[Dialogue] spong

[KroegerD@aol.com]

March 29, 2006 
The Lamb of God: Jesus  for the Non-Religious, Part III

In this series, to which I am returning periodically through the year, I seek 
 to draw our attention to the person of Jesus before the creeds were formed 
and  doctrines were created. I even want to get to who Jesus was before the 
gospels  were written. My goal is to understand the original ‘Jesus experience’ 
and  perhaps even to enter it. It is important to note first that at least 
forty  years had elapsed between the end of Jesus’ earthly life and the writing 
of  Mark, the first gospel, and at least seventy years between the end of Jesus’
  life and the writing of the last gospel, John. In that period of 40 to 70 
years  interpretive data drawn primarily from the Jewish scriptures were added 
to Jesus  that formed the portrait that the gospel writers simply assumed. In 
the last  article in this series I sought to demonstrate that the gospels 
reveal a Jesus  who had already been intertwined with the content of the Jewish 
Scriptures,  shaped by the liturgy of the Jewish people, and interpreted through 
the lens of  Jewish messianic expectations, none of which could have occurred 
except inside  the synagogue. Christians are not generally aware that the 
Christian Church did  not separate from the synagogue until the final years of 
the 9th decade. Before  that date, the disciples of Jesus, like Jesus himself, 
were regular participants  in its life. Support for this conclusion is present 
on almost every page of the  four gospels.  
In what is now the third column in this series, I want to examine a familiar  
Jewish symbol, ‘the lamb of God,’ that the disciples of Jesus obviously used 
to  interpret his death at the dawn of the Christian movement. It is a symbol 
that  comes directly out of the synagogue liturgy for the Day of Atonement, 
called Yom  Kippur. The fact that Christians have used a lamb as a symbol for 
Jesus and that  we refer to Jesus in liturgical worship today as ‘the Lamb of 
God’ reveals this  connection. In addition familiar evangelical phrases like “
Jesus died for your  sins or my sins,” or those times when Christians speak of 
being “washed in the  blood of the lamb” are also related to Yom Kippur. Yet 
despite these clearly  borrowed references, most Christians, knowing little 
or nothing about Yom  Kippur, or the way in which that Jewish holy day has 
shaped the language of  contemporary Christianity, continue to use this symbol, 
sometimes in ways that  are strange and even bizarre to the original Jewish 
meaning. So I begin this  column by introducing the meaning of Yom Kippur and its 
influence on Christian  practice.  
On the Day of Atonement the Jews were personally required to concentrate for  
a 24-hour period, on their understanding of human life as sinful and 
alienated  from God. The dimensions of that day are spelled out in the Torah (see 
Lev.16:  1-28 and 23:16 ff). It is a time for fasting, penitence and seeking the  
forgiveness of God. The Yom Kippur liturgy required the taking of two animals  
(goats or lambs, but later tradition has made one a lamb and the other a 
goat)  from the flocks to present to the High Priest. These animals were required 
to be  young, healthy males without a spot, blemish or broken bone. Physical 
perfection  was of the highest importance. Since human beings were not thought 
to be able to  enter God’s presence in their alienated state, they sought to 
gain access to God  by offering a perfect offering. Physical perfection was 
part of that. In time  this lamb also came to be thought of as morally perfect. 
Animals do not have  freedom of choice so it was presumed the lamb could not 
choose to do evil. It  was, therefore, seen as a perfect symbol to be offered to 
God in place of the  imperfect people.  
One of the creatures was then chosen by lot to be sacrificed. After being  
slaughtered the blood of this “lamb of God” was placed on the mercy seat in the 
 Holy of Holies, the spot in the Temple where God was thought to dwell. The 
blood  of the perfect lamb thus covered people’s access to God. They went to 
God only  through the blood of the lamb.  
The second animal was then brought to the High Priest. Holding its horns and  
bowing over it, the high priest began to confess the sins of the people. The  
symbol here was that as the high priest confessed, all of the evil inside the 
 people came out and landed on the head and back of this animal, making it 
the  ‘bearer of their sins’. The newly cleansed people celebrated their purity, 
by  pronouncing curses on this sin-bearing creature and calling for its 
death.  However, this animal was not killed at Yom Kippur, instead it was run into 
the  wilderness bearing the sins of the people with it. The Book of Leviticus 
called  this creature, “The Scapegoat.”  
Using the Yom Kippur symbol for Jesus entered the New Testament first in Paul 
 who related it to his death. In I Corinthians (15:1-6), Paul asserted that 
the  death of Jesus was not purposeless, since his death, like the death of the 
 sacrificial lamb, was “for our sins.”  
Mark, the first gospel, (ca.70 C.E.) added to this Yom Kippur connection by  
interpreting the crucifixion as a “ransom” offered for many. Jesus, like the  
sacrificial lamb, paid the ransom required, making further punishment  
unnecessary.  
The identification between Jesus and the sacrificial lamb was complete by the 
 time the 4th Gospel was written (95-100C.E.) when the author portrayed John 
the  Baptist referring to Jesus with words taken directly from Yom Kippur: “
Behold  the Lamb of God who takes away the Sins of the World.” Liturgical 
Christian  churches use these words, now called the ‘Agnus Dei’ at almost every 
Eucharist,  while in evangelical churches these words created the idea that is 
called the  substitutionary theory of the Atonement, which asserts that though 
you and I  deserve to be punished for our sins, Jesus has absorbed that 
punishment for us,  freeing us from our sins.  
Looking deeply into the gospel tradition, we discover more subtle influences  
of Yom Kippur in those texts. When John’s gospel tells the story of the legs 
of  two thieves being broken to hasten death (19:31-38), he notes that the 
legs of  Jesus were not broken. That was not literal memory at work. It was 
rather an  attempt to preserve the symbol of Yom Kippur in the portrait of the 
cross. The  new Lamb of God must, like Yom Kippur’s lamb, be physically perfect.  
When the gospels record crowds calling “crucify him, crucify him,” they were 
 making it clear that Jesus had been identified with the sin-bearing creature 
of  Yom Kippur to whom words were also shouted calling for its death, the 
fate of  all sin bearers.  
The story of Jesus’ crucifixion was thus seen and interpreted through the  
lens of these Yom Kippur rituals. Jesus, like the animals, was a young, healthy  
male with no blemishes or broken bones. He also came to be understood as the  
morally sinless one. Under the pressure of this interpretive symbol, it was 
said  of Jesus, he was “tempted in all things and yet without sin.” His death 
was thus  said to be like the death of the sacrificial lamb. His perfection 
covered the  imperfections of the people and gained for them access to the 
presence of God.  People began to talk of being “washed in the blood of the lamb.” 
The Jewish  disciples of Jesus understood this identification as a symbol of 
the human  yearning to be at one with God. It was their way of saying that the 
death of  Jesus was not a tragedy, but was a free and complete act of human 
self-giving.  In offering his life without the need to protect, defend or 
preserve his  selfhood, they were saying that in the death of Jesus they had caught 
a glimpse  of who and what God is. They had experienced in Jesus life fully 
lived, love  wastefully given, and the ground of all being giving them the 
courage to be  themselves. The death of Jesus was thus originally interpreted as 
an act of  ultimate self-giving that greatly enhanced life by draining from 
human beings  all their sinfulness that served to separate them both from God and 
from each  other. The self-giving act created in its recipients a response of 
wholeness.  When the Gentile world, into which Christianity had moved by the 
end of the 1st  century, received this symbol, the concentration was no longer 
on the unfettered  gift and the willing sacrifice that love always makes, it 
was rather focused on  a legal concept. The fallen world deserved punishment. 
God was obliged to  provide that punishment so justice would result. The 
punishment due to sinful  people was, however, more than human beings could endure 
and so Jesus absorbed  it for us. God laid on him the punishment deserved by 
all. Salvation understood  as undeserved restoration became the dominant note 
of Christianity. Justice was  served. Debt was paid. Life was rescued. We were 
washed in the blood of the  ‘Lamb of God.’ When this contract was 
literalized, it was not life and freedom  that resulted but gratitude and indebtedness. 
This is how Christianity became so  totally identified with our understanding 
of human wretchedness and with the use  of guilt as the emotion of control. 
>From that day to this, Christianity would  never be the same. Guilt always 
distorts life and unrelieved gratitude  ultimately issues in chronic dependency, a 
combination that has never enhanced  life or increased love for anyone. 
What once had been a Jewish liturgical symbol, expressing the human yearning  
to be at one with God, was literalized and a distortion of Christianity  
immediately began. Its marks are everywhere. Why do we baptize children? To wash  
away the stain of the “fall” into which we are hopelessly born. Why do we  
celebrate the Eucharist? To reenact the sacrifice of Jesus who rescued us and  
filled us with dependent gratitude. Why do we sing of God’s Amazing Grace?  
Because it “saved a wretch like me.” Why do we in worship say such things as:  ‘
Lord, have mercy,’ ‘we are miserable offenders,’ unfit to ‘gather up the  
crumbs’ from beneath the Lord’s table? It all derives from Yom Kippur  
legalistically misunderstood by Christians. Christianity, which began as a call  to 
new life, was transformed into a religion of guilt and control, sin and  
punishment. That is the direction in which most Christian doctrines finally  flowed. 
To reclaim the promise of life, this theology of sacrifice, death and  sin 
must be first raised to consciousness and then banished, for it is not  
compatible with the Jesus who claimed that his purpose was to give life and to  give it 
absolutely.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
A retired Ob/Gyn M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine writes on  
Abortion: 
With regards to abortion, I did not do them for birth control. However, I  
have done them for medical indications. I tried to avoid the psychiatrists since 
 they all said that the patient would go crazy if not aborted. Maybe that is 
an  exaggeration. 
I did a late term abortion for a woman with cancer of the cervix. I also  
lifted the ovaries out of the radiation paths. I was so sure that the baby would  
be born dead at C-section that I didn’t have a pediatrician present. The baby 
 came out screaming and is still living as far as I know. 
I also delivered a woman with idiopathic myocarditis. We carried her until  
the baby would survive and then delivered her. She was on anti-coagulants that  
we reversed for the delivery. Six weeks later I tied her tubes and she died 
that  night. We just couldn’t win with that one. 
I also did a C-section on one lady with a Pheochromocytoma. The baby died but 
 the mother survived after the tumor was removed. 
My daughter-in-law had a normal pregnancy and then had a baby with Downs  
syndrome. Her next pregnancy resulted in a diagnosis of Turner’s syndrome. There  
was also another broken chromosome. The diagnosis was made by chorionic 
villous  sampling. Since there was a high chance of mental retardation, I advised 
her to  have an abortion. I can’t imagine making a person have a baby with 
mental  problems when it can be avoided by abortion. She is now 5 months pregnant 
with a  normal girl. 
I think that a lot of diseases warrant having an abortion. Most of the heart  
diseases with valve disease and heart failure are grounds for abortion. It 
has  to be individualized. If one can get past the second trimester, there is 
less  stress on the heart. The fluid volume in the woman decreases in the last  
trimester. 
I certainly think that severe hemorrhage from placenta previa warrants  
abortion. Also severe toxemia of pregnancy warrants termination of the pregnancy  
at any time. I would use late term abortion for severe malformations like  
hydrocephalous and anencephaly. Still late term abortions are relatively rare.  
The physician should have the option of doing what is best for the mother and  
not have to worry about going to jail. 
I saw a lot of women who died of Clostridium infections from back room  
abortions. I wouldn’t want to go back to that. So in answer to your question, I  do 
believe in abortions at any time. I don’t think you can make a law that makes 
 everybody happy. It’s still up to the doctor and patient. Every day there 
are  new advances in genetics and all these problems will change. 
Dear Doctor,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I am quite willing to  protect your 
privacy by not sharing your name. I do hope, however, that medical  practitioners 
will not long have to seek anonymity for fear of their lives at  the hand of 
pro-life crazies who kill to protect the pro-life position. 
Thank you for asking.  
John Shelby Spong 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060329/db0ea746/attachment-0002.htm