In Exodus, Passover began on the tenth day of the spring month of Nisan, which was to be considered the first month of the year. Yet this Friday, Rosh Hashanah, “the head of the year,” will usher in the year 5787 in the Jewish calendar, traditionally counted from creation. Which one is the real “new year” then?

Well, our society also organizes time through more than one calendar: January begins the civil year, April the fiscal year for many, and September the academic year, while each birthday marks the passing of our own years (two of our parishioners turn 100 this Wednesday!). In the church, the cycle of readings restarts with Advent, but our vestry year, around which financial planning and elections are organized, begins in March. In practice, in many northern climates, societal activity tends to orient itself around making the most of our short summers. Thus, for us, parish life, like that of many workplaces, picks up in the fall with the arrival of cooler weather, the closing of cottages, and the end of summer travel and leisure.

Different dimensions of life simply follow different cycles, and since at least the third century, Jewish tradition has recognized this through not just one or two but four calendars, according to the Mishnah, the written document that gathers the oral teachings developed up to that point. The Jewish calendar also uses lunar months, so feast dates range within a couple of weeks, but the calendar as a whole is adjusted to the solar cycle to keep the agricultural festivals in their appropriate seasons, with a leap month added seven times every nineteen years. The result is that Nisan begins the religious year in the spring, and Tishrei begins the reckoning of the agricultural year in the fall, with its first day dedicated to rest, assembly, and trumpet blasts. The observance itself dates back 3000 years, but the name Rosh Hashanah and its association with the time elapsed since creation are 1800 years old.

What is especially relevant to our theme today, however, is that the ten days beginning with Rosh Hashanah are dedicated to reflection and repentance, culminating next Sunday in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. As we mark our own feast, Holy Cross Day on September 14, we, too, ponder our understanding of atonement. What exactly went wrong between humanity and God? How can it be made right? Why is the cross considered essential in our religion to the process of making things right? 

The need to atone is universal: when we know we have caused harm, we want to make up for it. Even when no one demands this, we may imagine that God does, so ancient rites such as Yom Kippur have roots in sacrifices made to appease him. But in Leviticus 16, Yom Kippur also entails the purification and restoration of community. One goat was offered in sacrifice, yes, but another was sent into the desert, symbolically carrying away everyone’s sins. This is where we get our modern word “scapegoat”, whereas the word “atonement” acknowledges the real effects of sin, which go beyond simply breaking a rule and points toward “at-one-ment,” the making one again of those who have become estranged through confession and renewal. 

The first people who came to believe that Jesus had been resurrected remembered his teaching that a new world was about to begin. So they started to connect the idea of the upcoming transformation of the world with the perception that Jesus’ suffering had not been pointless but had somehow been instrumental in bringing about that renewal. If God gave new life to him, then he might do so for us; but the question was, on what basis? In light of the natural impulse to appease a god, and looking back to such sacred texts as the Passover story, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, and the sending away of the scapegoat, the followers of Jesus may have intuitively seen him as a sacrifice who made up for our failure to do right by God.

Over time, various Christian models of atonement arose that interpreted the nature of this failure through the prevailing social concerns of their time. The main problem I personally have with most of them is that, because they operated from a necessarily human conceptualization of fairness and justice, they ended up accepting that God somehow sanctioned violence against Jesus, and that, consequently, our own suffering may be the prerequisite for growing in virtue. But there is another way to look at it, which I will describe after I briefly reference the most influential theories below.

The earliest theologies developed in the ancient world, where captivity, ransom, and war were daily realities. Some viewed Christ’s death as a ransom for our release from captivity to the devil; others emphasized Christ’s victory over death rather than a payment made to it. These models echo the idea of salvation as liberation inherent to Passover, yet they create a dualistic representation of good and evil forces controlling the world.

As a medieval alternative, satisfaction theory emerged out of feudalism structured by honour, rank, loyalty, and obligation. Humanity was understood as a vassal who had insulted the lord or owed him a debt repaid only by Christ. This theory made God into a feudal lord and bound him to the medieval requirement of defending his honour, a concept that is hard to relate to as it is no longer operational in our world.

During the Reformation, satisfaction was recast in legal terms as penal substitution. Calvin had trained in law before becoming a theologian, and so his account describes us as defendants under sentence, while Christ accepts our punishment to give us an acquittal. The model insists on the impossibility of earning salvation, a distinctly Reformed principle, yet it again imposes upon God the need to mete out punishment to uphold justice, reflecting a human idea of fairness governed by retaliation. The related seventeenth-century governmental theory draws upon political categories to see sin as a threat to the moral order over which God governs. In this view, Christ does not bear each of our sentences, but God’s authority depends upon making an example of him.

A couple of alternatives to payment and punishment also emerged that focused on love and shifted the effect of atonement to us. In moral exemplar theory, we are understood as incapable of true love, and Christ’s life and willing suffering provide an example of self-giving so supreme that our repentance ought to be unavoidable. The related moral influence theory describes us as unable to trust God, and Christ’s death as that which woos us into a loving relationship by impressing us with the extent of his self-giving. These relational accounts are more compelling to me than the transactional ones, but I remain troubled by the idea that God arranges his son’s torture to demonstrate love.

All these theories use human images of justice and reconciliation involving a reluctant authority figure: a ransom paid, an enemy defeated, an offended lord compensated, a sentence served, public order defended, or a lover’s devotion proved. Perhaps anthropocentrism is unavoidable because we cannot conceptualize God otherwise. Yet I think that precisely because God is not human, God offers reconciliation freely.

The theology of atonement that appeals to me therefore rejects the idea that God requires violence while accepting essential insights from other models: salvation as mystical and cosmic yet individual liberation; the real damage of wrongdoing, which even forgiveness cannot make irrelevant; the grace inherent in creation; and the invitation to participation and transformation. But violence is not the mechanism by which any of this occurs, which is why the theory that appeals to me is called nonviolent atonement.

In this view, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” does not require us to hear, “God sent his Son to die,” but rather, “God sent his Son to live.” As he sends all of us, he sent Jesus to embody God, heal, welcome, restore, forgive, and confront evil. Jesus’ death was not the purpose of that mission but the result of remaining faithful to it in a world organized against it. In other words, it is not that God arranged for Jesus’ death to satisfy himself. It is that people killed Jesus, and God chose to resurrect him and ultimately, us. As such, the resurrection is not a receipt of the Good Friday payment, but the very mechanism of salvation that vindicated Jesus’ way of living and created new hope and a new future out of defeat. All of this because of God’s love for his son Jesus and for all of us, who are his children, too.

Yet our participation matters. Passover required Israel to leave Egypt. Once grace opens the door, spiritual liberation asks us to leave the systems and habits that continue to create victims. To illustrate, let me turn to the woman whose story gave us Holy Cross Day, and who exemplified both the impulse to atone and the freedom of a purpose-driven life.

This fourth-century woman was Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine, and the date of Holy Cross Day commemorates the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built on the site where, according to tradition, she discovered the remains of the true cross. Of course, history and tradition have intertwined in her story, as the fourth-century account of her discovery of the cross was elaborated over time to the point of connecting her with the Arthurian universe. Yet the church is real, Helena’s pilgrimage upon which she discovered the site is historical, and she remains for me one of the most inspirational women in the history of Christianity.

A stable maid who became the companion of a Roman tetrarch and the mother of the first emperor to endorse Christianity, Helena experienced losses from which neither imperial status nor an emperor’s affection could protect her. First, her son was taken from her to live as a political hostage on the other side of the Roman Empire. Then she lost the man whom she considered her soulmate during his military campaign in Britain. Finally, her son Constantine ordered the death of his own son Crispus, who had become Helena’s beloved grandson, on charges of treason. Constantine’s wife Fausta may have framed Crispus as disloyal, and according to some sources, Helena may have exposed her, resulting in Fausta’s own execution upon Constantine’s further orders. 

Though we do not know Helena’s full role in this horrifying family catastrophe, we can imagine her grief, perhaps guilt, and desire to atone for what could not be undone. Perhaps, as she set out on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in her seventies, as though making her own exodus, Helena was searching not only for the cross but for a way of living after tragedy. This makes Helena’s story meaningful for older adults. Age brings not only experience, perspective, and confidence but also an awareness that there will not always be time to begin again. We start to ponder, “what have I accomplished, whom have I helped, where did I fail, and what is still possible”? As you perhaps grapple with such questions, have there been moments when you felt the need to atone for something? Did you seek pain for yourself or repair for the person harmed? What did you imagine God required of you? 

Yet God does not ask us to manufacture additional suffering to reconstruct what was lost. On Constantine’s part, killing Fausta did not bring back Crispus, even if she was responsible for his death; likewise, nothing Helena could do would undo the violence. She could and did, however, use the wealth and authority of the imperial household differently from then on. She supported the poor and pilgrims, established places of worship, and preserved sacred history. None of this made the past disappear, but it re-oriented her life, which is close to the meaning of teshuvah, return, which lies at the heart of the ten-day journey from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. Echoing Passover, when Pharaoh was not only an ancient ruler and Egypt not only the place Israel left behind, this journey causes the faithful to consider which system, institution, desire, or pattern within us depends upon someone else remaining less free. 

We can, and we do, continue to grow freer with age. Remember, Helena was not young when she travelled, built, gave, prayed, and devoted herself to a new purpose, which may, in a way, have brought her peace that “passes all understanding”. The theories of atonement have described attaining such peace in eternity and moment by moment. Each theory utilized familiar human images of captivity and freedom, debt and payment, courtrooms and sentences, estrangement and reconciliation, sickness and healing, lovers and beloveds. And while each theory captures only a facet of the truth, it seems clear that we atone by receiving reconciliation and allowing it to change our lives. We confess, repair what can be repaired, release the illusion that further suffering can repair it all, and become participants in the new life God is creating in each of us. Late in the calendar year or late in life, God always gives us another beginning.