God of the Mountain
A Reflection on the Meaning of the Cross
William Loader
Father,
forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing
But we know - do we?
The spike of
the club had pierced her right temple. Inside the brain was now pressed to the left side
by the blow, the right side filled with blood, preserved in the frozen corpse, a human
sacrifice from Inca times found atop Mount Ampato in Peru. The museum video in Arequipa
explained how the 12 year old girl will have been prepared to die for her people, will
have trekked many kilometres to her last moment. She would die to appease the angry god of
the mountain. Then the famine would break. Her people would be saved. A little Jesus above
the Amazon - or so it seemed in the National Geographic video.
And here on
Golgotha another god appeased? God’s own son made to suffer a violent death by his
father, to appease the father’s anger and save us all? Or so it seems in much that we
hear and say. Gods of violence sanctioning people of violence. No forgiveness without
revenge - on someone, as long as it is on someone. A matter of honour, ensuring
punishments are enacted, penalties paid in full. Is our God of the “hill far
away” related to the God of the mountain far away? Is that what the cross is about?
Is that what we know? Close the books, the debt is paid, ledger balanced, all is
forgotten, we are safe from the anger of the mountain god. This young man was spiked for
us and for our sins.
But we know - do we?
What if the
killing god is the god of the killers, determined not to love, wanting to discard the
troublemaker, unwilling to leave room for generosity that will not be tamed by the rules
of punishments, the debts of accounting, by the principles of honour and appeasement?
Father,
forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing
But we know - do we?
Why do we
hatch up explanations which protect the dignity of a killing, punishing, vengeful God? Why
do we want to say God could only love by first finding a victim to appease his honour, to
take his punishment, to balance his debts? Why do we want a God who had to be paid off?
Why are we afraid of just being loved? How does it benefit us to ensure the sums are done
and the generosity is not pure generosity? Why must God be a mountain god? Is it because
we can then have a sense of control; the sums are done, the books are balanced, we can
close the books? Does it give a subtle sense of control where we can say: “Well the
penalty has been paid, so we can now claim forgiveness by right?” Is it because it
allows us still to hold on to our own ways of violence and calculation, our own demands
that people appease us or pay for it?
Father,
forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing
But we know - do we?
What if we
see on this cross not a transaction with an offended mountain god, but a revelation at a
moment of time of the love which is eternally in the heart of God, lived out in the long
trek of Jesus? What if we smile at our failed and compromised images of paid penalties,
sacrificial blood, ransoms, and punishments, all of which reflected some truth but also
distorted it, and see in this historical moment a climax of lived love and lived hate, of
the gods of religion and the God of compassion, of the political suppression of change and
the unwillingness to recant on care? Then he died for us, against us, within us, before us
- in a moment frozen in time for all time. And perhaps, then, we begin to know.
Father,
forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing
But we know - do we?