Weekly Reflection 040107AD

Sunday, April 1, 2007AD

Palm Sunday

Why Was It Necessary?

As Catholics have done from the very beginning, we remember and, more importantly, relive the Paschal Mystery through, with and in Christ Jesus. According to the Jewish principle of zikkaron, the remembering of an event makes it present again. The Greek word that is used is ana-mnesis (to recall again). Even our English word “recall” means “to bring up (something) in the mind again”.

Why was it necessary for Jesus to do what He did for us? Lots of people have wondered about the question for the past 2000 years.

One solution lies in anthropology. Most cultures have a primitive defining system, whereby it is delineated who is the “in group” and who is excluded. (This involves the purity of the “in group” and a special relationship with the tribal god.) However, what happens when the purity of the group has been violated for any reason? Frequently, some type of serious atonement has to be done to restore the proper relationship. Obviously, religion comes into play.

Israel saw the need for sacrifice in its relationship to YHWH. They saw restoration of the relationship as a redemption, as God’s reclamation of what truly was God’s. They thought a price had to be paid. It was common for many cultures to think this way. The first Jewish Christians, therefore, tried to interpret what happened to Jesus in terminology and categories that would have made sense to themselves. As a result, they described the martyrdom of Jesus, the Prophet, the Savior and the Messiah in sacrificial language.

Nevertheless, the question was raised about why Jesus’ death was so bloody and cruel. Why did it have to be that way? In the first millennium, a consensus developed that the devil had to be paid a ransom to redeem all of us sinners under the devil’s control.

It was only in the twelfth century that St Anselm of Canterbury made what he thought was an advance on this primitive argument. He wrote a book, entitled, Why Did God Become A Man? The gist of the book survives in the consciousness of many Catholics to this day. Simply put, sin was an offense against God, the Infinite Being by finite human beings. Therefore, a finite person could not render adequate reparation for the offense done to the Infinite Being. Therefore, the One Who could restore God’s Honor had to be both Infinite (to do the Infinite) and finite (to represent finite humanity). So, God had to become human in Christ Jesus.

However, people have always been troubled by St Anselm’s honest effort. A God Whose Honor needed to be restored does not resemble very much the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, God’s requiring the death of God’s Own Son, these days, might be interpreted as a case of child abuse. (Some Jewish theologians have raised a similar question with God’s testing Abraham by asking for the sacrifice of Isaac, his only son.)

A spinoff of St Anselm’s theory is the substitution, atonement theory that was so dominant in the Mel Gibson movie a few years ago. “The more pain, the more gain”. What kind of a God would require and tolerate the brutalization of God’s Son?

There has been, for hundreds of years, another school of thought which vied with the mainstream as a way to answer the question of the Necessity of the Crucifixion. A Scottish, Franciscan theologian named Blessed John Duns Scotus, who taught at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, taught that Christ died as God’s Way to convince us how much God loved us, viz., we are the ones that God is trying to convince and win over!

Using the language which St Paul used in his letter to the Philippians (our second reading today) as well as the opening hymns that St Paul added in his letters to the Colossians and Ephesians, Duns Scotus speaks of Christ Jesus as both the image of the invisible God and the pattern or archetype of all creation. As a result, Jesus becomes, for all of us, the Cosmic Scapegoat, Fall Guy, Victim. He does so to show God’s Love for us.

Religion was (and is) serious business for many then and now. For many, shedding blood was the big way of getting God’s attention. Israel was speaking out against shedding human blood to please God in its formative story of the God’s testing of Abraham in asking for the sacrifice of Isaac, His only son. God does not want human blood shed. However, through His death on the cross, Christ, once and for all, ended the need for repetitious animal sacrifice, that had come to dominate Jerusalem’s temple. Now, God does not require the shedding of animal blood. How? God sheds God’s Own Blood, when Christ died for us.

Several years ago, an interesting discovery was made in the archeology of a Jewish synagogue that was in use around the time of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. Part of the liturgy for Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, was the symbol of the scapegoat. A goat was chosen and the community wrapped the animal in either purple or red cloth. The cloth was secured with a wrap of thorns to keep the cloth in place. The (scape)goat was driven out of the town, beaten with rods and spat upon by the worshippers. The (scape)goat bore the sins of the community on its back and this ritual was part of the process of the forgiveness of the community’s sins. No doubt, part of this shaped the Jewish Christian imagination in their understanding of what happened to Jesus, seen as the innocent victim, in our First Reading from Isaiah today. He described the suffering servant, Whose Face was buffeted.

The familiar story of the death of the Lord occupies our Gospel today, as it is presented to us in St Luke’s Gospel, (Chapters 22-23). Most Catholics know the storyline, in 6 consecutive scenes: 1) the Last Supper, 2) the Agony in the Garden and the arrest of Jesus; 3) the trial by the temple authorities (representative of all institutional religion); 4) the trial by Pilate (representative of all systems of the world that claim absolute allegiance); 5) the Way to Calvary and the Crucifixion; 6) the burial of Jesus.

However, each Evangelist presents the scenario in a distinctive way reflecting how Jesus has been described throughout the Gospel. We hear four variations of the traditional story, each of which has to do with the over-riding theme of Jesus’ forgiveness and empathy for other people even while he is dying. Only in Luke’s account, does Jesus heal of the ear of the man who came to arrest Him in the garden. Only in Luke’s account, does Jesus console the women of Jerusalem who are weeping for Him. Only in Luke’s account, does Jesus tell the good thief that he “will be with Jesus that day in paradise”. Only in Luke’s account, does Jesus pray from the cross for those who did this to Him, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

In addition, Jesus, our Prophet-Martyr and Savior, favorably resists temptation to do things in a more convenient way than the Crucifixion. He was tempted three times in the wilderness at the start of His ministry. At the last moment of His Life, Jesus was tempted to save Himself by coming down from the cross. The tempters are the crowds passing by, the religious authorities and the other thief on the cross. In a significant change, Jesus’ dying words in Luke’s account are part of Psalm 31, the prayer of the faithful Jew who commends his entire life to God. “Father, into Your Hands, I commend My Spirit.”

He died, as He lived, trying to trust in God on good days as well as bad.

Still, Christians know that Gospel today segues into the Easter chapter, which we will hear next week. Jesus teaches us, with God’s Help, to bear the pains of life, to make the necessary leaps of faith (that we need to make and can make with God’s Help), to surrender, let go and trust the Holy Mystery of God in Whom we live and move and have our being from moment to moment to moment. During Holy Week, we ask for the Grace, the Help that we need.

Blessed Juliana of Norwich said that God allowed the worst thing to happen (the death of God made human) so that the best thing could happen (the Resurrection) in the very same action. St Catherine of Genoa said that in a meditation, she questioned why the crucifixion had to be so bad. God’s answer was simply, that if there were any other way, God would have done it long before. Santa Clara wrote that when one reflects of the depths of God’s Love for us in the death of Christ Jesus, the only prayer that is appropriate is a gigantic THANK YOU to God for the act of creating us.

The medieval consensus that is coming into vogue again might be a great meditation this Holy Week. Maybe, Jesus died to convince us how much God loved us. Certainly, a gigantic THANK YOU is in order!!

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