the cross

This week I signed up for the daily email meditations from Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation so I can say with complete confidence that people far more educated about these topics have better things to say about them. But still. I told myself, and at least two of you, that I'd write about this, so here's a go.

I was wondering yesterday whether I should call myself an atheist. It seems just a teeny bit hypocritical to be spending all this time in church and taking theology courses and then saying I'm an atheist. But it's not untrue.

What comes to mind is my dad's aviator trick of putting your thumb up to cover the sun so you can see whether enemy fighters are coming at you from 12 o'clock. That's not something you do because the sun doesn't exist or isn't important - quite the opposite. But it helps you focus on some human things that, while not nearly as big or as important as the sun in the grand scheme of things, can have a big impact on our little lives.

So let's say for a minute that God doesn't exist. Maybe that's even appropriate, given that today is Holy Saturday, the day after we remember Jesus's death and the day before we celebrate his resurrection. So Jesus of Nazareth was just one person out of the billions who have lived on this planet; he was an inspiring teacher who connected so deeply with people that he could heal them; he dreamt of a kinder, more just world, and his Jewish faith led him to give that world the name "the kingdom of God." He knew the scriptures, and the scriptures foretold a Messiah who would take upon himself the sins of the people and precipitate the coming of the kingdom of God on earth. He became convinced that he could be that Messiah. This one human, Jesus, so loved his fellow humans that he walked up to the authorities and said, "here I am, take me," because he thought this would help save the world. Although it didn't, in fact, serve any higher purpose, because God doesn't exist.

Now here I sit, two thousand years later, in the Church that bears the name of the very authorities who killed this man and later co-opted the power of his name for themselves. And we say, isn't it wonderful that this man bore the sins of the world - the sins of those who came before him and the sins of those who came after him and the sins we have yet to commit? Isn't it wonderful that whatever we do - treat each other badly, treat ourselves badly, keep participating in systems of injustice - we'll be forgiven through the death of Jesus? We believe God will make it right in the end! "They" killed him, and our great God accepted his death as a sacrifice and promised us that from now on, he'll be fighting on "our" side.

Is this not shameful?? We are looking squarely at a hideous thing that humans did to another human, and we drag God in to justify it?!

I think the distinction between "forgiveness" and "redemption" is important here. Forgiveness, as my one-time Jesuit guru Fr. Robert Spitzer put it, is the intention to forget. It is taking something crappy and giving it the gift of a permanent burial. Redemption, on the other hand, is taking something worthless and giving it worth. Redemption occurs when our imperfections allow us to connect with others. Redemption happens when a man's death on the cross inspires millions of good works.

In my current theology class the instructor's overarching message seems to be (and here I'm radically simplifying, so you can safely assume that the lack of nuance is my own): Jesus's work - of working against unjust systems of power - was continued by the first Christians, then corrupted by the Roman empire. "Imperial Christianity" then ruled, at least in the Catholic Church, until Vatican II. Now we need to repent and get back to our roots.

But I don't know. It seems to me that the first Christians were more concerned about the imminent coming of God's kingdom; and since we can be relatively sure at this point that Jesus's death didn't bring about God's kingdom, at least in the way that they and Jesus thought it would, it's not clear to me that that's something we can go back to. Moreover, there have been men and women through the centuries who have followed Jesus's teachings - studied his work, fed the poor, clothed the naked, worked for justice - even within the power system that the Church developed. On the other side, of course, there's the incredible violence - physical, psychological, spiritual - that has been done and continues to be done in the name of Christianity. We can't just blithely move on without taking responsibility for that.

I don't know enough about any of this. But I know that we can't change the past and we can only change the future through the sum of our individual actions. So this is what the cross says to me, right now, this year, as an atheist Catholic or a Catholic atheist or whatever it is that I am:

I don't believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead. But I can be part of Jesus's resurrection when I learn about his dream of the kingdom of God and work to bring it about.

I don't believe that God redeemed our sins through Jesus's death. But I can be part of the redemption of the Cross, when I regularly reflect on the gross injustice in it and use that reflection as fuel to work against injustice and violence in my life and in my world.

And with that...it's back to my regular life of nothing so highfalutin as any of that. FYI, the lambs survived their surgery and are all spruced up for the slaughter tomorrow.

in case more proof were needed that this whole "lamb of God" thing is perverse...