We should be joyful always in the knowledge that God delights in us, and that Jesus not only come to reconcile us to God, but to teach us that God has always been very near, eager to be in close, loving relationship. (Philippians 4: 4-8)
For Jesus’ apostle Paul. immersed in the deep knowledge of the scriptures of Israel, called and sent by the Risen Jesus to teach his gospel to all the world, the great news he wants to share is that our relationship with God has been restored in Jesus. Indeed, from the perspective of God’s loving heart, this original connection of love never was gone; it was we who seemed unwilling or unable to grasp that God could delight in us. The Greek word that Paul uses repeatedly to name this restoration of relationship is “katalasso.” For Paul. “katalasso” as the restoration of relationship is not only the meaning of Jesus’s life but it is the job description of everyone called to follow Jesus or to communicate this awesome reality to others. Paul uses forms of the word “katalasso” frequently in the letters in which he focuses on the centrality of Jesus’ death and resurrection. One of the most powerful of these “katalasso statements” is in the second one he wrote to the contentious community in Corinth, in which he joyfully claims that, in Christ, God has begun a new creation, and we who have become one in Christ are helpers in bringing it about:
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”(2 Cor 5:18.)
In church history, the meaning of this concept of reconciliation has been fraught with legalistic explanations of the machinery of this process, including such extreme distortions as penal substitutionary atonement, which in its darkest expressions, implies a God so angry, offended and disgusted by humanity’s sinfulness that he demands a cosmic retribution in the form of the death of his son. This seems to me a spectacular misunderstanding of Paul’s and a tragic reversal of the message Jesus embodies of an unfailingly tender God. It is natural for a person to feel revulsion and horror, rather than reverent awe, when Abraham is about to slaughter his son Isaac to prove his faithfulness to God. Even as little children we are broken hearted, even traumatized, at the realization that a little lamb must have its throat cut to make for our sacred meal. We should trust our God-knit hearts and spirit-lighted minds to reject the idea that God is a brutal bully, more like an enraged feudal Lord, than a loving parent. I understand that the biblical language of sacrifice, ransom and atonement requires much reasoning and interpretation, but our engagement with awe, wonder, and mystery, should not be silenced by the reproach to have “faith”, a demand for assent to a legalistic formula. This understanding of faith is an affront to the teaching of Jesus and the prophets about the faithfulness and steadfastness of God’s love.
In this light, it may be more helpful to think of Jesus’ mission as restoration. “Reconciliation” has acquired an aftertaste of “propiation”, the attitude to the gods at the heart of pagan theologies of the ancient world. Propitiation is rooted in postures of pleasing, placating, appeasing, even groveling in a pantomime of self-loathing. Restoration denotes the liberating revelation of God’s justice that the prophets of Israel so famously reveal. Restorative justice is the prophetic game changer for worship and social relations. not the retributive justice of getting even, or the transactional reward and punishment of coercive behavior management. Preeminent biblical scholar and biographer of Paul N.T. Wright locates this understanding of restoration in the teaching of the prophets of Israel, which were the life shaping scriptures of Jesus’ apostle Paul:
According to the prophets, Israel’s God had abandoned Jerusalem, had departed from the Temple, leaving it open to invasion and destruction. But the prophets didn’t leave it at that. They promised a great restoration. Two of Israel’s greatest prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel, focused these long-range promises on the assurance that the One God, having apparently abandoned his people to their fate, would return. (Wright, N. T.. Paul: A Biography (pp. 47-48)
To better understand the relationship of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to God’s plan for restoration, I have found so helpful the great Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr’s coinage of the term “AT -ONE- MENT.” This intentional breaking down and rebuilding of the word “atonement” replaces the deeply problematic (but stubbornly rooted) misunderstanding of the cross as a punishment intended for human beings but executed on a more worthy victim. In Rohr’s most comprehensive work, “The Universal Christ”, he helps us imagine the purpose of the Incarnation, and ultimately, of all creation itself, as an ongoing process of becoming ONE with God . This transformation into “one body in Christ” is similar to the understandings of many spiritual traditions: life as a journey into unity, holiness as wholeness, growth an organic process of transformation into integrity and full relationships. Judaism’s central prayer, and what Jesus names the greatest commandment, the “Shema” , can be interpreted as comprehending the essence of the divine as the oneness of heaven and earth in the “person” of God:
Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and all time. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. These words which I command you today shall be on your heart.
Similarly, the Sufi mystic poet Hafiz can say, “I am a hole in the flute that the Christ's breath moves through listen to this music. I am the concert from the mouth of every creature singing with the myriad chorus.”
All of the Torah, Law, and Wisdom Poetry of the Bible proclaims that contrary to conventional opinion, God love for all creation, including all of God’s people, never ends. Not only is God never giving up on us, but in the life and teaching of Jesus, God is literally close enough for us to touch. As John the Baptist, says. You just need to turn around and look for him. That is really what repent means:turn around again. “Just look over your shoulder!” the high priest of Motown, Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops sings. Jesus, the kingdom of God is very near to you.
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