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What is “good” about Good Friday?

Jesus and the end of violence.

 

Jack McDonald

St Martha and St Mary's Anglican Church Leuven

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Marilyn McCord Adams

(+ photo 1)

 

American Anglican priest

 the first woman Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford

 

Christ and Horrors (2006)

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Horror? 

Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist in the Democratic Republic of Congo, tells a similar story: "It was in 1999 that our first rape victim was brought into the hospital. After being raped, bullets had been fired into her genitals and thighs. I thought that was a barbaric act of war, but the real shock came three months later. Forty-five women came to us with the same story. They were all saying: 'People came into my village and raped me, tortured me.' These weren't just violent acts of war, but part of a strategy." A US study published in 2011 suggested that up to 1000 women were being raped in the DRC each day. (Church Times, 11 April 2014)

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The problem of human violence

 

The problem of horror

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Sigmund Freud

(1856-1939)

“Humanity's fundamentally aggressive instinct”

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William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)

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What is happening in human horrors?

 

René Girard

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Theory of Scapegoating (Leviticus 16)

 

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

 

“The war of all against all”

… is channelled, through scapegoating, into ...

the war of all against one.

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6 ‘Aaron is to offer the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household. 7 Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the LORD at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 8 He is to cast lots for the two goats – one lot for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat. 9 Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the LORD and sacrifice it for a sin offering. 10 But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat.

Leviticus 16: 6-10

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Jesus the Scapegoat 

1. Redemption – Jesus' death is a ransom paid to Satan. (Mark 10.45: For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.)

2. Justification – Jesus' death justifies the individual sinner before God. (Romans 5.9: Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood will we be saved through him from the wrath.)

3. Satisfaction – Jesus' death appeases the anger of God (“propitiation”), or removes a barrier between God and us (“expiation”). (Romans 6.23: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.)

4. Sacrifice – Jesus' death is a sacrifice for us. (Ephesians 5.2: Live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.)

5. Reconciliation – Jesus' death heals a broken relationship between God and humanity. (2 Corinthians 5.19: In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.)

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In its teaching, the Christian Church has combined all these biblical interpretations of the Cross of Christ:

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Thomas Cranmer

First Prayer Book (1549): “... who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world...”

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René Girard, Le bouc émissaire (1982):

 Jesus is not God's scapegoat – God's reign is not built on horror.

 Jesus is humanity's scapegoat. Caiaphas in John 11.50 (and John 18.14): You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.

 Jesus is innocent.

 Jesus is God's Son.

 Jesus is scapegoated by those around him.

 Jesus is butchered on the Cross.

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Jesus forgives his murderers:

 Jesus in Luke 23.34: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

(Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece (1516))

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Jesus exposes the bitter mechanics of scapegoating.

 Jesus exposes the futility and emptiness of violence.

 Jesus indicates once and for all that God is not a god of violence.

 Jesus builds a bridge between the Father's peace and our violence.

 To follow the Cross and to believe in Jesus on the Cross is to be converted against violence.

 In the face of horror, Christ is our Saviour and our Peace.