Here’s my latest article for The Tahlequah Christian, my congregational newsletter,  for the week of February 21-27.

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Last week I was so excited about the H20 Project Challenge that I spent my entire column writing about it and completely forgot to announce my Lenten Sermon Series: Atonement Through the Years. So this week, I’ll offer this belated announcement and give you a little bit of an idea of what’s in store for the coming Sundays.

For those of you who missed worship, the series began with a sermon entitled “Atonement: Now, Then, and Way Back Then.” We looked at two 12th century theories of atonement and then set them up beside John 3:11-18 to see how well they squared up with our understandings of the ever famous John 3:16. “For God so loved the world …” Our first theory is known as “satisfaction theory,” and was developed by Anselm of Canterbury. This has become the bedrock of the traditional understanding of the Christian faith: we all owe a debt to God that we can never repay, and Jesus’ obedience and death upon the cross covered our debts. We discussed this with Peter Abelard’s understanding, known as “moral exemplar theory” which understands atonement a little differently. Instead of a debt that must be repaid, he believed that humans could be transformed by the visage of Jesus upon the cross, obedient to God even unto death, and our hearts would be turned back toward the God we turned away from. If you want to hear this understanding in song, find a hymnal and read the words of Isaac Watts’ “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” Then we closed it out with a look at how each of these theories sorta-kinda can be read back into John, but that neither one comes straight out of John’s gospel account.

This coming week we continue to look at the history and hear a message on Paul’s understanding of atonement along with another theology of atonement known as “ransom theory” that held prominence in the early church. For the remaining three weeks we will jump ahead to explore Paul Tillich’s and Walter Wink’s 20th century understandings of atonement along with Catherine Keller’s 21st century theology.

I hope you’ll come with minds ready to explore the challenges of our faith, and that you’ll bring your questions! I’m happy to share in discussions of faith and hope to talk with you soon.

Walking the journey of Lent,

Clint