31/50: So, What Did Jesus Do?
This song names so many powerful questions that popular ideas about Jesus have raised.
“Jesus, Jesus, I’m still looking for answers
Though I know that I won’t find them here tonight
But Jesus, Jesus, could you call me if you have the time?
And maybe we could meet for coffee and work it out
And maybe then I’ll understand what it’s all about”
Returning to theological thoughts today around the implications of letting go of the idea that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins.
That idea makes a really big assumption that God needed Jesus’ death to forgive us. And that brings up some really big problems with how we think about God. As I mentioned a few days ago, it means that God is worse than the best in humanity. I just don’t buy that God needs perfection in order to forgive or be in relationship with us. But it also brings up a historical issue. What happened before Jesus? Was God struggling to love before Jesus died on the cross? Did some big heavenly switch get turned on the moment that Jesus took his last breath?
I don’t think so. And I think seeing Jesus as truth-teller helps us understand what the historical moment of Jesus means.
Think about a moment of revelation you have had. Maybe it’s the moment you realized you were in love with your best friend. Or when you found out you were pregnant. Or when you realized that a habitual way of being was unhealthy and hurtful to others? That is not the moment that any of that became true, it’s just the moment that you saw the truth. It’s the moment of telling the truth.
The historical reality of Jesus is a similar moment of truth-telling. The curtains go up on what has always been true about God: that God is defined by relationality (my favorite made up theological word) and compassion.
For me, this is why the Trinity is so central to Christian theology. The first thing we know about God is NOT that God is mad at us because of our sin. The first thing we know is that God is in relationship. Quantum physics (or what I can understand of it) is telling us that relationship, the space between things, is the nature of reality. And I think this is also the nature of God.
This is not a radically new idea. It is found in the Nicene Creed that declared, “For us and for our salvation, (Jesus) came down from heaven…” Notice it doesn’t say, “For God and our salvation.” God did not need Jesus to die on the cross. We needed the truth-telling moment that is the full arc of Jesus’ life to see who God is: God welcomes sinners and saints! The first will be last and the last will be first! Union with God is possible in human flesh! Love is stronger than death!
There is so much good news in Jesus that I never tire of exploring this mystery. In that exploration, I am saved from my self-absorption, isolation and deep grooves of personality. In that exploration, I pray we find ourselves gathered around a table of compassion and mutuality where there is room for everyone.
God is not mad at us. We just didn’t know it yet.