Ever since the days of Arius hymns have been the tutors to popular belief and none more so since the Reformation. But they often reflect a ‘folk’ understanding of faith and tend to point up controversies of bygone days. So we could take exception in Christopher Wordsworth’s Easter hymn to the two lines -

which do not in any real way transmit the meaning of Jesus’ death as the gospels and the letters of Paul understand it. The history of the transition from ‘gospel’ to ‘hymn theology’ is a long one and one can only hint at it here and there in this paper. But central to the process has always been the problem of understanding the language and idiom of the first Christian communities. By the late second century the sharpness of the gospel cutting edge had been lost in a welter of conflict and dialogue with both Jew and pagan. For example, Paul’s language of sacrifice and words associated with it, began to be understood literally and not in the metaphorical way devised deliberately by Paul to explicate the Event of the death and exaltation of him whom they now called Messiah, Christ Jesus the Lord, in the inauguration of the new age.

First of all let us look at the gospels. Often they are regarded as too opaque to any one who wishes to seek ‘meaning’ in what happened to Jesus. But in fact, in a straightforward way they yield surprising results when thought about apart from the received ideas of popular theology.

It is remarkable that the gospels, written as they were from the standpoint of faith by the first post-Easter communities, highlight not the glory of the risen Lord but the real humanity of Jesus. But that was by design. Jesus, now the Lord of the church and of the world, worked out our salvation in a human way, led by the Spirit of God. He was not the God-Man striding over the earth, but the son of Mary. Apart from the astonishing story of the transfiguration Jesus appears in the gospel to be up against the common foe of ignorance, disease and downright evil. His temptations in the desert act as a clue for us. From the outset his career is outlined as one of true obedience to God as none had ever practised it. As such, his life is portrayed clearly as the antidote to Israel’s centuries-long unfaithfulness. Here was one who lived by the Spirit of God. Early meditation on the events of Jesus’ ministry of healing and on his teaching caused the first Christians to see in him the fulfilment of prophecy as in Isaiah -

For clearly, Jesus’ life was seen as a true revelation of the character of God himself. Israel’s God was Judge of his people, without doubt and this is not sidestepped in Jesus’ teaching. But in all his encounters with people - having meals with the outcast, healing the lepers of society, having compassion on those in need, whatever the Law said about sabbath regulations - God is finally revealed as merciful love, to the Jews first but also to all.

Jesus was also aware of the afflictions of Israel, his own people. From the time of the crisis of the sixth century Israel had been in the furnace of affliction. As the great prophet of the Exile saw this, it was a judgement on their faithlessness to the covenant made with Abraham and their forefathers. When the Law bade them worship only their God they were seduced into offering sacrifice to idols. The Land had been taken from them as a consequence and the Temple had been profaned more than once -

The house of Israel shall surely know that I am the Lord their God .......... And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they dealt so treacherously with me that I hid my face from them and gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they all fell by the sword. ..........A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.

One can only imagine the anguish of thought as Jesus grappled with the intuition that in his own life and ministry God’s truth and blessing was to be released for all men. In the narrative of the request of James and John to be given some superior position in the coming kingdom, Jesus lets fall a little of his insight into his understanding of his own calling

After Easter his disciples would connect this ‘servant of God’ with the mysterious servant of the prophecies of Isaiah, particularly the great Chapter 53. But at the time, facing the reality of death in Jerusalem on account of his outspokenness, like the prophets before him, how much can one say was in Jesus’ mind? This verse in Mark 10:45 is the only hint we have and it is enigmatic. ‘A ransom’? and, ‘for many’? We are getting close to the words we objected to at the beginning of this paper. We have seen already that from the time of Ezekiel, and before that, Jeremiah, any revival of Israel as a nation could only come about by the act of God himself. Jesus had taught openly and in parables the same truth, and preeminently in the parable of the prodigal. Looking back, the disciples after Easter could see how, in Jesus, the Father had come running to embrace them and to kiss them with a divine love and a forgiveness which had the power to change the whole direction of their lives. So we may not interpret this single saying of Jesus to imply that in some way the Son of man was about to pay for the release of captive Israel. God was the God of grace and gift and Jesus was truly a free man, responsible for his actions to such a God that he could call him ‘Abba’. The poignancy of the last days of Jesus are so great and so full of prophetic meaning, that to take the human element out of the situation and to substitute the desperate remedy of sinful and ‘captive’ humanity is to make a travesty of the gospel. We can imagine Paul saying to some literal theory of Christ’s death as sacrifice - “Jesus a ‘ransom’ or a ‘victim‘? Never!”

But there are the passion ‘predictions’ to consider - the threefold knock of doom, however they may be lightened by the promise of ‘resurrection’. How shall we consider them in relation to the actual mind of Jesus and his determined obedience to a God who is love and mercy?

And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise. Behold we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him; and after three days he will rise.

These verses are important not because they are ‘predictions’ but because the editor who inserted them as links in the narrative wanted his readers to understand the real circumstances of Jesus’ work on our behalf. To be made to suffer, to be rejected - scrutinised and given an adverse judgement by his enemies; and eventually to be brought to ‘nothing’ by a cruel death, is the unredeemed, human response to pure love - God’s love for us revealed in Christ’s life and work. Jesus’ raising from death by the Father, and the risen Lord witnessed to by the apostles and Paul, was the catalyst which gave them the understanding that Jesus had put himself into the hands of men as his final act of willing obedience. Yes, it was self-sacrifice. But not a sacrifice to any god or instead of anyone. It was a great paradox, this relationship between Jesus, ourselves and the Father. While we were incapable of movement towards God and yet longed for that to be possible, Jesus opened up access to God through his own total, self-effacement. The graphic, pictorial symbol of this event of the crossing over from the old age to the new age through the covenant of love made by Jesus on our behalf was the rending of the veil of the temple -

The picture of Jesus, from first to last, is of a man who in his own life both revealed the love of God and enabled all to share in it. It is a story of the vindication of the truly free, truly obedient servant of God. It is about true relationships unfettered by ritual taboos. In Paul, there is a leitmotif in his insistence that in the death of Jesus a new creative act of God has taken place, breaking with the religious tradition.