Visible victim

Christian Century, March 14, 2001 by S. Mark Heim

Christ's death to end sacrifice

ON EVERY LENTEN JOURNEY many people stumble over the paradox of the Christian story. Jesus' death saves the world, and it ought not to have happened. It fulfills prophecy, but it was the work of sinners. It is a "good bad thing." The attempt to give the crucifixion a general moral (die to self, be faithful to the end) runs the risk of simply baptizing all bad things, as if with the right approach they too can be good things.

Is there good reason that scripture puts Jesus' death at the heart of the redemptive plot? These days, many object to the notion of Jesus' death as a substitutionary sacrifice, a vicarious assumption of the punishment that humans deserve. In last week's issue, we rehearsed some of the objections to this view, including the concern that it presents a confused image of God (is God really merciful if he demands a sacrifice?) and that it ends up exalting the role of suffering and abuse, both with God and among humans.

Let's think about the problem the other way around. What would Christianity need to be like to avoid all the criticisms that are made about the shocking execution that is at the center of faith? What if, in place of the passion narratives of the Gospels, Christians had instead the following text:

Christ--the living wisdom of God--came down to earth. He visited a great city in the form of a stranger, a swarthy carpenter with a withered leg, in order to call back those who had fallen into ignorance. He taught many things to those who had the inner ears to hear. But those who saw only his outward form did not understand the grace he brought.

He performed many miracles, and the people worshiped him for this reason and made him their king. But still their ignorance was not dispelled, and each house in the city was set against another, and great fires burned there day and night. So Christ prepared his final miracle. One day he called to him Mary, his mother and his dearest disciple. He went into the temple and ate the bread in the holy of holies, that no person is to touch. They lay together there near the altar throughout the night. While they lay there the earth shook, and many in the city were stricken with a deadly disease and the people were afraid. He sent Mary away, telling her that she must return without fail at the first hour and that whatever she found at that time must be cast outside the gates.

In the morning, when the people came to the temple, seeking to know what evil had been done to bring these troubles upon them, they found nothing but the smallest mustard seed lying near the altar. He had taken the form of a mustard seed, carrying the entirety of divinity within him. All the people were greatly distressed at this. Priests and soldiers, foreigners and natives, members of every tribe, all were seized with awe, in a kind of trance. Heeding Mary, with one spirit they rushed together to form a procession and carried the seed to a stony hill where they threw it in a great hole that opened there. And each person, without exception, threw in stones to cover it.

Miraculously, the seed immediately grew up into a great tree, and Christ himself was in the fruit of that tree, and everyone who ate of this fruit discovered God within themselves and the joy of eternal life. The people returned to the city rejoicing, and health and peace ruled in those walls.

This is a rich symbolic story, full of allegorical possibilities. There is no offensive violence, no punishment or glorified suffering. Instead of a cross of blood, there is a tree of life. How different things might have been if Christians had made such a parable of spiritual self-discovery their text. We would not be embarrassed by charges of victimization in our scriptures. We would have the added bonus that the spiritual value of this story is uncomplicated by worries about what actually happened. Its spiritual value is no less if we regard it as entirely imaginary rather than historical.

Suppose we added just one additional clarification, namely that this text in fact refers to the events of Jesus' execution, to what actually took place as it is described in the Gospels. In that case, the text is a lie about a lynching. If we were then happy to substitute this text for the Gospels, knowing that Jesus' death is perhaps the one thing about which we are historically most certain, it would say something interesting about us--that we like to avert our eyes from the real victims.

THE SUBSTITUTE gospel we have just considered is not merely a thought experiment. Rene Girard has attracted a great deal of attention by arguing that to avert one's eyes from the sight of the real victims is a characteristic human act. He also contends that in light of this central aspect of human life, we can understand the saving character of the cross. That is, the meaning of Jesus' death can be understood only in light of the prototypical "good bad thing" in human culture: scapegoating sacrifice. Girard maintains that central human myths are in fact transcriptions of a consistent kind of violence that he calls the "founding murder." Such murder literally stands at the beginning and in the middle of human society. It makes human community possible.