Good Friday, 2022

St. Paul’s, Monroe

April 15, 2022

Opening

Image of God

Many years ago I came across a book that was eye-opening for me at the time. It remains so to this day. It challenged me by claiming that the way we live our lives is at least in part a function of what our image of God is like. The title of the book is Good Goats; healing our image of God.^1

It was a simple appearing book and not very long. It had big illustrations, almost as if it was a children's book. In part it was a treatise on the theological theme of atonement or some might say redemption. The other part was an attempt to reach ordinary Christians like you and me and to challenge us to self-examination about our working image of God. Is our image a great uncle in the sky? Is it a demanding teacher? Is it an unforgiving judge? What is our working image of God?

From the beginning Christians have experienced and believed that the greatest work of God is in the cross, the death and passion of Jesus. From the beginning Jesus's death was experienced as redemptive, as the very thing that brings us into reconciled relationship with God.

But what is the nature of that redemption? What do we mean by redemption? Or atonement? After 2000 years what is the accepted explanation for what that redemption is like?

The remarkable answer is that after 2000 years there is no accepted right answer. Over the centuries a variety of answers have been given, and at some periods one view has held sway over the others. What used to be understood as an obvious explanation in time fades and another has taken its place.

But that little book persuaded me that how we understand the redemption from the cross is connected with how we imagine God, what kind of image of God we carry around with us.

Five examples

Redemption has been understood in many different ways through the centuries, but I'd like to briefly point to 5 general examples.

1. Redemption as the ultimate victory of Christ – Resurrection, then, as victory over death
2. Redemption as a kind of ransom where our lives are enslaved – e.g. to sin
3. Redemption as a satisfaction for a debt that needs to be paid – God's profound justice requires compensation for the injustice brought into the world by sin
4. Redemption as a kind of guide for us to grow spiritually and morally
5. Redemption as a divine application of the scapegoat principal whereby the community's sin is removed by exiling the goat that carries away the sin

God in these examples

In the early years of the church the view of God as a supremely wise teacher was in fact widely held. It was simply taught that Jesus Christ came and died in order to bring about a positive change to humanity. This moral change comes through the teachings of Jesus alongside His example and actions.

At a certain point and among certain groups, God was understood to be at war with the Devil or Satan. In this image there is a battle between Good and Evil and the outcome might not always be obvious. The passion of Jesus, his death and Resurrection, then were the final victory of good over evil. Do we imagine God as a warrior or a soldier?

For some it might be that God is the ultimate Banker. Keeping track of who's done what and where. Sort of a cosmic Santa Claus. “He knows when you've been good or bad…”

I know that for a very long time my own image of God was of a stern judge. Clearly in charge of the world and the universe, but fairly unforgiving in demanding perfection and excellence. Such a God was safest if kept at a distance.

A modern understanding of what's going on in Jesus's passion may seem strange at first sight. A scapegoat. Now I have to say that I have a very favorable attitude towards goats in general, having raised a few of them in my 20s.

The notion of a scapegoat goes all the way back to Leviticus in the Old Testament.

Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. — Leviticus 16:21–22, New Revised Standard Version

In the Bible, a scapegoat then is one of two kid goats. As a pair, one goat was sacrificed (not a scapegoat) and the living "scapegoat" was released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities.

Such an image of redemption creates a path for us to let go of our need to invoke violence against one another as we blame others for what has gone wrong. Instead the symbolic carrying away of the sin allows us to cast the blame there -- freeing us to embrace one another -- to love even our enemies.

So then our image of a violent God can be healed^source and we are left to be instruments of peace and reconciliation.

We can understand Christ's death as a self-giving act on God's part, like a parent who is prepared to make tremendous sacrifices for the sake of the children. Abba, Father God, knows how humanity prefers blame and violence to love and peace. So God's victim succumbs to our compulsion to blame and violence and thereby takes away our need for violence, that "opens up our being able to enjoy the fullness of creation as if death were not.”

This is a view of atonement which does not cast God as a power / potentate / weird father-figure looking more like an abusive parent than a loving Abba.

Which gets us back to "God is love." It's a phrase I hear often. But I often wonder whether it's the operative image of God for most people. As one person put it, "Surely God's love is greater than the person who has loved us the best."

It is in most cases, perhaps, beyond our imagining. But we can't help carrying with us some image. We don't work well in imageless surroundings. Our senses seem to require something from us by way of image.

Desmond Tutu said: "God has made us responsible for his reputation."

That makes it important what images we cultivate and embrace. Good Friday is a good day to do that. Consider the best you can muster as an image of God. Place it on the cross. Let God do the work.

Later in the liturgy I will invite you to approach the cross and to make a gesture of love, appreciation, and gratitude for the love that God has given you through the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Notes

Lectionary

[^all]: James Allison