Why did Jesus have to die?
Commentary
Object:
While Don Richardson was a student at Prairie Bible Institute in the 1950s his heart burned in anticipation of bringing the good news about Jesus to an unreached tribe. He and Carol found their prayers answered in 1962 as they sailed out of Vancouver harbor toward Netherlands New Guinea. Before long they were deposited by missionary plane among the Sawi people, a group of tribes living in the trees of the interior rain forest.
The jungle floor was too damp for permanent dwellings, so the Sawi helped Don and Carol, and their infant son, Stephen, build a tree house in their neighborhood. Carol learned the ways of the Sawi women while Don spent time with the men, attempting to understand their language and reduce it to writing. Afternoons would find the Sawi males in one of their treetop workrooms, buzzing in conversation while they mended nets and hunting equipment, and swapped stories of fish and boars.
It was in this setting that Don took his first furtive steps toward speaking the Sawi language and reciting stories from the gospels. Most of the time the others ignored him, caught up in their own manly concerns. So the months progressed, with little Stephen becoming a Sawi child, Carol adapting meals to local produce, and Don attempting to get the message of the Bible into a form the Sawi could understand.
One day everything changed. Don was moving along in the gospel story to the last weeks of Jesus' life. As he related the tales about Jesus heading toward Jerusalem and the conspiracies that were swirling about him, the Sawi men began to listen. At first it was only that their conversations with one another died down, while their hands continued in busywork with their hunting and fishing tools. But then even this work ceased, and every eye was fixed on Don. He happened to be talking about Judas' secret meetings with the religious leaders, and the betrayal that ensued.
Suddenly there was a murmur of approval and the delighted smiles of those who seemed to know this story. Don asked his translating helper what was going on. The reply chilled him to the bone, even in the heat of the tropics.
The Sawi, he was told, prided themselves for their hunting and fishing prowess. There was an even greater expression of manhood. They called it "Fattening the Pig for the Slaughter." It happened when one young man chose to target another young man in this or a neighboring clan, and built a strong web of friendship. The two would hunt together and fish together and roam the forests together and eat together and laugh and talk together. They became best buddies. Then, when the relationship was secure, the initiator of the friendship would invite his comrade over to his mother's home for a grand meal. During the middle of the feast, when laughter was the language of the hour, and back-slapping good humor seasoned the supper, the first young man would suddenly pull out a long knife, brandish it with delight before the other's face, and when looks of dawning horror increasingly webbed out from the betrayed's eyes, plunge it through his "friend's" chest, piercing his heart.
The mother would come quickly with freshly baked bread that the traitor touched to his dead comrade's genitals before eating it. Then mother and son would open the skull of the victim, scoop out his brains, and consume these as well.
The deadly project was complete: one brave young Sawi warrior had displayed his cunning prowess and then had ingested all the power of his target. He became a greater man by taking into himself the strength and energy of his betrayed friend.
Don was dumbstruck! How could he communicate the story of Jesus and the love of God to these people if they viewed Judas, the betrayer, as the hero of the tale?! Just as important, what was on the tribal menu for supper tonight? Were the Richardsons the next victims of "Fattening the Pig for the Slaughter"? Don slipped out of the men's lodge a wary and troubled man.
The story has a wonderful ending, that will come at the conclusion of this article. But the central issue for Don and Carol Richardson is one that is key to all that Christians talk about and "celebrate" this week and this day: Why did Jesus have to die? Is his demise at a young age a symbol of weakness rather than strength? Is Christianity a religion of wimps who pride themselves in following the loser rather than the winner? How do you preach Christ on another Good Friday in a world that thrives on war, one-up-manship, devious politics, profits at all costs, and survival of the fittest in a cosmic game where the rules are heralded every Thursday evening: "Outwit, Outlast, Outplay!"?
Isaiah 52:13--53:12
Three major families of atonement theory have been proposed, over the centuries, to answer such questions. The first is linked to Isaiah's prophetic impressions in today's passage. God has been wronged. God's people have gone the way of wickedness and wastrels. The world is imbalanced, and the Creator isolated from the people who are to him like loved but wayward children.
How will things be made right? Who will bring restoration and renewal and reconciliation? According to the Word of the Lord through Isaiah, it will happen when "my servant" enters the picture and rewrites history. It is not clear exactly what the Suffering Servant will do, but the outcome is certain. After what appears to be a lackluster residential sojourn, those around the servant will attack him and cause him pain and kill him cruelly. But when all of that has happened, there will be a new peace between God and humanity, and the former times of alienation will be gone.
Anselm interpreted this as Jesus' mission into our world to defend the honor of the Father. Because of the arrogance of spreading sin and the hubris of human communities that took the image of God, which they possessed for rebellious license, the creator had been shuttered away from the creation, and Yahweh was forgotten except as a curse word.
But along came Jesus. Like one who still remembers the true nature of reality, and appearing in the guise of a humble but faithful servant, Jesus takes up the thankless chivalric duty to restore the honor of the king of the castle, the lord of the estate. The Father might have been ready to wipe out the whole of humanity, just as Yahweh had threatened to Moses in Exodus 33, but then he saw the face of the Suffering Servant, and realized that one still held him in honor. The faithful obedience of the one mitigated the divine wrath of God for the many, and life on planet earth was restored and balanced.
Calvin took Anselm ideas a step further, paying close attention to the forensic language of Paul in Romans and Galatians. It was not merely God's honor that had been violated, he said, but the righteousness of God's justice. We humans were not just rebellious clods; we had become downright guilty lawbreakers. Before the court of heaven none could stand with either pride or dignity. The eternal codes of propriety accused every person of failure, transgression, and fault.
Enter Jesus. Jesus comes as the lawyer for the accused. He does not pretend we are innocent, but openly marks our guilt. Yet when the holy sentence is passed, and capital punishment is ascribed against us, Jesus shows the extent to which he will advocate on our behalf. He himself steps into the penalty box, he himself climbs up to the gallows, he himself is strapped into the electric chair, he himself receives our toxic chemical cocktail, and dies our death for us. There is good news about resurrection to come on Easter morning, of course, just as Isaiah hints at in the closing notes of his lament. But on Good Friday, the good news is that of escape and substitution.
Hebrews 10:16-25
A second family of atonement theories connects well with the book of Hebrews. It is not the Creator/Father who needs to take note of Jesus in his sufferings, but we humans. We have forgotten who we are. It may well be that we have offended God, but God is big enough to be able to handle it. What is more important is that we have offended ourselves. We have lost touch with our place in the house of God. We need a high priest who can help us find our way back home.
Jesus does this in a variety of ways. Irenaeus thought that Jesus had to be at least fifty years old when he died, because the point of Jesus' coming to earth was to go through all the stages of human life (fifty was certainly old age at the time!) in order to show us how to live and die correctly. We had lost our way. Only when we saw Jesus living our lives out of grace and love and courage, and even dying well, would we be able to do the same. He called Jesus' work "recapitulation," a replaying of human identity done right. What we observe most of Jesus on this Good Friday is his ability to die with courage and dignity, just as he had lived. When we see Jesus we buck up, get our acts together, and recover the best of our humanity.
Later theologians would further emphasize that exemplary character of Jesus' life and death. Abelard saw in Jesus' death the power of moral influence. We have grown complacent in our degradation, according to Abelard. Jesus comes among us and all we can see is his goody-goody character, and we despise him for it. We taunt him, trying to make him become a normal sinner like the rest of us. We tease him as if he were sub-human. When he refuses to play our dirty games we get angry with him, and plot to get rid of him, and ultimately throw him up on a cross in despicable shame. Only when the dastardly deed is done, it is not he but we who are suddenly cut to the heart. We hear his words from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" and we are embarrassed beyond loss of face. We see in his reflection what we have become, and come to know the ugliness of ourselves for the first time. His morality pierces our immorality and we must turn away. Like the dirty, old man in one of O. Henry's stories, the one who sees by lamplight the beautiful woman he once called friend, but lost because of the blackness of his own rotten character, and suddenly remembers what he could have been if he had stayed with her instead of becoming his awful self, we turn with him down a dark alley and bang our heads against a wall and cry out, "Oh God, what have I become?!" Still, in Jesus' love we find ourselves anew for the first time.
Schleiermacher and Ritchl would take up the same sermon generations later, preaching a morality in Jesus that becomes an example for us. Jesus' death was not a failure, but the ultimate testimony of love. Did not Jesus himself declare it? "Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends!" Here is Jesus on the cross, condemned by the political powers of the day for combating power with love. While all of his troupe could have been sentenced and killed, Jesus was willing to stand along, allowing the others to scurry off to save their skins. When they later realized what Jesus had done, they gained new courage to be like Jesus as well, and formed a socially transforming movement that has since spanned the globe. "Be like Jesus!" they declare.
This is the kind of courage that comes in the final paragraph of our New Testament passage today. See what Jesus did, and then live and die in similar fashion, for the good of the world.
John 18:1--19:42
There is also a third approach to atonement theory, and our gospel reading connects with it. For John, God's good world has been plunged into darkness by the viral effects of sin. Creation's brightness has been swallowed up by the shades of evil. Those who were made in the image of God have become ruined, warped, and distorted. It is the scene of Mordred in Tolkien's Middle Earth, where everything once righteous and holy has become twisted, perverted, distressed, and rotten.
All power appears to be in the hands of the Evil One, the "Father of Lies" as Jesus terms him in John 8:42-47. No relief from the shadows seems possible (note the place from which Nicodemus emerges in chapter 3 and the arena to which Judas exits in chapter 13) until Jesus calmly steps into the chasm manufactured by iniquity and it closes around him.
Origen called it a ransom to the devil. Satan, he said, was the greatest fisherman of all times, snagging every flippin' creature from the waters of this world. When his boat was filled to the limit, he headed for shore and a ravenous meal of consumption that would send us to his infernal bowels forever. Like any good fisherman, the devil snaked a troll line into the boat's wake on the journey back to harbor. Suddenly the reel whizzed out in a furious tug. A giant fish had gone for the devil's spinning lure!
Satan stopped rowing and fought the line. The fish at the other end was huge beyond belief. After playing it with practiced dexterity, the devil finally saw the fish near the gunwales. It was enormous! More than that, it was the creator's own first creation! It was the Son of God!
Now the devil was in a dilemma. He did not have room for the big fish in his boat. He could keep either his current catch or toss it aside and claim the prize of the day, but he couldn't do both. Like any great fisherman, he chose the record breaker. Shoveling the little fish out of the boat, he managed to tease, taunt, and gaff the big one over the edge, and get it to flop heavily onto the deck. His catch would be the news of heaven and earth!
As he wrestled his over-committed craft toward the docks, the trophy fish he prized gave a sudden wallop of its mighty tail, capsizing the boat and escaping into the water. In an instant the devil was left with nothing.
So, said Origen, is the story of Good Friday, when Satan, the prince of the powers of this age, played his biggest hand, trading all of wicked humankind for the big prize of God's own Son, and lost everything in the bargain. Why did Jesus have to die? Because it was the only way to get the rest of us free.
There is much of this in John's telling of Jesus' death. Everyone evil wants a piece of the action. Still, Jesus himself is in charge of his own existence. On Easter morning, as we shall soon see, the big fish gets away, as do all of us who swim after him in the waters of baptism.
Application
The story of Jesus' horrible death is as familiar as it is enigmatic. We know that Jesus died, and did so in a cruelly painful way, but the why of it still remains fuzzy. Did Jesus have to satisfy God's honor or justice? Yes, that is indeed a message of the New Testament. Was his death an example to us, and an act of moral persuasion? Certainly, for Jesus' own words testified to that. Were the evil powers that have locked their claws into this good creation of God weakened and perhaps ultimately destroyed in Jesus' infamous demise? That, too, is an element of the tale. But all are mixed together in ways that refute easy dissection or quick categorization.
Don and Carol Richardson survived their Sawi sojourn and even succeeded in bringing the gospel to these people. The story begun above took a later strange turn. Due to increasing scarcity, the Sawi people needed to range further in hunting and fishing. This, in turn, caused them to run into conflict with other area tribes and peoples. Soon there were skirmishes and fights and all-out wars. People returned to Sawi homes bloodied, battered, or missing limbs. Sometimes they failed to return at all, claimed by assassins' wounds and swallowed up by the putrefying womb of the jungle.
It was then that the men began to talk openly about the possible need for a "Peace Child." Intrigued, Don asked what they meant by that term.
Sometimes, they said, when war got too pronounced and murderous, when tribes were in danger of killing one another off, when brutality bested their will to live, one of the chiefs might grab the youngest newborn male baby from its mother's arms, and run swiftly, despite the woman's wailing, across the no-man's-land between the tribes. Reaching the first enemy village, he would thrust the baby into the arms of a young woman.
All knew what this meant. A son from one child was now the possession of the other tribe. Both tribes had a stake in the child's future, and all warfare would cease for as long as that child lives. The "Peace Child" reconciled the foes.
Interest mounting, Don asked a further question. What would happen, he queried, if someone should kill the "Peace Child"? Horrified, the group shook their heads aghast. No one would ever think to do such a dastardly deed. It was beyond belief!
Hmmmm… thought Don. Then he proceeded. "Let me tell you a story…" he said. He related a tale of a time when the tribes of heaven and earth were at war with one another. He told of the chief of heaven bringing his own Son across the no-man's-land into our tribe as a "Peace Child." He explained how one day someone had instigated the murder of that "Peace Child." When the horrified Sawi warriors begged him about what could be done to erase this monumental human blunder, Don preached Christ and grace and the forgiving love of God.
Alternative Application
John 18:1--19:42. The gospel story needs to be read today, even if it is not preached. But if it is preached, and the approach above is taken, one of the greatest endings to the message would be a powerful recital of the dark night in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in which Aslan is slain in the place of Edmund, but the magic from before time prevents the White Witch and her evil brood from winning the day. Declare the victory of Aslan with all the splendor of great drama.
Preaching the Psalm
by Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 22
This psalm is loaded. It's freighted with pathos and power. It sets the teeth on edge and opens wide the eyes of those who are at ease with their faith. These are the words that Jesus cries from the cross. They are the words, if not the sentiment of many down the centuries who have faced the torturers rack or the scourge of war. They are the utterance of thousands who have felt abandoned by God in their deepest hour of need. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
It's no secret to anyone that God's presence can sometimes feel elusive. If Jesus can feel abandoned by God, then we're in good company when we look around in our pain and see no evidence of God's help on the horizon.
The question seems to ask itself. What do we do when it seems God has taken a powder? Where are we to turn when it seems like God has blown us off like some faithless date at a frat party? We could follow the example set here in this psalm and blame ourselves. "But I am a worm, and not human…." (v. 6). Of course God won't be there for me because I am so woefully inadequate, so below average, so completely below God's standards. This is predictable and perhaps even part of our process as it is for this psalmist.
Once the drama has eased and the self-doubt and recrimination fade away, faith emerges. From the ashes of our own misery comes the sterling power of a faith that will not quit. Even though we may "lay in the dust of death" (v. 15), a beautiful stubbornness wells up from within. Though biting dogs and evil-doers encircle (v. 16) the beleaguered psalmist, a powerful persistence stands out in the fray.
This is the core of who we are in faith. It's easy to stand by God when the going is good. Singing praises and heading to church on Sundays is no big thing when we have a job and our family is healthy. But when we get laid off and lose our health insurance; when we learn in that a child is seriously ill and we have no money to pay for the doctor; when the bank is about to take our home; then praising God is a little tougher.
Yet in all of this, we discover that it is into our suffering that God comes! Even as we wonder where God has gone, we look up to see a shower of grace pouring down upon us. God has not forsaken us after all. Indeed, God is evermore presence in the midst of suffering and need. And each one will yet be able to rise up and proclaim God's deliverance to a generation yet unborn (v. 31).
The jungle floor was too damp for permanent dwellings, so the Sawi helped Don and Carol, and their infant son, Stephen, build a tree house in their neighborhood. Carol learned the ways of the Sawi women while Don spent time with the men, attempting to understand their language and reduce it to writing. Afternoons would find the Sawi males in one of their treetop workrooms, buzzing in conversation while they mended nets and hunting equipment, and swapped stories of fish and boars.
It was in this setting that Don took his first furtive steps toward speaking the Sawi language and reciting stories from the gospels. Most of the time the others ignored him, caught up in their own manly concerns. So the months progressed, with little Stephen becoming a Sawi child, Carol adapting meals to local produce, and Don attempting to get the message of the Bible into a form the Sawi could understand.
One day everything changed. Don was moving along in the gospel story to the last weeks of Jesus' life. As he related the tales about Jesus heading toward Jerusalem and the conspiracies that were swirling about him, the Sawi men began to listen. At first it was only that their conversations with one another died down, while their hands continued in busywork with their hunting and fishing tools. But then even this work ceased, and every eye was fixed on Don. He happened to be talking about Judas' secret meetings with the religious leaders, and the betrayal that ensued.
Suddenly there was a murmur of approval and the delighted smiles of those who seemed to know this story. Don asked his translating helper what was going on. The reply chilled him to the bone, even in the heat of the tropics.
The Sawi, he was told, prided themselves for their hunting and fishing prowess. There was an even greater expression of manhood. They called it "Fattening the Pig for the Slaughter." It happened when one young man chose to target another young man in this or a neighboring clan, and built a strong web of friendship. The two would hunt together and fish together and roam the forests together and eat together and laugh and talk together. They became best buddies. Then, when the relationship was secure, the initiator of the friendship would invite his comrade over to his mother's home for a grand meal. During the middle of the feast, when laughter was the language of the hour, and back-slapping good humor seasoned the supper, the first young man would suddenly pull out a long knife, brandish it with delight before the other's face, and when looks of dawning horror increasingly webbed out from the betrayed's eyes, plunge it through his "friend's" chest, piercing his heart.
The mother would come quickly with freshly baked bread that the traitor touched to his dead comrade's genitals before eating it. Then mother and son would open the skull of the victim, scoop out his brains, and consume these as well.
The deadly project was complete: one brave young Sawi warrior had displayed his cunning prowess and then had ingested all the power of his target. He became a greater man by taking into himself the strength and energy of his betrayed friend.
Don was dumbstruck! How could he communicate the story of Jesus and the love of God to these people if they viewed Judas, the betrayer, as the hero of the tale?! Just as important, what was on the tribal menu for supper tonight? Were the Richardsons the next victims of "Fattening the Pig for the Slaughter"? Don slipped out of the men's lodge a wary and troubled man.
The story has a wonderful ending, that will come at the conclusion of this article. But the central issue for Don and Carol Richardson is one that is key to all that Christians talk about and "celebrate" this week and this day: Why did Jesus have to die? Is his demise at a young age a symbol of weakness rather than strength? Is Christianity a religion of wimps who pride themselves in following the loser rather than the winner? How do you preach Christ on another Good Friday in a world that thrives on war, one-up-manship, devious politics, profits at all costs, and survival of the fittest in a cosmic game where the rules are heralded every Thursday evening: "Outwit, Outlast, Outplay!"?
Isaiah 52:13--53:12
Three major families of atonement theory have been proposed, over the centuries, to answer such questions. The first is linked to Isaiah's prophetic impressions in today's passage. God has been wronged. God's people have gone the way of wickedness and wastrels. The world is imbalanced, and the Creator isolated from the people who are to him like loved but wayward children.
How will things be made right? Who will bring restoration and renewal and reconciliation? According to the Word of the Lord through Isaiah, it will happen when "my servant" enters the picture and rewrites history. It is not clear exactly what the Suffering Servant will do, but the outcome is certain. After what appears to be a lackluster residential sojourn, those around the servant will attack him and cause him pain and kill him cruelly. But when all of that has happened, there will be a new peace between God and humanity, and the former times of alienation will be gone.
Anselm interpreted this as Jesus' mission into our world to defend the honor of the Father. Because of the arrogance of spreading sin and the hubris of human communities that took the image of God, which they possessed for rebellious license, the creator had been shuttered away from the creation, and Yahweh was forgotten except as a curse word.
But along came Jesus. Like one who still remembers the true nature of reality, and appearing in the guise of a humble but faithful servant, Jesus takes up the thankless chivalric duty to restore the honor of the king of the castle, the lord of the estate. The Father might have been ready to wipe out the whole of humanity, just as Yahweh had threatened to Moses in Exodus 33, but then he saw the face of the Suffering Servant, and realized that one still held him in honor. The faithful obedience of the one mitigated the divine wrath of God for the many, and life on planet earth was restored and balanced.
Calvin took Anselm ideas a step further, paying close attention to the forensic language of Paul in Romans and Galatians. It was not merely God's honor that had been violated, he said, but the righteousness of God's justice. We humans were not just rebellious clods; we had become downright guilty lawbreakers. Before the court of heaven none could stand with either pride or dignity. The eternal codes of propriety accused every person of failure, transgression, and fault.
Enter Jesus. Jesus comes as the lawyer for the accused. He does not pretend we are innocent, but openly marks our guilt. Yet when the holy sentence is passed, and capital punishment is ascribed against us, Jesus shows the extent to which he will advocate on our behalf. He himself steps into the penalty box, he himself climbs up to the gallows, he himself is strapped into the electric chair, he himself receives our toxic chemical cocktail, and dies our death for us. There is good news about resurrection to come on Easter morning, of course, just as Isaiah hints at in the closing notes of his lament. But on Good Friday, the good news is that of escape and substitution.
Hebrews 10:16-25
A second family of atonement theories connects well with the book of Hebrews. It is not the Creator/Father who needs to take note of Jesus in his sufferings, but we humans. We have forgotten who we are. It may well be that we have offended God, but God is big enough to be able to handle it. What is more important is that we have offended ourselves. We have lost touch with our place in the house of God. We need a high priest who can help us find our way back home.
Jesus does this in a variety of ways. Irenaeus thought that Jesus had to be at least fifty years old when he died, because the point of Jesus' coming to earth was to go through all the stages of human life (fifty was certainly old age at the time!) in order to show us how to live and die correctly. We had lost our way. Only when we saw Jesus living our lives out of grace and love and courage, and even dying well, would we be able to do the same. He called Jesus' work "recapitulation," a replaying of human identity done right. What we observe most of Jesus on this Good Friday is his ability to die with courage and dignity, just as he had lived. When we see Jesus we buck up, get our acts together, and recover the best of our humanity.
Later theologians would further emphasize that exemplary character of Jesus' life and death. Abelard saw in Jesus' death the power of moral influence. We have grown complacent in our degradation, according to Abelard. Jesus comes among us and all we can see is his goody-goody character, and we despise him for it. We taunt him, trying to make him become a normal sinner like the rest of us. We tease him as if he were sub-human. When he refuses to play our dirty games we get angry with him, and plot to get rid of him, and ultimately throw him up on a cross in despicable shame. Only when the dastardly deed is done, it is not he but we who are suddenly cut to the heart. We hear his words from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" and we are embarrassed beyond loss of face. We see in his reflection what we have become, and come to know the ugliness of ourselves for the first time. His morality pierces our immorality and we must turn away. Like the dirty, old man in one of O. Henry's stories, the one who sees by lamplight the beautiful woman he once called friend, but lost because of the blackness of his own rotten character, and suddenly remembers what he could have been if he had stayed with her instead of becoming his awful self, we turn with him down a dark alley and bang our heads against a wall and cry out, "Oh God, what have I become?!" Still, in Jesus' love we find ourselves anew for the first time.
Schleiermacher and Ritchl would take up the same sermon generations later, preaching a morality in Jesus that becomes an example for us. Jesus' death was not a failure, but the ultimate testimony of love. Did not Jesus himself declare it? "Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends!" Here is Jesus on the cross, condemned by the political powers of the day for combating power with love. While all of his troupe could have been sentenced and killed, Jesus was willing to stand along, allowing the others to scurry off to save their skins. When they later realized what Jesus had done, they gained new courage to be like Jesus as well, and formed a socially transforming movement that has since spanned the globe. "Be like Jesus!" they declare.
This is the kind of courage that comes in the final paragraph of our New Testament passage today. See what Jesus did, and then live and die in similar fashion, for the good of the world.
John 18:1--19:42
There is also a third approach to atonement theory, and our gospel reading connects with it. For John, God's good world has been plunged into darkness by the viral effects of sin. Creation's brightness has been swallowed up by the shades of evil. Those who were made in the image of God have become ruined, warped, and distorted. It is the scene of Mordred in Tolkien's Middle Earth, where everything once righteous and holy has become twisted, perverted, distressed, and rotten.
All power appears to be in the hands of the Evil One, the "Father of Lies" as Jesus terms him in John 8:42-47. No relief from the shadows seems possible (note the place from which Nicodemus emerges in chapter 3 and the arena to which Judas exits in chapter 13) until Jesus calmly steps into the chasm manufactured by iniquity and it closes around him.
Origen called it a ransom to the devil. Satan, he said, was the greatest fisherman of all times, snagging every flippin' creature from the waters of this world. When his boat was filled to the limit, he headed for shore and a ravenous meal of consumption that would send us to his infernal bowels forever. Like any good fisherman, the devil snaked a troll line into the boat's wake on the journey back to harbor. Suddenly the reel whizzed out in a furious tug. A giant fish had gone for the devil's spinning lure!
Satan stopped rowing and fought the line. The fish at the other end was huge beyond belief. After playing it with practiced dexterity, the devil finally saw the fish near the gunwales. It was enormous! More than that, it was the creator's own first creation! It was the Son of God!
Now the devil was in a dilemma. He did not have room for the big fish in his boat. He could keep either his current catch or toss it aside and claim the prize of the day, but he couldn't do both. Like any great fisherman, he chose the record breaker. Shoveling the little fish out of the boat, he managed to tease, taunt, and gaff the big one over the edge, and get it to flop heavily onto the deck. His catch would be the news of heaven and earth!
As he wrestled his over-committed craft toward the docks, the trophy fish he prized gave a sudden wallop of its mighty tail, capsizing the boat and escaping into the water. In an instant the devil was left with nothing.
So, said Origen, is the story of Good Friday, when Satan, the prince of the powers of this age, played his biggest hand, trading all of wicked humankind for the big prize of God's own Son, and lost everything in the bargain. Why did Jesus have to die? Because it was the only way to get the rest of us free.
There is much of this in John's telling of Jesus' death. Everyone evil wants a piece of the action. Still, Jesus himself is in charge of his own existence. On Easter morning, as we shall soon see, the big fish gets away, as do all of us who swim after him in the waters of baptism.
Application
The story of Jesus' horrible death is as familiar as it is enigmatic. We know that Jesus died, and did so in a cruelly painful way, but the why of it still remains fuzzy. Did Jesus have to satisfy God's honor or justice? Yes, that is indeed a message of the New Testament. Was his death an example to us, and an act of moral persuasion? Certainly, for Jesus' own words testified to that. Were the evil powers that have locked their claws into this good creation of God weakened and perhaps ultimately destroyed in Jesus' infamous demise? That, too, is an element of the tale. But all are mixed together in ways that refute easy dissection or quick categorization.
Don and Carol Richardson survived their Sawi sojourn and even succeeded in bringing the gospel to these people. The story begun above took a later strange turn. Due to increasing scarcity, the Sawi people needed to range further in hunting and fishing. This, in turn, caused them to run into conflict with other area tribes and peoples. Soon there were skirmishes and fights and all-out wars. People returned to Sawi homes bloodied, battered, or missing limbs. Sometimes they failed to return at all, claimed by assassins' wounds and swallowed up by the putrefying womb of the jungle.
It was then that the men began to talk openly about the possible need for a "Peace Child." Intrigued, Don asked what they meant by that term.
Sometimes, they said, when war got too pronounced and murderous, when tribes were in danger of killing one another off, when brutality bested their will to live, one of the chiefs might grab the youngest newborn male baby from its mother's arms, and run swiftly, despite the woman's wailing, across the no-man's-land between the tribes. Reaching the first enemy village, he would thrust the baby into the arms of a young woman.
All knew what this meant. A son from one child was now the possession of the other tribe. Both tribes had a stake in the child's future, and all warfare would cease for as long as that child lives. The "Peace Child" reconciled the foes.
Interest mounting, Don asked a further question. What would happen, he queried, if someone should kill the "Peace Child"? Horrified, the group shook their heads aghast. No one would ever think to do such a dastardly deed. It was beyond belief!
Hmmmm… thought Don. Then he proceeded. "Let me tell you a story…" he said. He related a tale of a time when the tribes of heaven and earth were at war with one another. He told of the chief of heaven bringing his own Son across the no-man's-land into our tribe as a "Peace Child." He explained how one day someone had instigated the murder of that "Peace Child." When the horrified Sawi warriors begged him about what could be done to erase this monumental human blunder, Don preached Christ and grace and the forgiving love of God.
Alternative Application
John 18:1--19:42. The gospel story needs to be read today, even if it is not preached. But if it is preached, and the approach above is taken, one of the greatest endings to the message would be a powerful recital of the dark night in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in which Aslan is slain in the place of Edmund, but the magic from before time prevents the White Witch and her evil brood from winning the day. Declare the victory of Aslan with all the splendor of great drama.
Preaching the Psalm
by Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 22
This psalm is loaded. It's freighted with pathos and power. It sets the teeth on edge and opens wide the eyes of those who are at ease with their faith. These are the words that Jesus cries from the cross. They are the words, if not the sentiment of many down the centuries who have faced the torturers rack or the scourge of war. They are the utterance of thousands who have felt abandoned by God in their deepest hour of need. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
It's no secret to anyone that God's presence can sometimes feel elusive. If Jesus can feel abandoned by God, then we're in good company when we look around in our pain and see no evidence of God's help on the horizon.
The question seems to ask itself. What do we do when it seems God has taken a powder? Where are we to turn when it seems like God has blown us off like some faithless date at a frat party? We could follow the example set here in this psalm and blame ourselves. "But I am a worm, and not human…." (v. 6). Of course God won't be there for me because I am so woefully inadequate, so below average, so completely below God's standards. This is predictable and perhaps even part of our process as it is for this psalmist.
Once the drama has eased and the self-doubt and recrimination fade away, faith emerges. From the ashes of our own misery comes the sterling power of a faith that will not quit. Even though we may "lay in the dust of death" (v. 15), a beautiful stubbornness wells up from within. Though biting dogs and evil-doers encircle (v. 16) the beleaguered psalmist, a powerful persistence stands out in the fray.
This is the core of who we are in faith. It's easy to stand by God when the going is good. Singing praises and heading to church on Sundays is no big thing when we have a job and our family is healthy. But when we get laid off and lose our health insurance; when we learn in that a child is seriously ill and we have no money to pay for the doctor; when the bank is about to take our home; then praising God is a little tougher.
Yet in all of this, we discover that it is into our suffering that God comes! Even as we wonder where God has gone, we look up to see a shower of grace pouring down upon us. God has not forsaken us after all. Indeed, God is evermore presence in the midst of suffering and need. And each one will yet be able to rise up and proclaim God's deliverance to a generation yet unborn (v. 31).
