Atonement

Instead of any sort of reflection today, I offer you the following. Steve Sherwood, a Young Life leader, is the winner of Emergent Village's atonement metaphor contest. His imagery and use of scripture (Hosea and the Prodigal Son) are remarkable, and I offer the whole text in pdf here. Atonement is the systemic theology of what happened on the cross, essentially the searching for an answer to "What is the it in 'it is finished'?"

Here's a snapshot of of his argument:
"God goes to the cross. Jesus, who is still just as much Emmanuel~God with us on the day of his death as he was on the day of his birth, goes to the cross. Gomer’s indebtedness had to be paid off. The son’s shame had to be removed. The sin of humanity has to be dealt with. But, just as Hosea’s goal is not retribution but restoration and just as the father shames himself to be relationally restored with his son, Jesus does not go to the cross to pay off God’s wrath. He goes to the cross to complete the restoration to relationship that God the Father has yearned for from the start. Reconciliation comes at a great cost to Hosea and to the father. Both set aside honor and ‘their rights’ to bring reconciliation to the one they love. They, the innocent party, ‘bear the penalty’, the shame brought on by another, in order to restore the one that was lost. Likewise, Jesus, the visible expression of God’s heart toward humanity, endures the cross. Not to ‘satisfy the wrath of God’ but to satisfy God’s love."