Jesus as midwife

“I don’t think that’s true,” my 10-year-old daughter said, “I don’t think God gets mad at people.”
My girl was describing to me something she heard about God. Her inquisitive brain always warms my heart, and I love the conversations we get to have about God.

In the moment I received my faith (or constructed it) I also began deconstructing my faith. Because to someone like me, who finds comfort and identity in the questioning and learning, deconstructing and reconstructing faith is a constant, real-time cycle of belief. But there are big moments of deconstruction, and J hits on it in her honest reflection.

As we move into holy week, there is so much to contemplate about the dying of Christ, and then the coming to life of Christ on Easter Sunday.

My big question is: how can I understand the death of Christ when I no longer believe in the wrath of God?

I’ve done my fair share of studying atonement theories. I know that I was taught penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) growing up, though I doubt the leaders of my Pentecostal church knew it was called that. I read R.C. Sproul and several other reformed theologians. I had constant conversations at my college cafeteria table about theology and atonement. I had to turn in journaling assignments to one of my writing profs and I was always blabbing on about theology. He stopped me one day and asked if I considered going to divinity school. I landed somewhere near TULIP, but more like TUIP, because the limited atonement piece bothered me (but the total depravity didn’t?).

Even with the genuinely horrible people leading our nation, and the depravation of humanity coming to light in the Epstein Files, I still reject God as a wrathful being. But I don’t really know how to reconcile it all. I think these people deserve punishment. But I also firmly believe that justice and violence are never the same.

Jesus died in one of the most inhumane and unjust ways. And if he didn’t die to appease God’s wrath, why did he have to die? Maybe he was crucified as a way of showing victory over the powers of evil and death (Christus Victor atonement theory) or maybe Jesus was killed by human wrath and shows us just now nonviolent God will be in the face of violence (Non-Violent atonement).

Many argue that when Jesus says, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” it’s proof of the need for atonement. But there’s also the other side of that:

“In each Gospel we discover that God didn’t need the cross in order to forgive. The truth of God’s “grace upon grace” is that God forgives sinners, tax collectors, and cowardly disciples, in other words, everyone, before Jesus even went to the cross. —Adam Erickson, The Nonviolent Atonement: God’s Grace Upon Grace

And Christ’s forgiveness was so palpable with his disciples. As I’ve said before: Judas’ presence at the Last Supper tells us that even those who betray God are welcome at God’s table.

It’s the inclusiveness I cannot get over.

While agonizing in the pain and suffering he’s in the middle of enduring, Jesus transfers identity and creates a new family dynamic with two sentences:
Woman here is your son. And here is your mother. (John 19:26-27)

If Christ is a reflection of God, this moment feels miraculous.
Christ can no longer take care of Mary economically. He cannot be there for her. There is another who can take over his protector, provider, and familial role. Another who can love her well. So the family expands.

Dear woman, here is your son. He can be for you what I cannot. And here is your mother.

As Christ offers a new mother-child relationship to his earthly mother, maybe this is also a greater reflection of what he came to do. He makes a way for his spiritual mother, the Holy Spirit.

But I tell you I am going to do what is best for you. This is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you. (John 16:7)

Franciscan school of thought says about the cross, “Jesus was not changing God’s mind about us; he was changing our minds about God.”

What if we saw Jesus as midwife.

Dear Mother God, here are your sons and daughters. Daughters and sons, here is your Mother. You belong to each other.