Palm Sunday Evening

 

The preacher on television this morning recounted the atonement theory of Christian salvation right down to the last dotted "i" and crossed "t".  I wasn't having it, but I was in the other room anyway.  The Lovely Wife asked me what I thought, and I ended up handing her my copy of Paul Among Jews and Gentiles,  by Krister Stendahl.

I still owe you all a post on Stendahl.  I'll get back to it in Holy Week.  Pinky swear.

Anyway, the idea that God is too holy for humankind, and humankind too sinful for God, is not a universal one nor even a core Christian belief.  Julian or Norwich had visions of Jesus who told her "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."  Hardly the harrowing of souls at the end of time.  In my own church's traditions, German immigrants came here and set up orphanagaes and a hospital and a mental care facility and a place for river workers on the Mississippi to go at the end of the journey, rather than to bars and bordellos.  The preacher assured me that faith alone (sola fides, as Luther put it) would save us, and that works were not a path to salvation.  The old Protestant complaint about indulgences, which were pretty much dead by Luther's time, anyway. To put it bluntly, nowhere in the gospels (well, John, but that's why I'm not fond of John), so nowhere in the synoptics, does Jesus say "No one comes to the Father except through me."  John was fighting with the Hebrews, later Jews, in the early 2nd century.  It was a family fight.  Jesus in the synoptics stresses "works," as in caring for the sick and the helpless (women and children in a patriarchal society), and taking care of each other.  "The first of all will be last and servant of all."  The power of powerlessness.  Works without faith is dead; but so is faith without works.  The preacher emphasized evangelism, as in telling people "about Jesus" in order to save their souls.  My German spiritual ancestors let their deeds speak for them.  No translation into English needed.

Which brings me around to "Jesus Christ Superstar," still a major subject in my faith history.  A personal one; don't worry yourself with it.  The great controversy about “JCS” when it was released was that it treated Jesus as human. An ironic complaint, given that Holy Week is the church’s annual remembrance that the Christ was Jesus: was arrested, whipped, tortured, and executed in one of the most brutal and inhumane ways ever devised. And then died. Yes, “executed” incorporates “died,” but Christians have to remind themselves of that. They aren’t uniformly good at it.

The tenor of the times, the reason, I’d argue, for the controversy, is contained in the title song, sung by Judas just after the whipping and just before the crucifixion ends the opera. The repeated chorus says “Don’t you get me wrong/I only want to know.” The song is addressed to God, who supposedly would be offended by such questions. Ironic, that, since theologians and church leaders and Biblical scholars have been asking such questions for 2000 years. But among congregations and “ordinary people”? The status quo of religious belief is to be preserved at all costs. God knew what God was doing 2000 years ago, and don’t question it now.

“O that you would come down!” Yeah, nobody was reading that part of Isaiah to me in high school. AFAIK, I first read it in seminary a good 20 years later. It wasn’t pointed out to me before seminary how many times people question God in the scriptures, or how many times God demands they question God. Judas’ questions and proviso seemed pretty sensible to me. It would take me another 10 years out of seminary to realize the problem with Judas’ situation in “JCS” was not that God intended Judas to be damned for all time (we get that through Calvin, actually. Or rather, through mixing Calvinism (which ain’t all Calvin all the time) and Greek fatalism (via Greek tragedy). It’s a bad combination.), but the doctrine of the atonement that says Jesus had to die. I think now even Paul would at least mutter “You stupid Galatians” over that one.

Pauline theology was that Jesus became divine because of his absolute faith in God, and at the time of the resurrection. After death, in other words. It’s no coincidence Paul has virtually nothing to say about the life of Jesus (or his sayings). That alone poses a problem for the gospel writers, who don’t want to leave the reveal to the end. Mark manages it (no nativity story, and no encounters with Jesus after finding the empty tomb), but Matthew and Luke and John push the godhood in Jesus of Nazareth back further and further, and the nature of the man qua man becomes more difficult to interpret. The atonement theory, Christ was born to die on the cross, was meant to be a solution to that problem.  Jesus had to be human to die, but God in order to atone. But the central conflict of “JCS,” that Judas was born to play his role in making the crucifixion happen, raises a new problem. Do we thank Judas for his timely betrayal? Or damn him for all time? And what kind of salvation scheme is this, anyway? One that depends on a particular person being damned so the rest of us can step over him like a bridge to our salvation?

Thank you, Judas?

I should not be understood by this to be denying the mystery of the Holy Trinity. I’m not going Unitarian on you. I just think the atonement theory has outlived its usefulness, because the truth is, we are always struggling to understand ourselves and God and the revelation not just of God but of the creation and our own humanity. Theories change, in other words. That doesn’t mean God does, anymore than the universe does because our theories about it change. But we do, and what and how we understand does. God does change, in fact, even as we do. But mutatis mutandis, we remain who we are.

Consider it another mystery.

But JCS is mired in the atonement Christ, and caught in that theory is the human Jesus of Nazareth. The value of this is that it reminds us the Easter morning we take as an inevitability was impossible to even imagine during the original (un)Holy Week. Part of the purpose of Holy Week is this remembrance, and the effort to live it over again as if we don’t know the outcome. Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday used to follow each other in the last weeks of Lent, opening Holy Week by remembering the crucifixion, which itself is observed on Good Friday. Good Friday itself was actually the beginning of Triduum, and the Easter Vigil which lasted until Easter morning. Sunrise services on Easter were an echo of the Great Vigil (the other vigil on the liturgical calendar was Christmas Eve, the remnant of which is the midnight service that welcomes the birth of the Christchild. One vigil sits up with the dead and the mourners; the other waits with the expectant parents). 

The Great Vigil was a service of four services, recapitulating the salvation history of scripture (I haven’t abandoned soteriology, just relocated it). They are: a service of light (Christ as light of the world); a service of water (Christ as water of life, and recalling baptismal vows); a service of the word (Christ as logos); and a service of bread and wine (Christ as the Eucharist).I used this service as my Easter service, starting in a dark worship space and introducing light, and then music. The scriptures began with the Exodus story, ending with the resurrection story. The service ran from darkness to light to baptism remembered to a joyful Eucharist.

JCS is about the week before the victory was known or expected. It's not presented as a great celebration, despite the Hosannas of Palm Sunday in the beginning of the second act. Judas reflects the Pauline theology: Jesus is not God before Easter morning. “You’ve started to believe/the things they say of you/You really do believe/This talk of God is true.” And a twist on Paul, who seldom mentions what Jesus said: “You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say.” I often think of that line when I’m in the presence of people who emphasize salvation over servanthood.

The enemies of Jesus don’t see him as God; they see him as human. All too human, and dangerous for it. And here is where JCS clearly follows the gospels, rather than history. It’s unlikely the religious authorities (it’s anachronism to even label them “Jewish” at the time if Jesus, even though John uses the term some 75 years after the first Easter Sunday) were upset enough by Jesus of Nazareth to want him dead. Crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, reserved for political prisoners, the greatest threat to the Pax Romana. Pilate probably executed Jesus without a second thought. In fact, he was removed as governor of Judea because he crucified too many, too freely, even for Rome. Most of the gospel stories of Pilate dithering or arguing with Jesus or washing his hands in public, or even agonizing over the decision to execute Jesus, are pure invention. The gospel writers wrote that so Rome would not look harshly on them.  They weren't that sure about their resurrection.  Jesus was executed for being the guy who caused so much trouble in the Temple the week before Passover. It took a while to identify him, but when they did, Pilate didn’t need priests and Sadducees asking to rid them of this troublesome prophet. He probably didn’t care what they thought in the first place.

Whether that took place on "Palm Sunday," Christians commemorate it on this day. It is the beginning of the darkest week on the liturgical calendar, one traditionally concluding with a music-less service of word and prayer on Good Friday, with the church draped in funereal black.  At least, that's the way I used to do it.  In the Episcopal practice, the altar was cleared of all adornment and paraments, and ritually washed.  All in silence.  It is not a celebration in any sense of the word.  Some churches leave the sanctuary open on Holy Saturday, for vigils and silent prayer.

The gospel writers cared what Rome thought, though, they blamed their enemies: local religious leaders who were opposed to their religious movement. Rome had the power to do to them what it did to Jesus. Even Herod couldn’t do that. As I say, they weren't that assured of their own resurrections.  Who can blame them?  They were only human.

But JCS reminds us Jesus was human. Luke says he sweated blood in Gethsemane. He was truly afraid of death, the Synoptics agree. JCS presents this as part of God’s plan, as John does, but I think that lets us off the hook. We killed Jesus. People like us. Human beings. JCS hits this, too. It’s the chorus, literally the Greek chorus of a tragedy, the voice of the people affected by the decisions of the tragic hero, who demand Jesus’ death. This I find more likely. What Jesus says becomes a burden. First shall be last? The first of all shall be last and servant of all? The sheep are the ones who served others, the goats are the ones who served only themselves? And the sheep are ushered into the presence, the goats left out where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth? No wonder salvation is about "letting Jesus into your heart.” No wonder that matters more than the things Jesus said. It’s so much easier on us.

JCS reminds us that Holy Week, especially, was about Jesus being fully human. And that we are fully human, too. Capable of the humanity of Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman was justly praised for her love song in the opera, but her brief passage gently rebuking Peter for denying Jesus literally throbs with sorrow, confusion, and heartbreak. Her character represents all the women who are Jesus’ disciples in the gospels. That portrayal is very true to the gospel stories.), as well as the blunt cruelty of the crowd demanding Jesus’ head.

Who killed Jesus? We did. Why was Jesus resurrected? In spite of us. What should we do about it? Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. And love one another, as Jesus loved us . Because, after all, Jesus was one of us, too.