Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

June 15, 2008

Genesis 18:1-15

Romans 5:1-8

Matthew 9:35-10:8

 

“God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.  Since therefore we are now justified by his blood,

much more shall we be saved by him

from the wrath of God.”

Romans 5:8-9

 

“Go and learn what this means:

I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”

Matthew 9:13

 

The first quotation is taken from this week’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans.  The second quotation is taken from today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew.  At first sight, it looks as if these readings can’t possibly belong to the same Bible.  The first gives the impression of a wrathful God who demands sacrifice to appease his anger.  The second reading talks of a God who is all compassion and mercy. 

 

I have to say that I’ve never liked that expression: “The Wrath of God”.  It reminds me of a Baptist minister who is a friend of mine.  Every time he invited me to preach to his congregation, he left a note for me in the pulpit.  In large letters, it read:  “Dangle them over the pit!  Let their toes feel the flames!”  Paul evokes a picture of a God who smites, the God who dreams up punishments for sinners, the God who only condescends to be merciful once His blood lust has been satisfied.  It is a theme in Pagan religions, which resorted to human sacrifice if a plague or the threat of war could not be appeased by any other means.  Some Christians continue to think of Jesus’ death in similar terms. You can find a similar way of thinking in writers like Anselm of Canterbury, Calvin and the Swiss Reformers, and certain Protestant sects in our own day, like the Southern Baptists in the United States of America.   God was angry with us, and justice demanded that we be condemned to death for our disobedience.  But instead of smiting us, God smote Jesus, His only Son instead.  A ransom paid the price for our sin.  Only when justice had been satisfied could mercy smile on us.

I don’t want to misrepresent this doctrine.  At its best, it offers us a God who forgives us, no matter what we do.  But at its worst, this doctrine is grotesque. It makes no sense.  If God's grace is so abundant, then why is a death on a cross required?  Why do we need to be justified by the spilling of blood?  Jesus said that we sinners are supposed to forgive our neighbors – not just seven times, but seventy times seven times.  So why can't God do that too?   What kind of God puts his son through an excruciating death on the cross?  It is very hard to love a God who can only bring himself to redeem the world through a bloody sacrifice. Surely, if we believe that God redeemed the world by means of a violent death, then we can just as easily justify every war that has been carried out in God's name over the last two millennia?  We could easily say that if God redeems through violence, then so can we.  If God is bound by the laws of vengeance, then so are we. We only need to think of Iraq to see the sad repercussions of believing in such a horrible idea. 

 

Jesus gives us a picture of a God who is all mercy, regardless of sacrifices.  That God requires the same of us. It doesn't seem like this God would insist on the death of a single human being, let alone his Son, in order to appease his wrath.  Luckily, this appeasement theory about God is only one way of looking at the Good News of the gospel message.  The horror of the cross shows us that violence only perpetuates violence, and usually the first to know this are its most innocent victims.   For Clement of Alexandria, the cross was an example of God’s supreme love for us – a love that is akin to the love a mother feels for a child.  For Irenaeus, Christ’s death was the price God paid to Satan in order to set us free from slavery to death.  For Hippolytus, the cross was the “fragrant tree”, the primordial cosmic cross by which we are all fed, and in whose shadow we can pitch our tents.  The proper response to Christ’s death on the cross is not a groveling sense of relief and a tearful promise to try to do better next time.  The cross should bring out the best in us; a deep sense of gratitude, a profound outpouring of love - a knowledge that nothing can separate us from the God who loves us so much.  The cross shows us – just as the story of Sarah showed us in the Old Testament reading – that for God, nothing is impossible; even bringing love and eternal life out of what was a seemingly futile and pointless death.  

The Revd. Nigel Massey