to satisfy God's need for justice.
God's solution was Jesus. And many Christians have grown up understanding this explanation in some way, shape or form, to be the only reason for Jesus' death. It is expressed in our preaching, our hymns and our liturgies.
But do you ever wonder if Jesus' death is all about us or all about God?
Is Jesus' death a reaction to our behavior or an expression of God's love for creation?
In his book "Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality," Father Richard Rohr asks "Is Jesus' death just a mopping up exercise, a putting things back in order after humanity's big screw-up by a God who needs God's honor satisfied; or is it the revelation of a fundamental truth about the essence of the nature of God
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