Does Jesus Die on the Cross Every Easter?

Welcome to Curiously Caitlyn where we try to make theology make sense

Welcome back to another Curiously Caitlyn. I am joined once again by producer Mike Mike. How are you?

Caitlyn, I'm feeling deja vu today. Yeah, pretty good, huh?

Mike, that's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, everyone's well. Some deja vu. Some deja vu. Fun fact,

yeah. Do you know why people experience deja vu? No, the matrix? Possibly. Basically they think.

I'm learning increasingly that like like the biblical scholars you get upset about,

lots of scientists similarly are like, we don't know why that happens. But apparently

scientists think that you experience deja vu when your brain accidentally stores information

in the long-term memory place of your brain instead of the short-term memory place in your brain.

So you learn something that normally you would just learn and then move on or experience and move on

and your brain's like, way, way, way, no, this is more important or this is happened before or

yeah, but it probably didn't actually happen before. Interesting. Our brains are crazy.

Our brains, it reminds me gosh, now we're just way off top. My favorite this American life episode

is the one on memory. I don't know if you've listened to this one. I don't think I have where they

would like interview couples about the same story. Oh my gosh. And they would get both takes from

from two people who experience the exact same thing. Yeah, yeah. But then there's this one couple

and I forget what they were fighting about, but they had video evidence proving. I think it was,

I don't, one of the, one of those spouses were like Ron and they had video evidence that they

were Ron and that spouse still refused to believe. This is the crazy thing about human memory.

Maybe I have listened to this episode because I've, I've heard someone else talk about this

effect with big national events. Like they'll record there's some, some center or foundation

or whatever that will talk to people right after a big national event and they'll be like, where

were you? Describe where you were when you heard that the president got shot or something like

that and they'll ask them like 10 years later the same question and not only will people generally

have a very different memory of the event, but they'll play the tape for them. They'll be like,

that's so weird. I lied that day. Yeah. Like you just, you just believe you're right even though

your memory is wrong. Oh man, we could do a whole podcast about how we can't trust our brains

and what are the implications of that. Wild. But you know what we can trust. Kids. Jesus.

Yes. We can trust Jesus and we can trust little kids to have funny questions. And speaking

of funny questions. Yeah. Let's listen to today's question. Just Jesus die in the cause and we

Easter. Sorry. Jesus die in the cross every Easter. That is just the sweetest, first of all,

sweetest little voice right there. Also, that's such a sweet good question. Does he die every Easter?

And it kind of makes sense because we have a good Friday service before every Easter where we are

very sad about Jesus dying. It feels like a funeral. It does. Yeah. And like why would we feel so sad

if we knew, oh, no, this isn't happy. Yeah. And why do we act so surprised and excited? Yeah.

Every year when he rises from the dead. It's true. Easter is a little baffling to kids.

That totally makes especially if if you're a kid who's been to a funeral at the church that you

will also go to a good Friday service. You might really be like that person died one time.

Every year though, we talk about Jesus dying. Is he dying over and over and over again?

Yeah. Really good question. Really good question. I hope you have a really good answer. So well,

let's just, I think let's just make sure we actually answer the question. Okay. First part.

No. No, he doesn't. He does not die of Easter. Just that's a pretty straightforward.

Sometimes we have questions like this, Mike, and you'll, you have seen this once before,

where my notes start out and my notes are just no. And then bullet point two also knows.

Pretty clearly no. So to be clear, Jesus does not die of a Easter. Before we get into the kind of

probably question underneath the question of people, then why do we kind of act like he does?

I think it's important to say that actually this answer no is really important.

Like the Bible spends some time making clear to us, not only that Jesus only died once,

but that that was really crucial and that it changed something about our relationship with God

that used to not be a once and done kind of event. So in Hebrews, Hebrews talks about the sacrifice

Jesus made and who Jesus was in so many different ways over and over and over again.

One of the main kind of messages of Hebrews is Jesus was really a man. He really took on human

experience and finitude, our smallness, our limitations. And also he really both was a sacrifice for us

and played the role that the priests typically played of offering the sacrifice. He was both

the sacrifice itself and offered the sacrifice on our behalf. So it says in Hebrews 10,

day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties. Again and again,

he offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when this priest has offered

for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God and since that time he

waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice, he has made perfect forever

those who are being made holy. Now reading this this morning, I was just thinking about how

revolutionary this is because in my Bible reading plan, which I've been doing this year,

which I don't always do, but this year I'm on a Bible reading plan. And I've been reading

in Exodus and in Leviticus. And you get to those, but I mean, this is when people usually like

get off their Bible reading plan because it's like, okay, there are so many details. There are so

many rules. It's very complicated. I've been in the first few chapters of Leviticus yesterday

and today. And I won. I've been struck by the temple must have smelled really good because there's

these like grain offerings that have been mixed with things and like, there's a lot of emphasis on

the aroma and then like the meat is sacrificed and cooked. And this is like an aroma for God.

But there's so many details about the sacrifices that are about if you do these kinds of things,

you have to offer these kinds of sacrifices. And if you have a certain amount of money,

you can offer this sacrifice. But if you don't have as much money, you can offer a different

sacrifice and all of these details about sacrifices. And the people's assumption is you'll do this

over and over and over again. And even in Hebrews in another, in another place in Hebrews,

it makes clear even though that was set up and instituted by God, the prophets even start to tell

us that's not really what God wants. Like he wants your heart to be different more than he wants

you to just keep offering sacrifices. To obey is better than sacrifice. To obey is better than

sacrifice. And then by this point in Hebrews, it makes very clear why Jesus' sacrifice was so

significant. Not only did he take on humanity, he became a human like us. But that sacrifice was

of a different order, a different kind. And it was final. And even in the passage I just read,

it emphasizes day after day again and again, like this was something that had to keep

happening that never fully reconciled humans to God. Not only did it never take away sins,

nowhere in the Old Testament does it say like this magic little ritual you do takes away your sins.

No, it was a ritual God meant God instituted to remind them of their sin to be this kind of morally

formative thing where they recognize what's right and what's wrong. But it was never supposed to

just kind of magically get rid of sin. Only this could really get rid of sin in the sense of

fully reconciled us to God make possible our redemption and restoration. And it was final.

And in that last verse, really emphasizing one sacrifice makes perfect forever, those who are

being made holy, those who are God's people. So it's really important actually that we say Jesus

died once. There's one version of this that people can get kind of confused about. We both say Jesus

died once and most Christian traditions that will do communion every week. We remember we rehearse

that Jesus died every week. Jesus doesn't re-die every week, but we recognize that we participate

the New Testament says in his death, which also means we participate in his resurrection. So there are

many times every week and then this one really important time and good Friday. When we remember Jesus

his death, we participate in it. We rehearse it. But no Christian in any time or place has ever been

like, we are re-killing Jesus. That's important. Okay. Good to know. I didn't really wonder,

but I'm glad to have it concurrent. Just in case you're ever wondering if we are re-killing

Jesus. We're not. We're not. And also, I should say one little's other side now before we move on

to the other kind of main point here. You may have never thought that. There are some Christians,

particularly Protestant Christians, of which probably most people listening are Protestants,

if you're Baptist or Anglican or Presbyterian. They may have heard that Catholics believe

that Jesus is sacrificed every week. That's true. And that is not what Catholics believe. But they do

emphasize a different part of communion than we do. So not only do Catholics believe slightly

differently about what's happening in the Eucharist, maybe lots of or communion or the Lord's

supper or whatever you're calling it. A lot of Protestants will say, you know, this is a symbol

or this is a practice we do because Jesus told us to. But Catholics believe and actually many

Protestants also believe historically, Jesus is actually really present in the bread and in the

wine. We did a whole episode a really long time ago with my friend Kendall Vander Slyce about

different views of this because a little kid asked basically, like, is there enough Jesus

to go around? Like, will we run out of Jesus in his body? So we don't need to get into all of that

here. But I think it's important to say Protestants typically think of communion as a meal. We draw

back to the last supper. We draw back to the early church having kind of fellowship meals. We don't

really spend as much time thinking about communion as a sacrifice. But there is always a connection,

right? Because we are in a certain sense, practicing something similar to the Jewish people who

had actual sacrifices with animals and with grinds. And we don't do that. But we remember this

final sacrifice that's already been made for us. And the Catholic church tends to emphasize that.

So they will more likely talk about how in communion, there's a participation in Christ's death.

And Christ is in that moment offering the sacrifice and being the sacrifice, sacrifice even in

the sense that like we consume Jesus. And they really emphasize that there's a covenant made here

between us and God and covenants require sacrifice so that the sacrifice for us and our covenant

with God is Jesus. But it's really important to say they are not saying that when the priest

you know, praise the right prayer and says the right thing and buy a miracle that God provides the

bread and the wine are Jesus that were somehow killing Jesus every week. Catholics do not believe

that if you've ever been told the Catholics believe that they don't, which we could get way more

into detail there that we will not. But the point is no Christian believes that Jesus is sacrificed

every year or even every year. That's good. That makes a lot of sense. But why then? All right,

I've been to plenty of good Friday services. Actually, when this will have aired, I will have

just been to a good Friday service. Many of our listeners. People are very sad at good Friday

services. Normally, you leave in silence. It's very somber. The cult. It's dark. We incorporate a lot

of red. Like my church puts a black cloth on the cross. It's like a funeral. And so if Jesus

only died once a long time ago, why are we acting so sad on good Friday? Yeah, that's a great question.

It's kind of similar to how the people in the Old Testament, the Jewish people, were given

these rhythms, these festivals, these feasts to help them remember things that you would

similarly think, well, that already happened. Why do you have to remember it? So there's a pattern

in Scripture of God recognizing that we are forgetful and small and limited and fallen. So both

because we are small and limited and humans that don't know everything and are not all powerful.

And also because we are fallen humans who on top of that limitation tend to forget important

things out of self-focus and tend to get distracted by other things that are not as good

or worthy of our love and attention as the things of God. Because we're forgetful, we're finite,

we're fallen. God has in His graciousness throughout the whole history of the people of God,

given us regular opportunities to remember what God has already done, what God has promised to do.

So even like the people of God in the Old Testament would have ways to remember in the Passover,

which we believe Jesus celebrated the Passover on this night that He was killed.

They had this celebration of the Passover to remember something that you might similarly go,

you're not enslaved in Egypt anymore. So why are you paying all this attention to what it meant

to be enslaved and forgot to take you out of that captivity? You might forget otherwise,

actually. And so it's a practice handed down through generations to say, it's important not only

to remember what God has done for us, but the real straits we were in that God took us out of.

So in the Passover, let's remember God liberated us from our enslavement, which requires

remembering a little bit of what enslavement meant, like mourning that reality and then celebrating

what God did to liberate us. Similarly, on Good Friday, we historically, in the church from

quite early on, have wanted to remember why Easter even matters. Like, we don't want to jump

too quickly into the celebration and the fun and for us today, the bright colors and the Easter

bunny and the Easter eggs, we really need to remember why any of this was even necessary,

which is our sinfulness, our fallenness, the great and not just our own sinfulness. Some of us

on Good Friday services, we can really be directed by the church into mourning just our own sin,

which is important. It's a good opportunity to reflect on the ways I've hurt people, the ways I've

hurt myself, the way I've misused, the gifts that God has given me. It's also an opportunity to

look around at the great evil and destruction and brokenness in the world and lament that

in preparation for rejoicing over what God has done. So we need help remembering, we need help

remembering the story, the salvation story. We also, God recognizes that we need help remembering

that not only in this kind of regular rhythm, but using our bodies and our senses. So even

what you just described, Mike, lots of church traditions use different things. In the east,

they will typically wear black vestments, like the priests who have special funny clothes,

they'll wear the black versions of that. In the west, Catholic church Protestants, they'll wear red.

Many traditions will fast on Good Friday, so they'll eat very little or they'll kind of

abstain from certain foods to recognize the severity of this. Most church traditions, if they

regularly have communion, they won't have communion on Good Friday because that's a celebratory thing.

Many church traditions on Thursday, right before Good Friday, will do something called stripping

the altar where they take down all of the images that kind of decor around the church.

Now, obviously, this requires that you're in a church tradition that has lots of decor and images.

But I think it's important that, I mean, even throughout lens at my church here in Illinois,

like there were coverings put on many of the images in the chapel because there was a recognition

that we're in this period of kind of somberness. We're really meditating on sin, so we want to

cover up some of the really beautiful parts of the church or take them down, stripping of the altar,

are you taking all of the things off of the altar to kind of recognize with our bodies, with our

eyes, that we're in a different season. We're really focusing on the brokenness of the worlds

and our own lament of our own participation in that brokenness. And I think a lot of evangelical

churches have lost this sense that we learn things through our bodies, through sight and sound

and smell. And we actually might learn it more strongly with those things taken up. One of the other

things that some traditions will do, not just on Good Friday, but all through Lent, is there's a

regular liturgy of the church at my church. And it usually ends with, at the end of the service,

you say a bunch of things that are kind of in your little booklet, you're reading along, you've

got written prayers. At the very end, you'll say, Alleluia, Alleluia. That's like the last thing you

say after the priest has said the last word, and then we all leave the service. The whole of Lent,

you don't say Alleluia, which is, I've never been at a church until recently where the liturgy was

so strong and so ingrained in you, that the first Sunday of Lent, probably half the church,

just said Alleluia. And they went, oh, no, I can't say that because you're so formed into saying it,

it's not even totally conscious. You just sort of say it, which is why a period of Lent's actually

really beautiful to break up the Alleluia is to be like, maybe you're not really saying that Alleluia

in quite the right spirit anymore. Like maybe you haven't really understood that you are saying that

as a response to the amazing work God has done. Let's get rid of it for a little while. Let's

remember why it's actually good news even at the end of this season. Let's remember the brokenness,

the evil, the grief. I mean, not even just sin, but like people die because of no one's faults.

And natural disasters hurt people like there is so much grief and sadness and brokenness in the

world. Let's sit in that for a while. And then by the time you go back to saying Alleluia again,

maybe because it's strange again, you'll remember why you're even saying it in the first place.

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I don't have kids of my own, but I love them. I'm the friend, the aunt, the babysitter who

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I think, for the most part, many American churches are bad at limits. That's not anything new.

Many of our listeners know that, but it reminds me there was one time when I was working at a church,

we went through a name change, and so we brought in a consultant to just kind of help us think

through the many implications of changing your name, including your communication and messaging,

and all of that. And he was helping us think through our tagline, because of course the church

will need a new church. I was very uncomfortable with all of this, but I was just trying to kind

of go along with it in Yada Yada, and as he was telling us, he was talking to us about like,

well, let's talk about what you want the tagline to represent. So now that this is what the tagline

would be, but just internally, this is kind of what we wanted him to represent. And he goes,

I don't know, what if it was something like, you want your tagline to represent that your church

exists to help people win? Oh, God. And Caitlin, I don't, I'm surprised that man ever worked with

our church again, because I, I mean, I basically, everything I was bottling up, I let out, and just I,

the idea that like the point of the church is to help people win, it's completely wrong. It's

completely wrong. And why I so much appreciate, and I've also been a part of church settings where

like there is a debate even about, well, should we have our people leave in silence at the end of

a good Friday service, because it's kind of uncomfortable. It's awkward. What if it's a new person,

and there was a long stretch in churches, they're still tempted to do this, where it's like, oh,

we want to make things easy and accessible and comfortable and fun and joyful and

celebratory. But the problem is that no one goes through life, only experiencing fun and joyful

celebration, that I actually think Good Friday and Lent is an opportunity to equip our people

on how to grieve and lament well, because it is good to be sad and moved by the death of Jesus,

and it would also be wrong to become so despondent on Good Friday. Yes. Like Jesus wasn't, you

didn't know yet if Jesus was going to, to be raised from the dead, that, that I love the idea of

leaving my Good Friday service on Friday in silence and feeling the grief of my Savior being

crucified, while also still having that hope that Sunday's coming, that it's not going to be

like this forever, and that when I practice that during Lent, then it prepares me outside of Lent.

When I do go through seasons of loss or suffering or tragedy, oh, I know how to do this. I know how

to experience grief while still not losing hope somewhere inside of me. The other thing I thought

of in all of this is like, well, I think sometimes evangelicals especially

doubt our salvation. It's like it reminded me of the the summer camp experience where like you

gave your life to Jesus every summer camp at the ultra call, because you weren't quite sure,

or even that like temptation, well, maybe I need to get baptized again and again and again. Like,

I think a kid has this question because it's a good question. They're confused. I think an adult

might not ask this specific question, but they would ask similar questions. Well, do I need to

get baptized again? Do I need to kind of recommit over and over again? What would you say to those

people? Yeah. I mean, there's an impulse here maybe to go, okay, there's this once a year real

focus on sin. We talk about sin all the time in church, but especially on Good Friday, it's like

really focus on our sin, really focus on what Jesus did for us and like the grief of that and

the loss of that and and we're waiting. Like you said, we're expecting, but we're still holding

off for a bit on the celebration of Easter. Is that intended to kind of make us go, oh, am I really

good with God? I might need to I might need to have an ultra call again. I might need to go to

the front and pray in other centers prayer. I might need to and that's never been the teaching or

the emphasis of the church. The assumption has always been like the passage we wrote at the

beginning from from Hebrews 10. This was once and for all, like Jesus did this for you. You accept

it. That's it. Like you are in, you are good. There's a lot asked of you. There's a lot of growth

for you, but you don't need to be in this anxiety, written state of of, did I really mean it this time?

Did I really say the words right? Did I really and some of Good Friday, it is intended to shape us

emotionally, right? That's like a real good thing the church often does is say like the images,

the sounds, the mood is intended to form certain emotions in us because emotions aren't bad,

but they should be rightly directed and the church can help rightly direct our emotions.

The flip side of that is are we trying to manipulate emotions to get a big response? And I think

Good Friday is an opportunity to say, as you already said, I actually can rest in this grief

for a moment. I want to I want to feel it. I want to mourn. I do want to lament. Even though I have

already been saved, I do want to say to God, I am grieved by the way that my sin and the sin of

others have harmed me, have harmed others, have harmed your creation. That's not putting me at

like risky grounds like, am I still good? That's me doing what a saved person does, which is

lament and repent and return to God. And I also think it's really important that we recognize that

many of us are on one end of the spectrum of this or the other. Some of us might want to avoid

lament and sorrow and grief like the plague. And we need the rhythms of the church to help us go

no sit in it. Like it's uncomfortable. It's hard to sit in it. Some of us want to live in the

despair. Some of us, especially at this moment politically and economically in our country,

it might be tempting to go so glad the church recognizes that and that's all there is. Like,

let's just live in Good Friday. And as you already said, no Christian in the history of the church

has ever really truly celebrated Good Friday, actually in the mindset of, I don't know what's

coming. I love that we, as a church say, we're going to hold off on telling you a whole story.

We're going to leave in silence in some traditions. We're going to like have the black, have the

red, like really focus and sit in on the sorrow. But you actually can't do that if you don't know

what's coming. Like if it really is just the end, like Jesus died and his mission is over and his

movement failed, then like we wouldn't be doing this every, it'd be too, it'd be too much despair.

That would be terrible. Instead, we need to sit in that solumnus on Good Friday so that we can feel

in our bones that there was a time that is not here anymore when all hope was lost, when all

options were exhausted, when we really could not save ourselves so that on Easter, which is not one

day, but 50 days after Lent, for 50 days after Lent, we will really get to celebrate the fact that

when it seems like all hope was lost, all options exhausted, our fate was sealed. Jesus didn't

just preach a good sermon or do a cool miracle or do any of the things we read in the gospels

towards the beginning. He rose from the dead and that means we can't do. That I think is a great

way to end on. Caitlin, thank you again for taking what is a little bit of a silly question.

And yet I think answering it in a way that anyone listening, it's impactful. It's a reminder

that these kid questions are addressing things that even adults struggle with fully understanding.

So as always, thank you for people at home. Keep sending in those questions and we will see all

next week. Curiously, Caitlin is a production of Holy Post Media, produced by Mike Strailo,

editing by Seth Gervett, theme song by Phil Vischer. Be sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And leave a review so more people can discover thoughtful

Christian commentary, plus cute kids, and never any but news.