The Scandal of Grace

The Scandal of Grace (March 19, 2006)

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” I Corinthians 1:18

Last week our subject was the World’s Most Profound Paradox. Jesus said those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their lives for his sake will find it. Jesus had told his favorite disciple, Peter, that he was about to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be put to death on the cross and after three days to rise again. Peter wouldn’t hear of it and, according to the text, began to rebuke Jesus. It just didn’t compute, as we say, in Peter’s mind, that suffering was part of the picture. Jesus response to Peter was “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Peter may have been the first but he was by no means the last not to figure out why the cross was necessary. The apostle Paul ran into some of the same misconceptions: “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing” he noted. But, “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles”. The word in Greek for “stumbling block” is skandalon, from which of course we get “scandal”. The word for “foolishness” is moria, from which we get “moron”. Only a “moron”, the Greeks said, would believe such stuff.

The Greeks overwhelmingly believed that the gods couldn’t care less what happened to human beings. Plutarch argued that it was an insult to God to involve him in human affairs. The idea that God would become one of us, take human form, humble himself and accept even death on the cross just didn’t “compute”, as it didn’t at first with Peter, though for different reasons. But Paul stuck to the message, which he himself says was what was handed on to him, that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, that he rose again on the third day. The only way God could show his love to the world and to save it was to enter it and take upon himself our sin, giving himself for our redemption, as “undignified” as it may have appeared to the elite of Greece. “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Above all, the Greeks loved wisdom, Sophia. And what they prized was a person who could debate endless points of philosophy, much as college students love to do in “bull sessions”. But here Paul came with a message, which is the basic message of the Christian church, the message of the cross, an ignominious death which shows mankind at its worst but also God at God’s best, going to the greatest degree possible out of love. Instead of focusing on our “wisdom” the message focuses on God’s grace.

It was C. S. Lewis who said that one of the things about reality is that it is so unpredictable and one of the things which makes him believe in Christianity, he said, is that it is just like reality itself, so unpredictable. “This is one of the reasons I believe Christianity,” he wrote in Mere Christianity. “It is a religion you could not have guessed.”

The cross has become such a part of ordinary life that we need to be reminded what a scandal it originally was. It is still a “scandal” because many want something else. Witness the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, which says Christ didn’t die on the cross but survived it and was married to Mary Magdalene and had a family. That’s much more “appealing” than the cross for many people. It appeals to their own wisdom and intelligence, which is just what the ancient Greeks wanted, not a faith which says clearly we are sinners, that we need salvation from our sin, and that God came himself in Christ to reconcile us to himself on the cross. As the New Testament says elsewhere, people will always want something which tickles their ears.

Christianity is by no means anti-intellectual. Some of the greatest minds the world has ever known have been drawn to Christ. But it does say that our intelligence will not save us. God saves us by his grace, the grace of the cross. Christianity places at its center, as the hymn says. “the form of one who suffered there for me”. It takes swallowing our pride, admitting our wrong-headness, and believing in the power of suffering love. Not everyone can quite bring themselves to do that.

One of the time-honored ways of facing a “scandal” is to deny it. (Several examples from the highest office in our land come to mind, but I won’t go into that!)

One of the earliest challenges to Christianity was a form of thinking known as Gnosticism. Among other things, it appealed to salvation by a secret “knowledge”. Christ only seemed to be human, they said, but he didn’t suffer and he didn’t die on the cross. The early Church answered clearly: “he suffered under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified dead and buried. He descended into hell”, in other words, he really did die. The religion of Islam honors Jesus as one of the six great prophets and gives him the title “the Word of God” but also says he didn’t die on the cross but someone else died in his place because God just wouldn’t allow that to happen to a prophet, which ignores not only the gospel records but what often happened to prophets in the Old Testament.

The cross flies directly in the face of one of the most common attitudes of this or any time: retribution. “Don’t get mad, get even.” To people who think like that the cross represents weakness. But Jesus came preaching just the opposite of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” His message was the power not of vengeance but of forgiveness, not of retribution but of redemption.

In Palestine of Jesus’ day everywhere you went you saw the symbols of the Roman power, the escutcheons and shields of the Roman emperors. Who would have thought that these would sometime disappear? I once visited Seoul, Korea, and I remember looking out one night on the skyline and seeing red neon crosses everywhere, and not a single symbol of the Roman emperors.

St. Paul said, “we preach Christ crucified.” And that he said is the power of God. From the cross a new force sprang into being, a force which shows the power of love instead of the love of power. The Scottish theologian James Denney used to hold up a cross and say, “God loves like that.”

Anyone who watches the news or reads the papers certainly can see that the power of vengeance is running strong. Iraq is exploding into sectarian violence at a terrific scale and all people can think is getting back at the other guy. It is an endless cycle of violence and counter-violence, and no one can see the end of it. In the middle are the innocent victims who would like to just get on with their lives, but like Romeo and Juliet they are trapped in endless battles between Montagues and Capulets. Until some brave people speak up and say let’s look at a different way of living because this way just isn’t working.

That different way began 2000 years ago on a green hill far away outside a city wall.

As C. S. Lewis said, Christianity is believable because you could not have guessed it. Our minds, it seems, are wired toward retribution not restoration. But every now and then something happens which shows clearly how powerful grace can be.

Last fall a 19-year-old named Ryan Cushing appeared in a Suffolk county courtroom, charged with assault for throwing a frozen 20 pound turkey through a car windshield and seriously injuring the driver. Mr. Cushing and six friends had been out joyriding. Every bone in the face of Victoria Ruvolo, the driver, a 44-year-old office manager, was shattered by the force of the turkey through her windshield. She required hours and hours of surgery. Surgeons said the impact might have caused serious brain damage, but she appears to have recovered. She came to the courtroom that same day, but hers was not the attitude of so many crime victims.

Mr. Cushing could have received 25 years in prison. Instead, at her insistence, prosecutors granted him a plea bargain of six months in jail and five years’ probation. Many in the courtroom, veteran reporters and witnesses and officers, couldn’t hide their emotions. After the court room drama, during which the young man pled guilty in a very quiet voice, he came face to face with his victim and begged her to forgive him. She cradled his head as he sobbed and patted his back. “It’s OK,” she said, “It’s OK. I just want you to make your life the best it can be.” When she came to the courtroom she was wearing a black pant suit and a golden cross about her neck.

Afterwards, a tearful Mr. Cushing told reporters, “I love the woman. She is a wonderful woman.” Prosecutors said they seriously doubted the young man would ever be in trouble with the law again.

This is the way Jesus taught, and it is why Jesus died, not to pay us back for sins but to rescue us and to make our lives the best they can possibly be in the love of God.