In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The anger of God is not a popular topic of sermons among the Christian people today, but it seems to me a necessary topic, because the anger of God or the wrath of God is manifest, isn’t it? It is manifest. Without going into it in detail, let me suggest those of you who are not sure what I’m talking about may want to look at the first chapter of Romans this week and see how the anger of God is manifest: certain social phenomena where the anger of God is manifest.

But I don’t believe I could stand, I could tolerate, my mind could rest in talking about the anger of God, except in the context of the passion of Christ. And no treatment of the passion of Christ is complete, I think, if it leaves out all consideration of the wrath of God. I don’t know how many books on soteriology, some of them written by Orthodox, talk about the significance of the passion of Christ and don’t mention the anger of God. Well, that’s just silly. That’s just silly. The New Testament does. One would need to be blind not to observe in the Bible in both testaments how often God is said to be angry at man’s sins and angry at sinners. And if it is true that the Lamb of God, by his death on the cross, takes away the sins of the world, how is it possible to speak of that sacrificial death without relating it to the divine wrath? Since sin is what prompts the wrath of God, and since the immolated Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, it is not legitimate to dissociate the passion of Christ from the wrath of God.

Now the subject is large, it is complex, it is worth more than one sermon, but if the Lord sustains the old age of the writer, there will be a book on this coming pretty soon. Well, not “pretty soon” but kind of “soon.” I can’t consider all aspects of it in a Sunday sermon. A long-standing custom of this parish suggests that we should consider three aspects of it today.

First, the anger of the biblical God is never placated. There’s absolutely nothing anybody can do to make God less angry, because God’s wrath expresses an aspect of his being. God cannot stifle or stop who he is. The expression “the divine anger” is a metaphor, of course. This signifies the metaphysical incompatibility of moral evil with the Font of goodness. When the Bible then uses such expressions, these expressions indicate his fundamental displeasure toward what is radically opposed to his being. You see, God would never be angry except that he created, and he created all things good, but there’s something in there that’s not good; it’s an insult to God. Now that’s a metaphor, too, of course.

If God’s wrath is understood in this way, it is clear that no one can placate it or appease it. No one can do anything to make God change his attitude towards sin. It is metaphysically impossible for God to become somehow less angry with regard to evil. Sometimes that needs a philosophical approach. The Lord’s negative reaction cannot be other than it is, because it expresses his intrinsic truth. As long as God is God, sin must be the object of his wrath. Nothing done on this earth, nothing accomplished by Christ himself alters the divine nature. The wrath of Zeus might be placated, the anger of Shiva might be appeased—but not the God of the Bible. It is impossible for the biblical Adonai to be other than El Kanna, the jealous God. For this reason, God must always be angry at sin. God will never adopt a milder or more conciliatory attitude toward sin. This is true in both testaments, by the way. Don’t throw back to me that this is just an Old Testament God. I’m sorry, the scariest parts of the Bible are in the New Testament. And this is why it is impossible to placate or satisfy the divine anger.

Consequently, however the cross of Christ is related to the anger of God, it has nothing to do with placating that anger. In this respect, the sacrifice of the cross follows a clear pattern in ancient Israel’s sacrificial system. Indeed, the anger of God is not a single time mentioned—not once—in the Bible in connection with the sacrifices of the Temple. Never. If we Christians call upon the Bible and, forsaking all others, adhere only to the Bible, the category of sacrifice provides no legitimate way to relate the event of the cross to the anger of God. Simply and plainly put, Israel’s sacrificial system and theology, distinguished in this respect from the sacrifices of paganism, never speaks of the divine anger. In holy Scripture, the wrath of God is never related to the prescribed sacrifices. Sometimes the Bible speaks about blood sacrifice, but when it does so it never speaks of God’s wrath. Sometimes the Bible speaks about God’s wrath, but it never does so in connection with blood sacrifice. We must not join together what God put asunder.

Second, when holy Scripture speaks of the sacrifice of the cross in connection with God’s anger, it is invariably in terms of deliverance. The apostles taught that Christ saves us from the divine wrath, and this, too, is consonant with the teaching of the divine Scriptures. When we turn to the biblical treatment of the wrath of God, we observe the vocabulary of deflection. God’s anger is said to be “turned away”: when man turns to God in repentant prayer, God turns away his wrath. This is a common pattern all through the Hebrew Scriptures.

Perhaps the best-remembered case is the prayer ascribed to the deeply humble David who was convinced that God would not despise a broken and contrite heart. Now remember, God was very upset with David. David may have thought he had a good relationship with Bathsheba, even a meaningful relationship, so meaningful it led to the murder of her husband. God was very angry. He did not stop being angry, but his anger was deflected when David repented, with that bony finger of the prophet stuck right in his nose and said, “You’re the guy. You’re it.”

Now, when David turned to the offended Lord, he prayed; he didn’t say, “Lord, calm down.” [Laughter] He didn’t say, “Lord, cool it.” He prayed that God would turn his face away from sins. “Avert your face from my sins. Hasta paneka mehatay. Turn away your face from my sins. Turn it away.” The sacrifice God required of him, David knew, was a broken and contrite heart, and such was the sacrifice David offered in this prayer. Here, as in all the Bible, divine forgiveness is the response to human prayer.

It is useful, beloved, to consider this Davidic psalm as a whole, as much as the Church has always appealed to it in connection with the forgiveness of sins. This is the one psalter for sure the Church prescribes recitation, not just once a day, but several times a day. David prays to be washed thoroughly from his iniquity, to be cleaned from his sin. He begs to be purged with hyssop and made whiter than snow. According to this prayer, the sacrifice required of this sinner is the turning of the mind and the heart to God. The true burnt-offering is a broken heart.

The one who prays this psalm is certainly familiar with the divine wrath. He is familiar with God’s radical, punitive displeasure. The sinner knows his guilt. He confesses his offense. He is praying, moreover, to be forgiven and restored. But what does this mean? What does this mean? What the repentant soul seeks here is more than the Lord’s turning away his face from the offense. Salvation in this psalm consists in more than the removal of damim, bloods, or its usual translation is blood-guilt.

The man who makes this prayer his own is asking for what? He’s asking for communion with God. “Restore to me the joy of thy salvation.” The salvation sought in this prayer is positive. It is more than the removal of guilt; it’s a plea for the renewal of the Holy Spirit. “Receive you the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them.” Only in the Holy Spirit is one forgiven. It’s a plea for the renewal of the Holy Spirit. The Psalmist is explicit in this point. The goal of repentance is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, through purity of heart. The one indeed is inseparable from the other. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew inside me the righteous Spirit, Ruah nakown. Cast me not away from your presence,” actually, literally, “your face. Cast me not away from your face. Take not your holy Spirit from me, the Ruah qadesheka, the Holy Spirit. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain me with a kindly Spirit, Ruah nedibah.”

What the repentant sinner seeks here is true atonement, a genuine being-at-one with God, through the Holy Spirit. There is no forgiveness of sins without the Holy Spirit. The sinner is not asking for God’s declaration of his righteousness. Our righteousness is not a divine declaration; it’s the gift of the Holy Spirit. What the Psalmist is asking for is the inner transformation of his heart. What he seeks is true restoration to God’s friendship.

Now that, beloved, is what the cross accomplishes: communion with God. When Jesus dies on the cross in the gospel of John, most of the translations—I think there are one or two recently that got it right—it says, “Bowing his head, klinas ten kephalen aftou, bowing his head, paredoken to pnevma, he handed over the spirit.” He hands over the spirit. And in the next chapter, the next chapter of John: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.” Forgiveness of sins comes from the grace of the Holy Spirit, and that’s what the cross brings us.

Third, then, what shall we say of the cross of Christ in this respect? What took place on the cross, we hold, was a self-offering of the New Adam, obedient unto death. What changes in the crucified Christ is the relationship of human beings to God. On the cross, Christ repents on behalf of the whole human race. He turns aside the anger of God by the gift of himself to God. You see, everything that was signified in the sacrifices of Israel all came down to that: an attempt to give back oneself to God, and that’s what Jesus does when he yields himself and his destiny to the Father.

What took place on the cross was the manifestation of both the wisdom and the power of God. With respect to the cross, St. Paul refused to separate God’s power from his wisdom. “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of the preached word to save those who believe, for we preach Christ crucified, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Sweet people, God’s redemptive counsel is a mystery in the strict sense. It does not conform to any humanly intelligible theory. And that’s my problem with St. Anselm and all of the other theories of atonement. They’re theories. You take what the Scripture says; you put it into a framework that makes sense. You simply can’t make full sense of God’s word without it ceasing to be God’s word. God’s redemptive counsel, then, is a mystery in the strict sense. It does not conform to any humanly intelligible theory.

Like creation and the exodus, it is God’s act, a kinetic reality, that passes from his eternal being across a mysterious threshold into history. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. If our redemption was the act of God, no created mind can take the measure of it. No theory can account for it. Theories about redemption, like theories about creation, are intrinsically off-base; in fact, they’re likely to be idolatrous. The line between God and history can only be crossed from his direction.

Christ’s self-gift to the Father was made on behalf of all of us and each of us. The Bible’s supreme and defining example of sacrificial intercession is that of the suffering Servant who is wounded for our transgressions and was numbered with the transgressors and who, though he knew not sin, became a sin-offering for us, that we might become the righteousness of God, in him. Amen.