The Hypocritical Christian

Read Mark 14:53-15:40

…He suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, died, and was buried.

So goes a small phrase of the Apostles’ Creed, an early memory device taught to people to encapsulate the Christian faith in a few brief words. Today when churches and organizations write statements of faith they are normally wordy, not pithy. That is the result of over thinking and unlimited paper.

The Apostles’ Creed works on an economy of words. There is much of Jesus life that is not mentioned: no miracles, no healings, no excorcisms, no teaching, and no baptism. Not every Christian denomination or group uses the Apostle’s Creed (“We have no creed but JESUS!”), but you might be hard pressed to find a group of Christians that can not agree with at least 95% of the creed.

Christianity has always been a faith that is rooted in a specific, verifiable, historical time. Pontius Pilate is mentioned outside of the Bible in documents that still exist. He was a real person who had imperial responsibilities in a region that included Jerusalem during the years in and around 30 CE.

Of course the Apostles’ Creed doesn’t say why Jesus was crucified. The creed is not an evangelism tool, it’s function is not to convince someone of the faith, but rather to be an acknowledgement of the faith by a believer.

This blog has been a project that has taken far too long to work through the Gospel of Mark. It is also been primarily aimed at someone who already knows about Jesus and who he is. For better or worse that is how it has played itself out.

The title of this post is a shorthand. “God Doesn’t Care…” That ellipsis is your clue. The rest of the sentiment is as much as we do about the things that we care about.

Why did Jesus have to die? Because people care way too much about the wrong things. Here are a list of the wrong things that Jesus did during his public ministry that led him to being arrested, beaten, and turned over to the Roman authorities for capital punishment.

1. He healed people on the Sabbath, in other words he felt it was more important to do good on the day of rest than to blindly honor the day of rest.
2. He ate with outcasts and people whom the “good” people of society deemed to be on the outside. He cared more about a community that ever expanded with mercy and grace at its center than the lines and boundaries that were drawn between people.
3. He was willing to be in contact with lepers, blind people, children, and women who were menstruating. Not one person was ever unclean in his eyes.
4. He called out religious leaders and people who came up with narrow interpretations of God’s law to make it ever harder and harder for people to feel a part of good society as the real vipers and sinners.
5. He openly questioned whether station in society mattered, whether wealth and success equaled the blessing of God, and if making money off of poor people through burdensome taxes, bad exchange rates at the temple, and other forms of organized corruption were just.
6. He suggested that the religious authorities of his day might value their positions of honor more than their piety.

That list can go on and on. Interestingly enough he did not openly question the authority of the Roman Empire to rule over the traditional land of Israel. In fact, he told people that they should do whatever a roman soldier asked and more. Jesus was even quoted as suggesting that the taxes paid were to be paid because they were Caesar’s due. To get Rome to put him to death the local authorities of Jerusalem had to convince Pilate that Jesus was seditious and claimed to be the King of the Jews.

So why does he have to die? As I mentioned above the Apostle’s Creed leaves the stuff of Jesus life out and focuses on the fact that he “was crucified dead and was buried.” Now to be clear all of the things that Jesus did in that list of 6 were good things and worthy of our attention and response. Those 6 things are simply not reason enough for the only begotten Son of God to die.

Many Christians think that they are reason enough. I suspect that they have a view of Jesus that makes him like Ghandi or Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. namely a peace-loving person who speaks truth to power and becomes a threat to the powers that be and therefore must be stopped. That is often the fate of the person who bucks the system; crushed by the machinations of power to maintain the status quo. I suggest that is also too little a reason for Jesus death.

Later in Apostles Creed after the section on Jesus there is a brief litany of doctrines that the Christian believes in: “I believe in the holy, catholic church (little C), the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”

This is the part that the other Christians emphasize. Jesus is not just some worthy do-gooder who runs afoul of the authorities. That’s no savior for the world. For these Christians, the death of Jesus is about the forgiveness of sins. It is safe to say that for them the death of Jesus is ONLY about the forgiveness of sins.

That forgiveness would include the things I mentioned above in that list of 6 things that Jesus did to cause trouble; however, they tend to focus on the things that people do individually that violate the 10 commandments. So, under that formulation, Jesus’ death pays the penalty for all who believe in Jesus for their murders, lies, adulteries, stealing, idolatry, and coveting. They say that Jesus dies to free each of us from the penalty of our sin which is death. His death provides a means to be right with God because his blood is shed for us vicariously and becomes our substitute in judgment.

Apologies for oversimplifying some really important theological concepts. Truth be told though, this idea of why Jesus had to die is also too small. In some ways it is arrogance to suggest that the reason that the Son of God has to die is because I got in trouble in the second grade for bringing a toy car to school, had it taken up by the teacher, months later took it back from her desk, and lied when she asked if I had taken it out of her desk. (It was a Hot Wheels of the Speed Racer Mark V so as the kids say if you know you know!)

Fun fact: I started this post 4 years ago! Apparently, then I wasn’t ready to say why Jesus had to die. In the interim, I have led some fairly comprehensive in-person Bible Studies on Luke, Hebrews, Philippians, and Romans. Through that process and my own study, prayer, pondering and angst I have wrestled with this seemingly simple question: why did Jesus have to die?

Again, I point out that the Apostle’s Creed does not list any details of Jesus life apart from his virgin birth, his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, and his resurrection. Forgiveness of individual sins is a corollary at best in the Creed and grouped in with a litany that includes belief in the Holy Spirit, the Church and baptism. (Note: it is true that in the Nicene Creed we have a purpose for Jesus: “for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven”, but none of that is explicitly in the Gospel of Mark. Particularly not in Chapters 14 and 15.)

Stay with me. I have wrestled with this question a long time and I am going to sum up with answers that may or may not satisfy. I am prepared to be wrong, and I will admit that while I can show my work like any good math student, I am not going to make this post even longer by going through it all here. I am simply going to go to the two conclusions I have drawn (so far) and humbly say that I am still working out all the details.

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (The only words of Jesus on the cross mentioned by Mark and translated: My God, My God why have you forsaken me?)

“Bartender you see, the wine that is drinking me, came from the vine that hung Judas from the devil’s tree, its roots deep, deep in the ground.”

These are lyrics from a song by Dave Matthews (who while not a professing Christian is often a pretty solid theologian) about a person who is bargaining with the bartender because of his fear of death. Roots deep, deep in the ground. The sin problem. It has some very deep roots that go well beyond both our everyday individual sins to encompass the extraordinary depths of our collective evil (racism, war crimes, genocide, child abuse, corruption to name only a sampling) and the ultimate penalty of those sins great and small and cumulative. Death.

Not only that, if that weren’t enough, but the sin problem is also the reason for the tortured natural world. What the Bible calls futility. Futility is why there are weeds in the garden and why there are virus that make us sick. Futility is why we have to work so hard to grow food (or a houseplant) and why dogs and cats so often fail to live in harmony. And all over that futility is the shroud of death.

The sin problem encompasses so much more than the foibles and excesses of you and I.

Roots deep, deep in the ground.

I have come to the conclusion that when Jesus is crucified, he became sin itself. Not simply that he took on all of our individual sins (as the atonement crowd likes to trumpet), but that he literally became the embodiment of sin. This is why he is forsaken by God. Like apathy to love and hate, the absence of feeling to strong feeling; sin is the absence of God. When Christ cries out these words from the cross it is because he is feeling for the only time in his life what it is to exist in a vacuum where God is not present.

Why did Christ have to die? So that sin could be destroyed. He dies to begin the unravelling of the eons old sin problem. To allow sin itself to stand in judgment before a righteous God. So that all the evil (sin) that ever was and ever shall be is dealt with in its entirety. Jesus became sin and took on the judgment that sin merited so that it could be dealt with once and forever. That is why he has to die, and in accepting the cold fingers of death (that we all experience and fear as the separation from all that love is) he puts himself in the position to defeat that enemy as well.

If that conclusion doesn’t make sense to you then I apologize because I have yet to fully comprehend how to express the thoughts in words. I fear it is a conclusion that goes beyond a rational explanation.

But I am thoroughly convinced that something that can best be described as cosmic is happening on the cross.

I mentioned two conclusions. The second one is much easier to express. At the end of the day the cross is not about judgment but about mercy. While judgment is being rendered (on sin through the death of Christ) what is being pronounced is the exceptional, never-ending mercy of God.

Not mercy limited to pardon extended to those who ask for it. But mercy flowing like a never-ending stream that overwhelms all who wade into it. For the One who is the rightful Judge is also the One who embodies the sin.

And that feels more like the mysteries of grace to me.

Earlier I said that the title of this post was God Doesn’t Care… (as much as we do about the things that we care about) and that is still true. The better completion of the title would be:

God Doesn’t Care as Much as We Do About the Things that We Care About Because He Cares So Completely About the One Thing that Truly Mattered.

Now that is wordy and not at all pithy!

Feel free to use this Bible Study for your own groups or discussion.  It is freely given. If you do I merely ask that you acknowledge where you got it and if you find it useful that you encourage others to seek it out. It is freely given and written with fear, foreboding, and prayer by a fellow hypocrite who is simply trying to figure out the road ahead.