One of the points the gospel makes to us is that the reason the Son of God had to undergo crucifixion for our sake is that we are a species that, given the freedom to chose any and every response to the Son of God, opted for crucifixion for him. We did it. Us. That’s who we are and it’s what we do.
Nor was it a one off. We’ve done it so many times in our history that you have have to be a blind fool to be surprised when we do it again (as we are now doing here in the US).
Americans keep saying, “That’s not who we are” and the entire rest of the world keeps saying, “Are you sure about that? Cuz it looks like that’s exactly who you are.”
Americans, swollen with pride and filled with the lie of our “Chosen Nation” secular messianism that has been in our DNA since our founding, are perpetually amazed and repelled by the reality of original sin. But the truth is, we have been, by grace, cocooned from the violence and darkness in our soul by the ease and false comfort of our prosperity. We congratulate ourselves that we would never have fallen for a Hitler when the reality is that we live three meals away from pogroms, Klan rallies, lynchings, and scapegoating violence that would have made a Nuremburg rally look tame.
It is customary, when original sin is mentioned, to begin the the game of blaming God for allowing us to be what we scream at the top of our lungs for the freedom to be and to (in many cases) simultaneously arraign God for both not existing and for being evil.
But, of course, it is dumb to blame a non-existent God for what we do and it is dumb to argue that a non-existent God does evil since non-existent things famously don’t do anything. The reality is that all this blame-shifting is simply a juvenile attempt to avoid responsibility for what our species constantly does through our fault, through our fault, through our own most grievous fault.
Why did Jesus have to die on the cross for our sins? Because that’s what we chose to do to him. God permitted us to do it, foresaw from all eternity that we would do it, and submitted, out of love for us to undergo it. But the suffering was all because of us, the love was all God’s.
One particularly sick theology tells us that God is a sadist who wanted to destroy us but that Jesus, the eldest child in an abusive family, stepped between us and his psychotic Father and took all the torture and murder he meant to pour out on us in order to somehow slake his abusive Father’s thirst for human blood.
Rubbish.
Jesus died to save us from our sins–our murderous, dysfunctional, insane, chaotic sins that are what nailed him to the cross. He did not die to save us from his Father. He died to bring us to the Father who sent him to save us and whom he loves with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. That is why the message of the apostles is, very consistently, “This Jesus whom you crucified, God raised for our salvation.” All the death and evil was from us. All the love and mercy–a mercy so complete that it even took the murder of the Son of God and made it the vehicle of our salvation–is from God.
Why did Jesus have to die on the Cross? Because that’s was we chose to do to him–and, somehow or other, keep choosing to do to him again and again and again throughout our history. We freely and sovereignly chose the means by which we made clear the desperation of our plight as fallen predators. God freely and sovereignly chose to take the worst shit in the world that we could think to do and make that the means by which he would pour out his unstoppable love for us.
Lent is for facing that fact and asking for the same inbreaking of grace that raised Jesus from the dead to break in again, right here and right now.
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