A Story of Salvation Where God Doesn’t Demand Violence

A Story of Salvation Where God Doesn’t Demand Violence
(Matthew 5.38, 42, 43-46, 48)
A reflection by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost: July 24, 2011

The sixth in a summer series on topics the congregation has asked to hear reflections about.
This morning’s is the second part of a reflection on, “What does it mean to be ‘saved’?”
The specific focus today is the question, “Are we finished with the concept of Original Sin?”
This morning we continue to look at Patty’s question, What does it mean to be “saved”? And we look at salvation in terms of Allison’s question, “Are we finished with the concept of Original Sin?”

The doctrine of original sin was developed 1600 years ago. St. August was the Bishop of Hippo, in modern-day Algeria. Around 400 he put together a theory as to what Jesus’ death and resurrection saved humans from. Augustine’s theory became the doctrine of Original Sin. Seven hundred years later, another priest worked out a theory about why Jesus had to be sacrificed. Around the year 1100, St. Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, based his theory about why Jesus had to be sacrificed on Augustine’s theory of Original Sin. I’m putting Patty and Allison’s questions together today because the doctrine of Original Sin was developed because Christians needed to know what Jesus’ death saves us from. So for Christians, the doctrine of Original Sin cannot be separated from questions of what it means to be saved.

I received a very visual picture of the doctrine of Original Sin and Anselm’s idea that God needed Jesus to be sacrificed to save us 12 years ago in Israel. Peter and I were on a tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem. A sepulcher is a tomb. And the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is a huge, very odd building. Scholars think under its roof are both the hill of the crosses where Jesus was crucified and the tomb where his body was placed after he was executed. We stood in front of a glass case. There was a model of the cross, and a model of Jesus. The tour guide talked about Jesus’ crucifixion. Then she took us downstairs. We stood in front of another glass case. There were a couple of human skulls against a wall. She said, “Now we’re standing directly below the place where Jesus hung on the cross. These skulls belong to Adam and Eve. See these marks on the skulls? Those marks are bloodstains. While Jesus hung on the cross, his blood dripped onto the skulls of Adam and Eve. Christ’s blood washed away the sin that stained them after they ate the forbidden fruit. Now that they were washed of their sin, God forgave them. And now they enjoy eternal life with God in heaven.”

I don’t know how many people in our group believed Adam and Eve were real people. Or that we were looking at their skulls with Jesus’ bloodstains on them. But what the tour guide said is pretty much the story of salvation Christians have been telling for centuries.

Let’s start with the doctrine of Original Sin, developed by St. Augustine 1600 years ago. This doctrine says life in the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve was perfect. Then they went and broke the only rule in the Garden. They ate fruit from a tree God had forbidden them to touch. Christian theology calls this act of disobedience The Fall. The Fall brought sin into the world. Sin destroyed the perfect relationships Adam and Eve had enjoyed with God, with each other, and with creation. As soon as they ate the fruit, they knew they’d sinned. For the first time in their lives, they felt ashamed and afraid. So they hid from the God who had made them. But sin didn’t stop with them. The doctrine of Original Sin says eating that fruit put sin into their genetic structure. So everyone who came after them inherited sin. Sin spread through creation like a plague. There was nothing humans could do to free themselves from its power.

Fast-forward 700 years. As St. Anselm tries to figure out why Jesus had to be sacrificed, he finds an answer in the doctrine of Original Sin. Jesus’ death saves creation from the power of sin. But why did Jesus need to be killed to save us from the power of sin? Because, says Anselm, God is a God of perfect love and perfect justice. If God were just a God of perfect love, God could have forgiven everyone’s sins without the need to sacrifice Jesus. Like a giant etch-a-sketch, God could have shaken the history of human sin. All that sin would have disappeared just like that. And then we could have started fresh.

But God is also a God of perfect justice. And perfect justice says: when someone breaks the law, someone has to pay the price. Think of our symbol of justice: a blind woman holding scales. When I break God’s law by being cruel instead of loving, the “sin” side of the scale in God’s hands goes down. And the “punishment” side of the scale goes up. The only way to get the scales of justice back in balance is for me to be punished. When I pay the penalty for breaking God’s law, the sin and punishment sides of the scales of justice are back in balance. It’s all very neat.

There’s only one problem. Anselm said humans have sinned so much the sin side of the scale has gone through the floor. And we keep adding to the sin side of God scales of justice. So there’s no way humans can pay the penalty for all the sin we’ve committed. Humans can’t put the scales of justice back in balance. That’s why God sent Jesus into the world. Christian tradition says Jesus never sinned. He never added anything to the sin side of God’s scales of justice. So Jesus was the only human who could pay the penalty for all the sin of human history and all the sin that humans would do after he was sacrificed. Jesus paid the price for human sin. With Jesus’ death, the scales of justice are now in balance again. God’s demand for justice has been met. So now the God of perfect love and perfect justice can forgive us. The resurrection of Jesus says Jesus destroyed the power sin has over us. We still sin. But Jesus’ resurrection assures us sin doesn’t have the power to separate us from God again.

Finally, Anselm’s Christian story of salvation says if we believe the “right things” about Jesus, then Jesus’ resurrection promises us we will enjoy eternal life in heaven with God. If we don’t believe the “right things” about Jesus, then we will suffer eternal punishment in hell.

I really struggle with this Christian story of God demanding violence to save us. I struggle with it because it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus spent his whole life rejecting violence. And he called his followers to reject violence. In his most famous collection of teachings, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says,

“Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth’. Is that going to get us anywhere? … No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. God gives the best – the sun to warm and the rain to nourish – to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty….

“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
(Matthew 5.38, 42, 43-46, 48, The Message, altered)

How can this Jesus save us through violence? Jesus wanted nothing to do with violence. Yet for 900 years, the only Christian story of salvation has been Anselm’s. God demands violence in order to save us from sin.

A British Roman Catholic theologian offers another Christian story of salvation where God doesn’t demand violence. His name is James Alison. And this is the story he tells (On Being Liked, NY: Crossroad, 2003).

Alison reminds us Anselm’s story of salvation where God demands violence starts with the question, What does Jesus save us from? That led Anselm back to Original Sin. But James Alison says we don’t have to start there. As Christians, he says, what if we look at salvation by starting with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? When we do that, we get a very different story of salvation than the one that demands violence. Jesus grew up in first-century Palestine, a land and people under occupation by the Roman Empire. Religion and Empire had spent a lot of time separating people in insiders and outsiders, winners and losers, clean and unclean, saved and damned. That kept people divided against each other. Which meant they couldn’t unite and oppose the oppressive policies of religion and Empire.

What did Jesus do? He spent a lot of time with the outsiders, the losers, the damned. He kept telling them, When God looks at you, God says, ‘You are my beloved daughters and sons.’ He also spent time with the insiders, the winners, the saved. And he said, “Staying behind your safe walls has made you arrogant. You think you’re better than everyone else. Let me tell you: the people you call outsiders and losers and damned are closer to God than you’ll ever be as long as you keep yourself separated from them. Let’s tear down these walls. Then you can come together. And get to work trying to convert those leaders of religion and Empire who have turned themselves in gods.”

Of course these leaders of religion and Empire didn’t take too kindly to the preaching of Jesus. They told him if he didn’t shut up they’d kill him.

What a terrible face for Jesus to find himself. If you have seen the Village Theater’s production of Jesus Christ, Superstar, you saw how deeply Jesus loved this world. How much he wanted to stay with his friends. How horrifying the torture and mocking and agony he faced. He didn’t want to die. And yet he refused to shut up. So the powerful people killed him. Then the first Easter morning dawned. Jesus is no longer safely dead. But rises to new life.

What Alison finds most surprising about the story of Jesus is that Jesus didn’t have to die. He or God could have saved him. They could have used violence to kill the people who wanted to kill him. But they rejected the use of violence. Alison says this shows us that Christians, too, must reject any story of salvation that says God demands violence.

In Alison’s story of salvation, Jesus saves us from the fear of death. Easter shows us the Enemy Death doesn’t have the last word. As much as he hated doing it, Jesus could go to the cross rejecting violence to save himself because he knew God’s love was stronger than death. He knew, beyond the grave, there is eternal life for all people. Alison says another problem with Anselm’s theory of salvation is that it says if people don’t believe the “right things” about Jesus, they’re going to hell. But if Jesus spent his life tearing down walls that divided people, then the Christian story of salvation can’t divide them again behind walls of “saved” and “damned”.

So in Alison’s story, Jesus saves us from the power of death.

What does Alison say Jesus saves us for? Jesus saves us for a job. Jesus invites us to help complete God’s dream for creation. But what we learn from Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is that the only way we can complete God’s dream for creation is if we reject violence. Always.

James Alison’s story of salvation where God doesn’t demand violence breaks me open. It breaks me open to imagine. I imagine what would be different if the 2 billion Christians who live in this world decided to follow our Savior and reject all forms of violence. If the Christians in this world told our families and schools and churches and governments that we will no longer tolerate the use of violence, in any form, wouldn’t things have to change? If 2 billion people suddenly refused to support violence with our tacit agreement and our tax dollars, something would have to change. Maybe we’d help complete God’s dream for creation. Maybe our lives would testify to the love that shows us conflict can be handled a better way. If 2 billion Christians refused to support violence, maybe fewer broken people would grow up believing Jesus hates people of other faiths and wants us to kill them; if Christians truly rejected violence, we could show the world God never blesses (this sermon was preached two days after an anti-Muslim, fundamentalist Christian allegedly bombed a government building in Oslo, Norway, and then shot over 90 people at a Labor Party-sponsored youth camp).

James Alison’s story of salvation where God doesn’t demand violence leads me to imagine what kind of creation could we help build if we had no fear of death, and no fear of losing anything … so we were prepared to sacrifice our very lives rather than go along with violence (James Alison, p. 14)?