The
Inner Passion of the Christ
By
the Rev. Lee Woofenden
Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, April 4, 2004
Readings
Isaiah
53 By his wounds we are healed
Who
has believed our message and to whom has
the arm of the Lord been revealed? He
grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground. He
had no beauty or majesty to attract us
to him, nothing in his appearance that
we should desire him. He was despised
and rejected by mortals, a man of
sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom others hide their
faces he was despised, and we held him
of no account.
Surely
he took up our infirmities and carried
our sorrows, yet we considered him
stricken by God, smitten by him, and
afflicted. But he was pierced for our
transgressions, he was crushed for our
iniquities; the punishment that brought
us peace was upon him, and by his wounds
we are healed. We all, like sheep, have
gone astray, each of us has turned to
our own way; and the Lord has laid on
him the iniquity of us all. He was
oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not
open his mouth; he was led like a lamb
to the slaughter, and as a sheep before
her shearers is silent, so he did not
open his mouth. By oppression and
judgment he was taken away. Yet who of
his generation considered that he was
cut off from the land of the living for
the transgression of my people, to whom
the blow was due? He was assigned a
grave with the wicked, and with the rich
in his death, though he had done no
violence, nor was any deceit in his
mouth.
Yet
it was the Lord's will to crush him and
cause him to suffer, and though you make
his life a guilt offering, he will see
his offspring and prolong his days, and
the will of the Lord will prosper in his
hand. After the suffering of his soul,
he will see and be satisfied; by his
knowledge my righteous servant will
justify many, and he will bear their
iniquities. Therefore I will give him a
portion among the great, and he will
divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto
death, and was numbered with the
transgressors. For he bore the sin of
many, and made intercession for the
transgressors.
Mark
15:22-39 The crucifixion of Jesus
They
brought Jesus to the place called
Golgotha (which means The Place of the
Skull). Then they offered him wine mixed
with myrrh, but he did not take it. And
they crucified him. Dividing up his
clothes, they cast lots to see what each
would get.
It
was the third hour when they crucified
him. The written notice of the charge
against him read: The King of the Jews.
They crucified two robbers with him, one
on his right and one on his left. And
the scripture was fulfilled which says,
"He was counted with the lawless
ones" Those who passed by hurled
insults at him, shaking their heads and
saying, "So! You who are going to
destroy the temple and build it in three
days, come down from the cross and save
yourself!"
In
the same way the chief priests and the
teachers of the law mocked him among
themselves. "He saved others,"
they said, "but he can't save
himself! Let this Christ, this King of
Israel, come down now from the cross,
that we may see and believe." Those
crucified with him also heaped insults
on him.
At
the sixth hour darkness came over the
whole land until the ninth hour. And at
the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud
voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani?"--which means,
"My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?"
When
some of those standing near heard this,
they said, "Listen, he's calling
Elijah."
One
man ran, filled a sponge with wine
vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered
it to Jesus to drink. "Now leave
him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to
take him down," he said.
With
a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.
The
curtain of the temple was torn in two
from top to bottom. And when the
centurion, who stood there in front of
Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he
died, he said, "Surely this man was
the Son of God!"
Arcana
Coelestia #4735.9 The Lord's passion
The
Christian Church of today knows nothing
else but that "the blood of the
Lamb" means the Lord's passion. For
it believes that people are saved solely
through the Lord's passion, and that it
was to endure this that he was sent into
the world. This belief may be enough for
simple people who cannot grasp deeper
secrets. Yet the Lord's passion was
actually the last stage of his
temptation, by which he fully glorified
his humanity (Luke 24:26; John 12:23,
27, 28; 13:31, 32; 17:1, 4, 5). And
"the blood of the Lamb" is the
same as the divine truth, or that which
is holy flowing from his Divine Human;
so it is the same as "the blood of
the covenant."
Sermon
He
was pierced for our transgressions, he
was crushed for our iniquities; the
punishment that brought us peace was
upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. (Isaiah 53:5)
Well,
I've finally gone and done it. I finally
went to see Mel's Movie: "The
Passion of the Christ." I figured
that if I was going to do it, I'd better
do it before Palm Sunday and Holy Week.
I must admit, I have been avoiding this
movie. You have probably read the
reviews, and some of you may have seen
it. Just as the reviews say, it is a
relentless bloodbath. It's a very
difficult movie to sit through.
The
scenes focus on the physical suffering.
And I think that is why, at the end of
the movie, I felt unsatisfied. Yes, it
was a portrayal of the brutality that
took place in those days. And I don't
doubt that there were floggings just as
brutal as the one depicted in the movie.
Yet it seemed that the main point of the
movie was to show the brutality, the
suffering, and the physical pain. There
were brief flashbacks of Jesus' life and
message--and long, drawn-out scenes of
physical torture. The whipping scene was
certainly the longest and most explicit
I have ever seen in any movie. And the
scene of Jesus bearing his cross from
the city of Jerusalem out to Golgotha
seemed to take up about half the movie!
It just kept going and going, with Jesus
being brutalized the whole way.
Yes,
it was a very difficult movie to sit
through. And it left me unsatisfied. It
seemed to focus on the outer
suffering--which was, indeed, real--to
the neglect of the inner
suffering that was taking place within
Jesus, and that he struggled with
throughout his life.
So
my theme for this morning is "The Inner
Passion of the Christ."
This
movie was touted beforehand as an
accurate portrayal of the Gospel story
of Christ's last twelve hours. To some
extent, it was. But it did take
liberties. And it certainly was an interpretation,
just as every other movie about Jesus is
an interpretation.
In
particular, this movie draws on
traditional Christian theology, which
says that the Lord's suffering was
necessary in order to pay the price for
our sins. That price had to be paid in
order to satisfy the wrath, or the
justice, of God the Father. "All
we, like sheep, have gone astray"
(Isaiah 53:6). And God the Father is
angry with us because we have sinned. Or
God the Father has a "perfect sense
of justice," which must be
satisfied. Someone had to pay the
price for our sins. And that someone had
to be Jesus Christ--God's own Son.
In
this view, our salvation is in each drop
of Christ's blood. And in the movie,
there was plenty of it! From the
perspective of the movie's director,
Christ's blood was the salvation of our
souls. So the blood and gore become the
focus of the movie.
This
idea of salvation strikes me as similar
to the idea that the police must put
someone away for every murder, even if
they get the wrong man. Someone
has to pay for the life that was taken!
Or it is similar to our country's
response to the attacks of September 11,
2001. Someone had to pay for it! Even if
we were not quite sure who did it, or
couldn't quite get at them, we had to
punish someone for what was done
to us. And the punishment had to be big!
It is the same in the traditional
Christian view of God the Father's
attitude toward Christ's suffering. Someone
had suffer for the sins that we humans
committed! And if we weak and limited
humans couldn't suffer enough to pay the
price, then God's Son Jesus would do it
for us.
From
our church's perspective, this view of
God's nature is based on an
interpretation of the Bible that is
comes from physical-mindedness rather
than from spiritual understanding. I
cannot accept such a view of God. And I
presume, since you are here in this
church, that you cannot accept it
either.
Emanuel
Swedenborg, the great theologian of our
church, utterly rejected this vindictive
view of God. One of his most potent
expressions of this is in True
Christian Religion #132. I would
like to read part of it to you.
Swedenborg had a flair for the dramatic
at times, and I found this passage quite
compelling. He introduces the subject by
saying:
It
is a fundamental error on the part of
the Christian Church to believe that
the passion on the cross was the real
act of redemption. That error,
together with the erroneous belief in
three divine persons existing from
eternity, has so corrupted the whole
Christian Church that there is not a
scrap of spirituality left in it.
This
is what brought home to me the
realization that this movie is all about
the physical; it is not about the
spiritual at all. A vast number of
Christians focus on the physical side of
things rather than on the
spiritual--which is the true meaning and
reality of the crucifixion.
Now
let's see what Swedenborg has to say
about the traditional Christian view of
the Atonement and the Passion of Christ.
It is good to keep in mind that this was
written over two hundred years ago. Some
parts of Christianity have moved beyond
what he writes here. Other parts of
Christianity, though, are still stuck
right where he describes them. He says:
Is
there any subject that does more to
fill and pack the books of orthodox
theology today, or is taught and
driven home more zealously in
colleges, and is more often preached
and ranted about in pulpits, than the
belief that God the Father, in his
anger with the human race, not only
drove it away from him, but actually
placed it under the ban of universal
damnation, thus excommunicating it?
But because he is gracious, he
persuaded or forced his own Son to
come down and take upon himself the
sentence of damnation, so as to
appease his Father's anger--and it is
only in this way that he is able to
look upon human beings with any favor?
They
add that this was accomplished by the
Son, who, in order to take upon
himself the damnation of the human
race, allowed himself to be flogged by
the Jews, have his face spat upon, and
then be crucified as "accursed in
the sight of God" (Deuteronomy
21:23). The Father was propitiated
when this had been done, and through
his love for his Son revoked the
damnation--but only for those for whom
the Son interceded, so that he became
in perpetuity a Mediator with his
Father. These and similar phrases ring
through our churches today, re-echoing
from the walls like the echoes in
woodlands, and filling the ears of all
listeners.
But
is there anyone whose rationality is
enlightened and made whole by reading
the Bible who cannot see that God is
mercy and compassion itself, since he
is love itself and good itself, and
these qualities are his essence? And
that it is therefore a contradiction
to say that mercy itself or good
itself could look upon humans in
anger, and pass a sentence of
damnation on them, and still remain
what he is in his divine essence? Such
actions can hardly be attributed to
upright people, but rather to evil
people; nor to angels of heaven, but
rather to spirits from hell. So it is
an unspeakable crime to attribute such
acts to God.
This
is Swedenborg's Bible-based perspective
on the traditional Christian view of the
Atonement. He is saying, in essence: How
could God, who is love (1 John
4:8, 16), feel anything but love
for the human race? How could God feel
wrath toward us, and want us punished?
How could God want his own Son Jesus to
suffer for our sins, as is taught in
traditional Christianity?
These
are not things that good people feel and
do. If we are truly upright, we do not
wish evil upon our enemies. Rather, if
someone has done wrong to us, we wish
that they would reform. We don't desire
punishment for those who have hurt us,
and we don't feel vindictive toward
them. Rather, if we truly have God's
love in our heart, we wish for
reconciliation; we wish for
"atonement," to use the
Christian term. So to attribute anger,
wrath, and harsh justice to God is a
terrible insult upon the nature of the
Divine.
In
our church, we do not believe in the
kind of theology that says that the
physical suffering of Jesus Christ would
satisfy the anger, wrath, and justice of
God. We don't believe that. And if we
look at the story of the crucifixion, we
find that it was not God who
punished Jesus. It was the evil people
of his day who punished Jesus. It was human
beings who punished Jesus. And God,
I believe, was standing by in mercy,
weeping at what was taking place.
For
Jesus Christ himself, though the
physical pain was certainly terrible to
bear, the inner pain was far
greater. The inner pain was this: The
whole reason that the Lord came to this
earth was to reach out to people in
love, and to show people the truth. And
what he got from most of the people was
rejection and insults and murderous
hatred toward the truth, goodness, and
love that he was bringing to them. That
was what he met on this earth.
The
greatest passion of Christ was not the
physical suffering. It was knowing that
people were digging their own graves by
rejecting the love and the goodness and
the truth that the Lord brought to them.
It was knowing that people were making a
life of hell for themselves, and
shutting themselves out of the heaven
that the Lord longs to give us.
Christ's
suffering was not for his own sake. He
could take the physical and emotional
pain. He knew that he had a connection
with his divine Father. And he looked
out and felt a terrible pity and
compassion for the people. When he came
to the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday,
he wept over it (Luke 19:41). Later,
while he was teaching the people in the
Temple, he said, "O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and
stone those sent to you, how often I
have longed to gather your children
together, as a hen gathers her chicks
under her wings, but you were not
willing" (Matthew 23:37).
It
was out of pure mercy and love that God
came to us as Jesus. He came because he
wanted to reach out to us. And the
passion of the Christ was knowing that
so many would reject that love--that so
many were rejecting that love,
and expressing their rejection through
the insults and abuse and torture and
death that they heaped upon him. That
was the inner passion of the
Christ. It was the pain of knowing that
so many would choose eternal pain and
death over eternal life and joy.
Today,
the Lord has the same struggle in our
world. The Lord has the same struggle
with those who would reject the higher
way--the way of love and mercy and truth
and justice--and would instead grasp for
their own pleasure and power. The Lord
has the same struggle and passion in our
world that he did two thousand years
ago.
He
has the same struggle and the same
passion in each one of us as well. Jesus
is struggling in every one of us. He is
struggling in our own souls to bring us
out of our way of selfishness, out of
the way of thinking only of our own
pleasure, out of our false materialism,
and into the true and deep love that he
wishes to give us. He is struggling
within us to save each one of us, to
bring us toward the good. And he is
doing this, not for the sake of his own
pleasure and glory, but because he
loves us, and he wants us to be
happy. He wants us to be fulfilled and
satisfied. He wants us to have the same
joy and love that he feels for us.
This
is his passion within us today. This is
his passion in our world today. It is a
passion to save the entire human race.
It is a passion to save each one of us.
It is a passion to save you. It is a
passion to save me. This is the inner
passion of Christ.
I
believe that this is what he was
thinking of when he was hanging on the
cross. He was not thinking of the
physical pain. He was thinking of all
those who would come to him because he
was lifted up in that way. He had said
to his disciples, "When I am lifted
up from the earth, I will draw all
people to myself" (John 12:32). And
we can see in his struggles and his
suffering the true nature of God's love
for us: that God would come to us from
his place of complete bliss at the
center of the universe, come to us out
here in this cold and dark world, and
suffer all those things purely to show
us what God's love is truly all about.
That
was his struggle; that was his mission;
that was why he was willing to suffer
and die for us. He wanted us to know
that he, that God, will do anything
for us. God will suffer for us. God will
die for us in order to show us
what true divine love is. That is the
message. That is the passion. That is
the powerful and comforting assurance
that God gives us today.
God
is there for us. And there is nothing we
can do, there is no insult we can heap
upon our Lord, there is no type of
abandonment we can commit against our
Lord that will cause him to turn away
from us. No matter what we may have
done, no matter how bad we may think we
are, Jesus loves us; God loves
us. And God is reaching out to us,
asking us to turn toward him, to accept
him into our lives, and to live in the
love that is Jesus Christ. Amen.
Music:
Fairest Lord Jesus
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