Sermon from April 23, 2006
The Apostle Peter caused a stir, when he spoke in public about the death of Jesus. Only days before, he had denied Jesus three times out of fear for his life. His fellow disciples had run away into hiding. Any flawed human being might have done that. But to return within days to the place where he had miserably failed and there publicly place responsibility for Jesus' death on the authorities was completely unexpected.

People were trying to digest that unexpected turn of events, when Peter spoke the imponderable. The authorities, he said, were not the only ones responsible for Jesus' death. In his first sermon on the Day of Pentecost Peter said, "This man (Jesus) was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge" – Acts 2:22. Why was it God's set purpose and foreknowledge that Jesus should die? It implies that God saw His death to be a necessity. What made it a necessity? Is there something in the human situation or in the nature of God or in both that required Jesus' death and nothing else?

Jesus once pointed obscurely to an answer when He said to Himself, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" – Mark 10:45. The expression ransom for many implied that humanity was in some kind of bondage from which it could not free itself. But if that bondage made Jesus' death necessary in the eyes of God for setting man free, what dreadful bondage was it? What dreadful bondage is it?

Here is an even more penetrating question. If Jesus' death was necessary to release humanity from its dreadful bondage, how did it accomplish that? Think about that for a minute. The Christian gospel says that the death of Christ altered the human situation for all people for all time; but how could an event under Pontius Pilate affect human life a thousand miles away or 2000 years away? That seems impossible.

The Bible answers these questions. The apostles expressed those answers in a variety of ways, all of which they learned from the Old Testament. "The Old Testament furnishes the essential thought-forms, and the essential language too, for conceiving and expressing salvation," (C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John, 66).

In the Holy of Holies
Today, we turn to one of those essential thought-forms and the essential language of sacrifice. That means we turn again to the Jewish roots of our Christian faith. Early each fall, Jews celebrate Yom Kippur. "Yom Kippur is probably the most important holiday of the Jewish year. Many Jews who do not observe any other Jewish custom will refrain from work, fast and/or attend synagogue services on this day. The holiday is instituted at Leviticus 23:26. The name 'Yom Kippur' means 'Day of Atonement.'"

For Jews today, "it is a day set aside to 'afflict the soul,' to atone for the sins of the past year. This day is, essentially, your last appeal, your last chance to change the judgment (of God), to demonstrate your repentance and make amends. Yom Kippur atones only for sins between man and God, not for sins against another person." (excerpted from http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday4.htm)

The book of Leviticus tells us the very different way Israel celebrated this day before the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. The temple way of celebrating the Day of Atonement is important for understanding Jesus' death. So, let's make a journey back into the mysterious rituals of the Day of Atonement, as we find them in Leviticus 16.

Verse two laid down the first ground rule for observing the Day of Atonement. The LORD said to Moses: "Tell your brother Aaron not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud over the atonement cover."

Chapter 16 was a unilateral arrangement. God did not ask for in-put. It is another indication of the terrible gulf between God and man that cannot be bridged by human ingenuity or human effort. This gulf is fundamental to understanding the world we live in. It is fundamental to understanding the Christian faith.

The Most Holy Place, which Aaron could not enter whenever he chose, was the inner sanctum of the Jewish temple. In there rested the Ark of the Covenant. Jews called the lid that covered the Ark the kaphoreth. The NIV calls it the atonement cover. The KJV calls it the mercy seat. It was made of pure gold. The God of Israel appeared in a cloud over the kaphoreth.

The High Priest could go into that room only once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Neither could he go in unprepared. He would enter as he was told, or he would die. This ultimate price also indicates the terrible gulf between God and man that cannot be bridged by human ingenuity or human effort. "The service of the day (of Atonement was) designed by divine appointment to" bridge this gulf, to "gain for man access to God," (B.F. Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews, 279). Essential to that access was sacrifice.

The high priest offered a sacrifice first for himself. Verse three: "This is how Aaron is to enter the sanctuary area: with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering." Then he took a sacrifice for the nation Israel. Verse five: "From the Isarelite community he is to take two male goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering."

Verse six explains why Aaron, the High Priest, needed a sacrifice. "Aaron is to offer the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household." The name of this terrible gulf between God and man that cannot be bridged by human ingenuity or human effort is sin.

The High Priest could not enter the Most Holy Place, until he addressed the problem of his own sin, which separated him from God. The nation Israel needed a sacrifice for the same reason. Now, how did the sacrifices take place?

Verse 11: "Aaron shall bring the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household, and he is to slaughter the bull for his own sin offering." With the sacrifice complete watch what happened next.

Verse 12-13: "He is to take a censer full of burning coals from the altar before the LORD and two handfuls of finely ground fragrant incense and take them behind the curtain. He is to put the incense on the fire before the LORD, and the smoke of the incense will conceal the atonement cover above the Testimony, so that he will not die." He could not look at the kaphoreth on pain of death.

Alone, with the fragrant, thick cloud of incense obscuring his vision of the atonement cover and feeling his way to the most sacred spot on earth, verse 14 says, "He is to take some of the bull's blood and with his finger sprinkle it on the front of the atonement cover; then he shall sprinkle some of it with his finger seven times before the atonement cover." Then, he leaves the Most Holy Place and repeats the entire process on behalf of the nation, this time with the goat's blood.

Verses 15-16: "He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull's blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been."

Only one man, only once a year, in only one place and in that one place only with blood and with his vision of the kaphoreth obscured by the smoke of incense could make atonement for sin.

Hebrews and the Day of Atonement
Two weeks ago, we noted a peculiarity of the Bible. In referring to the death of Jesus, the New Testament never refers to it as an execution, assassination, or tragedy. It doesn't say that Jesus was cut off in the prime of His life. All four Gospels report the crucifixion, but they spare us the gruesome details in which, e.g., Mel Gibson's movie specialized. The writers did not deny the gruesomeness; they had seen crucifixions, and they likely saw His; but their reporting and interpretation of that event ignored the gruesomeness altogether.

How do we account for this absence of language and detail in the New Testament that would naturally belong to any contemporary journalistic account of Good Friday? What language does the New Testament use, and where did the writers learn their different vocabulary? We now have one answer.

"Year by year the (Jewish) people had access to the Presence of God in the person of the High-priest. The fellowship between God and the people, established by the Covenant but marred by sins against its conditions, was restored. By the virtue of an offered life (a slaughtered animal), communion (with God) became possible" again, (ibid., 280). The New Testament letter of Hebrews has the High Priest and the sacrifices of Yom Kippur in mind, when it explains the death of Christ.

The writer of Hebrews took the institution and the language of the Day of Atonement and said in effect, "If we are to understand the death of Jesus, this institution and this language will be indispensable. What happened on the Day of Atonement gives our mind and imagination a way to get into words the true meaning of Jesus' death."

So, ten times the letter of Hebrews refers to Jesus as the high priest. Fifteen times it refers to the bloody sacrifice Jesus offered for sin. It talks about the Most Holy Place. It talks about a covenant between God and man. We will follow what it says about these things in the sermons to follow.

The ancient Jewish observance of Yom Kippur gives our minds a model with which to interpret what happened on the center cross on Good Friday. What happened there changed Peter from a coward to a man of courage. What happened there changed the status of the world before God permanently. It is thick with meaning and hope and joy.

The Gulf
This biblical way of speaking leads me to say a cautionary word. We often hear people say that Jesus is an example for us, and the Bible does present Him as an example for us. For some Christians and non-Christians that is all He is. Any talk about Christ's atoning sacrifice sets their teeth on edge. People may become visibly upset at the idea that Christ suffered as a substitute for man.

But to see Christ's death as an example for us and nothing more does not deserve our confidence, because it trivializes human evil. You almost get the idea that if God would just send humanity for remedial therapy, all our problems would go away. We should know better. That idea is not faithful to the New Testament. The New Testament makes "the death and resurrection of Jesus the pivot of the events in which the reconciling action (of God) takes place," (Colin Gunton, The Actuality of the Atonement, 158).

The Bible presents human evil in three ways: bondage, breach of law, and defilement. When Jesus said He came to offer his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), our bondage was an issue. When the Apostle John said that sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4), our breach of God's law was the issue. When Isaiah said, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips," (Isaiah 6:5), our defilement was the issue.

Whether we feel trapped or guilty or dirty, our emotions bear witness to the gulf between God and man that cannot be bridged by human ingenuity or human effort. Sin in all its forms alienates the human family from God. We didn't need an example. We needed a Savior, a Mediator, who could atone for our sins and open for us the way back to God.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Tom Wolfe, 75 years old, lives and writes in Manhattan. He is an astute analyst and critic of the spirit of our age. He wrote a novel last year that depicts the coarse sexuality on college campuses. In response to negative reviews of the book he said, "It really dawned on me that so many people are proud of the sexual revolution, you know, 'We freed ourselves from those ... religious people and this Puritanism.'" (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008076).

When I read that, I felt like he had tapped into my own feelings about the world and put them into words. When people supported President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, I couldn't get it into words what I felt. Wolfe helped me see that people supported him not only because they were loyal, but also because they were proud that he had brought the sexual revolution into the White House.

The War on Drugs is unwinnable, not only because of those clever drug cartels, but also because thousands of Americans with money are proud of snorting a line of cocaine or making and using methamphetamines.

Isaiah put it well: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil – Isaiah 5:20. That does bad things to the fabric of our society; it also deepens our blindness to the gulf between God and man that cannot be bridged by human ingenuity or human effort.

"Man experiences (consciously or unconsciously) a power which works in him to bind him wholly to his mortality and corruptibility, to render impotent any knowledge of God or concern to do God's will, to provoke his merely animal appetites in forgetfulness that he is a creature of God – and that power" (the Bible) "calls 'sin,'" (Dunn, Romans 1-8, 149).

Let God be true, and every man a liar – Romans 3:4. But let us seek to be faithful to God who tells us the truth about the gulf between Him and us. He has not told us that truth to destroy us but to let us know why He needed to redeem us. And by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit He has redeemed us. We journey into the mystery of Christ together, not to be crushed but to be liberated, forgiven, and cleansed. Blessed be the name of the Lord!