When I was a child the idea of being washed in blood seemed really gross. It struck me as weird and unnecessary. I did not grow up in a culture with sacrifices or burnt offerings. For folks who grew up in a culture where that was common as in the middle east centuries ago the idea of Abraham sacrificing a ram in place of Isaac made sense. And even the idea of Jesus dying as a sacrifice for sins tracked with the religious perspectives of the time. But I always struggled with this and thought God was kind of a jerk for setting up a system where animals or Jesus had to die to make us right with God. As I grew older and learned about confession and how priests were the intermediary for people to atone and connect to God I saw how this idea of Jesus as a substitute between God and I was in conflict with my religious training as a protestant. There is nothing between God and me, but love. Sin does not get in the way. God knows my heart and sees my atonement and forgives me. Jesus came to earth to powerfully show us about love and that God is bigger even than death. Jesus life, death, and resurrection are more about showing us how to live than some sort of set up to an offering that makes it okay for God to forgive us.
Paul, in trying to explain all this to a people who understood offerings used those metaphors in some of his letters and over the millennia what we call substitutionary atonement became the dominant theology around Christ’s death. And for some people this theology can be really helpful, but I have always found it lacking. To me it is so much richer to not have Jesus be part of settling a score, but rather his death be about corporate sin, the temptation to keep power no matter what, and that nothing, not even the violence of the state can stop God.
In this difficult days of uncertainty in our nation this theology of the crucifixion gives me great comfort. No matter the games of the powerful, the suffering of the people, or the violence around us, in the end God’s love will be more powerful than it all.
May you find comfort in your theologies and beliefs in these times.
-Eilidh
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