You’d never guess it now, but I used to be a "divine." I doubt that term is used anymore, but it used to apply to students of theology in Scottish universities. Being a divine, I was once invited to preach at a boys’ residential school in the midlands. This was long before my ordination and even longer before I had any idea what I was talking about.

The school to which I was invited was very old fashioned. The boys took cold showers every morning and wore kilts to Sunday worship. It wasn’t quite a scene out of a Dickens novel, but it was strange enough to scare the Dickens out of me. The pulpit in the chapel was tall and imposing, and I hoped the boys could not hear my knees knocking as I climbed the stairs to its summit.

I got to the top of the stairs, entered the pulpit, and set my notes down on the slab of oak that had held at least a hundred years’ worth of sermons, all of them better than the one I was about to preach. I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and looked down. There, deeply carved into the ancient oak were these words, "Sir, we would see Jesus."

If I had had any sense whatsoever, I’d have climbed down out of that high pulpit and headed for parts unknown. But being young and being more frightened of failure than of heresy, I carried on. If anyone in that young congregation saw Jesus in that sermon, it was entirely due to the intervention of the Holy Spirit.

"Sir, we would see Jesus." These are the words spoken by some unnamed seekers to Phillip, one of Jesus’ disciples. Phillip seems not to have know what to make of such a request, so he goes to Andrew and together they go to Jesus and tell him there are some Greeks who want an audience with him. The Gospel writer John never tells us whether the Greeks get to see Jesus or not, because Jesus uses the occasion to talk about his impending death.

"Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name . . . Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."

Most of us are accustomed to hearing Jesus’ death on the cross explained in terms of "sacrifice." There are many versions of this teaching, but the most common one, the one you’re most likely to hear on TV, is that Jesus took our place on the cross, that he was the substitute who was punished for our sins. In this way of thinking, the violence of the cross is a kind of divine violence. God required a perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world, and only Jesus could fit the bill, so Jesus suffered in our place.

This way of thinking about the cross has a long history, and deserves our respect. It has its place, but it also has its dangers.

Some Christians who think this way have tended to sanction violence toward, and suffering by, "the least of these." Slaves have been taught to endure mistreatment at the hands of their masters – for that’s what Jesus did. Wives have been told to stay in violent marriages, and to find comfort in their solidarity with Jesus. Jesus suffered, the logic runs. His followers should do the same.

If all disciples suffered equally, there might be more merit to this way of thinking. As it turns out, those who bear the brunt of this doctrine have tended to be women, children, and the poor. This has not escaped the notice of feminist and liberationist theologians. They point out that this way of thinking tends to condone – even to encourage – violence. If the Father requires the sacrifice of the Son, one feminist theologian has famously maintained, then the cross amounts nothing less than "cosmic child abuse."

Scripture provides us many other ways of thinking about the cross. Today’s passage is one of them. In John’s Gospel, the cross is not about substitutionary atonement. It’s about exposing the false myth that you and I have been taught to live by. It’s about driving out what John calls "the ruler of this world," and putting God’s Word made flesh in his place.

"Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

What John’s Gospel means by "this world," is not the whole of God’s creation. It’s the "fallen" world, the world as it has come to be in opposition to God. "The world" in John’s sense is "the System" with a capital "S." It’s the structures and institutions that shape our lives in opposition to God and make us captives to "the System’s" way of doing business.

For instance, where did we get the idea that in order to be happy, we must have a flat screen TV in every room and a new car in the garage? We got that from "this world," John would say, from "the System."

Where did we get the notion that there are only two kinds of people –winners and losers? The world has taught us that, John would say. The world works by maintaining structures that keep people in their place.

According to theologian Walter Wink, what keeps the System going is what he calls "the myth of redemptive violence." The only way to bring order out of chaos, this myth maintains, is by violently defeating some enemy or other. Choose your enemy; the myth works pretty much the same whomever you choose.

o Popeye eats his spinach and beats the daylights out of Bluto, thus restoring order to the universe.

o Jack Bauer, with only some reluctance, tortures a terrorist and saves the world from nuclear holocaust, all in the span of 24 hours.

o Jesus threatens the delicate balance between the religious authorities and their Roman occupiers. The System’s answer is the violence of the cross.

The myth of redemptive violence plays itself out everywhere we look. It’s the operative principle of most video games – the gorier the better. We see it in the death penalty, in terrorist attacks against our nation, and in our nation’s response to terrorism. This "myth of redemptive violence" is so deeply etched into our consciousness that we find it hard even to conceive of alternatives.(1)

Jesus does not live or act according to this myth. He rejects the violence upon which this myth rests, and that is why he is such a threat. When Pontius Pilate asks him if he is some kind of king, Jesus responds, "My kingdom is not from this world (not from this System). If my kingdom were from this world (this System) my followers would be fighting (on my behalf). But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."

According to John, the cross exposes this world, this System, for what it truly is – the opponent of God’s will, the way not of life, but of death. Through the cross, what John calls "the ruler of this world" is cast out. From the cross Jesus exposes the folly around which this fallen world turns, and shows us where we have gone so terribly wrong.

In a sense, the cross is this world’s answer to Jesus. In another sense, the cross is God’s answer to this world. In the cross we see how we’ve gotten it all wrong because seeing Jesus there has opened our eyes. We had to see the Word of God made flesh, stretched upon the cross, exposing the System for what it truly is.

"Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."

When I was a little boy I saw the TV images of Bull Connor’s police dogs attacking young African-American demonstrators. I saw those fire hoses trained on elderly women and children, ripping off their clothing. I was just one of millions who saw that violence.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. was asked to put a stop to the freedom marches, he said "Let them get their dogs and let them get the hose, and we will leave them standing before their God and the world spattered with the blood and reeking with the stench of their Negro brothers." It is necessary, he said, "to bring these issues to the surface, out into the open, where everybody can see them."(2)

Jesus died for the sins of the world, but that is not the whole story. He died as well to bring this world to the light. Before the cross we bring our fire hoses and our police dogs and our execution gurneys and all the other paraphernalia of the System, we see them for what they are in the light of God’s Word made flesh.

All of this is God’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. No single metaphor can capture the cross. No single concept can contain it. It is the wisdom and the power of God, the God who loves and saves the world.

"Sir, we would see Jesus."

See him on the cross and live.

 

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Notes:

[1] For this explication of Walter Wink, I am indebted to Charles L. Campbell’s commentary in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, Westminster John Knox Press.

[2] Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (New York: Crossroads Publishing Company, 1955) 226.

 

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