It beggars belief to think that this Jewish prophet who announced and enacted the joyful reign of the gracious and merciful God of Israel decided to go to Jerusalem to die in order to pay back the debt sinners owed to the offended honor of God, who could not forgive sin without the death of an innocent man. Not in your wildest dreams….
What our trek through the scriptures gives us instead, to use alternative language, is a theology of accompaniment. It fosters the idea of salvation as the divine gift of “I am with you,” even in the throes of suffering and death. Redemption comes to mean the presence of God walking with the world through its traumas and travail, even unto death.
— Elizabeth A. Johnson, Creation and the Cross, p. 106
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, April 19, 2020