In Jewish households, when they celebrate the Passover Seder, the youngest person able is given the very special responsibility of asking the Four Questions. Those questions and the answers given explain why they share that meal on that particular night in the particular way that they do. The first question is: “How is this night different from all other nights?” The short answer is that on this night the LORD God delivered us from slavery in Egypt. Well, if we on the Christian side of the fence had a similar tradition of questions concerning Good Friday, the first question to ask would be: “Why do we call this Friday Good?”
So, why do we call this Friday good when it seems so bad? We crucified Jesus. It seems a bit morbid to take something so grotesquely wrong and call it good…but we do. The answer to that question is multifaceted. It’s like putting on one of those magnifying eyepieces that jewellers wear and looking at a diamond from the face of each of its cuts or facets to appreciate the beauty of how light shines into its heart from the different angles. Using that metaphor, the church over the centuries has taken the diamond of the meaning of Good Friday and has spun it around to see the different facets and at times has said this facet is the best cut from which to appreciate the beauty of the meaning of Jesus’s death.
The last few centuries the facet of penal substitution has been the cut that has gotten the most attention. Penal is a legal system term referring to the punishment of an offender. This facet emphasizes that we are sinners who have offended everything there is with respect God and his hopes and expectations and requirements of us that he spelled out in the Law, primarily the Ten Commandments. Death, therefore, is the punishment we deserve and receive for our sin. The Substitution factors in as Jesus, God the Son become human, stood in for us. He took upon himself the sin of humanity, bore the judgement of “guilty” that God the Father has rendered against us, and died the penalty and punishment of death that we deserve. So that, with the penalty paid once and for all, God the Father in turn forgives us our sin and promises eternal life to those who will follow Jesus.
Penal Substitution was good news back in the 1500’s when the Catholic church was selling indulgences as a means of getting to Heaven after you die. Back then, people lived with a very immediate fear of dying in yet another church sponsored war or in yet another plaque which seemed to breakout with regularity. In the midst of all that fear the Sixteenth Century version of televangelism arose. Rome sent out teams of actors to do some very imaginative street dramas that portrayed what happened to people when they went to Hell. After the play a bishop or cardinal would preach that if they bought an Indulgence for themselves or a loved one they could get out of Hell and go to Purgatory and then, if they lived a saintly life and went on a few pilgrimages, they might even go to Heaven. An Indulgence was simply a piece of paper, a certificate, saying a person had bought a bit of forgiveness. Many of Europe’s most famous cathedrals were built using this method of fundraising.
To counter this abuse, Protestants and Reformers preached the Good News that Jesus died for our sins and sprung the gates of Hell and your certificate is the very fact that you believe. Penal Substitution put a gracious end to the spiritual abuse of Indulgences. But, over time the overuse and twisting of this facet in the understanding of Jesus’s death by the Protestant and Reformed branches of the faith, which form the backbone of what we label as Evangelicalism today, has robbed this facet of its original grace and made it to become a powerful tool of spiritual abuse akin to the selling of indulgences…’nough said.
Penal Substitution is only one facet of a multifaceted diamond as I’ve said. There are several other facets to be viewed. One of the earliest understandings of Jesus’s death and which likely dominates in the letters of Paul is what we call Christus Victor, Christ the Victor. By his death and resurrection Jesus defeated all the powers of darkness that are destroying God’s good creation and holding us as slaves to sin and death and so, now, with the powers defeated, Jesus sits rightfully enthroned as Lord over all creation. He now is spreading his reign of love here on earth by the gift of the Holy Spirit who creates true human community in his image until he comes to bring his eternal Kingdom in its fullness and ultimately do away with the powers. In the Christus Victor facet the forgiveness of our sins is a secondary consequence to the victory Jesus has won over the powers; sin and death being among them.
The Christus Victor message was Good News to a church persecuted. When you’re being persecuted and put to death by corrupt political powers because of your faith in Jesus as Lord, knowing that he is the ultimate Victor over those powers and feeling the assurance of the presence of the Holy Spirit gave you strength to endure. This facet still emboldens the church persecuted in many parts of the world today.
Another facet of the diamond of the death of Jesus that was around in the early church was the medical metaphor of our being healed of the disease of sin which culminates in death. This facet understands that Sin is a disease of the mind. It’s not simply that we do bad, immoral, unethical things. It’s that there is something gone awry in our minds so that we perceive God, ourselves, and the world wrongly and in turn do horrible things.
Its like alcoholism. If you try to cure an alcoholic by calling them bad for drinking the way they do, you will only empower the feelings of shame and isolation that drive and feed the mental disease of addiction. An alcoholic is powerless over alcohol in the same way that every human is powerless over sin.
Well, as Jesus, God himself became human and like a poultice draws infection from a wound, he drew humanity’s disease of Sin to himself and put it to death by his death; and thus became the beginning of a healed creation evidenced in his resurrection and now being spread through the presence and powerful working of the Holy Spirit among those whom he has raised to new life as the proof that he will ultimately heal the whole creation when he returns.
In this facet, the medicinal facet, the forgiveness of sins isn’t simply a legal declaration. Forgiveness of sins is something the followers of Jesus live out in their community through unconditional love. In Hebrew and Greek the predominate words we translate as forgive mean to pick up and carry, to bear. It’s not this “I’m sorry/I forgive transactional thing.”
Remember the story of the four men who tore through the roof of the house where Jesus was preaching so that they could lower their paralyzed friend on the mat of his shame, so to speak, down to Jesus so that Jesus could heal him. The Gospels say that when Jesus saw their faithfulness, not the faith of the man on the mat but rather of the four friends, he then said to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” The forgiveness of the man’s sins was that these four men together were carrying their broken friend to Jesus that he could be healed; and that’s exactly what happened. Jesus made him able to take up his mat and go home.
Forgiveness is our Christian community bearing with us in all our faults bringing us to Jesus to be healed. It takes a lot of love and patience to do that. Forgiveness is not some easy, legal transaction.
Friends, there is healing and new life in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit for the sin diseased; and that’s everybody. I think that this medicinal facet is the facet of the diamond of Jesus’ death that people need to hear today. Everybody hurts. Everybody is paralyzed in some way. Everybody has their own mat of shame. Jesus can heal and he does heal and he does it in the midst of fellowship in his name. That’s friends getting together for the purpose of sharing themselves with one another and asking Jesus to take our burdens and heal us. The astounding thing is that he actually does.
The Gospel enacted for people today does not look like the institution of the church. It looks like prayer-filled group therapy among small groups of friends and neighbours gathered around Jesus…and Jesus is there to heal. I hope that as this COVID disease makes its way around the world that we humans in lockdown will take the time to take note of that greater disease that’s killing us all and hunger for its healing. Jesus is the Cure. The Holy Spirit is the Vaccine. Amen.
