Holy Week: Atonement

A section of the modern garden in Gethsemane

 

I've been in interfaith spaces enough to know that Latter-day Saints have a different relationship with the Atonement of Jesus Christ than the rest of Christianity. While the idea that Jesus sacrificed himself to meet the demands of the Law of Moses, what the Book of Mormon calls "the great and last sacrifice," we have a different understanding from the rest of Christianity of when that happened. (See Alma 34:13-16)

In every other Christian tradition I've seen and interacted with, the belief is that Jesus died on the Cross for our sins. In Latter-day Saint tradition, we believe that this act of intercession and our Savior's achievement of perfected compassion in the Garden of Gethsemane. Note these verses from Luke 22:

41 And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed,

42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.

44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

For us, this is the Atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This is what it meant for him to be the Messiah. It wasn't a physical rescuing, although he did that for many throughout his mortal ministry. It was the defeat of loneliness, the conquering of sin, and deliverance from evil that defined Jesus Christ as our Savior. The blood he shed during that moment of intercession for the entire human family—past, present, and future—that would crown his ministry as the Only Begotten Son of the Father.


For me, this dual emphasis on Gethsemane and the de-emphasis of the Crucifixion is one of my favorite aspects of my faith. It allows me to have a more expansive view of Atonement that transcends sin. Our scriptures teach of the intercession of Jesus as an act that grants him perfect access to perfect empathy with each of us, in every experience I will ever face.

Some examples of that perspective from the Book of Mormon: 

• 1 Nephi 19:9
• 1 Nephi 21:16
• Mosiah 14:10
• Alma 7:11-13

In contrast, the Crucifixion to us is a tragic miscarriage of justice, a product of Roman brutality in capital punishment. That Christ was willing to suffer that is significant, but the Crucifixion itself has no inherent holiness to us—let alone being the focal point. That is why Latter-day Saints, for the most part, don't give emphasis to the Crucifixion in our iconography with crosses. Having spent my early years going to Catholic Mass with my mother and seeing the large Crucifix with an emaciated Christ carved and hanging from it at the front of the room, I do prefer my current traditions over the fear and guilt that inspired in me as a child

When people have asked me about why the pain and anguish of Jesus Christ was necessary, it has usually come from people in other Abrahamic faiths outside of Christianity. Why is that level of suffering required to appease God and to meet the demands of divine law?

When the Atonement of Jesus Christ is reduced to the legalistic demands of sin and its consequences, I can understand the confusion. It's not a satisfying explanation to point to the depravity of human kind and say "It was necessary to fix that." I’ve particularly had wise Muslims ask me how a totally innocent person suffering the consequences for a guilty person could ever possibly be just. And when your understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ begins and ends with sin, it's hard to know how to respond.

Latter-day Saints have an understanding that would say instead that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice simply because he wanted to. He didn't want any of us to be alone in all the struggles we would ever face. It's not just for sin—it's for every heartache we will ever experience, including those we haven't even come to yet. The total defeat of evil and its power over our lives. He has a perfect knowledge of every need we will ever have, and has received that knowledge into himself so he knows how to comfort and guide us. He was the only one who could do that for the human family. Such access requires "an infinite and eternal sacrifice," and Jesus Christ was the only one who was willing and able to pay the price on our behalf. (See Alma 34:9-12)

That's what makes Jesus Christ special to me: he can see the worst of what humans can do to each other, bearing the collective burden of all of our pain, and survive it without succumbing to hopelessness and despair. He isn't a convenient scapegoat, or (even worse) an enabler. He is a friend to the friendless, the hope to the hopeless, and the last resort to someone who would otherwise be left totally alone and defeated in this world.

I have never been to Gethsemane. I wasn't there when Jesus did this for me. I can't prove to anyone else that it was real or that it happened. All I can do is be the living witness of that kind of love, health, healing, and wholeness in my own life because that's who Jesus Christ has been to me.

Everyone needs that kind of friend in their lives, especially when they don't deserve it. Each and every one of us, no matter who we are or what we've done, have that kind of friend in Jesus of Nazareth.

As I Have Loved You, Love One Another

One of the most heartbreaking verses in all of scripture was the moment when Jesus brought Peter, James, and John with him as he entered the Garden of Gethsemane. It was to be the contest in which Christ made himself an offering for the entirety of the human family before all the hosts of heaven, the most difficult test he had ever endured. It would push his body and soul to the brink of oblivion, beyond what any individual human had ever suffered. To make intercession for every soul who had ever or would ever live.

 

Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Robert Walter Weir (1803-1899)

Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

"My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me," he said to Peter, James, and John.ⁱ A plea from a human heart that doesn't want to suffer, especially not alone. No different from any one of us.

We don't have to imagine his fear and trepidation in that moment. The scriptures tell us that Jesus Christ fell on his face before his Father and begged that "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me."ⁱⁱ A plea from a human heart that doesn't want to suffer, no different from any one of us.

"Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou will."ⁱⁱⁱ Willing to undergo the suffering and pain to teach the world, by example, the cost of unconditional love. The price to be paid for eternity. The very best trait any of us in humanity has to offer: the willingness to show mercy and compassion, especially to those who will never reciprocate.

They slept. The most important moment in his life, the entire reason he was sent to earth, and his brothers slept right through it. He came to them repeatedly and asked for them to watch with him. Each time, they fail. "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?"^iv How difficult it must've been for him to recognize that in a few short moments, everything he had built would be entrusted to them, and they were already asleep at the helm.

Peter, James, and John would spend the remainder of their lives trying to be equal to the moment that had already passed them by and found them wanting. They represent the challenge that remains for anyone who calls themselves a Christian: to be equal to the mandates Jesus Christ left behind for all of us, to become the manner of humans we ought to be. "Verily I say unto you, even as I am."^v

Asleep at the Helm

To be distracted and unfocused in a moment when we are being entrusted to minister to, or even just to sit with someone who is in pain, is not a sin that is unique to Peter, James, and John. In many respects, the modern Church has a similar issue in how it collectively confronts current moral failures among its membership. With sexism, racism, and the treatment of LGBTQ members in particular, there are too many times when the suffering and violence faced by those on the margins, including from those within the Church, has silent witnesses who close their eyes to it instead of helping.

The practice of Latter-day Saint parents abandoning their LGBTQ+ children and youth is especially heinous. To reject anyone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, to say nothing of forcing them onto the streets and into homelessness, is an evil with no place within the Church. It's an evil that exists openly, with too many Church and priesthood leaders who know about it without holding the parents to account for their actions. In too many cases, these leaders ARE the parents who are putting their children in danger by turning them out onto the streets. Any amount of this in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is too much, and we have too much. When Jesus taught that ours was the responsibility to take the gospel message into the world, violence against and the rejection of the marginalized is not what he meant.

I could sit here and spout of verses to prove this point all day long. I could quote Matthew 25 about how those who fail to feed and clothe God's children do that violence to Christ himself.^vi I could quote 2 Nephi 26 when the prophets taught that Christ sends no one away who is in need. I could quote the parable of the man with 12 children from D&C 38 where God rejects any parent who would willingly deny their children the sustenance that they need and still claim to be a good parent.

Seriously. I could sit here and come up with more of these all day long because I know the God I serve. At no point did God give any injunction or license to do violence towards or to ostracize the LGBTQ+ community among us. So for now, I will settle for the warning that Jesus gave in three different places in the New Testament about the consequences to those who hurt any of his children, especially when the victims are children.

"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."^vii

The problem here is not that the scriptures were vague or inconsistent. Jesus Christ was perfectly clear about how he expects all of us to treat each other. The problem is that too many of us don't want to listen. We want to join into the violent scapegoating of the Other because that's what the rest of The World, and by that I mean too many others in Christianity, are actively doing. It's easier for fundamentalists to accumulate social capital by doing violence and spreading hatred than it is to genuinely "do good unto all men."^viii Just because the others engaging in that behavior are other Christians doesn't make it right. It just means everyone involved has every reason to know better and do better.

Jesus of Nazareth has born the griefs of every soul who has ever lived. He knows the pains of LGBTQ+ people who have lost everything they once held dear. He can say together with LGBTQ+ people that he was also "wounded in the house of my friends."^ix Which I don't say as any kind of injunction for them to worship with us ever again. No one has any obligation to return to a place of violence that has made them unsafe. That's what the Church has been for too many of our own LGBTQ+ people.

To any and all within the reach of these words who prides themselves on doing violence to God's children because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation, my message to you this Easter season is simple: Stop it. Find something better to do with your time. 

In the time it takes to make someone else's difficult situation even worse by dehumanizing them, we could do what Christ did and love them instead.

iMatt. 26:38

iiMatt. 26:39

iiiIbid.

ivMatt. 26:40

v3 Ne. 27:27

viMathew 25:35-40

viiMatt. 18, Mark 9, Luke 17

viiiGal. 6:10

ixZech. 13:6