Speaker 1: What is up everybody?
Speaker 1: My name is Ryan Braley and I am in the studio with Mike Lauer.
Speaker 1: He's recording I'm talking.
Speaker 1: It's a partnership made in heaven.
Speaker 1: Hey, mike.
Speaker 1: Hey, we are in the middle of our Reflections series that we're calling Well, I don't know if we're calling it anything, but it's a three-part series, actually four parts, including the intro.
Speaker 1: We're examining the cross.
Speaker 1: What happened on the cross, why does Jesus die and what does it mean that he died and what changes because he died?
Speaker 1: How do we explain it?
Speaker 1: We know, of course the Bible says he died because of our sins Great, but what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 1: And so last week we talked about the ransom theory.
Speaker 1: Week one was an intro, so go back and listen to those.
Speaker 1: This week, I want to talk with you about one that we call.
Speaker 1: Some people call it the last scapegoat theory, others call it the mirror, but it's this idea that Jesus reflects back to us On the cross our human violence and rage, this mob mentality that we all seem to have and sort of how bankrupt it all is.
Speaker 1: So Jesus shows that our violence run amok is responsible for the death of this innocent man, jesus of Nazareth.
Speaker 1: Who is this good person?
Speaker 1: He's purely innocent.
Speaker 1: And on the cross, in this scene we sort of have this utter pulling back of Nazareth.
Speaker 1: Who's this good person?
Speaker 1: He's purely innocent.
Speaker 1: And on the cross, in this scene, we sort of have this utter pulling back of the curtain to see how bankrupt this whole system is.
Speaker 1: So here's how it goes.
Speaker 1: Violence is one of the predominant issues within society.
Speaker 1: It always has been, and for centuries or millennia even.
Speaker 1: It ravages our communities.
Speaker 1: But it's all this time, it seems these violent tendencies.
Speaker 1: And there's this anthropologist named Rene Girard who looks at why we tend to be people who are violent, why we sort of get on these merry-go-rounds or Ferris wheels of violence, and he says it's all because of imitation.
Speaker 1: So, since primitive times, imitation is part of what it means to be a human.
Speaker 1: If you think about it, we are always mimicking, mirroring, imitating each other, consciously and unconsciously.
Speaker 1: It's what it means to be a human.
Speaker 1: So children master language this way.
Speaker 1: They imitate the parent or the uncle and they learn to talk by imitating.
Speaker 1: They also learn to smile.
Speaker 1: That way, when a baby smiles, they smile because you smile, and so if your baby has an ugly smile, well, don't blame me.
Speaker 1: Don't blame me, but anyway, we, uh, we are always mimicking and mirroring each other.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you go to dinner with somebody and you reach for water, then, like science or studies have shown, that your whoever you're with will more than likely also grab their water, and not even knowing that they're doing it, because they're sort of wired to imitate and to mirror each other, and not just sounds or even behavior, but we also mirror each other's desire, anthropologists would say.
Speaker 1: And so desire itself is mimicked or mirrored, and you see this all the time.
Speaker 1: When there are kids in the room and there's one kid that wants a truck, like he desires the truck, another kid will mirror that desire and want the truck as well.
Speaker 1: Five seconds before nobody wanted the truck.
Speaker 1: But when one person wants it now they all want it, because that desire is mimicked and mirrored as well.
Speaker 1: And the neuroscience behind it is because we always have neurons in our brains firing.
Speaker 1: These neurons are like just constantly going and we have a subset of these neurons called mirror neurons that actually fire off when we see someone do something else.
Speaker 1: That kind of causes us to want to do the same thing, and so we're basically hardwired to do this stuff.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal If desire is mirrored and we want what other people want, it will always lead to a problem Because, again, if you have two kids and they both want the truck and the only reason that one of them wants it is because the other one wanted it, they both can't have the truck.
Speaker 1: And so you see this all the time with kids.
Speaker 1: What happens?
Speaker 1: A conflict ensues, a violent, sometimes I don't know ravenous conflict will happen and these kids will start to fight or have conflict over this truck.
Speaker 1: So if we imitate each other's desires, it will always create a problem Rivalry, conflict, violence on a larger scale, even things like war, because we both can't have the same thing.
Speaker 1: Years ago I was at a Broncos game the Denver Broncos, the greatest team in NFL history and it was crazy because the Philadelphia Eagles were in town.
Speaker 1: And if you know those fans, they are crazy.
Speaker 1: The Eagles fans are rabid and when they get there, you know both the Broncos fans and the Eagles fans wanted a victory, but both of us can't have it.
Speaker 1: So immediately there's this rivalry.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to have the victory, eagle fans, I want it.
Speaker 1: So out of nowhere, I all of a sudden hate Eagles fans in this stadium and I was like a young man and I was like, actually had this wherewithal to think why do I actually hate these Eagles fans?
Speaker 1: I don't even know them.
Speaker 1: They could be cool guys.
Speaker 1: I might want to go out and have a drink with them afterwards, but in the moment I'm like, no, you can't have the victory.
Speaker 1: We want it and we're going to go to war and have rivalry and not like each other.
Speaker 1: And so there's this rivalry born, and you see this all the time with kids in the playground too.
Speaker 1: When they're younger, how a lot of kids will be, you know they'll become friends with each other, with rivalry undergirding that friendship, because they're friends, because they're over and against that person over there.
Speaker 1: And so you know, conflict, rivalry, these kinds of violent interactions and engagements are a part of the human narrative and violence, as I said, is oftentimes the result.
Speaker 1: Now, in the Bible you see this like exhibit A is Cain and Abel, cain and Abel.
Speaker 1: You know Cain kills Abel because Cain is jealous of his brother, that somehow, for some reason, god gives approval to Abel's offering and not to Cain, and Cain can't handle that.
Speaker 1: He wants God's approval, can't get it.
Speaker 1: They both can't have it.
Speaker 1: In this case it's like this triangle of desire, and Cain is full of anger and rage and he doesn't know how to handle it, so he kills his brother.
Speaker 1: You see it also with Joseph and his brothers in the book of Genesis.
Speaker 1: Joseph is, of course, one of the sons of Jacob and all the brothers want their father's approval.
Speaker 1: But Jacob gives it to Joseph.
Speaker 1: He favors Joseph and they all want it.
Speaker 1: They can't have it and they have this violent rage and they throw Joseph into a pit to kill him.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, but it's as a result of mimetic desire or of mirroring desire that we imitate each other's desires.
Speaker 1: This, by the way, is why I would argue like open relationships don't work.
Speaker 1: An open relationship is where you kind of share your partner or your spouse around and it doesn't work because there's always going to be this resulting violence and anger and rage.
Speaker 1: It's no wonder to me that Will Smith, who's notoriously or infamously a part of an open marriage with his wife which I know very little about, so I'm over my skis here but and in that moment in the Oscars, when Chris Rock makes fun of Will Smith's wife, who they again, they both have this open marriage Will Smith is like full of anger, like why is he so angry and he gets up and goes and punches or slaps Chris Rock, Like why would he do that?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But I'm not surprised, because whenever we have these things that we can't share, it always leads to violence.
Speaker 1: And so violence in this case is like this virus that infects society, humanity and needs desperately a cure.
Speaker 1: So over the course of time in the ancient world that kind of begins humans develop a mechanism to deal with this, a way to kind of pour out all this violence and anger and rage onto a victim, and then this, in doing so, it alleviates or mitigates our need for further violence.
Speaker 1: So we call this the system of sacrifice.
Speaker 1: So in a sacrificial system, we pour out our violence on an innocent victim and thereby, according to ancient people's thinking, it appeases the gods who are angry with us.
Speaker 1: And so it relieves the gods of their anger and violence and rage against us and thereby alleviates our anger and violence and rage against each other.
Speaker 1: And it works.
Speaker 1: For a long time it works and it alleviates our own violent tendencies, but only temporarily, and so at first glance, when Jesus shows up, it looks like just another sacrifice being made to appease the angry gods, or in this case God.
Speaker 1: But it's actually undoing this very mechanism or very system.
Speaker 1: It's like a revealing of how crazy this whole thing is.
Speaker 1: He's actually the exception Jesus is, and he shows us that sacrificial violence is kind of built on this lie that the victim, you know, deserves what it got.
Speaker 1: Because scapegoating did work for a long time to scapegoat victims and we do it today.
Speaker 1: It kind of feels good when we scapegoat others and it temporarily mitigates the violence, this mob violence, and the crowd, in doing so, assumes the victim deserves it.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, we poured our violence or anger or rage or gossip or slander or whatever, and in doing so it alleviates our violent rages, but it does so because we think they deserve it, like, yeah, they deserve that, so give it to them.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem In those cases and actually emphatically in Jesus the victim is actually innocent and so in this case it's actually just a trade-off of violence and it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And the death of Jesus dramatically reveals this, because he's truly innocent and in this scene everybody's over and against Jesus, even the passersby.
Speaker 1: One gospel tells us that even passersby were walking by like hurling insults at Jesus, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: It's this horrible moment of like the curtains being pulled back and humanity getting a glimpse of what we truly are, this ravenous, raging, violent mob and demanding the blood of an innocent victim.
Speaker 1: And it's just craziness.
Speaker 1: And so in that way it unmasks the powers, the evil powers in the world, and I love it.
Speaker 1: The Roman centurion, in this moment, after Jesus dies, he sort of sees it for what it really is, this horrible system of pouring out of violence and anger and rage on an innocent victim.
Speaker 1: And he says surely this was the Son of God.
Speaker 1: So the death of Jesus is not just another moment of a sacrifice being offered to angry gods.
Speaker 1: Rather, it's the renunciation of violence itself.
Speaker 1: It's a healing of our own rage, which begins by us having our eyes open like, hey, this is madness, stop.
Speaker 1: And in doing so, jesus begins to reverse the scapegoat process.
Speaker 1: So one writer says in Christ, god becomes the one who is rejected and expelled.
Speaker 1: The scapegoat is not the one who is sacrificed to appease an angry deity.
Speaker 1: Instead, the deity himself enters human society, becomes the scapegoat and thereby eliminates the need for any future scapegoats or sacrifices.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say it one more time In Christ, god becomes the one who is rejected and expelled.
Speaker 1: The scapegoat isn't the one who is sacrificed to appease an angry God.
Speaker 1: Instead, the God himself enters into human society, becomes the scapegoat and thereby eliminates the need for any future scapegoats or sacrifices.
Speaker 1: So Jesus shows us the entire system was bankrupt and broken, by holding up a mirror to our own violent ways and saying this is madness, it's gotta stop.
Speaker 1: And in doing so he paves a way to our own violent ways and saying this is madness, it's got to stop.
Speaker 1: And in doing so he paves the way for our violence to be healed through forgiveness that Jesus offers on the cross and that forgiveness allows us a way forward out of the violent mechanisms and tendencies that we all have today by receiving that forgiveness and passing it on to others.
Speaker 1: I love this one.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite sort of atonement theories because it shows the forgiveness is what heals our brokenness in our violent ways.
Speaker 1: So okay, let me know what you think.
Speaker 1: Love you guys, peace.
Speaker 1: Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends.
Speaker 1: And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 8.30, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering, or you can check us out online at clcelkriverorg.
Speaker 1: Peace.