Rudy
Barnes, Jr.
Easter
is about resurrection and is the focal point of the Christian religion. It is about faith and belief in a miracle
that is beyond reason, but not unreasonable.
Jews and Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet, but not as the risen Christ;
and while Muslims do not believe in the resurrection, they believe that Jesus
will return on the last day to usher in God’s kingdom.
Something
truly miraculous happened on that first Easter.
Many who had been skeptical of Jesus as a messiah became believers, but the
nature of the miraculous event and its meaning were unclear until the Apostle
Paul articulated the atonement doctrine.
From that ancient time until now that doctrine
has remained at the foundation of Christian beliefs and creeds.
Paul
was a Pharisaic Jew who understood blood sacrifice as an atonement for sin and believed
in the resurrection of the dead, and he was expecting a messiah who would soon usher
in God’s kingdom on earth. It was no
surprise that Paul understood the crucifixion as God’s blood sacrifice of his
Son as an atonement for original sin, and that God resurrected Jesus Christ to
sit at His right hand and return at the
end times to usher in God’s kingdom on earth.
Paul’s
atonement doctrine fits squarely within his 1st century Jewish
theology, but outside that context it is both inconsistent with the teachings
of Jesus and with what we know of history.
While the atonement doctrine asserts that God sacrificed Jesus on the
cross as an atonement for sin, Jesus echoed earlier prophets in emphasizing mercy, not sacrifice. According to Jesus God’s forgiveness of sin
was available for the asking and did not require a ritual blood sacrifice, and Jesus
taught his disciples to follow him as the word of God, not to worship him as
God’s Son.
The
accounts of events leading to the crucifixion of Jesus as reported in the
Gospel accounts are inconsistent with it being a divine sacrifice orchestrated
by God. Those accounts indicate that religious
leaders felt threatened by the radical teachings of Jesus and convinced Roman
authorities to execute him as an insurrectionist. Another anomaly is that Paul and the early
Christians were wrong in their belief that Christ would return in an
apocalyptic Parousia in their
lifetimes to usher in the kingdom of God on earth.
Today we can see the resurrection in a new light. Without Paul’s atonement doctrine the
resurrection can be understood as God’s validation of the teachings of Jesus as
the Logos, or the living word of God (John 1:1-14). That would make belief in the teachings and
example of Jesus, rather than in Jesus himself, as the way, the truth and the life and the only way to salvation (John
14:6). If God is love (I John 4:16-21), then the new command of John’s Gospel to love one another (John 13:34) is at the heart of the Logos, and to emphasize the divinity of Jesus
Christ at the expense of the word of God is to distort God’s truth.
Needless
to say, that understanding of the resurrection would have changed history with
a different kind of Christianity. As it
was, passages from John’s Gospel (John 3:16 and 14:6) have been routinely cited
out of context to require belief in the divinity of Jesus and the atonement
doctrine as the only way to salvation, and that denigrates the teachings of
Jesus.
The Nicene Creed and The Apostles Creed are traditional
creeds that assert belief in mystical matters derived from the atonement
doctrine and theological speculation rather than the teachings of Jesus; and putting
exclusivist church doctrine ahead of the teachings of Jesus has caused many
Christians to become disillusioned and leave the church as Nones.
Robin
R. Meyers has stated the problem in the title to his book, Saving Jesus from
the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus
(HarperOne, 2009). It is not a new idea. Deists of the 18th century like
Thomas Jefferson and Biblical scholars like those of the Jesus Seminar have all
shared a belief in the moral teachings of Jesus as God’s truth while being skeptical
of exclusivist church doctrines.
Islam
has similar problems. Christianity and
Islam are competitive religions that seek converts based on exclusivist belief
systems that promise salvation to believers and eternal condemnation to unbelievers;
yet both religions recognize Jesus as a teacher of the word of God and consider
the greatest commandment to love God
and neighbor as a common word of
faith. Even so, it is unlikely that
either religion will promote loving their unbelieving neighbors as themselves
since that would negate their exclusivist beliefs (in Christianity the belief that
Jesus was the word of God made flesh, and in Islam that the Qur’an is the word
of God made book), and those exclusivist beliefs give each religion a competitive
advantage over the other.
In
a world of increasing religious pluralism it is critical that the exclusivist doctrines
of Christianity and Islam be subordinated to the moral imperative of the greatest commandment to love our
unbelieving neighbors as ourselves, as Jesus taught in the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Only then can the light of God’s love dispel
the darkness of exclusivist religious beliefs and all believers be reconciled into
the family of God. Then God’s
kingdom can come and God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
It
is time to see the resurrection in a new light, one that can dispel the
darkness of religious exclusivism.
Easter is a time for new
beginnings and spiritual rebirth. The Hymn of Promise states it well: In the cold and snow of winter there’s a
spring that waits to be; in our death a resurrection, at the last a victory,
unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see. Easter promises hope for the reconciliation
of all people of faith. It is a time for
us to experience and share the regenerative power of God’s love, and it is not
limited to Christians.
Notes
and References to Resources:
This topic is related to Lesson
#17 on Life after death and the
resurrection in the J&M Book at page 74; on the Islamic
understanding of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, see commentary on Jesus on the cross in the J&M Book at pages 203-208. The Gospel of
Mark has no post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, and the accounts in the
Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John are unique and uncorroborated in the other
Gospels.
On Paul’s understanding of resurrection, see I Corinthians, chapter
15; and on his understanding of atonement
as it applied to the crucifixion and resurrection, see Romans 3:21-26.
On the end times, see the J&M Book at page 183.
On Jesus’ preference for mercy, not sacrifice, see Notes to Promoting Religion through Evangelism, posted February 8, 2015.
On Jesus’ preference for mercy, not sacrifice, see Notes to Promoting Religion through Evangelism, posted February 8, 2015.
On love over law, see blog posted on January 18, 2015.
On the new command of John’s Gospel, the J&M Book at page 325;
on Jesus as the Logos and the way, the truth and the life, see Faith and Eternal Life in the J&M Book at page 394.
On religion and new beginnings: salvation and reconciliation in the family
of God, see blog posted January 4, 2015.
On the greatest commandment as a
common word of faith and the story of
the good Samaritan in Luke’s version, see blogs posted on January 11, 2015,
and on January 25, 2015.
On Christian creeds and
exclusivism, see The Rest of the Story
in the J&M Book at pages 333 and 334.
The
Hymn of Promise
(by Natalie Sleeth, 1986) is at page 707 of The United Methodist Hymnal.
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