The Cross: Propitiation

 

 “The Matrix” is a science fiction movie which uses Christian imagery.[i]  In the film, most of the people on earth are blind to a terrible evil oppressing them.  A living computer has enslaved every human on earth.  But it keeps humans in a virtual world where everything seems normal.  One character named Morpheus is a prophet who tries to wake others to the shocking reality of their enslavement.  In one scene Morpheus meets with a man named Neo.  He explains to Neo that something is wrong with the world: “Let me tell you why you are here.  You are here because you know something.  What you know you can’t explain.  But you feel it.  You’ve felt it your entire life.  That there is something wrong in the world.  You don’t know what it is.  But it’s there.  Like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.  It is this feeling that has brought you to me.  Do you know what I’m talking about?”  

 

Morpheus explains to Neo: “There is something wrong in the world.”

 

In Rom. 1-3 Paul makes a similar speech.  Paul writes that the world is filled with “wickedness, evil, greed and depravity” and “envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice” (Rom. 1:29 TNIV).  In Rom. 1 he writes to those who don’t worship the Christian God.  In Rom. 2 he writes to those who do worship God.  And to both, Paul writes, there is something wrong in the world.

 

 

There are times when we wake to this reality, aren’t there?   

·        It may be when we turn on the local news and there is a string of stories—a child abused by a stranger or a homeowner killed by an intruder—and we think, “What a messed up city.” 

·        It may be when we are at school and a girlfriend breaks up with us or an administrator turns down our request for financial aid, and we are filled with a sense that the world isn’t fair. 

·        It may be when we travel abroad and see a family living in a cardboard hut or children sleeping in the street and we wonder how the world could be so cruel.  There is something wrong with the world.

 

And in Rom. 1-3 Paul uses one word to describe the God’s reaction to this.  The word is “wrath.”: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness (Rom. 1:18 TNIV).  The Christian message is that God sees what’s wrong with the world.  And his response is wrath. 

 

At one level, God’s response is the same as ours.  In February of 1968 sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike.  The workers were being paid at near poverty level, had no health benefits, and worked in filthy conditions.[ii] Something was terribly wrong and the administration refused to fix it.  People were filled with wrath as a result.  And so on March 28 Dr. Martin Luther King led 6,000 protesters on a march through Memphis.  There are times when we see the wickedness of the world and we get upset.  That’s wrath.  That’s God’s response.

 

But it turns out there’s more wrong with the world than we first realize.  In “The Matrix” the evil came from the computers.  The humans were all just victims.  And we’d like to think that’s how it is in our world.  There’s a lot wrong with the world.  And it’s all “their” fault.  It’s all the fault of the selfish politicians and the corrupt governments.  We are just the victims.  But the point Paul wants to make is that it’s also our fault.

 

 

Paul puts it this way in Rom. 3:22-23 – There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned…  In Rom. 1 he writes to Gentiles—people who do not worship the Christian God.  In Rom. 2 he writes to Jews—people devoted to God.  And he concludes: there is no difference.  Both contribute to the wrong that’s in the world.

 

And that’s one of the hardest things to swallow about the Christian message.  When we wake up to the reality that something is wrong with the world, we want to lay the blame on others.  But Paul states that we have to lay some of the blame at our own feet.  The ongoing discussion about global warming illustrates this.  Human actions are impacting the climate.  And we’d like to lay the blame at the industrial factories that release ozone eating chemicals and the manufacturers who keep producing gas guzzling cars.  But each of us is also part of the problem.  When I leave my computer on overnight or toss recyclable goods away, I contribute to global warming.  Those little actions are part of the bigger evil of climate change.  The same thing is true with our “little” mistakes and failures and sins.  When you turn down an employee’s request out of spite or turn on the TV rather than call that hurting friend, you become part of what’s wrong with the world.  Those actions, multiplied billions of times by the billions who live on the planet and who do these very things, are part of what’s made things so wrong with the world.

 

And what is God’s response?  Once again, Paul says it’s wrath.  In Rom. 1, writing to Gentiles, Paul tells them The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings…(1:18)  And, in Rom. 2, writing to Jews Paul tells But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath when his righteous judgment will be revealed (2:5).  It turns out that even our seemingly “small” sins cause God to respond with “wrath.”

 

That’s something we don’t like to hear.  But what’s worse: a God who gets angry at what’s wrong with the world—even at what we’ve done; or a God who sees what’s wrong with the world and smiles anyway?  We may not like the idea that God is angry at the role each of us has played in making the world an unjust place.  But wouldn’t it be worse to believe that God sees this injustice and doesn’t get upset?  We wouldn’t want a mayor who doesn’t get upset about the crime in our city.  We wouldn’t want a parent who doesn’t get angry at something that happens to his child.  A few weeks ago I saw someone mistreat my son Jacob.  It was during a basketball game.  We let every player on the team shoot during the game.  It was Jacob’s turn to shoot the ball.  So I told our player with the ball to pass the ball to Jacob so Jacob could shoot.  The boy with the ball looked at me, looked at Jacob, and then shot.  And I got mad.  Parents are supposed to get upset when something wrong happens to their child.  I’m not sure we’d want a God who isn’t moved by what’s wrong with the world—even if it means I’m part of the problem.

 

 

But does all this just make God out to be some angry deity bent on judgment?  A 1993 film called “Tombstone” told how Wyatt Earp retired to Tombstone, Arizona.[iii]  The city was filled with lawlessness.  And eventually it so frustrated Earp that he came out of retirement.  He began to protect the citizens against the outlaws.  Those same outlaws then tried to kill Earp’s family.  Earp’s wrath grew.  In one scene Wyatt and his brothers take their families to the train so they can travel safely away while the brothers bring the outlaws to justice.  Earp catches one of the outlaws trying to attack the family.  Enraged, Earp points his gun at the outlaw and tells him to run back to the gang.  Earp screams at him: “You tell ‘em I’m coming.  And [judgment’s] coming with me.  You hear?  [Judgment’s] coming with me!”  Is that the picture the Bible wants us to have of God?  We can understand why he’d be angry.  There’s so much wrong in the world.  But is that all the Bible has to say?  What do we do with this wrath?

 

The Bible uses one word to describe what we do.  It’s a word translated in the old King James Version as “propitiation.”  In many of our Bibles it is translated as “atonement” or “sacrifice of atonement.”  The word is “propitiation.”  The way we deal with wrath is wrapped up in the word “propitiation.”    

 

This morning we begin a new series called Cross Examination.  In this series we are going to explore five images the Bible uses to describe what happened on the cross.  And this morning we’re exploring an image which comes from the word “propitiation.”  The King James Version translates Paul’s words in Rom. 3:25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.   Here’s how the TNIV puts it: God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood.  In the ancient world, this word “propitiation” described a how a pagan worshiper dealt with the wrath of the gods.  The god, who was angry at what something the worshiper had done, was about to unleash his wrath.  Thus the worshiper would offer some kind of sacrifice to appease the angry god.  The sacrifice “made up” for what the worshiper had done wrong.   It was a gift intended to turn aside that god’s wrath.^[iv]

 

But what do we offer the Christian God to make up for what’s wrong in the world?  What kind of offering could we present to God that would make up for the human rights violations in China or the materialism of American culture?  What kind of gift could we offer to appease the way that God is angry at how we spoke to our spouse this morning, or the way we treated that classmate last week?  Is there really anything we could do to resolve that anger? 

 

The Bible’s message is “No.”  We don’t have a gift big enough to appease God’s righteous indignation.  So, God does what we cannot do: Rom. 3:25–God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood.  Who does the propitiating here?  It’s not us.  It’s God.  God presents his own gift of propitiation.  It’s not a merciful Jesus stepping in between us and a wrathful God.  It’s not that God has cocked his rifle and squeezed the trigger at us and Jesus steps into that bullet, leaving God with a shocked expression.  God is filled with frustration at all that’s wrong with the world.  But he’s also filled with an inexplicable love for us.  And out of that love, he presents Jesus as a propitiation. 

But what about Jesus?  Is Jesus being dragged kicking into this equation?  No.  John uses the same word “propitiation” in 1 Jn. 2:1-2: My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.  But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.  He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.  The words “atoning sacrifice” can be translated “propitiation.” Paul says that God presented Jesus as this anger-resolving gift.  John suggests that Jesus offered himself—he was an advocate for us.  John writes in 1 Jn. 4:10  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  The words “atoning sacrifice” can be translated “propitiation.”  God was frustrated, and rightly so, at all that’s wrong in the world.  At the same time he was deeply in love with us.  So, he and Jesus provided a gift that would turn aside his wrath—the gift of his only son.

 

 

This kind of propitiation is very hard to get our minds around.  Even the Bible strains to explain it.  And that’s why, I think, the Bible ultimately settled on a poetic image.  Both Old and New Testaments ultimately rely on a poetic image to make sense of God’s wrath and the way in which the gift of his son dealt with that wrath.  It’s the image of a cup.  The image is found in the book of Revelation in 16:19: God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath.  The same image is used earlier in Jer. 25:15: This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.  This same cup seems to be the focus of Jesus’ words in Matt. 26:38-42: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.  Stay here and keep watch with me.”  Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.  Yet not as I will, but as you will.”…He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

 

 

The poets of the Bible imagine that as God sees the neglect of the poor in the United States, and the suffering in Myanmar, and the things we do wrong every day, his anger takes the shape of a cluster of grapes.  The skin is tight, barely able to contain the bitter and poisonous juice of wrath within.  With every corrupt regime, and every war, and every political scandal the clusters grow larger and the juice within becomes darker.  And as we cheat a customer, or fudge numbers of a spreadsheet, or betray our spouse with a lustful computer site, that cluster grows larger and darker.

 

 

Then God takes all of those grapes and he squeezes them.  Down his hand runs the burning, smoking, poisonous indignation which has been building from Adam and Eve’s dishonesty in the garden up until this very day.  And it drips into a goblet.  God squeezes every last grape and rids them of every last drop.  The cup is filled with this juice that symbolizes his wrath at all that’s wrong in the world. 

 

And if you were to taste that wine with just the tip of your tongue, it would kill you.  And there have been times in history when God has forced an unjust nation or a corrupt ruler to do just that.  He forced them to drink from this cup.  And the consequences were deadly. 

 

 

But God cannot bring himself to put the cup to our lips.  The cup’s contents must be consumed.  But God cannot bring himself to touch it to our lips.  And neither can the son.  They love us too much.  And so in a shared move, the Father hands the cup to the son and the son takes the cup from the Father.  It is not an easy move.  Even as the son takes the cup he begs for the Father to find some other way, to let the cup be taken from him.  But their compassion for us outweighs everything else. 

 

 

And the son lifts the cup to his lips and drinks.  It is such a large cup filled with liquid so hard to consume that it takes the son six hours to finish.  For six hours he hangs on that cross.  He drinks the cup of the wine of God’s wrath.  He drinks down the ounces that were grown from the things you have done in secret.  He drinks down the ounces grown from the atrocities committed in human history—the Holocaust, the Cambodian deaths under the Khmer Rouge, and the slavery of humans in America.  He drinks down that wrath.  And he dies.  He becomes the propitiation.