Services

Servers

Occasional offices

Music

Other

LSM homepage

TUESDAY OF HOLY WEEK, Year A: March 18 2008

Did Jesus have to die?

One thing is clear from the accounts of the Passion in the Gospels — Jesus did not want to die; He did not want to die on a Cross. He was not crazy. He was not a masochist; He did not entertain pathological ambitions of martyrdom; He was not a first century equivalent of a modern suicide bomber. In the accounts of Gethsemane, the Evangelists portray Him appalled (understandably) and horrified at the prospect of what awaited Him if He remained there for the police to come and take Him.

He won through his terror to a kind of calm acceptance of the Father's will, but He is quite explicit that this is not at all what He Himself wants: 'let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done'. He will accept the Father's will even if it means the Cross, but humanly speaking He most certainly does not want the Cross itself.

Well then, did the Father want Jesus to be crucified? And, if so, why? Down the centuries Christians have debated and pondered the question, and many opinions have been put forward, but no one single view has been accepted as the official teaching of the Church on the matter of why Jesus had to die.

The mission of Jesus from the Father is not a mission to be crucified; indeed, Jesus said that He was for life — 'abundant life. I have come that they might have life'. What the Father wanted of Jesus is that He should show us what it is to be a human being — for that is who Jesus is — GOD's way of being human.

Jesus accepted the Cross in love and obedience, but His obedience at the deepest level was to be human. And so it is that we can say of Him that He is the first member of the human race in whom human nature is perfectly realised and comes to fulfilment; He is the first human being for whom to live is simply to love — to love 'to the end' — for whom love is all His meaning. He shows us that this is what human beings are for — that the whole point of human life is that we should live together in mutual trust and generous and loving self-giving, one to another. When we encounter Jesus He seems to strike a chord in us: we resonate to Him because we instinctively recognise that He is the kind of human being we long to be, and yet dare not be. For His way of being human is to take the risks of love which we are too afraid, too self-protective, to take.

It is in this way that Jesus represents a radical shift in our human evolution — indeed it is He Himself who is that radical shift. We know that we human beings have evolved from that animal nature which is part of the great scheme of things, into being the kind of creatures which use language, and which are conscious of the claims made by such things as beauty, truth, goodness, and which have a sense of right and wrong, an awareness of mystery and holiness.

But unlike the other members of the animal kingdom we human beings are a troubled species. We ache for something beyond ourselves; we sense that there is something ultimate and lasting beyond all the transitoriness and tragedy and futility which we experience in life; we are restless for eternity.

And yet the swamps and jungles of our pre-history are not all that long ago; that ruthless world of 'nature red in tooth and claw' is only just behind us; we have only recently emerged from it; and it still exercises its power upon us, manifesting itself most particularly in that compelling instinct to survive at all costs, at no matter whose expense. That is the law of the jungle, and in various forms it continues to operate among us and within us in all kinds of ways. And part of the problem is that so often we are blind to its presence and we do not see what is really going on in our responses and reactions to the people and circumstances of our lives. So much of our behaviour springs from the root of selfishness which is deep within us, but which we do not recognise and acknowledge.

Most people, if they think about it at all, would say, "Well, that is how it is; we just have to accept that that is so". They assume, without questioning the assumption, that as a species we human beings have evolved and developed as far as we can go. It's a pity that we still lie and steal and cheat and murder and pillage and wage war against one another, but that's how it is, that's the way things are, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. It's how we are made.

But in the figure of Jesus we are shown that this is not so, that our evolution has not run its course, and that the law of survival, of self-preservation at no matter whose expense, is not the last word. Our human nature is still on the way, is still developing, and our potential is not yet fully realised — for, in the figure of Jesus, we can see that in fact there is another law, another principle, even more fundamental, because it is the law of GOD's own being — the law of self-giving, self-sacrifice, out of love and for love's sake. The law of self-sacrifice, whereby the individual looks not to his or her own interests, but to the interests of others, clinging to nothing, but emptying himself/herself in the service and for the well-being of others, and seeking to do so for love's sake.

But this is too radical for us: we are frightened by it, and so we settle for what is less. And in doing so we settle for being less than what GOD has created us to be; we settle for being less than human, for being less than beings created in the image and likeness of GOD.

In our heart of hearts we recognise that there is something in our nature which calls us to self-loss, self-giving for the sake of others. We recognise, however dimly, that we are the kind of creatures that finds their true fulfilment and meaning in letting go — letting go privilege and safeguard and status. As Jesus pointed out, if we persist in clinging to what we are and to what we possess, we shall lose it. But that is the risk we fear to take.

In the things that He said, and in the way that He lived and died — generously and courageously, Jesus is underlining that invitation which we faintly hear within ourselves (but which for the most part we choose to ignore) to venture into this unknown territory of sacrificial love — the love which loves 'to the end' — abandoning our own choices and preferences, and allowing ourselves to be reshaped in ways which we cannot predict or know in advance.

This is so difficult for us. We do not like venturing ourselves to the unknown, it is too risky, too uncomfortable. But in a very real sense the whole evolutionary process is based on risk, on moving step by slow and faltering step into the unknown.

Mostly we prefer to settle for what we are, for what we have made of ourselves. We settle for the person we have become. We settle for our own self-image because we are afraid to be made more fully in the image and likeness of GOD — the GOD who gives Himself, gives evermore, spares nothing of Himself, keeps back nothing of Himself, but ventures everything, risks everything for us 'to the end'.

And that is why Jesus had to die: that is why we put Him to death. Jesus was the first of our species to live wholly by the law of sacrifice for love's sake. He was the first human being who had no fear of living by that law — which is the law of life itself. He was the first of our kind to have no fear of being fully human, of living as one made in the image and likeness of GOD. And we could not bear it; we cannot bear it; so we killed Him.