Onward with God recast as love through forgiveness - James Alison call this the 3rd step of this recasting process. It 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. I read this last line as the power of death has lost its hold through the power of forgiveness. It could be that forgiveness is the power that takes the 'sting of death' away. No sure. And yet it sounds as though God's love - as forgiveness - disregards death's ways. It is as though the story line changes.First there is the power of death - but it gets trumped. Separation does not win the day. Love - the reuniting of the separated - is the reality within God's Reign. It is this love that does not let our sin - our brokenness - have the last word. From the last word being God's love through the power of forgiveness, we are left with how all things began - God's creative love. What potential. Connection: The potential for forgiveness to bring about new life is amazing. Too often I do not trust it. Too often I really don't want to go there. Maybe it is because I will not let myself enter that experience - face the empty tomb - rise to new life. O God of life, carry us into the domain of your forgiveness and refresh our days with you love. Amen. |
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