2021.11.07 | Reconciling Suffering
“Reconciling Suffering”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, Senior Minister
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
All Saints Celebration / Dia de los Muertos Fiesta
November 7, 2021
Today we observe All Saints Sunday, and the culmination of a week of remembering and giving thanks for the life and witness of those who have gone to God. The original celebration of All Saints Day in the Christian tradition was established by Pope Urban IV in the mid 13th century.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the first two hundred years that All Saints Day was celebrated, Christians observed the anniversary of the martyrs’ deaths at the place of their martyrdom. Because groups of martyrs frequently suffered and died on the same day, joint commemorations of the saints emerged. Eventually, other saints, not just martyrs, were remembered on All Saints Day.
So the correlation between suffering and this celebration is hard to overstate, and the reading of today’s passage from Isaiah 53:4-12 is more than fitting.
The passage is referred to as “the Suffering Servant Song” by biblical scholars. It is one of four servant songs found in the book of Isaiah. This passage is one of the most beautiful passages in all of our scriptures, in my view. And, yet, it is also one of the most troubling if you really pay attention to what’s been said and envisioned.
The poetry is eloquent and poignant, even eight centuries after it was first uttered and even after it has been translated from the ancient Hebrew into modern English and every other modern language around the world.
G. F. Handel brought several of the verses in chapter 53 into popular culture by incorporating verses 3-6 into the opening movements of his most famous work, Messiah, Part II, the Passion.
Every half-way decent choir in Europe and North America has sung these lyrics with gusto since the mid-18th century when it was written and first performed. The popularity and staying power of Handel's Messiah has ensured that at least these four verses from the Suffering Servant Song have become embedded in our psyches and culture.
When we read passages like Isaiah 53, and we hear choirs singing these verses, if we’re really paying attention, they do not give us the “warm tummy” feelings that we might associate with a Hallmark-style holiday. Instead, they forecast the harsh prophecies of Advent and they should scare the hell out of us!
And yet, they don’t. Why is that?
Perhaps it’s because passages like the Suffering Servant have become so familiar--maybe too familiar. Maybe they’ve become the spiritual equivalent of “white noise” drowning out the crisp, clear messages of the ancient prophets.
So let’s look and listen again. Better yet, let’s listen closer. And as we do, we cannot miss the fact that Isaiah envisioned a messiah who would come into the world and serve as a scapegoat--yes, a human sacrifice--to not only amend for human sin, but to blot it out. The theological term for this act is “expiation.”
The community out of which Isaiah 53 emerged believed that a messiah would come into the world--and not only make amends for Israel so that they could get right with God--the messiah would serve as an expiation for their sins, so that they would be liberated from captivity in Babylon and be able to return to Judah with a clean slate.
The release from servitude in Babylon, and the opportunity to return to Judah, I understand and embrace, but the archaic idea that an animal or human sacrifice is needed--not so much--not for an omnipotent God like ours.
II
In my view, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement--the idea that a human sacrifice was and is required to amend and blot out human sin--is an artifact received from an ancient culture that is not essential to my Christian faith. Substitutionary atonement is for me the theological equivalent of an archeological artifact like an Egyptian sarcophagus. It’s something that exists and something that we have brought along with us into the 21st century, but it’s not, in my view, central to my Christian faith. It is an artifact received from our ancestors in the faith, reflective of an idea from another time.
Substitutionary atonement originated in the ancient Near East at a time when animal sacrifices were a normal part of Temple practices, and when human sacrifices were a normative part of some religions in the world.
Isaiah 53 also comes from a time and a place when the Jewish people endured great suffering. The person and community with which this passage is historically linked was part of the Jewish diaspora. They were the remnant who survived the Babalonian conquest of Judah, and who had been taken captive in the latter part of the 6th century BCE. They had suffered a lot. They had been stranded for nearly forty years. Towards the end of that time, they were trying to make sense of their suffering, and trying to imagine a world beyond suffering, when they would be liberated from captivity and able to return home to Judah.
In conversations with some of our friends at Shir Ami, I’ve found that Reform Jews read passages like Isaiah 53, and appreciate the struggle of their ancestors, but they don’t embrace the ancient practices of animal (or human) sacrifices. In fact, the whole idea makes them (and us) a little squeamish.
Like most Reform Jews, most modern Christian feminists, including myself, don’t embrace the orthodox doctrine of sacrificial atonement, because this doctrine tends to idealize suffering and encourage oppressed people to stay mired in their suffering rather than speaking a prophetic word, and taking on the principalities and powers that oppress them.
Most Christian feminists see Jesus’ suffering as the result of human sin and the consequences which people endure when acting prophetically on their faith values. Such an example is considered noble, and worthy of emulation, but not necessary for human salvation.
III
I realize that the assertions that I’m making here about suffering and salvation are a bit unorthodox, and you may not share my view. And that’s OK.
There is plenty of good room at Eden Church for a range of theological views on the doctrine of atonement and other historic tenets of the Christian faith. We do not have to believe the same things to gather on this campus, worship in this space, or celebrate the sacraments together. This is one of the great attributes of the United Church of Christ. We are able to agree to disagree without being disagreeable.
In a similar vein, we don’t have to share the same beliefs and values to support each other in times of suffering and loss. We just need to recognize our own common humanity, create and hold a space to hold each other in our common loss, and trust that suffering is not our purpose, death is not the end, and that there will be a time and a place where all of God’s people will gather in peace--not as the world gives, but as God gives. Amen.