Jarrett McLaughlin
Cross Talk: Deny.Take.Follow.
The Moral Influence Theory of Atonement
February 25, 2024
Matthew 16:21-27
Cold Open:
Brian was a ten-year-old public school kid who struggled with math. His mom and dad did everything to help their son…peer tutoring, after-school sessions, private tutors, but nothing seemed to work.
On a wing and a prayer, they enrolled Brian in Catholic school, hoping the nuns and their habit-forming discipline might do the trick.
At the end of his first day at Catholic School, Brian walked in the house and went straight to his room and immediately laid into his math homework.
He emerged long enough to quickly scarf down his dinner, and then went straight back to work until bedtime.
The parents didn’t want to break the spell of Brian’s new-found focus, so they let it go without comment.
Weeks went by – same pattern…Brian became relentless with his math studies. One day, he came into the house, dropped an unopened envelope on the table and, per usual, went got straight down to business with his homework.
Cautiously his mother opened the letter, and to her amazement she saw a bright red “A” under the subject, MATH.
Overjoyed, both parents rushed into their son’s room.
“Was it the nuns that did it?” the father asked.
The boy shook his head, “No.”
“Was it the private tutoring? The peer-mentoring?” asked the mother.
Again, Brian shook his head, “No.”
“Well, tell us, what helped you turn this around so quickly?”
“Well,” Brian said, “Catholic School made it very clear to me that Math was important. As soon as I set foot in the building – and I saw the guy they nailed to that plus sign – I knew these people meant business!”
I know……it’s so stupid.
But I also love experiencing the Cross – so loaded with meaning and symbolism – through the eyes of a child who carries none of that baggage.
To him, it’s just a giant plus sign.
It makes you wonder – for all our familiarity with the cross – do we really understand it?
We post crosses on buildings and billboards.
We wear crosses on T-shirts, around our necks, or even as tattoos.
but do we understand about what that cross really means?
This Cross Talk sermon series is our way to accompany Jesus on his inevitable collision course with the Cross.
The series is shaped by a number of questions:
What exactly happened on the cross?
Was it a demonstration of God’s love that brings us back to God?
Was it a once and for all sacrifice?
Was it a cosmic struggle between good and evil coming to a head?
Was it a payment or transaction of some sort?
Was it a lynching, with the very love of God left to hang on the tree?
If you’re not altogether clear about these matters, then I have good news for you: The Church isn’t either. There are many perspectives about what happened on the cross – and the even better news is that these different perspectives are not mutually exclusive. You do not have to pick one and say, “this is how it happened!” The Church has sought to understand this for two millennia but in the end it’s a mystery.
In fact, these differing images about what happened on the cross have come to be known as atonement theories. I think that I prefer images as it preserves the sense of mystery, but the more important word is Atonement.
Break that word down into its component parts and you get At-One-Ment.
Central to all atonement theories is the sense that – through the cross – Jesus makes us “at one” with God.
We can wonder if the cross is really essential to this at-one-ment – but the witness of scripture is clear that the cross is a necessary, or at the very least an inevitable, part of the story.
We turn our attention to the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.
But first. let us pray:
As the beams of the cross join together at the point of intersection,
Meet us here, O God, in the reading of your word.
Meet us here at the crossroads and make yourself known to us,
so that we might see you more clearly, and the path you would have us follow. Amen.
Scripture:
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.
Sermon:
Do you know that old camp song “We’re Goin’ On a Bear Hunt?”
We’re goin’ on a bear hunt
Gonna catch a big one
What a beautiful day
We’re not scared
OH-NO!
GRASS!
Long, wavy grass.
Can’t go over it.
Can’t go under it.
OH NO!
Got to go through it.
Swishy swashy, swishy swashy, swishy swashy.
In the course of the song you encounter a deep cold river, thick oozy mud, a big dark forest. . . and every time it’s the same thing:
Can’t go over it; Can’t go under it – Oh No…got to go through it.
Jesus might have said the same about the Cross – a loomy, doomy cross.
“He can’t go over it. He can’t go under it. He has to go….through it.”
He was quite clear about this in our reading today – he must go to Jerusalem, he must suffer, he must be killed.
Peter does his best to convince him otherwise, but Jesus only doubles down: It’s not just a cross for him – there’s a cross for ANY who would follow him.
No short-cuts allowed – deny yourself, take it up, follow.
And to be clear – Jesus did not have a dainty, 24-carat gold necklace in mind.
The Church has done a good job beautifying the cross, but there was nothing beautiful about a Roman cross. It was a particularly cruel form of public execution.
The Romans had no interest in making a quick and painless end of their prisoners.
Crucifixion took hours – sometimes more than an entire day.
Prolonging pain was the point.
Crucifixion was designed to humiliate – yes the victim himself, but also the occupied people – to remind everyone who was in charge.
As such, Crucifixion was most often reserved for insurrectionists; for those who sought to run Rome right out of Israel.
Every crucifixion was like a human billboard – spelling out a simple, consistent message:
“DO NOT MESS WITH THE EMPIRE.”
The cross is quite ugly – and yet the New Testament writers maintain that there was something absolutely necessary about the cross…that the Gospel story is incomplete without it.
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to dive into what has been called the Moral Influence theory of atonement. While the Moral Influence theory is the least supernatural of the atonement models, it is among the oldest.
This theory begins with the idea that humans are so captive to Sin that we cannot tell right from wrong. Our separation from God is so complete that we think nothing of stringing up another person in public; of executing him so long as it protect our interests.
The cross embodies the very worst human impulses – our selfishness and greed; our capacity for cruelty; how quickly we reach for violence to preserve our advantages in life.
Jesus, on the other hand, is a perfect embodiment of God’s love.
And it is that divine love that sets Jesus on a collision course with the cross.
God so desires union with us that Jesus will meet us at our very worst.
The cross then is this grand gesture of God’s extravagant love – that God would hold nothing back from us – and when we behold the cross, when we know the depths of God’s love for us – there is this seismic change that happens inside us.
That captivity to Sin is shaken – and we are set free to lead a more holy and helpful life. God’s love – so powerfully on display – expands our own capacity to choose love.
In its simplest form, that is the Moral Influence theory of atonement.
The limits of this model are that it is all about the individual’s experience.
The effects of Jesus’ death are played out in our interior lives. This grand gesture of love may have an effect on you – it might break the spell of sin over your life; it could inspire you to lead a life that is more generous and caring. But maybe it won’t.
So, the question lingers – is the cross only effective for a small number of people? Is it only real for those who open themselves to its persuasive power? That’s the critique of the Moral Influence Theory of atonement.
This “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t” aspect was unsatisfactory to some and so in the history of the Church others sought alternative understandings, and we’ll examine many of those in the coming weeks.
What I find compelling in the Moral Influence Theory is the profound power of God’s love–
How God insists on meeting our worst with God’s best.
This changes us, yes,
But it is also quite counter-cultural.
Usually, our culture speaks of love as a feeling before anything else, an emotion. You can see it in the phrases we use: “I just don’t feel that way about you anymore.” More recently language has doubled down on this “Feeling all the Feels.” Whoa! That’s a lot of feeling talk.
This atonement theory, however, reminds us that God’s love is not an emotion, it’s more tangible than that.
To lean on John 3:16, it’s not that God so loved the world that he had warm fuzzy feelings about us. It’s God so loved the world that he gave…surrendered…sacrificed… his only begotten son. The love of God is not an emotion – it’s an active commitment to be with us even when it does NOT feel good…even when it hurts.
Because it’s another occasion characterized by love – consider a wedding ceremony.
Most of the weddings I have officiated have been for young couples…in their 20s, 30s. They’ve dated for a year or four, been engaged for another year or so, and then they’re standing in front of me ready to get married.
They’re dressed to the nines – not one hair is out of place. Sweet-smelling flowers are everywhere and it’s all so beautiful and there are feels bouncing all over the walls. And then it falls to me to ask them this absolutely earth-shaking question: “Do you promise before God and these witnesses to be loving and faithful in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health?” They’re all googly-eyed and giddy and feeling all the feels…and so of course they say “yes.” Just a casual, every-day “yes.”
But from where I stand in that moment, I can also see just beyond them to the rest of the congregation. And they’re all toothy grins too, but here’s what I know. Anybody out there who’s been married…one, maybe two, weeks – they might be nodding and smiling but inside I know what they’re thinking: “…They have no idea what they’re getting into.”
It’s true – that promise you’re making…you have absolutely no clue what seismic shifts you are welcoming into your life in that moment…how it will shape and re-shape you over and over.
You can’t see the sorrow that will one day rise up and threaten to steal away all of the joy.
You can’t see those moments when the want creeps in to overthrow the plenty that you were so sure would be constant.
It is a seismic promise.
And that’s not to speak of the countless ways you’ll drive each other crazy along the way – how this person will in fact help you feel ALL the feels. How you will in fact get unreasonably angry when your dearest life partner composts the leftovers that you were so sure had another couple of good days left…. just as a hypothetical for instance.
But when that young couple is standing there with those toothy grins, they may not fully grasp that this person is going to see me at my very worst.
If that young couple could see the full weight of that promise – they might have more to say than a plain old ‘Yes.’
Here’s the gospel, friends:
God could see us – all of us. The capacity for beauty and kindness, yes.
But God could also see the cruelty of the cross forming in our imagination – the very worst of what we can summon.
God could see it all – and God still chose us…and God still chooses us.
And therein lies perhaps the greatest miracle of all – that God could take something as ugly as a cross and transform it into something so beautiful.
If a love like that doesn’t influence us to be the best version of ourselves, I don’t know what will.
I’m not convinced that our “being best” is the entire point of the crucifixion,
But the purest kind of love embracing us at our very worst – that has a ring of truth to me.
I for one would go on a bear hunt for love like that any day of the week.
Amen.