In the cross of Christ I glory

I regard everything in the Bible to be most powerful at its metaphorical level. That’s not to say that things didn’t happen in just the way they are described. It is to say that the meaning and power behind those stories has greater impact when we consider them metaphorically. That is after all, the reason the stories were saved and retold.

The same might apply to our grand theological statements. Some of which have their origins in metaphors.
For example, there is an online debate taking place amongst some of my colleagues. Some say that Jesus died for our sins, in other words, he paid the price of his life to free us from our sinfulness. Others say that he was simply a martyr.

I have no doubt that the nuances of these debates are lost on me. Perhaps there are ramifications far beyond my meager understanding. I need to boil things down to their simplest components to figure them out.

So, the idea of Jesus paying the price of sin, as if God needed a human sacrifice to atone for our sinfulness, is ancient and amongst the earliest ways the followers of Jesus understood what he was doing. I think that this is sometimes called “redemption theology.”

It’s a strange idea, to say that the God who is so powerful that everything was created would also need a sacrifice to make things right. But that’s not the original idea of redemption. The redemption price was paid by a relative. So, the original redemption perspective was intended to convey the idea that God is an intimate—like a parent or sibling. I don’t mind singing hymns about redemption or saying Eucharistic Prayers that say as much, because they also remind us of how near God is to us.

I must say too, that the idea that Jesus is just a martyr falls far short of telling us the true impact of the birth, life, passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus the Christ. But a martyr he also was.

Sure, God is powerful enough to grant us salvation without requiring a human sacrifice or martyr, but that’s not how it happened. We need to grapple with how it happened and delight in all the ways us mere human have tried to understand and explain those amazing stories. Every story and every metaphor falls short. We are weak but somehow, something of the sublime truth breaks into our attempts to understand God.

In the cross of Christ I glory,
towering o’er the wrecks of time;
all the light of sacred story
gathers round its head sublime.

The text of this famous hymn was written by John Bowring in the 19th Century. The tune it is usually sung to is a rousing kind of march, making it sort of fun to sing.

It expresses the point I usually make in my Good Friday or Palm Sunday sermons. The word “sublime” refers to how the cross, an implement of torture and death has become for us a powerful symbol of hope and life. We argue too much about theology and forget to let the power of story, symbol and metaphor inform our hearts and carry us into a deeper appreciation of the intimacy of God the Creator.