A reading from "For All the Saints: A Prayer Book for and By the Saints" published by the American Lutheran Publishing Buruea, 1998.
Ralph W. Sockman (1889-1970) wrote...
[Describing the Bible as a four-act drama of the search for deliverance from evil via the scapegoat (Act 1), via morality (Act II), and now via the stong helping the weak (Act III).]
Suppose that is all I could say this morning: just be decent, help the weak, be charitable, help the Red Cross. We are all in this together; we must be men. It wouldn't be a very strong gospel, would it? There is a fourth act to the drama, and that fourth act is made most vivied by the great Negro play, Green Pastures. Green Pastures has in it a scene in which God is looking down over the parapet of heaven from His office. He is talking to the angel Gabriel, and saying, "Whose shadow is that?" Gabriel says, "That's Hosea's shadow." Hosea was the Old Testament prophet whose wife was unfaithful to him; and just as he had to suffer to win back that erring wife, he came to the conviction that God suffers to win back His wayward children. When God sees the shadow of Hosea, He says to Gabriel, "Does that mean that even God has to suffer?" "Yes," says Gabriel, "that's what it means." In the next scene God is looking down ove rthe parapet, and He says, "I see a young man carrying a cross up a hill."
That is the fourth act in the drama of deliverance. The scapegoat is not enough; morality is not enough; not even the vicarious principle is enough; God suffers to deliver us from evil. That, as I understand it, is the meaning of the cross. The cross isn't the price man had to pay to break God's heart. God's heart is always love. The cross is the price God paid to break our hearts. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.
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For many moons we have been taught about, on one hand, Anselm's theory of the cross as substitution and, on the other hand, Abelard's idea of the cross inspiring us to love, i.e. Jesus is a moral teacher. Now, however, some scholars are taking a second look at these two figures routinely cast as polar opposites and seeing how each of them inherently contains the thoughts of the other. The cross is niether divine child abuse or simply a love letter.
The cross of Jesus is God acting in the cosmological arena. YWHW's glorious presence has returned to the properly built Temple of Jesus' human body; YHWH is enthroned in Zion and his throne is Jesus' cross. Why must the cross be so? Because these first two signs of the end of exile can only be followed by the third and last sign if Holy Spirit is not only to be found in the person of Jesus but released to be found in all of his followers. (Hence, Jesus says it is to our advantage that he leaves that another advocate may come.) By the gift of Holy Spirit dwelling within us after Jesus' resurrection, we see the final sign that God has acted decisively in Jesus to end the exile: the age of Shalom has begun and will be fully consummated. All peoples are united to God through Israel as promised.
Thank you Kevan for the fullness of what you write...
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