Jesus on the Cross: WHY?

Foreword

One of my earliest recollections from parochial school days concerns the meaning of the crucifixion. It was nearing Holy Week, and Sister had been teaching us second-graders about Jesus' redemptive death. "He died for you;' she told us, "so that you could live without sin and be happy with God forever:' I was already feeling uneasy about the prospect of living with God forever, not quite sure that this was going to be as fun as Sister made it out to be. In addition, I was very confused about why Jesus had to die. I didn't see how he could have died for me, since he never knew me in the first place, and I hadn't done anything so wrong as to bring about his death. The whole thing left me feeling terribly guilty, like someone had done me a great favor and put me in great debt, but I hadn't asked for the favor in the first place.

Through my childhood and even later years, the theology of the crucifixion which I was taught featured such concepts as ransom, debt, expiation, atonement, sacrifice and satisfaction. The story goes--and I know you've heard it--that in the beginning, Adam and Eve walked and talked with God. Then God gave them an obedience test, which they flunked, so God sent them out of the Garden of Eden and closed the gates of heaven. God wasn't happy about this situation, however, so he formed a people, the Jews, and prepared them for the coming of a messiah. We Christians believe Jesus is that messiah. As true God and true man, Jesus was the only one who could repay the debt of Adam and Eve. This he did by dying on the cross, becoming a ransom for us and the perfect sacrifice who bridged the gap between God and humanity.

As a young child, I found justice in this account, but also something cruel and disturbing. After all, it only seemed right that people should be punished when they did something wrong, and that this punishment should make things right again. But somehow it didn't seem right that an innocent person should be punished for the guilty, although there was certainly something admirable about that. I knew I would never volunteer to be punished for my sister's mistakes (in fact, I sometimes enjoyed watching her get her licks). It took a real hero to take somebody else's punishment, I guess. The only problem with this view was that my parents would never agree to such an arrangement. When my sister did wrong, punishing me would not help her at all. So how could God's punishing Jesus help Adam and Eve, who were dead at any rate? How could it help me, if it happened before I had done anything wrong? And what kind of God was this anyhow, wanting to punish someone--anyone, but most especially his own son--to get rid of his anger! My parents never pun-ished me just to get rid of their anger. Was God as good as my parents?

I grew up in a church which cherished the cross as the symbol of what we were about, but I did not understand its meaning. In Lent I saw many people piously and tearfully meditating on the Way of the Cross. To me, the passion and death of Jesus seemed monstrously cruel and gruesome--nothing to get piously enthusiastic about. Not trusting my own judgment, however, I kept telling myself that one day I would understand. High school came, then college, and I kept waiting to understand. Then several friends converted to Fundamentalist communities, and they seemed to be very excited about the cross. They spoke or being "washed in the blood of the Lamb:' Gross stuff! I went to hear their preachers, and there it was all over again: Jesus dying on the cross as a ransom for my sins. Ransom? I was not even clear about what it meant to be a hostage!

Yet God's grace is such that I was never completely able to shake free of my attraction to Jesus. What I'd learned about him in my religion classes and through my own reading revealed a man who deeply inspired me. Through his eyes, I also came to see a loving Father, whose rain falls on the good and the bad alike. After coming to an adult faith commitment in my early 20s, I began to follow Jesus as my Lord of love, and to experience his risen presence in many different ways. As for my understanding of the crucifixion, I just simply accepted the fact that it was inevitable that a good and prophetic man like Jesus be killed by political and religious authorities more interested in preserving the status quo. Theologies of satisfaction and substitutionary atonement were still repulsive to me, but these were the only explanations I encountered.

I recall a particularly disturbing incident during my early days of adult faith when I was watching a televised Mass. In his homily, the priest told a story about a father who worked the controls at a railroad drawbridge. One day the father's only son, a young boy, came to play. The father warned him about playing near the machinery below, then went about his business. After a while a boat approached, so he opened the drawbridge to let it through. He then received word that a train was coming very soon and that he should close the bridge so it could pass over the stream. At that moment he looked out of his window and saw his son (his only beloved son!) playing near the control machinery below. If he closed the bridge, he would crush his son; if he didn't close it, a train full of people would fall into the river and drown. You can guess how the story ends.

I was bewildered and infuriated! How could my beloved Jesus and his Father be mixed up in such a gruesome business? How could a Catholic priest tell such a story over television? To make matters worse, I heard the same story from the pulpit the very next week (apparently, it was making the rounds). It was then that I decided that theologies of substitionary atonement did not answer my deepest questions about the crucifixion, although I didn't have anything to take their place.

Happily, I have since been introduced to several excellent books that helped me to reconcile my belief in a loving God with the events of Holy Week. My own prayer, reflection and struggles to live the gospel have also taught me much about the cross. Unfortunately, old explanations still seem to persist among both laity and clergy. That is why I am writing this book.

Why did Jesus die on the cross?

There are many different levels of response to this question. A historian, for example, would interpret the question why in different terms than a psychologist or theologian. The historian would probably say that Jesus died on the cross because he was perceived by the Jewish authorities as threatening their already tenuous political relationship with Rome. A psychologist might say that the love of Jesus called people to change, and few people arouse more hatred in us than those who provoke us out of spiritual inertia. The theologian, on the other hand, is primarily interested in what God has accomplished through the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Our primary concern in this book shall be with theology. As we shall see, there are rich and wonderful approaches to understanding the crucifixion which better emphasize God's love than the traditional explanations of satisfaction and substitutionary atonement.

In reflecting upon the theology of the crucifixion, we shall begin with the early church. What did the crucifixion mean to the first Christians? Chapter 1 discusses the crucifixion as the fulfillment of the prophecies about the suffering servant of Yahweh, and Chapter 2 discusses the crucifixion as the fulfillment of traditions of sacrifice and covenant. These were the explanations which nourished the early church's theology of the crucifixion. Also in the early church we find the beginnings of a theology which recognizes the crucifixion as the means by which God broke the power of sin rooted in the devil (Chapter 3), the flesh (Chapter 4), and the world (Chapter 5).

A second objective for the book is to discuss whether the understanding of the crucifixion reached by the early church and augmented through the ages still speaks to people of our age. How meaningful is it, for example, to speak of Jesus' death as a sacrifice to people who lack traditions of sacrifice in their culture? Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 include a section on catechetical implications which deal with these kinds of questions.

A third objective is to reflect on the meaning of the cross in our everyday lives. This is the main focus of Chapter 6. There we note the relationship between loving and laying down our lives for our friends. In this way, we come to better understand Jesus' words:

"If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and follow in my steps" (Mk 8:34).

Like its companion, Jesus Alive in Our Lives (Ave Maria Press, 1985), which studied the meaning of the resurrection, this book will provide questions for reflection and discussion. I suggest that the reader spend some time with the questions at the end of each chapter, perhaps using a journal. It is also good to discuss a book of this kind with others to learn how they understand and experience the cross of Christ in their lives. Helping one another to carry our crosses is one of our most significant activities as church.

Philip St. Romain