Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent

…since he was high priest for that year,
he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation,
and not only for the nation,
but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.


For centuries Christian theologians, along with the rest of us, have scratched their heads trying to explain precisely why Jesus had to be crucified. Did he placate an angry God by his meekness? Did he pay back the debt of sin? Did he conquer death by submitting to death and rising again? How did his dying open the gates of paradise? There are many explanations in the scriptures and in our tradition; if they don’t exactly conflict, neither do they harmonize.
In any case, we believe it was necessary.
Perhaps God the Father didn’t demand his death; perhaps we did. We would not allow ourselves to be saved unless we saw how far God would go to save us. Or, we would not be saved until we saw there are no limits to how far God will go to save us.
God might have saved us by a simple word or a simple sign – perhaps a skywriter scrawling daily across the sky, “I love you.” That might have satisfied God but not us. Perhaps his being born among us should have been sufficient – for God, but not for us. Perhaps his living in poverty, suffering hunger, cold and illness would have been sufficient.
We could not imagine how far God would go to save us. We dared not ask and yet by our persistent wickedness we demanded it. Every other gesture seemed to fail. The scriptures, the miracles, the catastrophes, the restorations, the healings, the prophets’ words of reassurance and their threatening curses – nothing seemed to work for us. “Finally he sent his only son saying, ‘Surely they will listen to him.’”
On the other, other hand, perhaps God would not be satisfied until he had poured himself out completely – all the infinity of the universe poured through the utterly senseless and irretrievable emptiness of death.

If our religion were manmade it could be explained. It would make sense. But our faith in Jesus Christ has been shown to us and we accept it. We can say only of the crucifixion, “It was necessary.” We have seen God do this for us; we have seen the man Jesus do this for us. And we thank him.