Atonement: Is God a Child Abuser?

A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), March 27, 2005, by the Reverend Christine Brownlie.

Reading:

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about 9 o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you what is right.” So they went. When he went out again, about noon and about 3 o’clock, he did the same. And about 5 o’clock, he went out and found others standing around and he said, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” When the evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” When those hired about 5 o’clock came, each of then received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received, it they grumbled against the landowner, saying ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious, because I am generous?”

So the last will be first and the first will be last.

Matthew 20:1-16

Sermon

Whether or not we consider ourselves to be Christian, our religious and social, and economic lives are profoundly influenced by the liturgical calendar followed by the majority of Christian Churches. It’s true, that we UUs ignore several of the high points of the Christian year: Advent, Good Friday, and Pentecost. But the two great feasts of the Christian year, Christmas and Easter, still tug at our hearts — and our purse.

My guess is that we feel comfortable with Christmas and Easter because they have been absorbed by the culture and secularized. Another possibility is that both of these celebrations have deep roots in pagan festivals that acknowledge the turnings of the seasons.

But what about the Christian stories that offer the religious meaning of these holy days? I would say that most UUs take the Christmas story as a myth that has layers of meaning. We don’t hold to doctrines that many Christians draw from this story: the virgin birth, the incarnation: “God come down to us in human form,” but that disagreement doesn’t prevent us from using the story as part of our shared celebration.

The Easter story is different. It makes us very uncomfortable — and for good reason; it’s a bloody and terrifying story. A beloved teacher is betrayed by one of his followers to the powers of the religious community and the state. He is summarily tried, tortured, and executed in the cruelest method available in those times: crucifixion. We are told that his death was agonizing, and that he suffered terribly both physically and spiritually. Most of his followers abandoned him, and, according to the Gospel of Matthew, as he nears death, Jesus cried out to his Father,

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Many scholars believe that much of this of the story is based in fact. The story of what happened next is the basis of orthodox Christian faith.

Jesus’ body was buried in a tomb, but when the women came back to anoint the body, it was gone. Over the next few days, he appeared to various followers in a variety of settings, and then he ascends to heaven to sit at the right hand of God.

Today [Easter Sunday], most ministers are preaching about this happy ending of the Jesus story to their congregations. I will not; in large part because most modern Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in Jesus’ physical resurrection any more than we accept the virgin birth. Some of us take the Easter story as a metaphor that expresses the power of love, memory, and the conviction that the message of this esteemed teacher lives on, long after his death. What gets under our skin, is a central doctrine held by many of the Christian faith: that Jesus died for our sins. How did this idea develop and why?

For Jesus’ earliest followers, the theological implications of his crucifixion and death were staggering and it took a while to work all this out. After all, his disciples went with him to Jerusalem expecting that Jesus was going to restore the kingdom that he kept talking about. They thought the end of time was at hand. They expected something wonderful and earthshaking to happen. It didn’t, or at least not in the way they had anticipated. Jesus died. The community of followers lost its center, and they had no idea what to do next. It was over. Then they began to wait for his return, but that did not happen either. So what did all this mean? If Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, the revolutionary liberator from Roman rule that the people had been waiting for, who was he? Why did he die?

If you read Paul’s letters to the seedling Christian communities which were written 40–50 years after Jesus’ death, you will find this answer: that Jesus died to free us from sin, according the will of our God and Father and according to the Scriptures. This concept of salvation must have worked, for in The Gospels of Mark and Matthew, which were written several decades after Paul’s letters, have Jesus himself saying,

“This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

We can understand why Paul and the authors of the Gospels would use language that referred to sacrifice and redemption. Paul was trained as a Pharisee and was well acquainted with the complicated system of sacrifices prescribed by Jewish law as a means for individuals and even the community as a whole to restore and renew their covenant with God. Many early Christians were Jews, and thus familiar with temple sacrifices. They knew that the amount of blood required for redemption was directly proportional to the severity of the sin.

We can also look to the tradition of the “Suffering Servant” found in the writings attributed to Isaiah:

“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation shall read to the end of the Earth.”

(Is 49:6)

and

“Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole.”

(Is 53: 4-5)

When we read these verses, we think of this servant as an individual person. The early church read these passages — and many others in the Jewish scriptures — as descriptions of Jesus and his mission. But scholars believe that in the original context, the “servant” was most likely a metaphor for the exiled nation of Israel.¹

Over time, the early Christians decided that if Jesus’ mission of salvation was not fulfilled on Earth then it must have been fulfilled in another realm, a heavenly kingdom. God must have willed his death — for if Jesus were divine, no human could really kill him. And now, pulling all of the pieces of the puzzle together this tragic death has meaning — and, for some, great hope and power.

We call this idea that Jesus died for our sins the doctrine of substitutionary or vicarious atonement. It became the foundation of the new faith, and it remains the foundation for many Christians today.

But not all Christians accepted it. One of the most heartfelt expressions of dissent came from Abelard, a thirteenth century Catholic theologian, who said,

“Who will forgive God for killing his own child? How cruel and wicked it seems that anyone should demand the blood of an innocent person as a price for anything? Or that it should in any way please him that an innocent person should be slain? Still less, that God should consider the death of his son so agreeable that by it he should be reconciled to the whole world.”

Looking at Jesus’ death on the cross through this lens, his act of sacrifice is either divine suicide or murder.

If, like Abelard, you are troubled by the idea that God would require the crucifixion of his own son to repair his relationship with human kind, you’ll be happy to know that our Universalist fore-bearers didn’t agree with this view either. Hosea Ballou, an American Universalist minister and theologian published an important book in 1805. The title of this work was A Treatise on Atonement. The ideas that Ballou offered were a radical departure from the Calvinist doctrines of his day. Ballou argued that the basic nature of God was eternal, unchangeable love, and that a finite creature — a human being — could not offend an infinite God. God’s desire was to glorify himself through human happiness. Jesus’ mission was not to be a sacrifice for the redemption of sin, but to renew love for God in human hearts. This love would develop as people followed the teachings of Jesus. Sin was real, and it was the source of human misery. God’s love and salvation were for everyone — not just a chosen elect. All would in the end, be reconciled unto God.

Ballou’s book is not a highly intellectual, polished work. Even so, many people found that Ballou’s ideas resonated with their own beliefs.

Many Unitarians also found the doctrine of vicarious atonement unworthy of the God they worshipped. William Ellery Channing, the foremost Unitarian of his day, preached of a moral God who sent Jesus as the savior. Jesus fulfilled this role, not through his death, but because,

“He is the light, physician, and guide of the dark, diseased, and wandering mind.”

Channing taught that Jesus’ purpose was not to die in order to appease an angry God, but to alter human character. Half a century later, Henry Bellows declared that the doctrine of vicarious atonement was a “blinding heresy.”

But my interest in this doctrine of atonement is not primarily theological. My concern is that this teaching about Jesus’ suffering and its reward for us through vicarious atonement has had profound implications for many who suffer — especially those who suffer at the hands of someone who holds power over them, and who believe that their suffering somehow pleases God.

You might wonder how anyone could think that way. Like many other ministers and counselors, I have heard victims of domestic violence — usually women — express this conviction as they told me why they remained with an abusive partner. They told me that they came to accept this suffering as a “gift” because through their suffering they could identify with Jesus. They believed that remaining in an abusive relationship would allow them to learn the meaning of the words found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: that love is patient and kind, that it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.

In their controversial book, A Proverb of Ashes, two feminist theologians, Rita Nakashema Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker (who is the President of Starr King School for the Ministry, one of our own seminaries), write about the way the doctrine of atonement distorted their own understanding of the suffering that each of them endured in their lives. These women endured the pains of racism, separation from home and family, and sexual abuse. Somehow they each came to believe that their suffering made them virtuous in the eyes of God, and that they were required to endure whatever happened.

Parker, who served a congregation as a Methodist minister, writes that she heard similar ideas from women who came to her for counsel and support. One woman was especially vivid in Parker’s memory. Her husband had a violent temper and she told Parker,

“Mostly my husband is a good man, but sometimes he becomes very angry and hits me and knocks me down.  One time he broke my arm and I had to go to the hospital. I went to my priest 20 years ago and I have been trying to follow his advice. The priest said I should rejoice in my sufferings because they bring me closer to Jesus. He said, if you love Jesus, accept the beatings and accept them gladly as Jesus bore them on the cross.”

Victims of abuse are not the only ones who have twisted their suffering at the hands of others into a means of pleasing God, or as an expression of their love for Jesus. Slaves, prisoners, and victims trapped in other brutal and oppressive situations have tried to comfort and strengthen their spirits with the faith that by accepting suffering, they become “Christ-like.” While I can easily grasp how this identification with a beloved and inspiring figure like Jesus would be encouraging, I am troubled by the idea the God would be the indirect cause of violence and suffering.

Brock explains that in her eyes, the doctrine of vicarious atonement defines Jesus as an obedient son who accepts violence because his father wills it. Jesus does so for the sake of his love for the perpetrators of violence, whether it is God, or sinful humanity. This defines love and relationship as control and sacrifice, structuring them as power and abuse. She says that this belief makes God a child abuser, or a bystander to violence against his own son. She calls this act “cosmic child abuse.”

To link violence and love together is to create a dangerous distortion that confuses pain and emotional entrapment with love. The tragic outcome of this confusion is the destruction of the sense of self and the ability to protect one’s self. To love as Jesus loved, the victim cannot walk out or try to escape. They must stand and accept the violence, because such love requires pain and suffering.

If there is something in Jesus’ life and death that saves us, I am sure it is not the teaching that the powerless are to submit to an abuser. Having grown up in a family in which violence was not uncommon, I’m well aware that people can become trapped in a terrible situation because they don’t see a viable way out. I’m also aware of the complexities of the personal and family dynamics that keep people in abusive situations. But I will never be persuaded that God desires anyone to endure any measure of suffering — not through violence, not through illness, not through torture or eternal torment in hell. I believe that God’s desire for humanity and creation is wholeness, happiness, and peace — but not peace at any cost.

I must refuse the covenant that the doctrine of atonement sets up: Jesus suffered and died for me, and if I believe in him, I’ll have eternal life. Jesus suffered and died because the powers of the times were corrupt and violent. Jesus is not the only one who died for the sins of society; history is full of such stories. Not one of these deaths offers salvation unless we are willing to learn the lessons of courage and conviction and fearless love that gave passion and purpose to the men and women who died because human powers demanded to be satisfied.

For me, the Easter message is that the world is in desperate need of loving examples of justice, self-giving, self-care, and forgiveness. As the Unitarian minister Theodore Parker declared more than a century ago, the message of Jesus is very simple: love to God and love to humankind. In other words, love to what we find ultimate, holy, and sustaining. Such love embodies deep compassion for neighbor, for the stranger — and for ourselves. This is the Easter message of our faith, our heritage: that if Jesus lives, it is through our lives — our incarnation of his message of love and justice.

May it be so!

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