Good Friday

Whenever I preach on Good Friday I always feel like I’m intruding. The liturgy preaches and it is sometimes better to let it stand on its own. But, I’m going to say a few words anyway.

More specifically, I want to say something about the word “atonement”. That word often gets used when we speak about the cross and it is worth contemplating what the word means. The word “atonement” means to bring two things that had been separated back into unity. What happened on the cross brought God and humanity, who had been separated, back into unity. What separated them, has been corrected, fixed, healed.

Some of the saints speak about what life was like in the Garden of Eden before the fall. Have you ever seen a sunrise that took your breath away? Maybe you were hiking in the mountains and the orange and pink rays of the sun catch the mountains and bathe them in a beautiful light and you are just stunned by the beauty of the scene. Or maybe you were hiking and you came upon a waterfall. Or maybe you held a baby and you were blown away by the beauty of the little person who is in your arms. Maybe it was a poem or a piece of art and tears fill your eyes because of the beauty you just experienced. … Those experiences are often fleeting, if we are present enough to catch them at all. … Now if God created a universe where such experiences happen, then God is the ultimate source of those kinds of experiences, and to be with God is to be in a constant state of awe. … No matter what Adam and Eve were doing, they were in that state of amazement of God and what God has made. … When Adam and Eve fell through their sin, they no longer experienced God or God’s creation like they once did. … Atonement is the road back to a place where we can once again have such a relationship with God. Living in that kingdom allows us to experience the world as a place infused with love- to experience the universe as our home, to know that we have a future in the loving presence of God. When we live in that Kingdom, we can even love enemies because we know that those who hate are ultimately harming themselves by being deceived. Atonement is the road back. Atonement is what the cross was about.

There are a variety of ways to understand the Atonement. C. S. Lewis has said that understanding how the atonemement works is less important than understanding that it works. He says it is like nutrition. People were eating food and drinking long before there were any theories of how the body broke down food to nourish cells. When you are hungry it is enough to eat, and it works. Jesus’ work on the cross is like this. We don’t have to dedicate ourselves to one particular theory about how this works.

That being said, the many ways of understanding the Atonement can be understood as falling into three basic categories. They answer the question “where was the work of Christ on the cross directed?” Was it directed to human beings? Was it directed to God? Or was it directed to Evil?

First, lets look at Jesus’ actions on the cross as directed towards humanity. Throughout the Bible, Sin is described as a kind of sickness. In the Old Testament we read that over and over again the people wander off the path set out for them. As they walk away from the safety of God’s path they encounter all kinds of suffering and corruption. The work of Jesus on the cross resulted in healing humanity by providing an example for them to follow, and expressing God’s amazing and unending love that draws alienated humanity back to Himself- back to the right path where they will be safe and made whole. … The lifeblood of the God-Man has been offered to heal our sin sick-souls. And the cross is a beacon of love- showing us the profound lengths God is willing to go in order to show His love for us, and that self-sacrificial love captures our hearts. By drawing us to himself, the great Physician, we are drawn into a relationship of ongoing healing.

Next, we can look at the cross as directed towards God. Viewed this way, the actions of Jesus can be seen as the actions of a representative or a substitute for humanity that stands before a profoundly holy God. We all want there to be fairness and justice in the universe. To have true justice means that sin has to be dealt with, … otherwise the universe is not ultimately a place of justice and God is not just. … This is the basic idea: Humanity’s sin is basically the failure to live as God has directed us to live. It is the responsibility of every human being to live according to how they have been created- we owe God a just and holy life, as well as the necessary amendment for any time we haven’t lived that way. We owe God a holy life. For God to overlook this would mean God doesn’t have a sense of justice. …

The problem is that humanity is unable to repay this debt. Even if we stopped sinning entirely we would only be giving God what we owe Him already- a holy life. The debt could not be paid down. And we continue to sin continuing to build a greater debt to God each time we deny God what we owe Him. …

God is left with two options- punish humanity as they deserve, or accept “payment” on their behalf. The tricky bit is that only a human being can make the payment because it is humanity that owes the debt. No human is able to make this kind of payment on behalf of humanity. The solution is found in Jesus Christ, who is both God and human. As a human being he belongs to humanity who needs to make payment. As God, he has resources to make the payment.

This one can be a bit hard for us to wrap our heads around because the idea of the bloody sacrifice of a life is very strange to us, but I want to remind us that it is most likely because of the influence of Christianity that we feel this way. Throughout most of human history sacrifice has been a regular part of human life in cultures all over the world. The teaching of Christianity was that Christ was the last sacrifice needed and so under the influence of Christianity sacrifices were no longer needed. That gives us the privilege to feel strange about sacrifice.

The last of the three ways we are considering today is to think about the atonement as something directed towards the evil powers. In this view, the work of Christ on the cross is about going to battle on our behalf to destroy the powers of Evil and rescue humanity that has been captured and oppressed. This is the view of the atonement that dominated the church for the first 1000 years. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus God defeated the devil and the powers of sin and death that enslave humanity. Jesus goes to battle on our behalf. He confronts the supernatural invisible evils- the Devil, demons, and evil spirits. He confronts the evil powers of this world that manifest in the form of corrupt social structures and economic systems that take advantage of people and create injustice and cruelty, and marginalize people. Jesus confronts the power of Sin that enslaves us and makes us something like addicts, slowly taking away our free will to choose good, or to even want to choose good. The ministry of Jesus is about releasing us from these powers. From the unseen demonic powers, from the systemic evil of cultures that oppresses people, and from the power of Sin that lives within us- the World, the flesh, and the Devil.

In this view of the atonement, what we see in the gospels is Jesus rescuing people from the kingdom of darkness and bringing them into the kingdom of God. Jesus saves us from the power of Evil, and the inevitable destruction that is coming to the kingdom of darkness and sin. Being freed from that evil empire, we are freed from the inability to live in right relationship with God, and we become free to participate in all the joy and abundance that comes with life in the eternal kingdom of God.

We, by our sin, have placed ourselves under the power and authority of Evil, which means a life subject to sin, fear, and death. But, God will not leave us enslaved to Evil and comes to us as Jesus. Jesus offers himself to these powers in exchange for humanity. They think they can destroy him. But the power of the sinless and divine Christ bursts from the clutches of evil and death. His humanity was the tempting bait that drew the evil power to destroy him, but his holy divinity and his self-sacrificial love was the hook that snagged the devil and defeated him. When Christ snuck behind enemy lines he rescued humanity from the clutches of death. And now, having opportunity to enter the kingdom of God, we have a new power working in us calling us to act out of the kind of self-sacrificial love we see in Christ.



So these are the three common ways to look at the atonement. As directed to humanity. As directed to God, and as directed to Evil. Again, we don’t need to ascribe to one of these theories, we just need to trust in God that what happened on the cross and on that first Easter morning was done to draw us and God back together in atonement. Amen