Maundy Thursday 2019: Father, into Thy hands, I commend my spirit

Here we are at the end of the road: the end of our 40 days in the desert of Lent, the end of the Via Dolorosa, the last of the seven words from the cross.  And now, we stand at the foot of the cross, waiting, desolate, lost, expecting nothing more after His words, ‘It is finished,’ but He speaks one last time, to the Father He so recently accused of forsaking him: ‘Father, into Thy hands, I commend my spirit.’

Christians often treat that sentence as if it is novel or peculiar to Our Lord and the cross, but that isn’t, in fact, the case. The exclamation is a strong reminder of His Jewishness, drawn from Psalm 31 and woven into the piyut, Adon Olam, said on Shabbat and often, before bed: B'yado afkid ruchi - To Him I commit my spirit.

Also quintessentially Jewish is His relationship with G-d, able to encompass ‘What, you’re going to just leave Me hanging here in the dark?’ as well as that cry of the trapeze artist to the catcher, ‘Into your hands…’ and everything in between: from the agony in Gethsemane to the tenderness of ‘Father, forgive them.’ It is the intimacy and depth that comes from the familiarity of everyday togetherness, of sharing the little things as well as the large; the pain as well as the joy. A more modern example of this Jewish closeness to G-d can be found the late Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker:

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker

We kill the flame

Hineni, hineni – I’m ready, my Lord

Shocking as those lyrics may seem to us, they are underpinned by the sentiment: I trust you so much, I dare to say this to you, I dare to challenge you, as Martha did to Jesus when she said, ‘If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.’ Though I’ve yet to get there, it’s a relationship style I strongly resonate with, since my spiritual life can be summed up by a favourite quote: I live my life between ‘Jesus, take the wheel,’ and ‘Oh yeah? TRY ME.’

It was my relationship with G-d I was pondering this Lent, as I walked or led the Stations at least once a week. The idea of surrender had popped up many times in various situations, heart to heart discussions – with Jewish or non-religious friends, and in various materials that would just appear: cards, books, even gravestones. I worshipped a G-d who became human and died for me, so why was letting go so hard, even AFTER I’d worked on my stuff; why did it feel like that resistance was woven into the very fabric of Christianity I was trying to live?

The answer came unexpectedly when Lynne Hutchings of Wyoming defended the death penalty by saying that without it, Jesus couldn’t have saved humanity from its sins. We don’t have time to get into just how deeply heretical that is, so let’s just say someone should have checked her mushrooms before she ate them. I, of course, couldn’t resist putting it out there, posting it with the headline: When substitutionary atonement goes too far. Anyone who really knows me will be able to guess just how much earthy language & first class snark hit that thread. But it was my theologian friend, Sara, who summed it up for us all when she drily noted, ‘Substitutionary atonement overreaches simply by existing.’

Why does the form of atonement we believe in matter? Because it is the lens through which we view our faith and so, it becomes the way we live our lives. Substitutionary atonement is problematic for a whole host of reasons, but the ones I want to point out today include how it diminishes G-d’s nature by imagining the Almighty can only forgive sins when someone (Christ) is punished for them and how it turns relationship into a series of transactions – debt, payment. It makes unforgiveness, cruelty, and transactional relationship a feature, not a bug, of Christianity. Donald Trump is supporting white supremacists and grabbing women indiscriminately? That’s ok, he’ll give us the judges we want to impose the Christian version of sharia law. Children being caged then trafficked through adoption agencies such as Bethany Christian to white saviour parents? Substitutionary atonement – their parents had the nerve to show up at our border asking for asylum (which, for those of you inclined to think otherwise, *is perfectly legal*), so we punish their children.

I’m supposed to surrender to a G-d who enables that? Hard pass. Lucifer’s got a party in the basement that looks like a better option, thanks. And frankly, I don’t think Jesus would surrender to a Father like that either. Substitutionary atonement reduces the cross – and Jesus’ life – to the unremarkable: debt owed & paid, rather than a sacrifice of love. Through that lens, the life that we know Jesus lived and the relationship He had with His Father makes no sense at all, not least His teachings on forgiveness. And though this may be a minor point, I find substitutionary atonement lazier than a three-toed sloth on Ambien and, as an Enneagram 8, that just irimtates me.

And so it was that I discovered that my resistance to surrender was based in this sense of transactional relation – debt, payment – that made trust difficult.

Peter, a Dominican friend, and I had long discussions about models of atonement afterwards, but nothing settled for me until I thought, ‘Wait, what if we’ve got the question at the Trinity Redemption meeting wrong? What if the Father wasn’t asking, how do I get satisfaction, but rather, how do I bring them home? And the big J’s response was, well, what if I go down and show them how to live a fully human life – which can only be lived in you? We know what that will mean, but I will gladly accept that price for love.’

The kaleidoscope shifted and it all made sense: the Incarnation into a vulnerable human baby, living with his parents – and talking back to them, a ministry of healing, challenging teaching, miracles, and unutterable love, and finally, the sacrifice upon the cross and those words of complete surrender to a loving father who wants to bring his children home, a father whose arms are always open: to catch His Son – and us. If we start from *here*, then we are meant to live our lives as Christ lived His.

Now, there’s no doubt that the imitation of Christ is much harder than the idea we’re paid for once and all: for one, it means my fantasy of rounding up Jacob Rees-Mogg, Donald Trump, and their hate-spewing authoritarian buddies around the world, dropping them on an uninhabited Marshall Island to live Lord of the Flies style, and restarting nuclear testing in the area…is off the table. Instead, I have to learn to love them, to see G-d’s image in them, bearing in mind that love doesn’t mean just being nice and letting them do what they want; it means finding a way to prevent them from further hurting themselves and other, from going deeper into sin.

How in the universe am I supposed to do that? Jesus told me: Father, into Thy hands, I commend my spirit. But I’m human and I can’t let go of the anger, the hurt, the need to control, to let my spirit operate through my own good but twisted nature. It feels impossible. Perhaps that is why we are told:

Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. 

Far too often, we use that quote to impose whatever set of rules we want on others, meaning that narrow gate is for us and those like us, but I suspect that’s not the case. The gate is narrow because we have to let go of everything, to let go of our lives, to walk through:

He’s hurt me; I want him to pay.       Father, into Thy Hands, I commend my spirit.

I can’t do this.                                     Father, into Thy Hands, I commend my spirit.

I can’t live w/o this thing/person.       Father, into Thy Hands, I commend my spirit.

We often talk about closing our eyes and breathing in G-d. But the only way through the narrow gate is to let G-d breathe us – to throw ourselves back on Him over and over again, despite our Gethsemanes, our Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani moments, our broken humanity.

I was in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral last autumn, on my knees during the Eucharistic prayer I’d heard thousands of times, when I heard these words for the FIRST time: May He make us an everlasting gift to you, and was yet again overwhelmed by His sacrifice of love and the Father’s commitment to bring us home. In that moment, I understood that surrender meant not loss of self, but a return to communion.

All I know is that I’m light years away from being that gift and right now, the best that I can do is to make a vow, perhaps best summed up as follows:

For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love,

I’ll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough,

With every breath I take, I will give thanks to G-d above,

For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love.

But I know there is no way I can do it on my own merit, without grace, and so…Father, into Thy hands, I commend my spirit.