Christus Victor Mosaic, Ravenna, 6th century
Victor, not Victim
Easter 2B
15 April 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
15 April 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31
Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us-- we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 1:1-2:2)
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
“The hardest thing in my life,” a dear friend once told me, “is that I always feel like I’m such a fraud. When things are going well, I’m always trying to catch up and make it appear that I’m totally on top of everything. When things aren’t so good, I seem to spend all my time trying just to appear normal.”
I think that almost all of us have that feeling on occasion, and it is very debilitating. It is a great drain on emotional energy to always be feeling behind the curve, trying to catch up, or always trying to stay on top.
There seems to be built into life itself, as good as life is, a painful disjunction between where we are and where we ought to be, or where we feel we ought to be.
The problem with making coffee in the morning is that you haven’t had your coffee yet and can barely negotiate the fixings and the machinery.
The problem with looking for your glasses is that you can’t see to find them.
The problem with pleasure is that there always is a point where it is too much and becomes disappointing or hellish. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
The problem with marriage is that the attraction that leads us to commit to each other—despite all our desire for autonomy and freedom—can have a mind of its own, and tends to wander after a while.
The problem with trying to not be so much a fraud is that you have to fake it so much.
The problem with making progress in spirituality is that you all too soon notice it and become very proud of it, and immediately lose it, or, worse, see it twisted into something ugly and unrecognizable.
The problem with trying to put away bad behavior is that it always seems to crop up again, sometimes in much worse form.
The problem with trying to live ordered lives is that life just can be so damned messy. And, as we have seen the last few weeks in this parish, the problem with health and life is that they end in sickness and death.
I’m not saying that life isn’t good. It is good, and sweet indeed. All I am saying is that for whatever reason, there seems to be built into the very structure of our lives a gap between the is and the ought, between how things are and how they ought to be, between what we are and how we should be.
In the Hong Kong subway, there are little signs pointing between the station platform and the opened doors of the trains. They say, “mind the gap.”
The gap I am talking about is much bigger, and so pervasive we cannot “mind” it. It is the chasm between what we desire and what we fear, what we hope for and what we dread. In the story of Lazarus and the Rich man, it is the “great gulf fixed” between Abraham’s bosom and hell. The chasm is found beneath and in almost everything in life. We see it in arguments, in disappointments, in unfulfilled hope, ruined expectation, and spoiled esteem. We experience it in dissatisfaction, when we feel shame, when we taste guilt. Law calls it a crime. Morals call it sin.
Trying to lower our standards to conform to our behavior doesn’t get rid of the gap, it just hides it for a while. Trying to get rid of all desire, as Buddhism teaches, is itself still a form of trying. Resignation to the unacceptable is a recipe for no progress, either in society or in personal life. Careful efforts at following rules and written prescriptions of how things ought to be, whether in the Torah, the Quran, or a Christian Bible interpreted by the letter, may make things better, but only for a while. No matter how hard we try, the ideal always seems to retreat, like the horizon line, and the chasm between where we are and where we should be remains as great as ever.
And therein lie the roots of cynicism, pessimism, and despair, despite all the good we see in our life. The problem with moral improvement is that we fail. The problem with health is that we eventually get sick. The problem with living is that we all die.
Today is the second Sunday of Easter. The epistle reading today says the following, “Jesus Christ … is an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
I think that almost all of us have that feeling on occasion, and it is very debilitating. It is a great drain on emotional energy to always be feeling behind the curve, trying to catch up, or always trying to stay on top.
There seems to be built into life itself, as good as life is, a painful disjunction between where we are and where we ought to be, or where we feel we ought to be.
The problem with making coffee in the morning is that you haven’t had your coffee yet and can barely negotiate the fixings and the machinery.
The problem with looking for your glasses is that you can’t see to find them.
The problem with pleasure is that there always is a point where it is too much and becomes disappointing or hellish. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
The problem with marriage is that the attraction that leads us to commit to each other—despite all our desire for autonomy and freedom—can have a mind of its own, and tends to wander after a while.
The problem with trying to not be so much a fraud is that you have to fake it so much.
The problem with making progress in spirituality is that you all too soon notice it and become very proud of it, and immediately lose it, or, worse, see it twisted into something ugly and unrecognizable.
The problem with trying to put away bad behavior is that it always seems to crop up again, sometimes in much worse form.
The problem with trying to live ordered lives is that life just can be so damned messy. And, as we have seen the last few weeks in this parish, the problem with health and life is that they end in sickness and death.
I’m not saying that life isn’t good. It is good, and sweet indeed. All I am saying is that for whatever reason, there seems to be built into the very structure of our lives a gap between the is and the ought, between how things are and how they ought to be, between what we are and how we should be.
In the Hong Kong subway, there are little signs pointing between the station platform and the opened doors of the trains. They say, “mind the gap.”
The gap I am talking about is much bigger, and so pervasive we cannot “mind” it. It is the chasm between what we desire and what we fear, what we hope for and what we dread. In the story of Lazarus and the Rich man, it is the “great gulf fixed” between Abraham’s bosom and hell. The chasm is found beneath and in almost everything in life. We see it in arguments, in disappointments, in unfulfilled hope, ruined expectation, and spoiled esteem. We experience it in dissatisfaction, when we feel shame, when we taste guilt. Law calls it a crime. Morals call it sin.
Trying to lower our standards to conform to our behavior doesn’t get rid of the gap, it just hides it for a while. Trying to get rid of all desire, as Buddhism teaches, is itself still a form of trying. Resignation to the unacceptable is a recipe for no progress, either in society or in personal life. Careful efforts at following rules and written prescriptions of how things ought to be, whether in the Torah, the Quran, or a Christian Bible interpreted by the letter, may make things better, but only for a while. No matter how hard we try, the ideal always seems to retreat, like the horizon line, and the chasm between where we are and where we should be remains as great as ever.
And therein lie the roots of cynicism, pessimism, and despair, despite all the good we see in our life. The problem with moral improvement is that we fail. The problem with health is that we eventually get sick. The problem with living is that we all die.
Today is the second Sunday of Easter. The epistle reading today says the following, “Jesus Christ … is an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
I was raised in a tradition that taught that when we say Jesus “died for our sins,” this meant that he had to die on the cross to pay for our sins. God was just and we all deserved punishment and death; God the Father sent Jesus in love and mercy so that he could take our place. And all we have to do is have faith in Jesus, repent, and follow him. And then we won’t suffer the punishment for our sins, because he bore the punishment for us.
This is doctrine of transferred punishment.
The early undivided Christian Church never defined its doctrine of the atonement. The Nicene Creed says that it was "for us and our salvation" that Christ became incarnate and “for our sake” that he was crucified. But it does not tell us how this was the case. Just 15 years after Jesus’ death, St. Paul quotes the tradition he had received from earlier Christians: “Christ died for our sins" (1 Cor 15:1-5), but again, does not tell us what this means.
Paul elsewhere gives us more than a dozen vivid images to describe what Christ did: he liberated us from oppression, he saved us from danger on the battlefield, he created us anew, he purchased us back out of slavery, he reconciled us to God as one would reconcile friends who had quarreled, he propitiated an angry deity, he declared us innocent as in a court of Law, he transformed us like in the Greek myth of metamorphosis. He is searching for the right image, drawing them from a wide range of human life, but clearly is not completely satisfied with any single one of them.
Over the ages, the Church has explained the atonement in different ways. For the first four or five centuries, both Eastern and Western preachers simply declared that Christ was a victor: on the cross he took on sin, death, and hell in a battle, and on Easter beat them all. Once feudalism had become the main social arrangement where Christians lived, they used its sense of honor based in social rank and began to say that Christ offered the “satisfaction” to a Deity insulted and dishonored by the failings of mere human beings, who could never repay their debt of honor to such a superior. In the High Middle Ages, secular-leaning scholars like Peter Abelard argued that the example Christ set encourages us to behave better and thus be freed of sin, while the more churchly ones like St. Thomas Aquinas argued for a sacramental view, directly linking Christ’s death on the cross with Holy Communion, which they called the sacrifice of the Mass, and which they saw as directly transformative on those who not only partook it, but merely gazed upon it in reverence. It was only during the Renaissance, with its greater emphasis on the individual; political economy, and legal reasoning, that Christians began primarily explaining atonement as substitutionary punishment.
All of these ideas are simply different ways of describing how Jesus closed for us the gap between how things are and how they ought to be, between what we are, and what God intends. The different images and doctrines just emphasize different parts of the chasm. And none is ideal.
One of the classic texts used as a so-called proof of the substituted penal punishment explanation of the atonement, 1 Peter 2:24, says “[Jesus’] own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.” But even this passage introduces this image by using another image, “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps” (v. 21). He thus says that Jesus died for us and bore our sins in his body on the Cross to serve as an example to us, an idea close to Abelard’s: he died for our benefit by leaving us his example.
In the person of Jesus, the gap between what ought to be and what actually is was as thin as it possibly could be. It is because of this thinness of the gap shown in Jesus’ life and teachings, that his disciples interpreted what happened on Good Friday and then Easter morning in the way they did. The resurrection was the ultimate closing of the gap, bridging of the chasm.
Soon his followers were saying that Jesus had in some way been God made present among us. They knew that his resurrection showed that his death was not meaningless or random. Within a decade of his death, they were affirming clearly as Paul reports in the passage I quoted earlier, “Jesus died for us in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3-9), thinking of passages in the Hebrew Bible where a good person suffers wrongly but is delivered by God, thus bringing the wicked to a knowledge of God, and where this is described poetically as the wounds of those who suffer wrongly as a kind of medicine that heals the wicked.
I have felt the healing and calming effect of Jesus’ victory, of his bridging the chasm. Christ on the Cross and Christ risen again gives me courage to try again, to not lose hope, whether this is making amendment of life or trying to work for a better world around me. The sweet comfort and the fierce joy we feel at Jesus’ victory is but a foretaste of a world with the gaps closed, the chasms filled, with all as it should be, all as God intends. No frauds, no sickness, no guilt, no oppression, no fear—just the loving presence that enables us to do and be what we ought.
Sisters and Brothers of Trinity Church Ashland: the Lord is risen indeed. In his victory over sin, death, and all that is wrong with the world, he shines before us as a great light, he stands before us as the closing of the gaps, of bridging from where we are to where we need to be. We need not fear the darkness, the chasm, or be discouraged by our failings.
Thanks be to God.
