Luke 24:25-27
Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
I’d like to tarry a moment longer with what Jesus’ says to these two disciples. Particularly when he asks them, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things…?”
“Necessary” is the word I want to focus on in particular.
What do you think Jesus meant? Many faithful Christians have interpreted this as supporting what is often called a “substitutionary” understanding of the cross. That is, Jesus became a substitute for us – suffering punishment that we deserved in order to satisfy God’s divine judgment so that God could in turn forgive us. But as we’ve seen, Jesus forgives sin and announces God’s forgiveness freely throughout his ministry and well before the cross. So I have suggested that Jesus doesn’t die on the cross in order to make God forgiving but because God already is forgiving.
If so, then in what way is the cross “necessary”? I wonder if it might be necessary because no other expression of love would be dramatic enough, shocking enough, significant enough to gain our attention, to pierce through the numbness that attends us and with which we protect ourselves from the slings and arrows of life in this world? Might it be, that is, that God embraces our humanity fully in Jesus because this is the only way by which God can communicate to us in a way we cannot misunderstand and thereby convince us that God loves us just this much? Might God’s commitment to us as expressed in Jesus’ life, suffering, and death be the means by which God seeks to break our hearts open to God’s unbelievable, almost unbearable love, the love of a parent desperate to be in right relationship with all God’s children?
I don’t know for sure, but given the constant emphasis in this Gospel on Jesus’ compassionate embrace of all elements of human life, of Jesus’ commitment to heal and repair brokenness of every kind, of Jesus’ announcement at the very beginning of his ministry of his mission to announce the era of God’s favor for all, this reading of the necessity of the cross seems at least as plausible as believing that Jesus had to pay off an angry God with his own blood. It was not God Jesus was trying to persuade, I think, but us.
Just as he is now persuading these two disciples. With that in mind, let’s see what happens next.
Prayer: Dear God, you come to us always and only in love. Open our hearts to be broken by your love that they might be healed, restored, and freed by the good news of resurrection. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
I agree with your assessment wholeheartedly! God offers us undeserved, unearned and unmerited Grace. His desire is to once again “walk and talk with us in the garden” without barriers, without fig leaves. Jesus tore through the “curtain” to restore that everlasting relationship with Himself. May Grace ever be proclaimed!
As usual, David, you “met me where I am” on my faith journey
A lifelong Lutheran, it has recently come to ” haunt” me whether the cross was “necessary”
Your explanation makes sense. Still, the cruelty of it all…
Any chance you might ponder this subject again and further?
Thanks for sharing your insights!