Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Hebrews 5:5-10 March 29, 2009

So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you"; as he says also in another place, "You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek." In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

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There's a story told by a man named J. Allan Peterson that goes like this. There was once a small boy who was consistently late coming home from school. His parents warned him one day that he must be home on time that afternoon, but in spite of the warning he arrived later than ever. His mother met him at the door and said nothing. At dinner that night, the boy looked at his plate. There he found a single slice of bread and a glass of water. He looked at his father's full plate and then at his father, but his father remained silent. The boy was crushed. The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy's plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate of meat and potatoes, put it in front of the boy, and smiled at his son. When that boy grew to be a man, he said, "All my life I've known what God is like by what my father did that night."

That's a nice story isn't it: a young boy, whose parents are trying to teach him a little responsibility, comes home late and is punished for it, rather mildly I might add. My parents tended more toward sending me to my room, or yelling and spanking if they thought I needed it. (Ah, the good old days of corporal punishment!) But this boy's parents were clearly a model of creative discipline. Rather than lash out at the child, they simply denied him a full meal, at the same table where the rest of the family had an abundance. He quickly made the connection between his late arrival and this meal of bread and water, and felt ashamed of himself. But then, in an act of love and grace, his "Father," takes the boy's deserved punishment upon his own undeserving self, thereby communicating a love and forgiveness that ran deeper than the boy's disobedience. As the boy grew into a man, for the rest of his life, that experience was his model for the nature of God.

Now, it's probably clear to you, by the way I've laid all of this out, that I have some discomfort with this story. Not as far as the boy and his parents are concerned. I don't see a problem there at all. Raising children is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. I remember with great satisfaction those times when Pam and I were able to be creative, loving and forgiving in our discipline. I also remember, with some embarrassment, those times when our patience wore thin and our creativity went right out the window. Raising children is hard, and far be it from me to criticize any creative act of discipline, especially one that seems to have actually worked.

What I find uncomfortable is just that last punch line of the story. The boy grows into a man believing that he knows "what God is like" by what his father did that night. The message J. Allan Paterson is clearly trying to get across with his story is that this is the essential nature of the God that we find in Jesus: though we are all disobedient sinners, out of a deeper love and forgiveness, God, in Jesus, takes our punishment upon himself on the cross, so that we might inherit the abundance of eternal life even though we don't deserve it.

This is certainly one way of understanding the Christian faith. In fact, it is the most common way of understanding it. Most people, both within and beyond the faith believe that this way of understanding God is what it means to be a Christian. We even have a theological name for it: Substitutionary Atonement. Substitutionary Atonement is the belief that what Jesus did on the cross is to make us "at one" (at-one-ment) with God by standing in as our substitute. God must punish sin, the thinking goes, but he was willing to take Jesus as a substitute for all of us who actually deserve that punishment. This is the most common popular understanding of what it means to be Christian, and "Jesus died for our sins" is our shorthand way of saying it.

And honestly, if we go looking for passages of scripture to support this understanding, we won't have far to look. This morning's passage, for instance, talks about Jesus as our "High Priest" according to the order of Melchizedek. Now, for the sake of background, you need to know that King Melchizedek, as an actual person, appears just once in the Bible. Genesis 14 tells the story of a battle, back in the days of Abraham, that takes place in the valley of Siddim near the Dead Sea. A number of local kings line up on both sides, but of course it is the side Abraham takes that wins. After the dust settles, King Melchizedek, who was also a "priest of God Most High" brings out bread and wine and blesses Abraham.

That's it, the whole story. The King, who was also a high priest, brought out bread and wine and blessed Abraham. As a preacher, I would say there isn't much there to work with. However, if you read through the book of Hebrews, you'll find that what the author does with that story is pretty stunning. He turns the King into something more than human. In chapter seven he says Melchizedek was "Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever." Wow. That's a pretty big set of assumptions wouldn't you say?

Not to be disrespectful, but I fail to understand how the writer of Hebrews came up with this. It's hard to avoid suspecting he simply made it all up. As a preacher myself, I can at least give him credit for creativity. It can sometimes be fun and interesting to take a biblical reference and play with it in imaginative ways. It wouldn't be all that big a deal, except that he then goes on to use it as a model for Jesus. Jesus, he says, is our High Priest, after the example of Melchizedek. What does that mean? Are we supposed to believe that Jesus was, "without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life"? Not exactly. Rather, the conclusion we're supposed to draw is that Jesus was the sacrifice made on our behalf.

Even that I wouldn't have much of a problem with, so long as I'm free to say that it either works or doesn't work for me as a Christology (a theology of Jesus that is.) For me, the real problem begins in knowing that throughout the centuries of Christian faith, this idea of Christ as our substitute/sacrifice has gone from being a creative metaphor to being taken as the central, literal truth upon which the church rises or falls. What once was imaginative preaching has become, in the minds of many, the essential dogmatic truth of the gospel.

No less an authority than Martin Luther believed it, and he wrote about it passionately. "All the prophets did foresee in Spirit that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, rebel, blasphemer, etc., that ever was or could be in all the world. For he, being made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world is not now an innocent person and without sins ... but a sinner [in his own right....] Our most merciful Father ... sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him ... the sins of all men saying: Be thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; [Adam] that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which hanged upon the cross; and briefly be thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men; see therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them. Here now comes the law and saith: I find him a sinner ... therefore let him die upon the cross. And so he setteth upon him and killeth him. By this means the whole world is purged and cleansed from all sins."

Now folks, I know this is a dark message and not an easy one to hear. But what I'm trying to say is that what we believe about Jesus is important. Jesus, in our Christian understanding, reveals to us the nature of God. Are we to believe that the God Jesus reveals is one who demands such a human sacrifice as the cost of our reconciliation and forgiveness? Are we to believe that Jesus stood as substitute for our deserved punishment? My friends, I do not and cannot believe it. It paints altogether too dark and ugly a picture of the God I have come to know and love.

I can certainly understand why the early church would have come up with such an idea. Sacrifice, animal sacrifice, as a means of making people right with God, was a virtually universal practice in the holy land in those days. Under the circumstances, given that Jesus was put to death in such a brutal way, it would actually have been rather amazing if the early Christians had not applied the notion of sacrifice to Jesus. But to go from there and make his substitutionary sacrifice the one and only truth of our faith is to do violence to his own essential message of grace. Wouldn't God have to be some kind of monster to demand a blood sacrifice as the price of our forgiveness?

So, for me, substitutionary atonement is not the message of the cross. There are many in the church who would say that because of this, I am not and cannot be a Christian. But they're wrong. We do not need to imagine a brutal, vengeful and exclusive God in order to be followers of Christ. We do not need to claim the cross as God's punishment for human sin. What makes far more sense to me, is that Jesus' crucifixion was simply the natural consequence of his coming into conflict with the authorities of his day, and being unwilling to compromise his message of love and forgiveness. He could have saved himself, but only by denying God; and that he was not willing to do.

What is God like? That is always a good question to ask. We do need models drawn from our human experience to help us understand and to give us glimpses of the divine. There's nothing wrong with looking at Jesus through the lens of sacrifice, so long as we realize that is one option among many. However, and this is really important, we should take care not to assume God could ever fit in any of our merely human boxes. No one idea, and no collection of ideas either, could ever be the whole, literal truth of God. God is and will always be greater than any merely human notion of the divine.

Amen