Ronald A. Cottone
Presented November 9, 2003
I want to reflect on one of the lectionary passages we are not using in today’s liturgy. It is from Hebrews 9:24-28. Like me, many of you will probably have strong feelings about it. I’ll read some of it for you.
“For Christ entered into heaven itself to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Christ has appeared once for all to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
Reading this passage made me think of the question about Jesus we have been considering in Adult Forum the past few weeks, “Who do you say that I am?” The church of my childhood taught me that Jesus is my savior because he died for my sins; he atoned for my sins “by the sacrifice of himself” as quoted in the passage I just read from Hebrews. My sins made it necessary for an innocent Jesus to die an excruciatingly painful and humiliating death. I killed Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
At four years old, I believed this view of my church about Jesus and with all sincerity and earnestness asked Jesus to forgive me and to come into my heart as my savior. But being saved did not assuage the guilt I felt for my personal responsibility in Jesus’ death. I trusted my church, and as it reminded me relentlessly of my sins and my sinful nature, I gradually developed a distrust of my body, passions, desires, and emotions. I learned that the flesh is bad and the spirit is good, so I concluded that my body causes sin. My church also encouraged me to use my intellect to separate from my body and control it. I was taught to distrust myself and to trust my church. Wanting to do the right thing and please the adults in my life, I denied my own experience and adopted the church’s teaching that my sins caused Jesus’ death. Because Jesus sacrificed his life for me, I should be thankful and show it by controlling my urges, desires and passions. Consequently instead of expressing myself, I became very good at controlling myself.
Now, I feel like my childhood was stolen from me. I gradually lost my spontaneity and my willingness to express my feelings openly without worrying about what others thought. Because of the church’s negative messages about my body, my confidence as a male was undermined. I felt guilt and shame for having male sexual feelings, for aggressively wanting to compete and win, for desiring to achieve status among my peers. I felt emasculated. I learned to feel shame for being a man and for wanting to express my masculinity. I learned to judge male behavior as not Christ-like and to distance myself from the biology that defined me. Gradually I became indecisive, slow to react, difficult to read, unsure of my gut instincts, ashamed of my male power, and nice. I compensated by developing my intellect, using it to live my life instead of using my gut and intuition. So I feel anger when I read the atonement theology in the book of Hebrews. It represents a personal loss to me.
I don’t believe that Jesus ever intended to create a scheme that would have me deny my God-given gift of intuition and gut-level sense of what is good for me. I don’t believe that Jesus ever intended to create a theology that would require I feel personally guilty, responsible and accountable, especially as a young child, for what the Roman state did to him on the cross. I do think the church developed an abusive theology around atonement and used it on me and on many others as well.
The concept of atonement is an old and valuable one. It has an appropriate place in Christian theology, and it has blessed many of us with its meaning. Each of us probably has a different story to tell about how a theological concept has blessed or hurt us. I am grateful that Judson is a listening community that affirms each person’s story of faith and includes and heals all our stories at the table of fellowship. I know my story has felt healed since joining this community. I hope this personal reflection will contribute to our on-going examination of the question, “Who do you say that I am?