Christ as the Self-Sacrificing Salmon

Last week, on the second leg of our trip to the Pacific Northwest, my wife and I camped for four nights along the foggy coast of northern California among the redwoods. The day before our arrival, we stopped at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, where I picked up several books by J. Philip Newell on Celtic Christian Spirituality. One book is called “Christ of the Celts,’ and the other is “Listening to the Heartbeat of God.” At our campsites along the coast, the fog and lushness reminded me of Ireland, so it was natural that after dinner was finished each night, I felt drawn to read Newell’s books in the gathering mists.

In his chapter on the meaning of the death of Christ, Newell reiterates a point I often tell my students: he says that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement – which, in our culture, is often assumed to be the ONLY way of interpreting Christ’s saving work – feels unpalatable to many of us because it assumes that God requires PAYMENT for our failings (a payment which HE supplies by sending Christ to die in our stead). Aside from the fact that the theory of substitutionary atonement did not fully develop until the 11th century (in the works of St. Anselm), this doctrine interprets Jesus’ death in terms of sin, guilt and punishment. Although many in our time find this to be a liberating teaching - especially to the degree that it is seen as a manifestation of God’s love - others of us experience this teaching as alienating. In fact, Newell calls this theory “the prostitution of God; payment for love.” Like Newell, many of us wonder: “Isn’t there any other way of interpreting Christ’s death – one that focuses on the POSITIVE aspects of our humanity?"

Newell provides an alternative way of interpreting Jesus’ saving work, one that focuses on comparing Jesus to a salmon, a common motif in early Celtic spirituality. As I read, I found this incredibly fascinating, especially since the salmon is such a large part of the indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest, from Alaska all the way to northern California, where we were camped. In fact, my wife and I picked up some fresh-caught King Salmon at a local shop and cooked it on our Coleman stove during our stay along the coast! In any case, Newell writes: “One of the most ancient symbols of Christ in the Celtic world is the salmon . . . The salmon, strong and glistening with vitality, swims hundreds of miles in the open sea and climbs thousands of feet in the torrents of mighty rivers to give birth to new life. And in spawning new life, it dies. [This is] Christ, the Salmon of Wisdom, the One who gives himself for the birthing of new life . . . In the Celtic world, Christ is this bright, blessed, beautiful Salmon. Love comes freely from the heart of life, with costly longing.” Newell concludes: “Everything God does is a pouring out of love, a sharing of lifeblood. And so the whole of creation is an ongoing offering of self, a showing of the Eternal heart that is pulsing with love in the life of things. Not only does the cross disclose love, but it also discloses the cost of love. To offer the heart is to offer the self. And so the cross, in addition to being a revelation of the nature of God, is a revelation of OUR true nature, made in the image of God. It reveals that we come closest to our true self when we pour ourselves out in love for one another.” In this reading, Christ comes not to provide a substitute payment for our sin, but, as Newell puts it, “to reconnect us to our true nature.”

In a fascinating coincidence, my wife was at the same time reading a book entitled “Grandmothers Counsel the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet.” This book was birthed by a 2004 conference in New York, where thirteen indigenous grandmothers from around the world offered their wisdom. The chapter about Agnes Baker Pilgrim, from the Takelma Siletz Tribe, located in Oregon, was especially enlightening, given my simultaneous reading of Newell’s books. Significantly, Grandmother Agnes is the Keeper of the Sacred Salmon Ceremony, a rite which had been lost for over 150 years. She says: “Legend tells us that the salmon were people shaped like us that lived in a beautiful city below the ocean floor. The spirit of the Salmon People chose to come back every spring and fall to feed the two-leggeds of the world. They chose to sacrifice themselves to feed us.” Accordingly, “After the long and dangerous journey upstream to her place of origin, where she lays her eggs for the last time, the female salmon turns back downstream and begins to die. During her slow death, her flesh falls off into the water and nurtures other little fish. Then the remains of her body continue to nourish thirty-three kinds of animals, who drink from the river and carry her minerals to replenish the land and surrounding vegetation.” Grandmother Agnes goes on to remind us of the law of reciprocity, whereby the Salmon People teach us that WE TOO are meant to sacrifice ourselves spiritually for the life of the world.

When we embody both the Christ-Salmon and the Salmon People, we understand that we are called to empty out our lives – through self-discipline, through the practice of dogged faith even when we feel ourselves subject to the corrosions of doubt, through acts of compassion even to those we are tempted to think don’t deserve it, through unrequited love, through creative acts of imagination that others consider crazy, and through a million other ways – in order to provide new life to others, to Mother Earth and to the Creator. What a liberating way to see the death of Christ - and that delicious Coleman stove-cooked salmon dinner!

Images: (Top) Celtic Christian depiction of Salmon, and (Bottom) Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim