"Mom, Did God kill Jesus?"
“Ugh, no. No?” Wow, my sweet child is throwing curve ball questions. The little girl in my heart is echoing him. How could God, the source of all love, send their Child to die? We are talking about the same God here, right? The one that feels like soaring at dusk on a swing, being wrapped in a hug on Grami’s lap, and Mom wiping tears away. That God? My mind and heart are spinning, breaking, pressing my own doubt behind my eyes threatening tears. Is this the moment his childlike faith shatters? I am all for navigating doubt and wilderness. I want my son to take those journeys. My holy doubt is where God finds me in wind through pine trees and river currents… but, is my son ready?
Before the merry-go-round of my own internal thought slows he hurls another curve ball. “And did he kill him because I break the rules?” Buh…
What I wish I said here is “I love you. So does God. That is not quite how I understand Jesus. These are important questions to wonder about. Can I take some time with them and talk to you more about it soon?”
What I actually said was “Where did you hear that?”
The story we’ve all heard goes like this: God loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus to die (suffering a brutal violent death) for our sins. This is called penal substitution atonement theory. After years of seminary I have found that though it is a dominant narrative, this thought process does not line up with my understanding of God’s all encompassing love, Jesus’s life and teaching of liberation, or my experience of the invitational nature of Spirt.
So why did Jesus die? He was murdered by empire. I believe that Jesus died as a result of the way he lived, standing up to empire and abuses of power. Jesus was a Jew living under militant occupation of the Romans. The Jewish people were responded in a variety of ways to the traumatic injustice of oppression:
The Zealots - Were unorganized violent revolutionaries wanting to end the occupation by force.
The Essenes - Decided that the world was too corrupt for Judaism to exist with it, so they left to create separate property sharing communes of purity in the dessert.
The Pharisees - Remained in society attempting to revitalize Judaism through strict adherence to purity laws.
The Sadducees - Were relatively “well off” because they assimilated to aspects of Roman culture and rule, but sacrificed many aspects of their faith in the process.
Responding to the suffering of his people, Jesus offered a creative fifth response. Unlike the Sadducees, Jesus called for change. Unlike the Pharisees who focused on God’s purity, Jesus declared God’s inclusion and compassion (even for those deemed impure. Unlike the Essenes, Jesus stayed present in loving solidarity to the suffering of his people. Unlike the Zealots who called for violent revolt, Jesus made counter cultural moves to love his enemies and taught the way of peacemaking. The Jesus movement was a non-violent threat to those in power. Jesus loved in such a revolutionary way that the oppressors with power were afraid of his transformative impact and killed him.
And where was God?
God was in the bodies of the women who stayed present, even in Jesus’s deepest suffering. God was in Jesus’s Mother at his feet as he hung on the cross. God was in the women seeking him in the tomb only to find the story wasn’t over.
No, God didn’t kill Jesus. God’s love is ever present. In suffering God never turned away.
May my children always know God’s endless love. May I embody love that will never turn away.