Violence in the name of God. Good Friday 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

The Passion According to John

It is finished. Those are the final Jesus utters before he dies in J0hn’s Passion account, and thank God it is finished: the suffering Jesus goes through is horrific. But here’s the thing about John’s Gospel: the narrator and Jesus often speak on multiple levels at once. So when Jesus says, It is finished, he is not simply referring to his personal anguish. There is more at stake here than that, and much more comes to an end on the cross than Jesus’ earthly life.

And the biggest thing that comes to an end is the whole bloody business of killing creatures to please God. Human cultures have done this for ages. When the Temple of Solomon was completed, the Bible tells us that on the day of its dedication, 22,000 oxen and 120, 000 sheep were killed. And from then on, the Temple functioned basically as a massive slaughterhouse, with animals being ritually killed by the hundreds and the thousands every day. The Jewish Talmud recounts one day when 1.2 million animals were sacrificed; it describes the priests, who were essentially butchers, wading up to their knees in blood.

It was a vast and brutal religious business. All of Israel participated in it, but even at its height there were those who questioned it and abhorred it. In Psalm 50, the LORD says, Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? (v.13). In the book of the prophet Amos, God declares, Even though you offer me your burnt offerings . . .  I will not accept them; and the offerings . . . of your fatted animals I will not look upon (Amos 5:22). But animal sacrifice continued because people liked it; we humans like scapegoats: we like to lay our guilt and our garbage on other creatures. And all too often we believe that God approves of that, that God is like us, bloodthirsty, and that God somehow takes pleasure in sacred violence.

But all of that comes crashing to an end on the cross. In Christ, God says, “Enough! We’re done with that.” Jesus invokes the whole sacramental system of ancient Israel — and then blows it apart. This is the point that that the Letter to the Hebrews makes tonight: Every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God . . . Where there is forgiveness of [sins], there is no longer any offering for sin (Hebrews 10:11-12, 18).

The whole business of killing to please God is finished, God never desired it, and in Jesus God ends it. No more sacrifices, no more blood spilled, no more violence done in God’s name. Now, if we would only get that message and live accordingly.

We don’t sacrifice animals anymore, but we still commit spiritual, emotional, and at times physical violence in the name of God — beginning with ourselves. I don’t think a week goes by that I don’t hear about or deal with someone hating herself or beating herself up because of some perceived failure or flaw. People can do a real violence to themselves when they fail to live up to whatever high standards they have set. We are called to honestly and humbly confess our sins and acknowledge our brokenness, but only in the light of love. God desires always to forgive and to heal and to make whole. God does not need or want us to do violence to ourselves. On the cross, Jesus takes all that violence into himself and takes it away. Self-flagellation and self-punishment and self-hatred have no place in God’s reign. It is finished.

And when we don’t beat ourselves up, all too often we project our violence out on to others. We all too easily scapegoat and demonize other people. It would be impossible to accurately assess how many have died in religious violence over the centuries, but some scholars have tried, and most estimates number such deaths in the tens of millions. But even when we are not actually killing, we can still do violence by excluding, reviling, and despising. We do it when we judge others harshly. We do it when we say hurtful words, words that wound others because we think we’re right and that God is on our side. We do it when we drive a wedge between us and them, denigrating Muslims or illegal aliens or Latinos or Republicans or Democrats or any group we feel self-righteous towards and look down on. That is spiritual and emotional violence that has real and destructive consequences, and there is no room for that in God’s reign. It is finished.

The crucifixion of Jesus exposes us and reveals the worst in human nature, not only our willingness to commit violence in all its forms, but our effort to justify that violence with divine approval. But the cross is God’s definitive “No!’ to all of that. Jesus endures the worst without retaliating in any way. There is no violence in him, for God is love. Never again can we invoke God to justify hurting ourselves and hurting others.

So tonight, as we kneel in prayer and light our candles before the cross, we can give to Christ whatever violence we carry in our hearts and let go of it. If we are hating ourselves or despising others, if we have been speaking hurtful words or doing hurtful things, then Christ can save us and set us free from that burden. If you are carrying violence in your heart tonight, surrender it to the God of love and hear those blessed words spoken to you: It is finished.