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the Cross is the moment where our worst impulses towards violence....to use the state to keep order before justice...and the love of God meet.
if a giant booming voice comes down, and says "you're forgiven" it's not going to change much. i don't think we would have had any idea how serious the situation was, or how deeply God desires to rebuild God's relationship with us.
to show humankind the gravity of the situation, God subjected God's self to our violence. and in rising from death, God showed the fundamental emptiness of that violence. it does not solve problems. it does not create justice. it targets the innocent right along with the guitly.
but instead of wrath, or separation...what violence hopes to accomplish, God proclaims forgiveness. the atonement folks say, that if God just forgave everyone, it would be cheap...that it would make sin mean nothing. A being that is all powerful, but that is not offended by the acts of depraved violence that we as a species are wont to do is dangerously amoral. i agree...but where i disagree is that the way out isn't God taking divine wrath in our stead. it's God showing up in our lives, and when we chose to direct violence at God, God accepts it. but where we think the violence will remove what we aren't comfortable with...the call to accountability, the call to justice, the call to radical relationship, the call to give up privildge, the call to the kingdom of God...it doesn't. The ressurection is the denial of what we think is a natural consequence. God's power to love outshines our power to destroy.
We now know what happens. Now we have a choice. Do we believe in destruction? Or do we believe in love?
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For God so loved creation, that God sent God's only Son that whosoever believed should not perish, but have everlasting life.
-John 3:16
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