The Passion: The Loving Heart of God

Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025 – Luke 24:1-12

Years ago, I visited a Shroud of Turin exhibit that was housed in the CNN center in downtown Atlanta. The Shroud itself wasn’t there, but large photographs were everywhere that showed very clearly what probably happened to Jesus. It was a very emotional experience. So, when the movie “The Passion of the Christ” came out, I didn’t need to see it because I felt I had already witnessed the gory details of that bloody crucifixion.

The story of Jesus’ death is not a pretty one, but it’s such a huge part of who we are as Christians. And when we pan out, as they say in the film world, to a wider perspective, we know that death, grief, and loss are inextricably tied up with human life. Several of us have lost loved ones in the last year, and a large number of the people here today are here because of the loss of their church, Gloria Dei.

The heartbreaking truth is that we live in a painful reality where good and well-loved things die. This is just the nature of the beast of an embodied world. Nothing is permanent, everything dies. But the good news is that God is always on the move, bringing new life to the dead places in our lives. God enters the tomb with us, and the best news of all is that God refuses to stay in that tomb.

Jesus invites us to leave our tombs behind and join him where the new life is growing.

Throughout Lent, I’ve been talking about hearts in this journey to the passion of Christ. And today, I want to talk about the new life in the loving heart of God.

The church has said for its entire existence that the heart of God is best revealed in the life of Jesus. Was Jesus angry, wrathful, and unforgiving? Did Jesus condemn people to death and eternal punishment because of their mistakes? No, he loved them, full stop, no matter what they did to him. He showed only compassion, and he gave up his own life for the truth of that Love. In the end, he revealed that God’s Love triumphs, God’s love wins. But for many people, that story of compassionate love is not what they’ve been told about God.

In all honesty, I have often felt that the church has seriously missed the mark. It’s buried its head in the sand when it comes to what science has been telling us about our incredible cosmos. And it’s acted as if certain theological ideas have been held by all Christians for all time, when in fact, that isn’t true.

Did you know that the early Christians knew nothing about the concept of “original sin”?

The idea that death and sin came into the world and corrupted humanity through the acts of Adam and Eve is also not at all what the Jewish people who produced the Genesis texts believed. In fact, the concept of original sin came into existence in the fourth century, and those church leaders who strongly argued against it were shouted down by Augustine.

And did you know that the idea that Jesus’ death was a blood sacrifice required to pay the debt owed to God for human sin was created in the 16th century during the Protestant Reformation? The roots of it were formulated by Anselm, who lived in the 11th century during the feudal system (and Abelard had a lot to say in disagreement).

Anselm came up with the idea that human sin offended God as if God were a feudal lord, and that either God’s honor had to be restored and satisfied or humans would be eternally punished.

Again, this was not an idea held by the early Christians, and it certainly would have been completely unknown to Jesus.

The fact is that the majority of Christians haven’t heard all sides of the story. Most people aren’t even aware that there have been spirited theological debates for the past 2,000 years. Christians have almost never agreed on anything – as we can see by the thousands of denominations we have now. And the cross has been one subject of much debate.

Here’s my question for us today: Is Jesus’ death on the cross the point of the story, or is it the turning point?

If we look at the gospel narratives, we see that although Jesus does show his followers his crucifixion wounds, he certainly doesn’t dwell on them. In Matthew, Jesus appears suddenly to the women and says “Greetings!” He tells them he’ll meet the disciples in Galilee and when they see him there, he talks about baptizing and teaching. He doesn’t talk about sin or about the cross.

In Luke, Jesus meets the men on the road to Emmaus, and says that he suffered what he did in order to enter into his glory. Then he meets his friends again at the table of fellowship to break bread and drink with them. Later, he brings greetings of peace, opens their understanding of scripture, and blesses them. In John, he again shows his wounds to prove who he is, brings them greetings of peace, and shares a meal of fish with them.

In every case, Jesus, who by this point had been betrayed, denied, and deserted by all of his followers (except the women), returns with blessings of peace and reconciliation with his community. He certainly doesn’t dwell on the cross.

What if Jesus wasn’t destined to be killed to appease an angry God?

What if God wasn’t so disappointed in humanity that God had to send his Son to die on a cross so that God could love us? In fact, couldn’t we say that a God who requires the death of his son to accept humans would be less loving than many humans? Why would we worship a God like that?

Father Richard Rohr asks the question this way:

How and why would God need a ‘blood sacrifice’ before God could love what God had created? Is God that needy, unfree, unloving, rule-bound, and unable to forgive? Once you say it, you see it creates a nonsensical theological notion that is very hard to defend.”

More truthful, I believe, is what Rohr and Francis of Assisi before him have taught; that

Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity; Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. This grounds Christianity in pure love and perfect freedom from the very beginning. It creates a very coherent and utterly positive spirituality, which draws people toward lives of inner depth, prayer, reconciliation, healing, and even universal ‘at-one-ment,’ instead of mere sacrificial atonement.”

On this Easter Sunday, let’s not dwell in the blood. Let’s not stay in the tomb. Let’s instead acknowledge what is dying or has died in our lives, lay it to rest in the tomb, and then follow Jesus the Christ into the new life and the greater Divine love that the Spirit is raising up, not just 2,000 years ago, but in every moment of our lives today.