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Death of Jesus: Part 1 of 4

// October 25th, 2008 // church, collected thoughts, theology

I taught a session last week on the death of Jesus as part of our Backstory curriculum.

Since then a number of people have asked for the audio and/or notes so I figured I would rework the info into an article for the blog… then I remembered that I have my regular job/writing to keep up with. I still think it’s a good idea (for my own personal thought as much as anything else) but I need a bit more time to put the information into proper(ish) sentences… so I’m going to be posting it in pieces over the next week or so as I go.

Hopefully it can help shape a different (or at least broader) frame on Jesus life and death than the sometimes myopic view presented in the evangelical church.

Intro
There are a number of traditions in the family of the Christian Church and each of those have placed a different emphasis on parts of the life of Jesus. The Eastern Orthodox church has primarily focused on the birth of Jesus – his entry into the world as the focal point for their theology. The Roman Catholic Church has built much of their emphasis around the resurrection, that fact that he died and came back to life as their focus. The protestant tradition which is where Westside has come out of, by contrast, has primarily focused their attention around the death of Jesus. Of course none of things can really be separated off in a meaningful way, because they were all a part of the story of Jesus.

You can’t have a resurrection unless you have a death.
You can’t have a death unless you have a birth.

So it’s important for us to keep in mind that we really missing out if we focus on one aspect of the story Jesus to the exclusion of another.

That said, the death of Jesus has always been a focal point in history. We divide history more less by occasion of his death (faulty dating but nonetheless we still mark time by this moment). It has also become fodder for all kinds of speculation, from conspiracy theories that suggest his disciples stole his body, to teachings that suggest that Jesus was just a spirit and didn’t really have a body to begin with.

Jesus death remains the focal point for much of the discussion around Christianity because it’s one thing to listen to and appreciate the ideas of Jesus, and it is another thing to make the leap to believe that this guy not only died but came back to life and that his life, death and resurrection are the turning point of human history.

I had a friend ask me a question just last week. He had been in a lecture at the U of C where the professor had made the comment that, “the death of Jesus is the central idea of the Christian Faith”. And so he ask, “Why? Why is the death of Jesus so central to our story?”

Well the key to our whole story and the reason Jesus’ death figures so prominently is the idea of the atonement.

Atonement
Atonement is actually an invented word. As all words are at one time or another.
William Tyndale, a Bible translator in the mid 16th century couldn’t find a good English word to translate this idea of what Jesus’ death was about. So he made up a word. He really liked the idea of reconciliation, which is a quite beautiful picture to begin with.

The word reconcile comes from the latin
Re – again
Con – with
Sol – seat
Reconcile – to sit with again

Tyndale however, felt that for him, there was another element that was missing. That reconcile didn’t fully capture this idea of the forgiveness or covering of sin that he saw in the feast of yom kippur. (which he eventually translated as the day of atonement) So he essentially invented the word atonement by combining some English words – “at” and “one” and the turning them into a verb atonement or at-one-ment. Tyndale felt this captured the idea of reconciliation – to sit with again but added a more intimate feel to the idea. This concept of being at-one with God.

It was a brilliant move because this very simple word conveys so much. It is an entry point to the entire story of God. Now sometimes we attach baggage to it and things get obscured much as the do with religious words like “sin” or “gospel” but it at its heart the word atonement is a fairly accesible metaphor for an extremely profound concept, because however we understand Jesus, however we dissect and study his life, death and resurrection, we are called, primarily, to understand this; that he has brought us to a place where we are at-one with God. That’s the Christian story. That we can literally, from the word reconcile, sit with him again. Atonement points us to that mystery.

We have lots of these important words and metaphors to help us understand and articulate what we’re talking about; how that happens or how we can explain it, but this is such a big concept that it’s hard, maybe impossible, to contain or communicate in succinct packages.

It’s been to our detriment that we have often done just that. Instead of making the idea of the atonement big, we’ve made it small. Instead of making the idea of the atonement mysterious, we’ve made it simple. And I think we’ve lost something important in that process.

Today the most common way you will hear the death of Jesus or the concept of the atonement explained looks something like this

You’re on one side
God’s on the other side

Death on your side
Heaven on the other

Quite the conundrum.
Thankfully, Jesus appears and becomes the bridge that gets you from one side to the other

Now that’s not necessarily a bad start. The problem is it can stop short of encouraging us to explore the depth of what this relationship means because it oversimplifies one of the great, actually the great mystery of the universe.