Fourth Sunday in Lent, cycle B
John 3:14-21
One of the things that people of other faiths have a hard time understanding is why we Christians claim that Jesus died for our sins. And some of the explanations given by Christians don’t help. In the early days of the church, there were three such explanations.
The first reason is that because of our sins, we deserve death and hell, and thus belong to Satan. Jesus offers himself in exchange for us, then having paid the debt, the Father raises him from the dead.
A second reason is that Jesus gave us a way to become one with him, then allowed himself to be put to death and rose again because he is God, and we go along with him to the extent that we have “put on Christ” as Saint Paul puts it.
A third and probably the most popular, was that God demanded satisfaction for the offense of the sinfulness of humanity, and human beings were never going to be able to come up with a sacrifice great enough. So Jesus, being God and man, offered himself to atone for our sins, to satisfy the anger of the Father. This view has been commonplace down through the ages, and certainly dovetails with some of the pictures of God in the Old Testament. During the Exodus, Moses is always trying to get God to calm down and not smite his people. And the God portrayed in parts of the Old Testament does seem to respond to sacrifices involving the death of an animal, who stands in for the person desiring forgiveness. Certainly many of our prayers reflect this theology, and every time we hear about Abraham’s almost sacrifice of his son Isaac, we see an obvious parallel with Jesus, whose sacrifice was not held back from happening by an angel.
Today’s gospel passage brings up this issue once again. If God loves me would he demand my eternal damnation because of my sin? It doesn’t make sense. And if he loves me, a sinner, does he not love Jesus who is perfect? What human father would demand the death of his son? Jesus answered that question by asking another question: Which among you would give his son a stone when he asked for a loaf, or a scorpion when he asked for a fish?
But in the idea of atonement, we have a misunderstanding of sin. Sin is not the breaking of a commandment. Sin is the moving away from God, who is our origin and to whom we are supposed to return. God does not punish us for sin; sin carries its own punishment. Sin is never a victimless crime; the sinner is always the victim. The punishment for stealing is maybe getting caught, but always driving a wedge between me and my victim; to steal from him means that I don’t recognize his humanity. The punishment for carrying around a grudge is that everything I think about is now colored by my anger at someone. And you can take everything that is a sin and see that sin always separates you from others, from God, and even from yourself in a sense, because sin always diminishes a person.
But sin is a consequence of God’s greatest gift to us, free will. He loves us completely, and made us to respond to him with our own love. But you can’t love unless you are free.
God makes us free, and even allows for the misuse of freedom. Because in our state of freedom, we are the ones who have to find our way back to God. In today’s gospel Jesus compares himself to light, the light of the world. It’s like a campfire at night in the forest. You can wander off and eventually lose sight of the fire and be unable to find your way back. We are like that lost camper. And God chooses to send His Son after us, who willingly goes all the way to take up the consequences of our sin, which is ultimately death. The Son and the Father want the same thing, as does the Spirit; the three persons all will our salvation. God is not an angry king who must be satisfied by his son’s death. God is not handing his Son over to buy us from Satan in some kind of cosmic trade. God is not even fooled by us putting on Christ so that when he looks at me he sees his son. God, the Father, the Son and the Spirit gives us the freedom to choose Love, the love of God, of my neighbor, of myself -- and that is my destiny, that is my salvation. If I wander into the darkness, I can only find my way back if someone comes for me. And that’s why Jesus God and Man, lives my human life and dies my human death and then rises, bringing me with him.
