Series: The Cross

Ransom!?
Isaiah 53:1-6; Mark 10:32-45

Theories

My friends, sometimes we have to unlearn before we can appreciate.

In adult education it is like that. In teaching theology, for instance, I have found that people often come to college with very firm ideas as to what is right and what is wrong. They have to unlearn some of their dearly held convictions before new vistas of life could be opened up to them.

In our series on the Cross I have to touch on some theories that have developed around the Christian Cross. I don't want to teach you these theories. We leave that to people who want to study theology. But some of these theories are very widespread. They may have shaped our understanding of the Cross. And we may have to unlearn them in order to gain a new appreciation of the Cross of Christ.

Such theories are human attempts to explain or understand what the Cross stands for.

At times they pick up one word from a biblical text and build the whole structure of a theory around it.

The word "ransom" is such a word. Theologians speak of ransom theories that explain the meaning of the cross.

I briefly introduce you to such theories and then see whether they actually bring to expression what the biblical text says.

The ransom theory

"Ransom" means paying a price to buy a prisoner or a slave freedom.

Our text says that "the Son of Man came … to give his life a ransom for many."

Several theories developed around that saying over 1500 years ago in the Middle East. They are quite sophisticated and quite complicated.

A simplistic version goes something like this.

Adam and Eve, representing the human race, were tempted. They yielded. It was their free choice to give in to the temptation.

But by surrendering to the temptation, they, and with them all humanity, came under the rule of Satan.

Since they surrendered voluntarily, they then rightfully belonged to Satan, and therefore God, because he is bound by his morality and justice, cannot free them by force. The only way to free the captured souls from the power of Satan, was to offer Satan an acceptable ransom price with which humanity could be bought free.

God showed his love for humanity by offering to Satan the soul of his sinless and perfect son as the ransom price for the souls of humankind.

Satan agrees to the transaction, not realizing, however, that in fact he had been tricked.

Since Jesus' soul is sinless, and as such could not yield to evil and would not die, this would cause eternal pain to Satan. Consequently, in order to maintain his own identity, he had to set Jesus free again, and consequently Jesus could rise from the dead.

A variation of this theory holds that God never lost control and influence over Satan, so that the ransom had to be paid to God in order that God might free the enslaved humanity.

But some theologians, like Gregory of Nazianzus in the 4th century, found both ideas distasteful. Why would God lower himself and pay a ransom to the devil? And how could a loving God need or demand the blood of his own son? He therefore says that Jesus in behalf of humankind offered his life voluntarily as a ransom to God. God accepts this offer to maintain the divine order and then frees sinful humanity from the power of Satan.

Evaluation

Now, my friends, please realise that theories such as these were developed over 1500 years ago in a totally different culture. Their understanding of life, their stories, their culture were totally different to ours. What made sense to them need not make sense to us.

The theoretical speculations about transactions between God and the devil make little sense to us, and, more importantly, they have little basis in the New Testament.

The idea that God is bound by a moral universe and therefore has to trick Satan cannot be reconciled with the Christian confession of the sovereignty of God.

And most importantly, the praxis and teachings of Jesus' life play no role in this theory at all.

So we would have to say that that ancient theory does not work for us.

Let us look at the text from where the word "ransom" comes from and see whether some of the meaning can flow over into our life.

On the road to Jerusalem

Jesus is not only "on the road", but he is on the road "to Jerusalem"! The attentive listener knows what that means, and we are not left in the dark. It is the stuff with which Mel Gibson is out to shock the world, to lead his audience to the brink. It sounds like a machine gun:

"… the Son of Man

will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death;
then they will hand him over to the Gentiles;
they will mock him,
and spit upon him,
and flog him, (torture we call it today)
and kill him;

and after three days he will rise again."

Tragedy

Is it irony? No, it is tragedy! The disciples don't get it. They don't believe it. Just as the church, as we, through the ages have found it difficult to believe that divinity and suffering can go together. Can the Messiah, God's man on earth, be tortured and killed. Can God's man, God's (!) man, loose? Would God allow that? Of course not! God will put on the breaks. Jesus will win and he will usher in his kingdom.

I must tell you a little anecdote, coming from one of the gospels that did not make it into the canon of the Holy Scriptures of the Christian Church. Little boy Jesus is playing marbles with his friends – and he always wins! You see, he is God's son and God cannot lose – can he?

James and John, good friends of Jesus, cannot bring Jesus and torture, Jesus and the cross, Jesus and death, together. We don't quite know how, they think, but somehow he will make it. He will win. He will liberate us from Roman occupation. And then their secret desires become words. We want to have seats on the front bench, indeed in the cabinet, when you rule: "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."

Jesus tries again. He reminds them, as he has often done before, that his friends will also be part of the passion. Even if before Easter they flee because they cannot bring God and suffering together. After Easter they will have to learn that believing in Jesus means taking up the cross and following him. The season of Lent, having started this week reminds us of that every year anew.

Transfiguration of values

Jesus tries again. Why don't they get. And then again, why don't we get it:

"You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers, lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all."

Weakness, Nietzsche called it. Wimps they would call it today. I don't know what Mark Latham would call it. I remember what people called Kim Beasley after shedding tears in parliament when he tried to speak to the "Bringing them home" report. Weakness? Or strength?

We live in a world where might is right. If you have might you can demand others to destroy their weapons of mass destruction without doing it yourselves. If you have might you are not bound by law. You redefine law to make it serve your interest. We say that we are on the side of Jesus, but in fact too often we support Caiaphas and Pilate.

Can there be a change? Will non-violence have a chance? Will we do with less in order that others may have a little more? Can we make a little more room in our hearts and in our country for those who are running away from violence? Can we risk trust with each other, rather than suspicion?

You see, Jesus stands for a new way of life, a new reality that calls for a new life style. Mohandas Ghandi once said that the way of non-violence, which for Christians is the way of the cross, cannot be proven by theories and arguments: "It shall be proved by persons living it in their lives with utter disregard of the consequences to themselves." (Non-violence in Peace and War [1948], vol. 1, p.122)

Grounding

Only then the question is raised, but then it must be raised!

The question, why?
The question, how?
The question, is it worth it?

Why? Why should we follow Jesus? Why should we not follow the rules of the market? Why should we not follow Josef Stalin and Ronald Reagan and the voice within us that says: trust is good, security is better! Why should we not agree with Stalin, who, when told about Jesus of Nazareth, wanted to know how many guns and how many soldiers he had.

How? How can we do it? The cultural pressure to conform is so strong. I don't want to be different. How can I get the power, strength and inspiration to be different?

Is it worth it? Is the way of James and John not more reliable that the way of Jesus?

If we are going to live in tension with the dominant mood of our culture, then we must have good reason to do so.

Here, at this point comes the importance of "ransom".

… the Son of Man – God's man on earth – came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

The reason for our alternative vision of reality is that through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God has created a new reality!

So, when we sing "in the cross of Christ I glory" or when we confess with the apostle Paul that the cross is a stumbling block to religious people and foolishness to the despisers of religion, or when we place a cross in our churches, we are concerned with the celebration of life. Our main interest is not doctrine. Our main interest is not the violence that is associated with the cross. Our main interest is life. How can we best spend the few decades that are given us? That is what we want to know.

Life has to do with freedom

And life has to do with forgiveness.

Freedom and forgiveness is what faith in Christ brings into our life.

And for people in the past, the idea of ransom made sense. We are bought free from slavery into freedom, from estrangement into forgiveness.

But the picture as such is not important. Important is the experience of freedom and forgiveness and that that experience is real. Not psychology, but an act of the same God who raised Jesus from the dead in our life.

Why follow the way of Jesus? Because it is God's way.

How can we follow the way of Jesus. In the power of the Spirit which God freely gives to those who take God seriously.

Is it worthwhile? On the basis of what God has done for us in Christ the apostle Paul says it better than I could: "… my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain." (1 Cor 15:58)

Thorwald Lorenzen
 29 February 2004