Did Jesus Set Up His Own Demise?

I'm sure that this may be seen as justification for laziness, but quite frankly I've been hard-pressed to find better words this year to explicate to my parishioners the mystery of Our Lord's Passion. Furthermore, I am increasingly loathe to depart from the wisdom of the fathers--especially one whose Tome shaped a formative Council. And I tremble at the hubris of attempting to correct them, cognizant of the fact that they are more knowledgable of the Scriptures, and holier in speech and conduct, than I. So, once again, I borrow from St Leo the Great--not slavishly (as on Holy Wednesday) but paraphrastically. For I have found his words both comforting, and quite contemporary.

As if to excuse the inexcusable; as if to cover up the sin that exposes all our sins; as if to justify the betrayer who exemplifies our betrayal—it is foolishly asserted that Our Lord Jesus elaborately set up and arranged His own demise. Of course, some might say, He did this for the good of all. He just needed help with the details. And so the ends justify the means.

But this means that the Righteous One committed evil by urging one of His own to sin. More than that, it says that Our Lord Jesus was not betrayed and killed by sinful men, but by His own will to complete the task.

Was the wickedness of Christ’s persecutors arranged and plotted out by the Father? Was this unsurpassable crime set in motion by the hand of God? Clearly, we must neither think nor believe this. For it is one thing to say that Our Lord knew what would happen to Him; and another to say that He arranged His own betrayal and death.

The truth is that the desire to kill the Messiah did not spring from the same source as His desire to die. Their desire, fueled by unmitigated hatred, was the ultimate act in trying to be like God. Our Lord’s desire, fueled by immeasurable love, was the ultimate act in restoring us to God’s image so that we might continually mature into His likeness. His desire and will came from the Holy Spirit. Their desire and will was of the devil.

So Our Lord did not incite, but rather permitted, those madmen’s naughty hands. And while He knew ahead of time what would happen, He did not compel them to do the sinful deed—even though, through it, He completed the first half of His mission in our flesh.

For you do know that His mission was not simply to suffer and die. Any man could have done that. But Our Lord’s mission reached its fullness when, after His passion and martyrdom, He descended into hell to release those bound by Satan’s death-grip; and then ascended from the grave, bursting open the gates of death and transforming them into the gates through which the righteous now enter life eternal.

So because His goal was not simply to die, but also to raise us to life; because He aimed not at His self-destruction, but at our restoration; because His will was not to die as a martyred hero, but to grant unending life to those destined to die—for this reason, what Our Lord Jesus undertook could not be reversed, while what the hateful mob did could be wiped out. For He who came to save sinners did not refuse mercy even to His murderers. While they were blinded with rage, He prayed for their forgiveness. In doing so, He converted their evil wickedness into their way—and your way—to Life. And with this, God’s grace becomes all the more wonderful, and the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge is seen to be all the more magnificent and worthy of our unending praise. For it is His mercy which turned the blood they shed into the blood that saved them. It is His mercy that made the body they sacrificed the sacrifice that atones for our sin. And it is His mercy that transformed their cries for His death into our hymns of adoration.

And so, even though He was willing to suffer what He knew had to be—what He knew was coming—that does not mean that Our Lord was the author of their crimes, or one who maniacally set in motion His own death. No one asked, urged, compelled or tricked Judas or the others into doing evil for the sake of good. But when evil was done to Him, Our Lord humbly and dispassionately permitted it so that He could use their madness in order to accomplish their salvation, and your salvation, and the salvation of all creation. And in doing so, He salvaged and recalled many who had a hand in His death—men like Peter who denied Him; and the others, who forsook Him; and the 3000 who 50 days later repented and were baptized in the same blood they had shed.

Yet the ungodliest of men—the “son of perdition” together with many of the priests and leaders—these were inflamed by a hatred that even Our Lord could not put out, because they were unwilling. They did not think the Lord’s promises were believable, and so they preferred their self-chosen addictions of pride, greed, and living life now. And in choosing what they preferred—in choosing against their Lord—they chose their own death. Is it any wonder, then, that Judas saw no way out but to hang himself? For he had not believed in mercy before; and he surely did not believe in it then. But the other betrayer—that is, Simon Peter—he held out hope, just like the Ninevites before him. And like them, he recalled the Lord’s mercy and re-invited the Lord’s cleansing by his tears of repentance.

The fact, then, is that Our Lord God, in His mercy, is determined to save us. So when He was ready, according to His own purpose and without any evil design, the Father led His Son in the Spirit to the top of the mountain where He was crucified, dead and buried. But this was not because Jesus was doomed to die, but in order to redeem us from death’s captivity. For the Word became flesh so that, from the Virgin’s womb, He might put on our suffering nature and be capable of undergoing our death. In this way, and in a great yet wonderful mystery, what could not be inflicted on the Son of God was inflicted on the Son of Man. For although He is very God of very God and the Life of the world, yet for our sakes He truly assumed our weaknesses and, without sinning, became our sin and spared Himself not human frailty. And He did this so that, in His resurrection and by our incorporation into Him in the sacred mysteries, He might—in a wonderful manner—impart to us what belongs to Him, and heal in Himself what is ours.

Therefore, since He has restored us by His resurrection from the dead; since He has not only shown us but also given us such remarkable mercy; and since all life that lives is completely dependent upon the life He died to live in us—let us not give into our pride or grow smug in self-satisfaction by excusing our sin, or the sin of His betrayer. For we have nothing—except what we have received from Him in His Spirit. And we have nothing to give—except to give thanks in His holy Church. And we have no other way to live—except to live the life He has planted within us. And this life is not a life that gives us license to live as we please, but to live only for Him by keeping His commandment to love His Word by loving one another.

Let us, then, love His mercy by being merciful. And let us love His sacrifice by partaking of it regularly. And let us love His love by holding to all His commandments. For Our Lord Himself is our way, and through Him alone do we come to the fullness of communion with the Father. So let us tread the path of His endurance and humiliation by living against our flesh, by resisting evil, by running from sin, by chasing away the clouds of despair, and by living courageously through the storms of fear. No doubt, as long as we are in this life, we shall know the snares of the wicked, the persecutions of the unbelieving, the threats of the powerful, the insults of the proud. But we must also remember that all these things the Lord of hosts and King of glory has successfully passed through in the form of our weakness and in the likeness of sinful flesh. And He has done this so that, when we face the dangers that threaten our life in God, we might desire, not so much to avoid and escape them, as to endure and overcome them and finally gain the victory through Christ Our Lord, to whom with the Father in the Holy Spirit belongs all glory, honor and worship.

The Son is Not Forsaken by the Father

What follows is what I preached at Holy Mass today. It is my recasting of Sermon LXVIII by St Leo, combined with the latter half of his Sermon LXVII. These sermons present evidence that the early Church did not understand Our Lord's "Eli, eli..." cry to be the lament of a son angrily abandoned by his father, but rather the dual lesson of the weakness of our flesh together with Our Lord's determined will to die for the life of the world. In this way, St Leo's sermon has urged this scribe to look away from the Anselmic view that dominates late-medieval, post-Reformational, and modern day confessional atonement theology.

Representing all the members of His body in Himself, and speaking for those whom He was redeeming in the punishment of the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ uttered that cry which He had once uttered in the Psalm: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from Me, and from the words of My groaning?”

That cry is a lesson, not a complaint. For the Son of God could not have been forsaken by the Father or separated from Him since, in His Person, Christ is both God and man. So it is on behalf of us—the trembling and the weak—that He asks why the flesh that is afraid to suffer has not been heard.

Therefore, when you hear Our Lord say, “My God, My God,” I urge you not to believe that, when Jesus was fastened to the wood of the cross, the almighty God and Father had turned His back on Him. For in Christ’s own person, the natures of God and man are so completely joined that the union cannot be destroyed by punishment or by death.

To be sure, both natures retain their own properties. Yet, in Christ, both are so united that He Who is arrested by the hands of wicked men is the same as He Who is bound by no limits. He Who is pierced with nails is the same as He Whom no wound can affect. He Who underwent death is the same as He Who never ceased to be eternal. So both things are established facts in Christ—both the truth that He suffered humiliation and the truth that He retained His divine majesty. For you must remember that, in Christ Jesus, the Divine power joined itself to human frailty so that God might make what is ours His and, at the same time, make what was His ours. The Son, therefore, was not separated from the Father, nor the Father from the Son. And there was no division within the unchangeable and inseparable Trinity. So, even though the Son alone became man, the Father did not—for this or any reason—separate Himself from the Son any more than Christ’s flesh was separated from His divinity.

So why, then, did Jesus cry out with a loud voice and way, “Why have You forsaken Me”? To notify all men that He wished not to be rescued, not to be defended, but to remain in the hands of cruel men so that He might be the Savior of the world and the Redeemer of all men not by misery but by mercy; and not by the failure of comfort but by His determination to die.

Yet by praying to the Father, Our Lord Jesus shows that this determination is not His alone; that He is not the only one determined to act on our behalf. For the blessed Apostle says that the Father “spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us all.” And he says, “Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify it.” Hence, the giving up of the Lord to His Passion was as much of the Father’s will as it was of His own will. So if the Father did “forsake” His Son, then it was only because the Son also abandoned Himself in a certain sense—but not as if He was fleeing in fear, but as if He was voluntarily withdrawing or hiding His full divinity. For the Crucified restrained His divine might, and refused to use His power, so that He might secretly deceive death and the devil.

For how would He—who had come to destroy death and the author of death by His Passion—how would He have saved sinners if he had resisted His persecutors? The Jews, then, believed Jesus had been forsake by God. For they were able to commit such unrighteous cruelty. Yet they refused to understand the mystery of His wondrous endurance. So they blasphemed and mocked Him saying, “He saved others, Himself He cannot save. If He be the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we believe Him.”

But the Savior’s power would not be displayed against the blind rage of the foolish scribes and wicked priests. And the redemption of mankind would not be delayed by obeying the blasphemer’s evil tongues. For if they had truly wanted to recognize the deity in the Son, they would have remembered His countless miracles which confirmed true faith. In fact, they acknowledged as much when they said that He saved others. But those many great miracles, done openly and in public, does nothing to soften the hearts of those who resist the Holy Spirit. And so all of God’s benefits towards them are turned into their destruction. So even if Christ had descended from the cross, they would have remained in their sin.

Therefore the insults of empty exultation were scorned by Our Lord. And the Lord's mercy in restoring the lost and the fallen was not turned from the path of its purpose by insult or mockery. For a unmatched victim was being offered to God for the world's salvation, and the slaying of Christ the true Lamb, predicted through so many, ages, was transferring the sons of promise into the liberty of the Faith. The New Testament also was being ratified, and in the blood of Christ the heirs of the eternal Kingdom were being enrolled. The High Priest was entering the Holy of Holies, and to intercede with God the spotless Priest was passing in through the veil of His flesh. In such a fine manner, a transition was being effected from the prophetic Torah to the apostolic Gospel, from the synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to the One Victim. So when the Lord gave up His Spirit, that mystic veil which hung before and shut out the inner part of the Temple and its holy recess was torn, by sudden force, from top to bottom. For Truth Himself was displacing figures, and forerunners were no longer needed in the presence of Him they announced. To this was added a terrible confusion of all the elements, and nature herself withdrew her support from Christ's crucifiers. To be sure, the centurion in charge of the crucifixion, fearful at the sight, said “truly this man was the Son of God.” Yet the wicked hearts of the Jews, which were harder than all tombs and rocks, is not reported to have been pierced by any regret or repentance. So it seems that the Roman soldiers were then readier to recognize the Son of God than the priests of Israel. The Jews, then, were deprived of all the sanctification imparted by these mysteries; and they turned their light into darkness and their “feasts into mourning.”

But let us not follow their lead. Instead, let us prostrate our bodies and our souls, and worship God's Grace. For He has poured out His grace upon all nations. And let us, each day, beseech the merciful Father and the rich Redeemer to give us His aid and enable us to escape all the dangers of this life. For the crafty tempter is present everywhere, and leaves nothing free from his snares. With God's mercy helping us, which is stretched out to us amid all dangers, we must steadfastly faith resist this devil so that, though he never ceases to assail, he may never succeed in carrying the assault. And let all religiously keep and profit by the last few days of our fast. And let no excesses mar the benefits of such self-restraint. For the things which pertain to sobriety and temperance must be the more diligently observed in these final days, so that our brief zeal might teach us a lasting habit. And whether in works of mercy or in strict self-denial, let not one minute pass without being faithful so that, as the years and time glides by, we may increase in good works and not squander our opportunities to do good. For to devout wills and religious souls God's Mercy will be granted, that He may enable us to obtain that which He enabled us to desire, Who liveth and reigneth with our Lord Jesus Christ His Son, and with the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen.

Sacrificing the Will

How does Our Jesus save us? In the same way that we are saved. By submitting entirely to the will of the Father. By sacrificing all self-chosen beliefs and liturgies; by sacrificing all self-serving hopes and fears; by sacrificing the will with the confidence that what the Father wills is best and shall prevail.

So Our Lord Jesus first sacrifices Himself—His will, His desire. And by doing so, He becomes the most pure, the most holy, the most spotless sacrifice which is offered for the life of the world.

Because He willingly sacrifices His will; because He deliberately submits Himself entirely to the will of the Father; because He determines to lose His life in order to gain the world—for this reason Our Lord Jesus both saves us with an unmatched love; and He also shows us the way we receive and give thanks for and live from this sacrifice. So His sacrifice is both our salvation, and our example. His sacrifice both is the way we are reconciled to the Father, and shows us the way we live a life of reconciliation. His sacrifice both is the path that leads to full communion with the Father, and demonstrates the way we live that communion in the Spirit.

For when He was being served up for our salvation, Our Lord thought not of Himself. Neither did He fear. Neither did He seek to hide. Neither did He get angry. But serenely and compassionately, as He saw His own forsake Him and His own deride Him and His own torture Him—for them He said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

For these He sought pardon, from whom at the time He was still receiving injury. For He took no thought that He was being put to death by them, but only that He was dying for them. (St Augustine)

An excerpt from today's sermon.

Abraham's Vision of the Mass

In today's Gospel, Jesus says that Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.

Which day was that? Which day rejoiced the heart of Abraham? St John Chrysostom says that "'My day,' seems to me to mean the day of the Crucifixion, which Abraham foreshowed typically by the offering of the ram and of Isaac."

Let me add, however, that Abraham does not simply see Good Friday. He sees the Holy Sacrifice; which is to say that he sees the Lord’s Day—that is, Abraham sees the Holy Mass. For at the Mass, in the Spirit, you see the Love of the Father. There He lies—the only-begotten Son—in all His glory on the altar. The Son, who in love, was both sacrificed and sacrificed Himself; the Son whose Body was broken so that we might eat and live, and whose Blood was shed so that it might be poured down our throats; the Son who offered Himself so that we, who will taste death, might now taste Life Himself.

It’s this day that Abraham saw and rejoiced to see. And he saw it as he stared at his son, his only son, whom he nearly killed, but whose life was ransomed by the ram of God.

God's Mercy in the Law & Commandments

Several times in the Gospel, Our Lord Jesus urges us to keep His word. To this urging He often attaches a sure promise. Here is one of those instances:

“I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.” (Jn 8.51)

This correspondes to what the Holy Spirit spoke through the mouths of Joshua & David. Joshua tells the children of Israel to take careful heed to do the commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, to keep His commandments, to hold fast to Him, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul. (Josh 22)

And David commands his son, Solomon, to walk in His [the Lord's] ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses. Then David adds this promise:

that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn; that the LORD may fulfill His word which He spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons take heed to their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul,’ He said, ‘you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’

How are we to understand these words? How are we to understand these commands?

The Law and commandments flow from the mercy of God. For they are handed down not as a test, not to threaten, but so that we might be safe-guarded from our own self-destructive ways and so that, through them, we may safely attain the kingdom of heaven.

Now should we refuse to walk in the way of the Law and in the works of the commandments, then they accuse us of going our self-chosen way--that is, against the Lord's way. But it appears that the primary use of the Lord's Law is merciful; so that we might remain in the way which is Christ Jesus our Lord.

"Come to Me"

Our Lord lovingly appeals to the Jews, and also to all the hesitant, to all the wary, to all the unwilling, to all the fearful. Our Lord urges them all to lay aside their hatred and meanness, and to see past their fears. For they fear that He will take away their place and nation. They fear that they will lose out on the zest of life. They fear that they’ll lose control. And they fear that it’s a trap—that God the Father is more like the fathers and men they’ve always known—abusive, demanding, cold-hearted, selfish and uncaring.

“Come to Me,” Our Lord says. “And walk away from your fears. Come to Me, and know—truly know—My Father. For He is not like your father, who lies to you every chance he gets; and who is in it only for himself. For your father is the father of lies. But My Father—He is the Father of Life, the Begetter of Truth. He not only loves. He is Love. So lose yourself and your fears, and come to Me. For by heeding My word, you shall never see death.”

An excerpt from today's sermon.

Ecclesial Dignity

Dn Leonard Klein's statement, which I quoted below, together with the ensuing comments to my post--particularly those which rightly see that the key issue is ecclesiology--have brought to mind this statement from a presentation given in November 2004 by Walter Cardinal Kasper:

Protestant Christians do not wish to be a church in the same way as the Catholic church understands itself as a church; they represent a different type of church and for this reason they are not a church in the Catholic meaning of the word.

In commenting on Kasper's statement, Fr Richard John Neuhaus (a former summer intern at Zion) aptly summarized the difficulty.

Catholicism and Orthodoxy claim to be Church in the same way. It is not a matter of Catholicism denying to Protestant communities an ecclesial dignity that they claim. They expressly do not claim or desire to be Church in the way that Catholicism and Orthodoxy do.

New Blog

My good friend and colleague, Rev Dr Burnell Eckardt Jr, has entered the blogosphere. I'm sure he could use some apt comparison to Gandalf and "Lord of the Ring" to describe his entrace, so I'll let him.

He writes from a decidedly historic confessional liturgical Lutheran perspective, is generally less crabby than yours truly and, if nothing has, has an engaging writing style.

Check out his blog. You might even find his "Memo to the preacher" entertaining.

Now the crabby-side, picking up on yesteday's post: how many adjectives does it really take to describe an authentic Lutheran? (See, even there I had to come up with a new adjective.) And why must one say "perspective"? -- Sigh

The Frustrations of Self-Determination

The frustrating thing about being a traditional Western Catholic in a Lutheran church body is that I am such because I've determined to be such. And the parish I serve is such, not because of anything I've done, but because--decades ago--they accepted, trusted and appropriated the patient, gentle 36 year formation by one Pastor. In that, they determined to be, self-consciously, an historic liturgical Lutheran parish (or, as Pr Runge would say, a "sacramental Lutheran parish").

Two things make this conscious self-determination frustrating. The first is that this is not as it should be. One should not be traditional, liturgical, sacramental, catholic (or whatever other adjective you wish to use) because one has determined to be such. Rather, that is what the Church is, and so that is what you are to be--by definition, not by decision. This should seem self-evident, and at one time it was more so that it is now. I say "more so" because, as Lutheran history shows, there have always been regions, groups, or synods that have self-consciously determined to "swim against the current" and be what the Church is.

The second frustrating thing is, when "swimming against the current," who's to say that you're actually swimming the right way? In other words, who's to say that one's self-determination is more correct, or right-headed than another's? The LCMS church nearest mine with a layman celebrating all the sacramental rites and playing "pastor" (with the people willingly consenting after being convinced by the heirarchy)--who's to say that's nothing more than their self-determined way of being Lutheran?

To be sure, one can vociferously cite confessional documents, and haul out theology books, and point to historical precedents ad infinitum ad nauseam. However, unmoored from catholic tradition within the increasingly unwraveling bonds of the conundrum called Lutheranism; and , worse yet, with tenuous or no liturgical grounding, self-determination becomes the all important thing.

I've thought these thoughts for some time now, but was reminded of them when I read a statement made recently by Deacon Leonard Klein to George Weigel. Klein was, for 30 years, a very prominent Lutheran pastor who promoted--as best he could--the Western Catholic understanding of Lutheranism within the ELCA. (Even that phrase, "Western Catholic understanding of Lutheranism" seems self-contradicting.) In 2003, with I'm sure no small measure of frustration, he and his family became Roman Catholic. Some time later he was ordained a deacon and, in a few months, Klein will be one of a handful of Latin rite married priests. Because of that, he's a causes celebres of sorts and, so I suppose, Weigel sought him out.

In part, here is what Klein said:

Toward the end of my time as a Lutheran pastor I used to protest that we were all reduced to being gurus. I tried to be authentically Lutheran, but who was to say that I was and the liberal feminist or church-growth ersatz Evangelical down the street wasn’t just as Lutheran as I...By contrast a Catholic priest or lay person can speak of what the Church teaches or permits, and that is freedom.

I think that sums up the frustration fairly well.


Read the entire article by Weigel here.

Understanding "Not My Will, But Thine Be Done."

Of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, the last three do not figure prominently in much of modern Western Catholic theology--most especially Lutheran theology. This lack constitutes one of the barriers between Eastern and Western christology since the former relies heavily on the christological definitions promulgated in the final three councils while the latter appears unfamiliar with the issues and formulations.

The Sixth Ecumenical Council in particular dealt with the question of whether the united divine and human natures in Christ resulted in Him having "two wills." The monothelites argued that Christ had two natures but only one will; that is, He divine nature willed all that He desired and His human nature had no will of its own, and so passively acquiesed. A key point in the debate revolved around the traditional interpretation of Our Lord's Gethsemane prayer, "Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done" (Lk 22.42).

Below is an excerpt from St Cyril of Alexandria on this very question. St Cyril was champion of the Third Ecumenical Council, and his articulation of christology is still that which officially holds sway (thanks to Martin Chemnitz) in the 1580 Book of Concord. His interpretation of this passage, especially as we approach Holy Week, is most instructive.

That the suffering on the Cross was in a sense not willed by Christ the Saviour, yet at the same time was willed for our sake and the good pleasure of God the Father is something you will in consequence understand. For when he was about to ascend to him and addressed his discourses to God, he said clearly in the form of a prayer, 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt' (Mt 26.39). That the Word was God, immortal and incorruptible, and by nature Life in itself who could not cower before death, is I think abundantly clear to all. Nevertheless, having come to be in the flesh, he allows himself to experience the things proper to the flesh, and consequently, when death is at the door, to cower before it, that he might appear to be a real human being.

That is why he says, 'If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.' What he means is this: 'If it be possible, Father, that without suffering death I should win life for those who have fallen under its [death's] power, if death could die without my dying, that is to say, with regard to the flesh, let the cup pass from me. But since this cannot take place in any other way, not as I will but as thou wilt.' Do you see how weak human nature is, even in Christ himself, when it relies on its own powers? Through the Word that is united with it, the flesh is brought back to a courage befitting God and is retrained in order to have a more valiant spirit, so as not to rely upon what seems right to its own will, but rather to follow the aim of the divine will and eagerly to run towards whatever the law of the Creator call us.

St Cyril of Alexandria, "Commentary on John," translated by Norman Russell in The Early Church Fathers, p. 112-113