| Today we take the third step to look at resurrection and death and sin. This is really getting us into some 'stuff.' .....God did not raise Jesus from the dead merely to demonstrate his own deathlessness, or rescue Jesus from the middle of the human reality of death as a bodyguard may rescue a beleaguered pop star from the midst of a pressing crowd of fans, to get her away from it all as quickly as possible. The third step in the recasting of God and the recasting of sin is that God raised up this man who had been killed in this way for us. The victim of human iniquity was raised up as forgiveness; in fact the resurrection was the raising up of the victim as forgiveness. This it was which permitted the recasting of God as love. I was not just that God loved his son and so raised him up, but that the giving of the son and his raising up revealed God as love for us. This is the witness of the remarkably similar passages found in John 3:16-17 and Romans 3:21-26, as well as of course 1 John 4:9-10. If the third step reveals God as forgiving us (and the presence of the crucified and risen victim was exactly this revelation), then it also simultaneously reveals that death is not only a human reality, and one inflected by sin, but that the human reality of death itself is capable of being forgiven. Even as we participate in the death of God's beloved, we are forgiven. God loves no matter what we do or intend to do. Though we are ruled by fear and anxiety and self-concern, God does not let that feeble power win the day - never and no way. What we must hear in all this is that there is room to live a new life. We do not need to say we are stuck and cannot get up. We are already lifted up by our God through the resurrection of Jesus. God lifts us up and sets us on flat ground that has an open future in which we need not fear that which we thought could consume us. That the meaning of being saved - we have life again - now - tomorrow - forever. Jesus who was this victim, crucified and then raised from the dead is the same resurrection power for us today and tomorrow. No magic. This is forgiveness so extreme we often cannot even imagine it. We want conditions - and yet there are none. There is only this reality handed to us and no power (like death) puts a damper on it. Connection: No excuses - only forgiveness and a new day - again! Lord of the Resurrection, you bring life - eternal - and we are still amazed. Amen. |
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