Redemption

(Caution: this is an entry in which the text does not relate to the photos. The pictures were taken during the crafting of a new headboard for our bed.)

There is a strange turn of phrase in the Christian world: "substitutionary atonement." In a most basic sense, it means that the separation between the divine and the human has been overcome (atonement) by someone, namely Jesus Christ, dying instead (substitutionary) of us. This phrase has come to some level of importance in the history of the Church. Some institutions make substitutionary atonement an essential piece of orthodoxy. One institutional statement of doctrine I found recently declares that Jesus Christ "died a substitutionary death for sinners." I call this phrase strange because I'm not sure that in the redemptive saga of Jesus Christ we may actually call his death or atonement "substitutionary."
To "substitute" is to put something in someone else's place. The verb has the same sense as our prepositional pair, "instead of," in-the-stead-of, or in the place of. Something happens to one in order that the other may be spared. "Substitutionary atonement" or "substitutionary death," which usually have the same meaning in Christian circles, mean the same thing: Jesus Christ died in stead of us. Here's my problem: we still have to die. This throws a wrench into the idea of "substitution." If I am called for jury duty, and my friend says, "I'll go instead of you," and she serves, then all is well and good. But if the county informs me three days later that I still have to show up for jury duty, I'm going to tell my friend that she really didn't substitute for me.
So what's the deal? How can the death of Jesus be a substitute for my own if I still have to die? This would be enough to deal with, but there's another prong on this fork. Not only do I still have to die, but according to the gospels, I will be called to follow Jesus Christ toward the same death he died (evidenced by "take up your cross and follow me"). Not only do I still have to die, but I'm being called to death--maybe a shameful, incriminating death like his. What kind of substitution is this?
What if we play with the meaning of "death"? Is there a way in which Jesus Christ might have died that, because of his death, we don't have to follow? If we can't be spared physical death, might we be spared some other kind of death that Jesus went through?
The Apostles' Creed speaks of Jesus' "descending into hell." And most Christians who acknowledge the existence of hell would affirm that believers in Jesus don't have to go there after physical death. In fact, this has been one of the great selling points of faith in Jesus throughout the life of the Church: faith in Jesus offers us (among many other things) freedom from hell and entrance into heaven. Perhaps this is the aspect of Jesus' death which is substitutionary. He went to hell instead of us, so we don't have to go there.
All well and good; except for a testamental hiccup. It's possible to make a New Testament argument that Jesus died (or, at least, descended into hell) instead of us. However, substitutionary atonement stands on an understanding of atonement; and death for atonement rests on an Old Testament (Hebrew scriptures) understanding of sacrifice. Here's the hiccup: I cannot find where in the Old Testament the people of God are told that "this sacrifice (of an animal) is being killed in stead of you." So blood, by which atonement is made in the Hebrew scriptures, even when it is spilled in sacrifice, does not spare the people from dying. They are atoned, but death is still their lot. Is it really atonement--bringing God and humanity back together--if the Hebrews killed all those animals and still had to die?
I suspect that the Hebrew problem of sin evolved between the Old and New Testaments into the problem of sin, death, and hell; there was no hell for the Hebrews. Real substitutionary atonement would mean we wouldn't have to die anymore. (Maybe Yahweh saw the problem with effecting real substitutionary atonement as it would affect world population and already mismanaged food sources.) So Yahweh did something different: Jesus came to go with us into death.
How do you transform Death from a dead-end mine shaft into a worm-hole into another dimension? Send Life through it. But to do so, one has to get the great Fish of Abbaddon to swallow the hook of Vitality. The bait? Life that can die, otherwise known as the Incarnation. Put the ephemeral flesh on Life, and Death will swallow the pill. So in Jesus Christ, Life goes with us--like a parent putting a child on his lap for the waterslide tube--into Death.
But Death can't hold Life. It's like pouring a jug of anti-matter into . . . well, anything. A reaction must occur, a transformation must happen. Death, incapable of engendering anything new, can't foot the bill of transformation, so what happens? Life becomes New Life: Resurrection.
See what's happened? In Jesus Christ we are carried onto the great waterslide of transformation into new life. But we are carried on it; Jesus does not go through it in stead of us. Perhaps Jesus goes into hell instead of us--or perhaps when Jesus gets there, we won't mind being there with him. Who knows? At any rate, "substitutionary" may be the wrong way to describe Jesus' passage from this world. Perhaps "accompanying" would be better. Try that on, and see if it fits. (It already makes me feel better about following him into death.)
I dropped the atonement piece. So do we still have to atone? Or did Jesus do that in our stead?
"Atonement" is, quite literally, "at-one-ment," or the becoming one of two things formerly separate. This Incarnation, the Life with Flesh On It, is the coming together of the human (that which must die) and the divine (that which is Life). They are one in Jesus Christ. Which means that atonement occurs (or must have already occurred) when Flesh and Life become one. Again from the Apostles' Creed, this happens at the conception of Jesus.
The "accompanying" or participatory death of Jesus Christ is enabled by the fact that Jesus Christ is both human and divine; thus, atonement happens in him, from the moment when divine and human, formerly separate, come together. Perhaps we should move from "substitutionary atonement" to "zygotic atonement"--or perhaps that would be too nerdy.
If we view the life of Jesus Christ as atoning, and his death as accompanying ours, then the call to die the death that he dies (taking up the cross) becomes clearer and more frightening. After all, if Jesus' death was something more than a dramatic re-enactment of animal sacrifice using a human body, then we must attend the other factors surrounding his death. If before his birth Jesus had atoned for human sin, then why did he die?
He died because the human machine of society and politics didn't want him, and viewed him as a threat. He was assassinated not because the priests recognized he was a sacrifice needed to appease Yahweh, but because he threatened our version of Yahweh. Yes, Jesus died for our sins, but because of our sins rather than to atone for our sins. Yahweh atoned for our sins in Jesus first, then the world said, Up yours, God! Go to hell!

Of course, we're Christian because that didn't work.

Jesus joined us in order to transform death from a pit into a wormhole. But if we join Jesus we're going to be killed--in whatever sense that verb is most terrifying for us--and probably at the hands of the people whose approval we usually seek. And to receive the atonement that does not substitute but accompanies us, we must also accompany the Life who died. I suppose now that Death swallowed the hook the remaining question is: Will we jump through the wormhole?

~emrys