I once went to hear Dr. Fred Craddock teach a group of pastors how to improve their preaching. Somewhere in the middle of his lectures he told us that everyone has a theory about the atonement. Everyone in our Churches has some understanding of what happened Easter weekend. To illustrate that point the told us a story of an encounter he once had.
Several years ago he was heading back to visit his boyhood home and he wanted to get a haircut before his trip. He stopped in a local barber shop and waited his turn. There was a large group of men gathered there and swapping stories and lies. One good ol boy asked him why he was getting a haircut since his didn’t look that bad. He told them that he was going back home and wanted to look good and grown up.
One of the men sitting there said, “Oh, I haven’t been home since I was a boy.”
Fred asked him why he had never returned home. The man went on to tell him a story from when he was a boy.
He told him that he had an older brother and they were raised by their father. Dad was a tough man and very strict. Anyway, one day his brother and he were playing around the house like boys will do. His brother jumped on his father’s bed and he landed on his dad’s glasses and broke them.
When his father got home he saw the glasses and assumed he had broken them since he was the youngest. Dad took him and started beating him with a belt on his back and butt. His father gave him the worst beating he has ever received. The whole time his brother sat in the corner and didn’t say a word. The next day he waited for his dad to go to work and he packed up his clothes and left home. He has never returned since that day.
Then he said, “I don’t know how the guilty can stand back and watch while the innocent take their punishment.”
He paused for a few moments and said, “Well, except for Jesus.”
Dr. Craddock says that he explained the events of Easter weekend and the atonement of Jesus with one line.
I have never forgotten that story and every year I reflect on its truth.