Hilton Head Island, SC – December 29, 2013
The Chapel Without Walls
Romans 5:6-23
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8 (RSV)
In 1914 a silent movie serial began, called The Perils of Pauline. Pauline was the stereotypical silent movie damsel in distress, and it was just one thing after another for the poor girl. The serial had quite a number of chapters before it faded into cinematic history prior to the coming of the talkies. However, the title and the story line were so captivating that there were three full-length movies which later were entitled The Perils of Pauline.
I tell you this because the title for this sermon, The Perils of Pauline Theology, obviously is derived from the movie title. It is my firm conviction, which may or may not be valid, that the theology espoused by the apostle Paul in his various letters that are part of the New Testament has led to a major and very unfortunate detour in Christian theology. That is especially true for what is called Christology, meaning the study of Jesus as the Christ. Nevertheless, despite my personal skepticism regarding Paul, Pauline theology became the normative and orthodox theology of the Christian Church by the end of the first century of the Common Era, and it has remained so to the present day. So that you do not misinterpret what I am going to be saying this morning, I want you clearly to realize that what follows is unorthodox. By no means are you obligated to affirm any of what I shall be saying, but I feel compelled to preach it.
One of the greatest advantages of being the pastor of The Chapel Without Walls is that there is no ecclesiastical authority which can revoke my ordination for making doctrinal waves. One of the great disadvantages of having a Chapel Without Walls is that there is no ecclesiastical authority which can revoke the ordination of the pastor when he tilts at his theological windmills. But I want all of you to know this: I am grateful to you that I can raise what I believe are important issues and question long-held beliefs without fearing that I shall be boiled in oil for having done so. You may disagree strongly with my thinking, but you are very kind to listen to it anyway and to conclude whatever you conclude about it without also concluding me.
For the past 20+ years, I have intentionally preached less and less from the letters of Paul. When I was a young pastor, I frequently preached from Paul’s letters. But as time went on, and my own theology took another direction from what many and perhaps most preachers believe, I found that increasingly I avoided Pauline theological texts for sermons, especially as regards to meaning of the crucifixion. Not the resurrection, because I basically affirm what Paul says about that. But his understanding of the crucifixion of Jesus is very problematic for me.
When I decided to preach this sermon, however, I also decided to preach a lengthy series of sermons after it called The Power of Pauline Ethics. From January 12 through February 23, the last Sunday before Lent, I will address some of the concerns Paul had in the realm of ethics. And there, so it seems to me, his thoughts are excellent and useful, and are very helpful to everyone who wants to try to act like a Christian in everyday life. I confess that my aversion to Paul’s Christology indirectly led me to avoid his ethics as well, and that has been a big mistake.
It is important for all of us to realize that the four Gospels and the letters of Paul do not present a concise and indisputable understanding of the nature and purpose of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Anyone can trot out a litany of various proof texts to validate whatever we may choose to believe about anything. Without question there is a generally and widely accepted orthodox position with respect to Jesus, and also without question my theology and Christology do not fall within that orthodox position. I know what I am supposed to say, but I cannot maintain personal integrity by saying it. Thus I have always attempted to preach what I believe needs to be said, and not necessarily what you believe needs to be heard.
I do not think that Jesus ever conceived even for a fleeting moment that he was divine. He perceived himself to be human to the exact same degree any of us is human. I also doubt that any of the disciples ever imagined Jesus to be divine. Paul probably believed Jesus was divine, although there are passages in his epistles which seem to cast doubt on that idea.
The issue I am addressing in this sermon is illustrated by a true story we heard yesterday. A friend told us about a 4-year-old child of her acquaintance who attends a church pre-kindergarten program in California. The little girl came home from school one day and announced to her parents that God had died on a cross. This was news to her parents, so they asked her to tell more. “Oh, yes,” said the child, “God died on a cross. But three days later he came back from the dead, and when He did, the disciples of Jesus all sang, ‘For He’s a jolly good fellow, for He’s a jolly good fellow, for He’s a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny.” Can you imagine telling 4-year-olds that God died on a cross? What can that mean to children?
None of the three Christmas carols we are singing this morning alludes to the divinity of Jesus. Subconsciously we may invest them with that notion, because we have been taught to believe that Jesus was not only the Son of God but God Himself in human flesh. Nevertheless, that concept is not unmistakably presented in any of the Gospels, even the Gospel of John. The implication is there, to be sure, but it is not there in an unmistakable fashion.
Has it ever struck you as odd that Paul said almost nothing about the teachings of Jesus? It may be because nobody told him what Jesus said, and thus Paul didn’t and couldn’t know what Jesus’ teachings were. Paul admits that as a Pharisaic Jew he fiercely opposed the first Christians, because he thought they were Jewish heretics. Then he had his profound conversion experience on the road to Damascus, and he who had been the Super-Jew became the Super-Christian. Maybe he felt so guilty because of his previous behavior that he wanted to make amends for it by becoming the Number One Christian of the early Christians.
In the opening chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote this: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (I Cor. 1:22-24). Reading between the lines, Paul probably means by his last statement here that if you believe what he believes about the crucifixion, it indicates that you are called by God, simply because you subscribe to the proper doctrines.
However, despite Paul’s heavy concentration on the crucifixion, it is an undeniable fact that the Gospels contain far more about Jesus’ teachings than about his crucifixion and resurrection. But for Paul, the crucifixion and resurrection were the essence of his belief system, and practically the only factors about Jesus that really mattered to him. The explanations of the kingdom of God, the parables, the miracles, the ethics of Jesus: none of that seemed important to Paul. But in fairness to him, he may have known little about these factors, because presumably none of the Gospels had been written until after Paul was executed in Rome. Still, Paul did know Peter, the chief disciple, and he also knew Mark and Luke, each of whom did write a Gospel. You would think they told him about what Jesus said and did. But Paul decided for reasons of his own to concentrate almost exclusively on the fact that Jesus had been crucified, and also on the belief that Jesus was raised from the dead.
Now we need to understand something about the nature of the Judaism in which Paul was raised, when he was known as Saul of Tarsus. For ten centuries, the concept of sacrifice was at the heart of what it meant to be Jewish. The temple in Jerusalem was built by Solomon not primarily as a place of worship as we understand that but as a place of sacrifice. One of the twelve tribes of Israel, the Levites, were designated to be the priests of the temple. In order for their sins to be forgiven, people would purchase animals to give to the priests and Levites to sacrifice on the altar of the temple. The ancient Jews believed, as did many other peoples in ancient times, that blood had to be shed in order for them to be at peace with God or the gods.
Our responsive reading for today comes from the 53rd chapter of the prophet Isaiah. I suspect that Isaiah 53 was not widely considered a key biblical passage by Jews, but it became a key passage to Christians early on in Christian history. The prophet wrote about someone whom biblical scholars called “the Suffering Servant.” Jews probably believed the Suffering Servant was intended by Isaiah to be the whole people of Israel rather than a specific individual. To Christians, however, the servant was understood to be Jesus. And, said the Christians, led by Paul, Jesus suffered upon the cross as the single sacrifice necessary to bring forgiveness of our sins. All other sacrifices were to be done away with. In Romans 5:8, Paul unequivocally states this: “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Jesus is thus the sacrifice.
There is a term which has long been used to describe this theological idea. It is called “substitutionary atonement.” It suggests at least two main ideas. All of us deserve to die for our own sins. No one is sinless, and therefore we should have to pay the price for our own sins, whatever that price might be. If it means we all deserve to go to hell, so be it. However, according to the concept of substitutionary atonement, Jesus died on the cross on our behalf. Therefore he substituted for us. And therefore we have escaped our deserved fate.
IF you believe all people deserve to die for their own sins, and IF you believe that a price has to be paid for sins (that something or someone needs to be sacrificed), and IF you believe there is a hell into which all sinners deserve to be hurled, and IF you believe Jesus substituted on our behalf to atone before God for the sins of all of us, THEN the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is one of the greatest concepts God ever invented. Certainly that is what Paul thought.
But what if you don’t believe that? I don’t believe any of those four suppositions. Perhaps you also have reservations about some of them. So where does that leave folks like us?
First I would say this: Don’t count on the Church changing its mind about the substitutionary atonement. The doctrine has been around so long, and it has been so widely affirmed, that the doctrine shall not disappear in our lifetime, if ever. If you reject the idea, you have no choice other than to consider yourself a member of the Loyal Opposition.
Far more Christians believe Jesus to be divine than those who believe he was not divine nor did he claim to be divine. That too is not going to change. Twenty centuries of Pauline theology will not be overturned quickly, if ever. The concept that divinity died on Golgatha is an orthodox notion that is not going to disappear.
The Romans intentionally did the first century Jews no favors. They were a cruel occupation force, and most Romans detested the Jews as peculiar and potential if not actual insurrectionists. Nevertheless, ironically, unintentionally, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70 CE, they also forever destroyed the possibility of Jewish sacrificial religion. Without a temple, there could be no sacrifices.
There is a second great irony which derives from the Roman occupation of Judea in the first century. It is this: the importance of sacrifice has continued only in Christianity of all the major world religions. Had the Romans not leveled the temple, Jewish sacrifice would have continued indefinitely, and the purported sacrificial death of Jesus would never have meant so much to Paul. But for Paul, instead of sacrifices (plural), there is just one necessary sacrifice, singular. And that is the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross, or the divinely appointed sacrifice of Jesus by God in the substitutionary atonement. It is not an ox, not a sheep, not a goat, not a pigeon that is sacrificed. It is a person. It is the Messiah. It is the Son of God. It is in some unexplained, inexplicable fashion God Himself hanging upon the cross.
What an extraordinary idea! What a fantastic notion! The Son of God or God Himself upon the cross! Does it draw countless numbers to Christianity? Does it move the masses? Does it become the central feature of the Roman Catholic Mass?
But is it too fantastic? Is it too much of a theological fantasy, too much of a phantasmagoria, too much a philosophical skandalon, a stumbling-block? Is the idea of Jesus as the one required sacrifice simply too much? Did Paul and does the Church invest too much theological capital in the crucifixion? Is it fundamentally an historical reality, something that may have become existentially inevitable, or is it THE theological reality? Are there truly perils of Pauline theology by making so much of the crucifixion of Jesus that the rest of Jesus as well as nearly everything else about God is lost in the theological shuffle? Does the cross save us, or does God save us?
Paul had a brilliant mind. He stood head and shoulders above the disciples, who did not have either the theological training or the mental acuity of Paul. In his ethics Paul was very helpful pastorally to all the early Christians to whom he addressed his letters.
Has the Church ever felt a necessity to try to “tone down” the excesses of Paul? If so, I am not aware of it. Nevertheless, on his concept of the crucifixion I am convinced he drew some over-the-top conclusions which should never have been drawn.
The Chapel Without Walls is important to those of us for whom it is the congregational center of our Christianity. However, I want to assure you of this: The pastor of this congregation preaching his distinct opposition to the essence of Pauline theology, which consists of Paul’s teachings regarding the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, is not going to prompt a major toning down of Saul of Tarsus. But I also want you to know I honestly am very grateful to you, dear hearts, that you allow me to proclaim my unorthodoxies without asking for my head on a platter - - - yet.