Jesus as the New Adam

Michelangelo's Naked Christ

I offered this post on May 3, 2017.

Jesus as the new Adam is a trope familiar to Christianity since Paul’s letters to the Romans and Corinthians. It has come to be reinterpreted by others, and perhaps what I present here has already been imagined, as anyone reading this blog knows my knowledge is limited. But I want to offer what meaning came to me as I grappled with the notion of Jesus “dying for my sins” during this recent Holy Week. 

I have flat out written on this blog that the God who is worthy of my devotion would never require the death of any kind of scapegoat as a stand-in for me taking responsibility for my own sins. 

But I have also written that the sacrificial love represented in the story of the cross mythologically conveys the absolute and eternal depths of God’s compassion. Many theologians have focused on the concept of God dying on the cross rather than “his only son,” taking the onus of a demanding, bloodthirsty God off the table. And anyone who has had a terrible sin to forgive of another knows the suffering such compassion entails. 

Longtime readers may remember that one of my Holy Week practices is to read one chapter each day of a short book, The Temple of God’s Wounds, in which the narrator visits a mythological monastery at a turning point in his life. I’ve written that I overlook his transactional understanding of atonement to contemplate other, deeper spiritual wisdom contained therein. 

This time I focused on how difficult it is for him (and  for me) to face that which is absolutely holy. I understand better the “mysterium tremendum,” the “terrible” face of God or, as the OED adds in its definition, of existence itself. 

During our last visit shortly before his death, an elderly dedicated churchman surprised me by his sudden tears and seemingly non-sequitur confession, saying something like, “I hope dear old Mother Church can forgive me for any embarrassment I’ve caused her.” I don’t think this was prompted solely by his having been a closeted gay man. 

Age may make us aware how far we have fallen short, not only of the glory of God, but of the glory of being a child of God, because I found during Holy Week that, along with the writer of The Temple of God’s Wounds, I felt such a need for forgiveness! Now, I know, as an introvert, that even the good I may do can embarrass me; but I’ve done plenty of things I’d prefer not to have in my eulogy! 

I have a depiction, acquired in Egypt, of a Pharaoh being weighed on scales opposite a feather. The tradition was that if the Pharaoh’s heart was heavier than a feather, he could not enter eternity.  Few if any of us could pass such a test! 

I have been reading The Islamic Jesus by Mustafa Akyol. A reader and contributor to my blog had asked me if there was a book I was eager to have in my library. Having just read a review of this book, that’s what I asked for. What’s remarkable to me is that the Qur’an, while not supporting Jesus’ divinity, reveres him as a prophet, like Moses and Muhammad. The writer suggests that this was the view of the Jerusalem church and its Jewish Christians led by James and represented in Christian scriptures by the epistle of James, which does not refer to the divinity of Jesus and famously includes, “Faith without works is dead.” This contrasts with other Christian emphases on mere belief, and specifically belief in Jesus’ divinity and substitutionary atonement. 

Thus I realized that progressive Christians have that in common with the early Jewish Christians, not to mention Muslims and Jews. We may or may not hold to Jesus’ divinity, and consider that doing justice and practicing charity and showing mercy are what the Lord (i.e. God) requires of us. 

For me as a progressive Christian, Jesus is the “new Adam”—not the innocent and perfect and beautiful (and initially sexless) Ken and Barbie doll of Adam and Eve; rather the tried and tested, unappealing and vulnerable and wounded one, acquainted with sorrows and grief, the bearer of the sins and injustices of the world—political, religious, and personal. Treasonous and blasphemous, betrayable and deniable, because compassion was all he held dear. 

Thus he knows the trouble I’ve seen, the trouble I’ve gotten into, and the trouble I’ve caused, not just personally but throughout the world. He is the real human being that Adam and Eve could not even imagine in their innocence and privilege. They were rough drafts, prototypes, not as fully human. 

So when Jesus prays, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” it seems genuine, true, and possible. 

 

Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

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New Meaning in the Cross

“Don’t you believe in the Trinity?” a friend asked last week, after I reacted negatively to a stranger saying that Jesus is God. I admit, I overreacted a bit, calling the latter belief idolatry, though discretely not to the person who asserted it. The person declaring Jesus their God did not affirm this in the context of Trinity: Jesus apparently stood as “Lord” all by himself in this man’s view.

I believe Jesus would be horrified. As a good Jew, he might at best have believed himself part of a chosen people, the children of God, and as a uniquely called prophet. To the person who asked about the Trinity, I rather lamely replied that I believed Jesus awakened us to the understanding that we are all beloved children of God. I added that the Trinity wasn’t devised until centuries after Jesus lived.

If I had had my wits about me, I would’ve explained further that the Trinity as three separate persons is not how I understand God. Previously on this blog I implied that early Eastern Orthodox mystics’ Trinitarian thinking was more about God’s activities than essence or personhood. To the extent we “see” the face of God, it is by God’s activities in the world. This was also the understanding of some Judaic and Islamic philosophers and mystics.

I believe we may see God in creation, compassion, and inspiration—the actions corresponding to what is designated Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. And the writer of 1 John saw God as love, and I see God there too.

The Romans thought of the first Christians as atheists because they didn’t believe in the many gods that filled up their pantheon and the many cultures they ruled. The Christian “pantheon” came to be populated in popular imagination by Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

But to me, this limits our experience of God. Every time I write about God, I realize how much I limit God. God has more than three “faces,” as evidenced by the wide variety of religions and faiths there are on our planet alone.

Remembering that in religion “myth” is—in the words of a child—“a story that is true on the inside,” the cross may be seen as a story of how “the powers that be” seek to diminish God’s activity in the world. The resurrection may be viewed as a story of how God’s activity in the world is renewed and refreshed. And Pentecost may be understood as a story of how transforming God’s presence can be, making us able to speak in the languages of strangers, share our possessions, and proclaim God’s love to the world.

Over the past year or so I’ve experienced a series of physical “issues” that remind me I am not always going to be this body. Not going anywhere soon, mind you, but I decided finally to read Sherwin B. Nuland’s 1993 book, How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, which has sat on my bookshelves unopened since a friend left it to me.

I like Nuland’s frank admission that, though society and the medical profession like to assign “causes of death,” sometimes we simply die of old age. The body was not designed to last forever. It wears out!

And I was fascinated to read a quote from Michael Helpern, the former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City: “Death may be due to a wide variety of diseases and disorders, but in every case the underlying physiological cause is a breakdown in the body’s oxygen cycle.”

This brought new meaning to the myth of the cross, that God incarnate suffered and died. Crucifixion, as is commonly known, achieves its end by suffocation: as the body weakens and sags, air flow is cut off, and the crucified dies by asphyxiation.

Many Christians have believed that Jesus or God suffered for us or in our place, which to me diminishes the fact that we too suffer and we too will die. Others of us have seen Jesus’ death on the cross as God’s suffering with us, the literal meaning of “compassion”= “to suffer with.”

Now to know that lack of oxygen is the cause of every death is to see the cross in every death—to believe that, in compassion, God is with us as we part this world.

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Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

A New Underground Railroad

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. 

One of my speaking venues in Pennsylvania mid-December was a church that served as a “stop” on the Underground Railroad. To show me, the pastor opened a door in the floor of the foyer so that I might descend a rough wooden staircase that led to the sanctuary’s original foundation, under which I could peer into a low and narrow tunnel. Through this, slaves escaping north crawled to hide in side tunnels carved out of the soil beneath the church. Any who looked into this crawl space would see neither persons nor side tunnels, so carefully disguised was this hiding place. 

I had just met with the Butler LBGTQ Interfaith Network, the Butler Chapter of PFLAG, and Community Safe Zone organizers in the fellowship hall of this church, Covenant United Presbyterian Church in Butler, Pennsylvania. As organizer Ted Hoover from Pittsburgh’s Persad Center had warned, “This sounds like a huge crowd, but this is a very conservative area!” What struck me was that this congregation was still serving as an “underground railroad,” but this time, for those who want to create safe spaces for LGBT folk and their allies in the outlying and rural regions of southwest Pennsylvania.  

The small gathering included a young man and his partner whose Presbyterian pastor had thrown him out of his church on Facebook (!), though he is beloved by the congregation, served as a church elder, and plans to attend seminary! Also present were a transgender woman and her wife, the latter of whom lost her pastorate because they wanted to remain together after the first’s transition. For decades, this couple had been favorites of evangelical Presbyterians for their missionary efforts in Africa. All four of these individuals had since been welcomed by Covenant Church, yet another example of this new underground railroad providing sanctuary to those escaping the bondage of unwelcoming churches. 

That day I had originally been scheduled to give a presentation on “Reconciliation” in Pittsburgh Presbytery, in light of Presbyterians there resisting the new open door policy of the denomination that allows but does not require congregations and presbyteries to ordain LGBT people as elders, deacons, and pastors. Some are seeking ways to separate or segregate themselves from the denomination. But the Presbytery disinvited me, and I ended up giving my talk on reconciliation to a crowd at Sixth Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh the night before.  

Among other things, I spoke of how the denomination’s Confession of 1967, that emphasized a ministry of reconciliation among races and nations, had drawn me into the Presbyterian Church in 1970, long before the church helped me reconcile my sexuality and spirituality.  I also explained that my first guest sermon in the church I joined as a college student was entitled, “Conflict and Unity Within the Church,” and I lauded the church as one of the few places where very different people could reflect on the meaning of their faith together—liberal and conservative, blue collar and white collar, more or less educated, of varying colors and ethnicities, and so on. This was in the days before the political and religious right claimed theirs the only legitimate form of Christianity, sending many progressives on our own underground railroad to find welcoming churches.  

Covenant’s pastor, Rev. Dr. Jim Swanson, not only recommended but sent me a copy of a book by Brad Hirschfield, an orthodox rabbi, entitled, You Don’t Have to Be Wrong For Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. I have since been reading it during my morning prayers and have found it as challenging as it is inspiring. On Monday of this week, I read of his opportunity to pray alongside Muslims, in Hebrew and in his own tradition, during a visit to the Islamic Society of North America, the largest Muslim organization in the U.S., at its headquarters in Indiana. He writes: 

"To be a true monotheist is to understand that no one human understating of an infinite power can ever fully capture what that power is, or how, exactly, to relate to or honor it. To appreciate this is to become modest about claiming to know 'what God wants.' The more traditionally religious you are, the more deeply modest and radically inclusive you should be. … Too often we think that by making room for each other we are somehow surrendering our integrity… When we fight for the integrity of our beliefs, relationships, and communities, we are actually fighting to integrate that which seems alien or threatening. We will have the most integrity when we are integrating the widest range of people and ideas." [Emphasis mine.] 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

Thanks be to God!

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Visit my homepage under "Recent Events" at www.chrisglaser.com to find my two Pittsburgh sermons on the LGBTQ Interfaith Network’s Facebook page. My gratitude to the sponsoring Pittsburgh Presbytery’s Task Force on Ministry with Sexual Minorities!