WHY?
“O
taste and see that the Lord is good.” These words, from Psalm 34:8 have been
used in the church’s communion service since the earliest days. In her extended
meditation on this text Bonnie Thurston, Biblical scholar, professor and
spiritual leader, tells of a grandmother who said that her three-year-old
grandson was interested in crucifixes and depictions of Jesus’s death in art.
He had so many questions about Jesus’s death that his grandmother wondered if
it were normal. Bonnie Thurston said she thought it was unusual but not
abnormal. Children who have been loved and nurtured can respond with great
sensitivity to the sufferings of others (Thurston,
Bonnie. O Taste and See. P. 51).
This
isn’t just a three-year old’s question. You and I can relate to the little
boy’s concern. “Why,” the quintessential two-and-three-year-old question, is
also our question. Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? How did the
crucifixion erase sin? What kind of God is this? Its outrageous to assert that
God died on a Roman cross, an instrument of death saved for non-Roman citizens,
insurrectionists and the most horrible of criminals.
Paul
recognized this when he said in 1 Cor 1:23 that the idea of the Messiah being
crucified was a “stumbling-block” to Jews and “foolishness” to Gentiles.
“Stumbling-block” translates A Greek word which is the source of our
English word “scandal.” It is scandalous to think the Messiah, the Savior, was
crucified. Why the cross?
Great
theological treatises have been written to answer that question but there is a
simple answer that comes out of human experience and human relationships. As
Bonnie Thurston put it: “In a broken relationship, only the wronged party
can restore the relationship because only the wronged party can forgive” (p.
52).
David
recognized this fact. Although he had done irreparable harm to Bathsheba and
Uriah he confessed to God in Ps 41, “against you and you only have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight.” We may wrong others and need their
forgiveness, but ultimately it is God we have wronged, and only God can
forgive. Our sins destroy our relationship with God, and we are helpless to
repair it. But God is love, and love seeks reconciliation.
As Paul
said in Romans 5:8, 10, “God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. … While we were enemies we were
reconciled to God through the death of his son.”
This is
the good news that we receive and remember each time we come to this table. “O
taste and see that the Lord is good.”
